[ads1]
Rani Mukerji took a break from the life she knew to concentrate on the life she made — Adira. She was immersed in motherhood, and movies were nowhere in the picture. Now that the queen has committed to a film, she is coming out of her self-imposed exile. As she talks about her husband, I can’t help but marvel at her fairytale marriage. It’s a coming together of two very different people and they make it work, without making it seem like work. As she returns to the set to shoot her next film Hichki, she talks about what drove her back to work (her hubby), what drives her to act (the love of her fans) and what she dreads (not giving her best to her work). Read on for excerpts….
Let’s talk about your comeback.
Again, that word! Comeback! It’s nothing. It’s just like any another professional taking a maternity leave/break and then coming back to work. That’s exactly what I am doing.
[ecp code=”4″]
Excited about being back on a film set?
I still don’t know if I am ready to get back to work. I have said yes to working again. But I don’t feel the the way about work now, like I used to, before I had Adira. Right now, though work is something which gives me happiness, the joy that Adira gives me is just too special. I keep telling my husband that’s because he actually forced me to get back to work. He was after me for about three months from the time Adira was born, because he saw me getting obsessed with her. He said, ‘If I don’t push her now, I think she is going to go into that full-on obsession zone.’ And I am still there. Since I gave birth to Adira, he has been like, ‘Come on! You have to reclaim your life and get back. You have to do your work and you can’t completely immerse yourself’, but I wasn’t ready. I don’t think I am ready even now.
So what brings you back?
I have a lot of people who love me and my work, I think it’s my responsibility to keep doing films, so that they get to see a part of me that I am known and loved for. I think working is very important for every woman. It’s a special feeling for a woman when she is independent. It’s a different kind of satisfaction, a different kind of respect she gets, a different feeling of well-being that she feels. There are a lot of mothers who dedicate their lives to their children, and that’s absolutely great and I respect their chosen path. At the same time, I feel, somewhere down the line when the kids grow up and have no time for their parents, that’s the time when few parents or mothers
get a bit…
Feel lost?
Yes, when the kids grow up and they have their own lives, schedules and friends. They don’t want their parents around that much. It’s important to understand early on that while your child is important, it is equally important that you make yourself happy and share that happiness with your child. The way our world is now, a child adapts to both parents working. They know that parents will come back and spend quality time with them. Because I have help. I can leave my child at home. It is easier because I have people I can trust. In other cases, there are family members, but I live in a nuclear setup. And it’s taken me long to kind of identify people and to be able to have that confidence of leaving my baby for those many hours and leave the house. For the first six months, I was completely immersed. I would not move out for a minute.
Had you planned to take such a long break?
I’d decided to take a break for one year because I wanted to give my child that much time. I wanted to be a part of each milestone in my baby’s life — from the first word to the first step, etc. I would’ve hated it if she’d done something for the first time and I missed it.
Continue to the next page….
[ads2]