Zaira Wasim Quits Acting As It 'Threatened' Her 'Relationship With Her Religion'

Zaira Wasim

Zaira Wasim, who made an impressive debut with Aamir Khan starrer Dangal,shocked the nation as she announced on Sunday that she is quitting Bollywood as it is interfering with her religion.

The National Award-winning actor, who is of Kashmiri, origin was last seen in Secret Superstar. She wrote a long post on her social media as she announced her decision to the world.

The 18-year-old wrote, “5 years ago I made a decision that changed my life forever. As I stepped my foot in Bollywood, it opened doors of massive popularity for me. I started to become the prime candidate of public attention, I was projected as the gospel of the idea of success and was often identified as a role model for the youth. However, that’s never something that I set out to do or become, especially with regards to my ideas of success and failure, which I had just started to explore and understand.”

“As I complete 5 years today, I want to confess that I am not truly happy with this identity i.e my line of work. For a very long time now it has felt like I have struggled to become someone else. As I had just started to explore and make sense of the things to which I dedicated my time, efforts and emotions and tried to grab hold of a new lifestyle, it was only for me to realise that though I may fit here perfectly, I do not belong here. This field indeed brought a lot of love, support, and applause my way, but what it also did was to lead me to a path of ignorance, as I silently and unconsciously transitioned out of imaan. While I continued to work in an environment that consistently interfered with my imaan, my relationship with my religion was threatened. As I continued to ignorantly pass through while I kept trying to convince myself that what I was doing is okay and isn’t really affecting me, I lost all the Barakah from my life. Barakat is word whose meaning isn't just confined to happiness, quantity or blessing, it also focuses on the idea of stability, which is something I struggled with extensively,” said the actress.

“I was constantly battling with my soul to reconcile my thoughts and instincts to fix a static picture of my iman and I failed miserably, not just once but a hundred times. No matter how hard I tried to wrestle to firm my decision, I ended up being the same person with a motive that one day I will change and I will change soon. I kept procrastinating by tricking and deluding my conscience into the idea that I know what I am doing doesn’t feel right but assumed that I will put an end to this whenever the time feels right and I continued to put myself in a vulnerable position where it was always so easy to succumb to the environment that damaged my peace, iman and my relationship with Allah . I continued to observe things and twist my perceptions as I wanted them to be, without really understanding that the key is to see them as they are. I kept trying to escape but somehow I always ended up hitting a dead end, in an endless loop with a missing element that kept torturing me with a longing I was neither able to make sense of nor satisfy. Until I decided to confront my weakness and began to strive and correct my lack of knowledge and understanding by attaching my heart with the words of Allah. In the great and divine wisdom of the Quran, I found sufficiency and peace. Indeed the hearts find peace when it acquires the knowledge of Its Creator, His Attributes, His Mercy and His commandments,” she further added.

Zaira wrote, “I began to heavily rely upon Allah’s mercy for my help and guidance instead of valuing my own believability. I discovered my lack of knowledge of the basic fundamentals of my religion and how my inability to reinforce a change earlier was a result of confusing my heart's contentment and well being with strengthening and satisfying my own (shallow and worldly) desires. I discovered my disease of doubt & error that my heart was afflicted with- There are 2 types of diseases that attack the heart, one; DOUBT and Error and the second; LUST and Desire. Both are mentioned in the Quran."

Zaira’s last movie will be The Sky Is Pink, which also stars Priyanka Chopra and Farhan Akhtar. The Shonali Bose-directed biographical drama is based on the life of Aisha Chaudhary, who became a motivational speaker after being diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis at the age of 13. Zaira is playing Aisha while Farhan and Priyanka are playing her parents in the movie, which will hit the theatres on October 11.