Sharmila Tagore, the leading lady of the 70s, set a precedent of balancing personal and professional lives back in the day. During a time, when actresses generally took a hiatus after getting married, Sharmila Tagore continued to prioritize her career while scooping out time for home as well. In a recent conversation, Soha Ali Khan recalled childhood days where her Amma was the "breadwinner", while her Abba was a stay-at-home parent, despite being a cricketer.
What's Happening
In a chat with Instant Bollywood, Soha Ali Khan recalled how Sharmila Tagore couldn't accompany her young children all the time back in the day.
"When I was born, my mother was still working and she loved her work, and she was very ambitious and she enjoyed working. Even today, she enjoys working so she made time for her work and she made time for her family but that also meant that she was not present for a lot of things with us at home. And it never bothered us," she said.
Soha insisted that her mother's absence didn't create any ill-perception about her among her children. In fact, they treated it as the "normal" thing in the household.
"It's not like I have any kind of misgiving. It was very normal. And my visual was that when we were young, our father was at home and mom would sometimes be at work, and sometimes she would be with us. But the breadwinner was my mother," she shared.
Sharmila Tagore also recalled her earlier days in an event organised by YFLO where she shared that she was "absent" from Saif's life for the first six years. "When I had Saif, I was very busy. I was working two shifts a day and for the first six years of his life, I was really absent. I did whatever I had to do. I went for the parent teachers meeting, attended his plays but I don't think I was a full-time mom. My husband was there, but I wasn't. Then when I became a mother, I became an overzealous mother. I wanted to feed him, bathe him and everything. That was the other side of the pendulum. I made a few mistakes, honestly," she said.
In A Nutshell
Soha Ali Khan, who launched her new wellness podcast All About Her, talked about her childhood where she saw the role reversal at home as her mother was the "breadwinner" and father would be at home.