When Nepalese beauty and actor Manisha Koirala shot to fame with her soul-stirring performance in the 90s sleeper hit Bombay, she was hailed as the 'next best thing' in Indian film fraternity.
With plum projects in her kitty, she scaled to greater heights and became a bonafide movie star in India. However, after a failed marriage and a full-recovery from cancer five years ago, the 90s beauty is set to make her comeback to the big screen in Sanjay Dutt's biopic.
But that's not the big news.
The actual big news is that the 46-year-old actor is working hard to become a single mother by the end of this year.
Koirala to become a single mother in 2017
Sharing her desire to adopt a baby girl by the end of this year, Koirala told a leading daily, "This December, it'll be five years since I got completely cured. If everything goes well, I'm planning to adopt a baby girl."
The cancer survivor shared that she is currently working on all the formalities so she can adopt a girl at the earliest. "I just hope everything goes right and it all falls into place. I want to be there for the child, and I'll make sure that I plan my life around this. I'm super excited about this new phase in my life, and I can't wait for it to begin," she shared.
Interestingly, it is not the first time she is trying to adopt.
Two years back, she expressed the desire to adopt and started work on the formalities But it seems everything is formalising now. And now that she's all set to welcome her baby girl, she's already identified that 'healthy' things she wants her girl to learn.
A post shared by Manisha Koirala (@m_koirala) on
Koirala plans to pass on some wisdom to her baby
That's because the actor has been a vocal advocate of healthy living and constantly motivates her fans through her social media accounts. "I'll pass on my wisdom and the lessons learnt out of life's experiences to her. I'll also teach her to appreciate the abundant beauty that lies in everything God has created," she added.
Koirala will be the second famous single mother after Sushmita Sen, who in a recent interview shared how difficult it was for her to adopt her two daughters.
Struggle of single Indian mothers who want to adopt girls
Sen shared, "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 added that the real struggle began when she decided to adopt her second daughter.
"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.
With a long wait and red tape formalities, adopting a child in India can get tricky, especially for single mothers. Here's why.
Draconian adoption laws in India
Although a data by the Indian Association for Promotion of Adoption and Child Welfare proves that the number of single mothers wanting to adopt kids is increasing, they are often discouraged due to the draconian nature of laws in India.
- In India the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) overlooks adoption and requires that there be a 21 year age gap between the adoptive single mother and adopted child.
- A single mother should be between 30-40 years to adopt a baby till the age of three years.
- She must also have family support and needs to show documentation of the same in order to prove the claim.
- Also, the Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act of 1956 states that Indian citizen who are either Hindus, Jains, Sikhs or Buddhists be allowed to adopt only one child of the same gender. However, not to forget that law also allows one to contest this in the court, just as Sushmita Sen did for her second daughter.
Read: Are you qualified to adopt in India? Read on.
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[All images courtesy: Instagram]
