All we hear is Radio ga ga.../ Radio blah blah/ Radio what’s new?” Now if you’ve been humming those lines from Queen, it could probably be that you have been keeping your ears pinned to the radio to catch Mona Singh on air.

Yes the very same Mona Singh who had you going ‘Who’s that girl?’. In the guise of the homely, bespectacled Jassi, she smiled her way into your hearts. Two years on and the identity is almost part of her personality. But the actress is not complaining. After all, it has been a dream debut for a girl from Delhi who started off modelling. She literally went around knocking on doors with her portfolio and did the rounds in Mumbai looking for a career in acting.

“But I’ve managed to carve out an identity for myself now. People have started recognising me as Mona Singh and not simply as the face behind Jassi,” smiles the actress as she sits pretty in the Big FM studio in Delhi along with close friend and actor Gaurav Gera (of Nandu fame from Jassi Jaisi Koi Nahin).

Getting back her own identity has ironically not been a cakewalk. First of all, Singh was recently seen shaking a leg on the reality dance show, Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa, where she was competing with the likes of Mahesh Manjrekar, Ajay Jadeja, Shweta Salve and Rati Agnihotri. And now, she’s also been sizzling on the airwaves with her very own breakfast show, Big Chai that she co-hosts with Gera.

“It has helped me reach out to a larger audience and connect with them on a personal note. We talk to them about their problems, their stories and their life,” she says. There’s no script as such to keep the two actors going on — it’s all impromptu.

“We have fun for hours without a script. With Gaurav, I have this amazing connection. We hang out together. When we are out on drives, for instance, we might hum the same tune or look out and notice the same thing without even talking about it. I start saying something and he completes it for me,” laughs the actress, now in her mid-twenties.

She’s also the new brand ambassador for Sony, a one-year contract during which she cannot work with other channels. So she’s doing the best she can during that time. For instance, she’s shooting for a reality show called Extreme Makeover. And it’s not your average one-day makeover Singh is talking about hosting here. The show is about surgical makeovers for victims of acid burns or those with defects like clefts.

For a journey that started out with television and has moved on to radio, there’s probably the big screen in the offing. To that her reaction is a simple answer stating that the right offers are yet to come her way. “I do not want to make my debut in just any film,” explains Singh.

Of course, it is a different matter that she manages to pack a punch with almost everything she does — be it donning a different personality, slogging her way to win the dancing queen crown, or lending a sympathetic ear to listeners on the radio.

“When she was Jassi, she used to spend all her waking hours in the studio. It was her home. She even had little plants and pinned photographs around her corner in the studio,” laughs Gera.

A day in the life of Singh indeed seems rushed — almost like a tornado passing through town. While she was rehearsing for Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa and hosting the breakfast show, she would be in Delhi for a few hours in the morning, do the show and then take the next flight back to Mumbai to rehearse for eight hours at a stretch.

“Now suddenly that the show is over, I’m experiencing a certain emptiness. I was used to rehearsing for hours on end. Now things are different,” says Singh. Which is why she has decided to keep dancing and has signed up for salsa classes. “I am also going to try out power yoga,” she adds. Clearly, if her trim self is anything to go by, there’s a new fitness-conscious Mona Singh on the block.

Though Singh shuttles to and fro between Delhi and Mumbai, she has bought a house in Andheri West. Her parents too have shifted into her new pad from Pune. “You see, my father is my Rock of Gibraltar. He is the one person who can tell me who I am. After a long day’s work, I really need to have my parents around me,” says Singh.

A graduate in commerce from St Mira’s College, Pune, Singh admits that acting didn’t happen quite by chance. It was by choice. “So no one discovered me on the road. I was modelling for ad campaigns like Breeze, which was incidentally my first campaign in 2002. The biggest ad I was a part of was the Asian Paints campaign by which time there was huge speculation as to who Jassi was,” she reminisces.

With fame came defining moments such as her first visit to Delhi post-Jassi. She says, “There were people all around, hanging from the escalators and balconies in Ansal Plaza. It was so moving that I cried. Later Gaurav and I had a similar experience in Calcutta, where at the Book Fair we appeared before a crowd of 30,000 people.”

But if offers have been pouring in, what’s crucial, points out Singh, is the fact that it is very tough to sustain success. She adds, “There’s always the pressure of performing. You can’t just say you’re not feeling well on a particular day and use it as an excuse for not performing well. After all, there are thousands of eyes on you.” And now with her radio show, the ears are tuning in too.

Photograph by Rupinder Sharma