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Hema Malini is prompt in personally answering messages and in texting you her address. But in the starry Juhu-Vile Parle Scheme, you don’t really need an address to reach her. Drop her name and it’s enough to have several hands point you in the right direction.
After nearly four years, Hema and her daughters are back in their Juhu bungalow. Walk in and it’s unmistakably Hema who’s the lady of the manor. She is professional enough to leave a message at the gate that you are expected, so you sort of sail into the compound where there’s unfinished work going on.
This is the bungalow Hema Malini built with her parents and moved into in the early 1970s. She was then only in her twenties. Three decades later, the weather-beaten bungalow had to give way to a more modern structure, prompting Hema and her daughters to go over to their Goregaon bungalow for a few years.
Meanwhile, her mother, the formidable Jaya Chakravarthy, the real power behind the throne, had passed away. Amma, as Jaya Chakravarthy was fondly called by filmwallahs, had resolutely refused to move out of the Juhu bungalow even when it began to fall apart. “She’d say, this is my house, I’m going nowhere,” reminisced Hema Malini.
The actress too, stayed on with her mother, watching the house crumble around her. It was only after Jaya Chakravarthy passed away and the Mumbai floods in 2005 further destroyed the bungalow that Hema, Esha and Ahana finally decided to shift to Goregaon.
And now they’re back in Juhu.
In the rebuilt Juhu bungalow, on the first floor, is the sitting room. “I’m happy with how life has shaped out for me,” says Hema, dressed in Sunday casuals, a cotton salwar-kameez, a bit of kohl in her eyes, a trace of lipstick, wavy hair left loose. “Every time I am done with one part of my life, another door, another opportunity, opens up on its own.”
She has just returned from her trip to West Bengal for electioneering and is exhausted with the schedule. “But once I make a commitment I have to live up to it. Otherwise people are waiting for you and the candidates start saying that the crowds get very disappointed,” she shrugs with the nonchalance of one who’s had people clamouring for her time for decades.
With Tell Me Khuda, a film that she has directed, ready for release, Hema proudly shows you the trailer they’ve made for distributors, talks of how they’ll market it, looks at options for a brochure and gets ready for a flurry of promos.
Through it all you can see that she is a woman in control of plenty. She has also provided her daughters with a floor each, remarking, “Instead of waiting, I decided to give them their share of the property now itself. They have their individual floors which they have done up the way they wanted to. And they’ve done it up really well.” Each daughter even has the dogs of her choice on her floor.
Yet, back in Juhu, Hema Malini is wistful. “I’m missing my mother a lot here,” she said quietly. “You need your own people to help you with everything. At one time the house was bustling with so many people.”
We won’t get soppy with sentiments. Hema herself is too composed to get emotional. But suffice it to say that Jaya Chakravarthy didn’t stop with just guiding Hema through her dance and acting career. Few know that even Hema’s entry into politics had much to do with her mother. When Hema was tapped to come aboard the BJP (“only for campaigning at that time”), Jaya Chakravarthy had been impressed that Atal Bihari Vajpayee wanted her to help the party. “My mother said, Atalji is asking you, you must do it. That’s how I started campaigning for the party.” From there to the Rajya Sabha, then a post as vice-president of the BJP, and now there’s no looking back for Hema.
Let’s turn to a star dad now. Mithunda would have been proud if he had been at the special screening on Monday night of Vikram Bhatt’s well-made Haunted, a technically slick horror film in 3D. His son Mimoh, rechristened Mahakshay for the screen, stood tall at the entrance welcoming guests and introducing everybody to Tia, his co-star.
Will Mimoh make it this time? For one, he’s already got one lucky trait. Like Ranbir Kapoor, Mimoh too is a carbon copy of his mom. And they do say in filmland that guys who resemble their mothers are lucky.
When Vikram Bhatt’s flight from Delhi was delayed, Mimoh took over the small job of taking the mike and asking all guests to enjoy getting scared. Mom Yogita Bali sat unobtrusively in the last row and watched it all, in fact, basked in it. As for Mithun Chakraborty, he’s superstitious about watching a film at a trial show and chose to stay home.
