Mamma mia!

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Sonali Bendre quit her acting career explicitly stating she wanted to be with her child. She has put together her parenting experience into a book

Her book makes Sonali Bendre sound like any new-age mother with all her insecurities, as well as confidence about what she wants for her child with the attendant guilt, anger, joy, pride… The book is her heart’s outpouring on everything about motherhood. Her candidness in admitting things that a blogger-mother might, but a star, never, is what has made her book identifiable with.

For all who remember Sonali from films such asSarfarosh and Duplicate, the real-life Sonali, mother of 10 year old Ranveer, is far removed from that avatar. The lady with the million watt smile admits that motherhood turned her around completely. In Bengaluru to launch her book, The Modern Gurukul at Baby Oye, she took some time to talk about her experiences. Excerpts…

Why did you want to write this book, and reveal so much of your personal life?

I think I’ve been pretty private as a person. Nobody really knows me. I didn’t intend for the book to be personal; it just happened as I kept writing, and came out that way.

Goldie (Behl, her husband and film producer) is a big part of it because this is our life, not just my life. I can’t put the book out there unless he is okay with it. I was quite sure Goldie is not going to be comfortable with it. But when he read it, he said ‘I like two things about the book – that you have the chapter on fathers’, which he knew would be there because I had done an interview with him. What I came across was that fathers wanted to be hands on and a part of it, but even today there are lot of times where women are told it (parenting) is their job, even in metros and cities, in the educated lot! Goldie told me he envied the fact that I could carry a child – ‘the bond with the child is greater because he’s inside you. I have to work at it.’ Second – he was shocked that though we had gone through the same experiences raising our son Ranveer, his memories of it were so different from mine. ‘I never knew you looked at it THAT way,’ he said. ‘I would have liked to read a book like this just to know what my wife is going through. Maybe I would have done a few things differently.’

His only apprehension about this book was that I was putting too much pressure on our child. I asked him what do you think pressure on child will be? ‘What if he’s not the best behaved child when he grows up?’ I don’t know what’s going to happen in future. And nobody really knows. We can only try our best, give it our all, and give him the upbringing. He’s a human being. He is going to make mistakes. I have to, as a mother, accept it; that’s the only way. There are certain issues Goldie and me agree to disagree on — one is that it is pressure on the child, and the other is that I had post-partum depression – he thinks I had it, I don’t think so!

Were you the writing sort when you were acting? Did you ever put down thoughts?

Not at all! Maybe to own a room full of books – that would have been the extent of my ambition! To be an author would be another level. Everybody says ‘aim for the stars and you reach the treetop’ and I always aimed for the bushes and reached the treetop! I don’t believe I just said that (laughs). So I’m quite happy with my life in that sense. But I did make notes as a mum — my notes in my housekeeping books for my reference, or scribbled on my grocery lists. The parenting books didn’t work for me; I got my parenting lessons from everything but the books! And it was about figuring things out. So every time I had a thought, I would put down my conclusions and thoughts. In discussions with friends, they would say you should write a book on it. It was quite a laugh initially…

We Indians believe parenting is instinctive. Our parents didn’t refer books or websites but we didn’t turn out too bad. So why so much fuss over parenting now?

Our lifestyles have changed a lot. The point of my book is that there are lot of things experience teaches – how do you adapt it to today’s age? There are certain facts written 2,000 years ago and are as applicable now as they were then. How do we use those? What we see today is definitely not what our parents saw. Even in my childhood, a generation was defined by at least 15 years; now a generation changes every five years. Things move at a different pace. What took us years to gather, children have that information now in one day. The odds are at a different level. The point of human evolution is adapting to circumstance. Not letting go of the old, but adapting it, is necessary.

Considering all that you’ve been saying on parenting, you’re now judging a show on children…don’t you feel that is a jarring contrast, after telling people not to judge kids?

I’ve always been judging children’s shows… I did Kya Masti Kya Dhoom when I was not a parent. No it doesn’t feel strange at all because I feel I bring a certain dignity to the show – India’s Best Dramebaaz – compared to season 1, there’s less crying. Children on the set are kept happy, we work around their timings. I don’t think I am in any way doing something

I don’t believe in. Having said that, every parent has the right to do what they feel is right for their child. I can’t impinge on that right. The parents who bring their kids there, I can suggest some things to them and I know it has worked because so many have come back to say ‘I agree with you.

I don’t want to put pressure on my child but I feel my child is talented…” and why not? The child really enjoys it and when they are being mentored and trained, they are getting the best Mumbai can offer them. The parents want that exposure for their child, because it’s the best and I don’t see anything wrong in that as far as you’re not pushing the child.