‘I have really wanted to check my kid’s phone, but I have controlled myself. It would mean going over the line. ‘So I make best friends with her friends, and in this matter, I use my stardom to the fullest,” Kajol says in an interview.
Kajol plays mum to a teenager in Helicopter Eela, but she says she’s not a helicopter mum to her own kids, Nysa and Yug. “I would say I’m a drone!” she exclaims, drawing much laughter.
“You cannot understand how much your mother loves you till you have your own child. As children, we don’t value and appreciate them. So everyday I tell my son, I stayed up with you, I washed your bum, didn’t sleep for six months,” Kajol says.
I believe parents should have faith in their children. The world has changed, kids know so much at a small age that you cannot keep an eye on everything. It is not possible to do so much helicoptergiri.
If you want to be a balanced parent, you have to have faith that you have taught your children the right things and that they are smart enough to take the right decision.
Kids usually revolt in their teens. How do you make them understand?
My kids haven’t revolted yet; but we have had wars. Yet, there has never been a situation where my kids and I are at opposite ends. My kids are smart. They know they cannot demand something wrong from their parents.
Do you relate with Eela?
Eela is the kind of character everybody can relate to. Whoever sees it will say ‘I am like this’ or ‘I can be like this’ or ‘this has happened to me.’
My decisions in life are personal for me, and Eela is a totally fictional character.
We have a lot of women like Eela who have given up their careers and not been able to get back to it because they are stuck in a rut and – and that rut is such a comfortable and happy place that you just don’t want to get out of it.
A lot of them are scared of trying something they wanted to try when they were younger and had youth on their side. What we are trying to say with Eela is to find something that makes you happy, something that is yours.
In the trailer, her son says, ‘Tum sirf meri maa banker reh gayi, woh Eela kahan hai jo gaati ti hi aur music videos banati thi, jo apne liye kuch karti thi, woh Eela kahan hai?’
You lose so much of your personality that you don’t know how to find it again. You don’t know how to stand up for yourself and say, ‘I want this for myself.’
Was your mother Tanuja over-protective?
Definitely not. My mother is the complete opposite of Eela in every way possible. She is one of the most forward thinking women; she brought me up with a lot of bravery. It takes a lot of courage to bring up your children in a way that is not the same as everybody else.
We would have breakfast together on weekends. Once in a while she would make food for me, but it was not like as soon as she came home, she would send me tiffin. I have not seen all this in my house. As a child, I would get a lot of beating, but the biggest thing my mother did was that when I was 12, she told me, ‘You will be 13 soon, you are becoming a teenager from today. I will never raise a hand on you again. Now is the time to take responsibility for your actions. You have to practice whatever I have taught you till now.’
‘I will guide you if you make mistakes, but I will not shout or beat you henceforth.’
I never back-answered my mom. Mujhe bahut darr lagta tha apne maa se. Mujhme himmat hi nahi ki apne maa se zor se aawaz mein baat karne ki (I’m very scared of my mother. I don’t have the courage to speak to my mother in a loud voice).
