COURTESY IANS
She lessened her film appearances when she became a mother as she didn’t believed in “dumping my children and going off to work”.
But after working her magic on screen again in Dilwale, the actress is enthused to take on more work in the film world now that her daughter and son are old enough.
“I hope I will be seen on screen more… I’d like to work more now. I took a break right after My Name Is Khan (2010) because my son was born and then he was still very young. Now my son is five years old,” Kajol told IANS.
“I will be starting a film mid-2016, but no, I am not planning to do three films a year like Shah Rukh Khan. I can’t work as hard as him,” added the actress.
Kajol and Ajay, who got married in 1999, are parents to two children – daughter Nysa and son Yug.
After the birth of her daughter in 2003, she did a few films like Fanaa, U Me Aur Hum, My Name Is Khan, We Are Family and Toonpur Ka Superhero. And again, after Yug’s birth, Kajol decided she would devote her time to motherhood.
In fact, previously, she had confessed that the only reason she gave up films was her children. ”I have not given birth to them to just dump them and go off to work. I am not that kind of a person,” said Kajol.
But when Dilwale came her way, Kajol, a Padma Shri award winner, said it was her daughter Nysa who urged her to step out of the house and return to face the silver screen.
“I honestly think it’s very educative for children to have working parents, and to have a working mother mostly, because that’s where the influence comes from for the daughter.”
“When I was a child, I sometimes resented the fact that my mother went to work, and I used to tell her, ‘Mom, why can’t you be like other mothers who are at home and cook?’ She used to be like ‘No, I have to work. I need to work’.”
“At that point in time, maybe I felt resentment towards her work, but when I started working, I realised that the work ethic I have, the way I work, the amount of hard work that I did was only because I had seen my mother do that all my life.”
“Hence, I feel that my daughter will hopefully understand that when she sees her mother go for work… when she grows up, she will realise that it’s important for her to work as well for her own independence and development,” she explained.
Generally too, Kajol believes that “it’s important for women to work”. ”In whatever area they choose, women should work. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be about going out of the house and working. But the work ethic has to be understood that it’s not only a man’s job to be the breadwinner of the family. That’s where gender equality has to start.”
