Diljit Dosanjh: You can take a Punjabi out of Punjab, but you can’t take Punjab out of a Punjabi. Diljit Dosanjh proved it. By standing up to speak up for the agitating farmers just when he needed to speak, not a day before and not a day after, and by taking on the biggest bully of Bollywood, Diljit proved himself the monitor in a class of life’s most laidback students. Willy-nilly Diljit has exposed the fraudulent conscience keepers of Bollywood who shed tears for Sushant , Covid and farmers(not necessarily in that order) without meaning a word of what they said. The turbanator strikes when it is time to do so.Diljit is a hero where it matters the most.

Rupali Ganguly: Anupamaa breaks many glass ceilings. For those who thought television soaps were dead, thanks to the excesses of Ekta and gang, the series brings back the era of a hooked viewership. Come 10 pm, and housewives are at the telly,family home and domesticity forgotten. Modestly Rupali takes no credit for the success of Anupamaa. “It’s the way the character is written. Any decent actress would have done just as well,” she says. Rupali whose father was a fine filmmaker Anil Ganguly never got his dues.Today Anilda must be smiling down. He was an outsider in Bollywood all his life.

Pankaj Tripathi: Here’s one actor whose career remained unaffected by Covid in 2020. Whether as airforce pilot Gunjan Saxena’s supportive father or as Kaleen Bhaiyya in the OTT series Mirzapur, or Munna Bhaiyya in Ludo or at the end of the year, the cocky superstar in Shakeela….Pankaj Tripathi simply steals and STEELS the show every time. Quite a long way to come for an impoverished Bihari villager who lived in a small room with a tin roof that leaked during monsoon right on his chowki.Pankaj today owns a posh bungalow in Madh Island with glass walls from where the rain seems anything but threatening. Someone, please make a film on his life.

Sushant Singh Rajput: Another Bihari who dominated the news for a major part of the year. Sushant left us on June 14. Since then the electronic and digital media have never stopped speculating of his death . His posthumous release Dil Bechara became rage on the OTT platform. Had he been alive and had Covid not struck it would have been a flop in theatres. His death made celebrities out of all sorts of people coming out as his “friend”.Many of these friends Sushant would have been surprised to meet.I am sure he’s smiling down on all the tamasha that his death has generated.