Anju Kurian: ‘Why MMA?’ people asked, but it’s made me more confident

Anju Kurian comes across as disarmingly down-to-earth. The Meppadiyan actress has been posting videos of her boxing workouts, but with restrictions being imposed around the severe second wave of the COVID pandemic, she has not been able to go to the gym. “The pandemic has taught me to be self-sufficient. Earlier I had a maid, but now I’m handling everything myself.I cook and clean the house, and the sweeping and mopping has been a sort of workout,” she says laughing.
After the first lockdown, she shot for Vishnu Mohan-directed family entertainer Meppadiyan, set in a rural backdrop, in which she plays a schoolteacher. “Everyone was excited to return to shoot after the long break. And it was such an enjoyable shoot. It was like being among friends, as it was a young, vibrant crowd. The shoot was in Pala, which was near my house, but we were all housed at the site, because of pandemic restrictions,” says the youngster from Kottayam.

She has also finished the shoot of an yet-untitled Tamil film starring Ashok Selvan, directed by debutant Vishal Venkat, in which she plays a Malayalam actress. “It is a thriller, and because I play a Malayalam actress, I am dubbing for my role. Also, I’ve lived in Chennai for a decade, as an architecture student and so on, so I speak Tamil well,” says Anju, who also has another Tamil project on the anvil.
When the lanky actress isn’t shooting, she’s focused on fitness, among other things. “I have always tried different things and have done dance, yoga and Pilates. And to be honest, I’ve had plenty of time on my hands, so I’ve focused on my body with workouts and maintaining a healthy diet,” she explains, adding that she has lost 10kg from her early movie days.

She is now trying out mixed martial arts (MMA) and loves it. “At first, people were asking, ‘why are you doing this?’ But that was the same attitude when women first went to the gym. I’m loving this. It’s a full body workout, that has made me stronger, more confident and also more flexible, for even when I dance,” she says. She is also a firm believer in following a healthy diet. “It makes a big difference on your body if you stay away from junk. I couldn’t work out that much during the first lockdown, and I was careful with my diet and was able to maintain an ideal weight,” she says.

During the first lockdown, Anju had shared videos of dance and song routines at home with those of her age group, and she says that people thought she had been meeting up with friends, but they were her cousins who had all come together again after a long time. “We were cooking and catching up on each other's news, and putting on evening entertainment sessions for the elders. We had a blast,” she says.
Do her cousins treat her as special because of her filmi connections? “No way. And I wouldn’t want that. I can still share anything with family and friends and I like that I can be myself when I’m around them. When I go into the kitchen, they’ll still tell me, “Better do a good job with whatever you are cooking,” she says.