She ruled the silver screen in the 60s and was considered an epitome of beauty and grace. Her movies were iconic and her roles were envious. But in addition to her onscreen persona, yesteryear actress and Padma Shri Asha Parekh was also remembered as the hit girl who never settled for less.
Parekh retired in the early 90s when she started getting the quintessential 'Ma' roles and she wasn't ready to settle for them. "
"Work started coming to me less, people approached me for the role of a mother. I did a few (referring to playing mother) but I wasn't happy doing that. I wasn't convinced that what I was doing was right. I remember there was one film where I (felt) tortured because the hero would come at 6:30 in the evening for a 9:30 morning shift. It wasn't working out for me," said the Kati Patang actress, at the launch of her autobiography The Hit Girl.
Nobody asked for her hand in marriage
This attitude of perfection also trickled to her personal life and she says most people were perhaps intimidated by it and never approached her for her hand in marriage.
In her book, the Gujarat-born Parekh mentions that she saw many failed marriages around her and therefore, she felt a sense of great relief. She knew that love had to be mutual and euphoric.
But that decision to stay single was not the only poignant one in her life. By the age she turned 35, Parekh wanted to adopt a child. She even spoke to her parents and got their permission. But as fate would have it, that wasn't to be.
Parekh regretted not adopting a child
In her book co-written with journalist Khaled Mohammad she mentions, that the only regret she has ever had in her life was to not be able to adopt a child.
She wrote that she connected with the child when she went to see hi at a social welfare centre in Mumbai. But she was denied the adoption because the child was two-years-old and had a medical condition that did not give him much time to survive.
"That truly broke my heart," she mentioned in her book adding that the baby held on to her fingers when she met him. But this incident put her off so much that she decided to never try it again.
At the time it was perhaps a bold move for a single woman to adopt a child, but today the process is easier for those who are persistent. The biggest example is single mum Sushmita Sen.
Sen was able to adopt because she didn't give up!
In an interview quite recently, the mum of two daughters spoke about her struggles of becoming a single mother in India. She said, being a mother was "magical, tough, complicated, very human, it's like everyone else."
"Being a single mother is not easy. It's very romantic, but its not easy. Yes, that's true (went to court for my first daughter). I was 24-years-old and I had been trying since I was 22 to become a mom by the process of adoption. And they didn't allow it. It took us a while and we got the custody for my baby," she shared.
She also added that while it was still easier to adopt Renee, adopting Alisah was the real struggle.
"But the second child was actually a bigger court fight than the first one. Because in India, the rules said that you could not adopt a daughter after a daughter. You have to adopt a son. And I wanted to adopt a daughter, so 10 years I fought and then my Alisah came. It was a long wait," she shared.
Read: Are you qualified to adopt in India? Read on.
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[All images courtesy: Instagram]
