Bollywood has some and again a few more. Aperitive mummies, we mean. But we chose the admirable extra Kajol to be TOI’s bedfellow editor for this appropriate Mother’s Day issue.
Not because she’s acting in Karan Johar’s Stepmom that will absolution afterwards this year. But because she’s the alone extra who alert in her badly acknowledged career has unselfishly stepped aback from the top to acquiescently acquire motherhood.
The aboriginal time afterwards babe Nysa, Kajol alternate in 2006 to win the Filmfare Best Extra Award for Fanaa adverse Aamir Khan. Again this year, aloof afterwards addition beauteous achievement in My Name Is Khan with her favourite co-star Shah Rukh Khan, Kajol completed Stepmom and acclimatized bottomward to her additional baby. It charge booty some doing. The actress, however, absolved the putting-career-on-hold and making-a-comeback approach with a bung of her chestnut hair.
“Your career is allotment of your life, your ancestors is allotment of your life, and your accomplished activity — your personality — is fabricated of every allotment put together. It’s upto you to bang the appropriate balance,” she said. “I abstruse from example. My own mother (the extra Tanuja) consistently put her ancestors first. Alike back she was working, we were her top priority, she gave us affection time — back she was there, she was with us 120 per cent. I’m advantageous to accept had her. And I achievement to be like her...”
She’s aglow with the aboriginal stages of pregnancy, and she’s adequate with her condition, she fabricated no fuss about the abundant drive from her home to our appointment in aiguille summertime to booty the armchair for this issue. Dressed accidentally in a apart white top and atramentous trousers, anxiety encased in bendable slippers, she slipped into the role emphatically... amber eyes aflame with expression, fists assault the table to accomplish a point. Back coffee and sandwiches were placed afore her, Kajol’s face lit up. “I’m so pregrant, aren’t I,” she giggled.
She was black with Mother’s Day, per se. “Mothers are fab and kids accompany out the best in women,” she said, “but you can’t accredit your accord with your mother to aloof one day in a year. For a child, the mother is God... the mother has the aforementioned albatross to her adolescent as God has to the world. And aloof as you deathwatch up anniversary morning and adoration God whether you’re 14 or 40, you should account your mother... alike back you are developed up, in complete ascendancy of your activity and are apparently attractive afterwards her.”
And she had a chat of absorption for afflicted mothers in today’s association of baleful children: “They should accept to their kids... a mother’s allowance to her kid should be the ability of speech. Don’t be impatient. Don’t abutting yourself to your adolescent by assured her/him to be what you appetite them to be. Your bulletin to them should be, ‘I adulation you for what you are and will abutment you whether you canyon or abort your exams.’ Mothers should additionally stop to accede what they would do if their kid was aback taken abroad from them today. I would die! Compared to that, you can accomplish accomplish every bearings work...”
There were added tidbits from this mother and mother-to-be alike while she discussed assignment (“I’m a nice arid person, you won’t get account on me!”), babies, motherhood, growing up, families (“they advise you and accomplish you who you are”), the charge to conduct kids (“spanking is not bad as a agency to get attention... it’s not the punishment, that’s abundant worse, and devious”) and abundance itself (“don’t become a mother unless you’re ready, don’t let this accommodation be advance on you, because again everybody will suffer... abnormally your child”).
Plus, a final chat of admonition to mothers: “Advice itself is bad, don’t be advised bottomward by what association says your kid care to be doing, await on your own instincts and decisions. As a mother, you apperceive what’s best for your kid, by learning, by instinct, by habit... And, practise what you preach. Your kid learns by watching you. In future, your adolescent takes advertence from you.” We had aloof one catechism for Kajol, did she subscribe to the accessible assessment that she was Bollywood’s aperitive mummy? “Absolutely,” she declared, giving the Kuch Kuch Hota Hai smile, “I was aperitive alike afore I had my baby!”
