She is Hindi cinema’s most understated actress. The thought hit home with Aamir Khan’s latest film Sitaare Zameen Par.

For the Sunday evening mass at a non-elitist church in Worli, two cars fetch up regularly. Nonagenarian Padma Bhushan Julio Ribeiro, former super cop and ambassador to Romania, arrives in one.

Alighting from the other is “the politician’s daughter-in-law”.

There are no stories around the Bandra girl whose surname has seamlessly gone from D’Souza to Deshmukh but who retains her belief in attending Sunday mass.

There will be reams and reels on Kareena Kapoor’s surname or the midnight mass she attends on Christmas Eve. Did she convert to add Khan to her name, is a frequently asked question.

If you peer closely, Genelia D’Souza Deshmukh (37) and husband Riteish Deshmukh (46) are a couple whose actions make a lot of social statements. But they are also the most muted power couple of Mumbai.

“If you throw a stone in Bandra, it’ll hit a pig or a Pereira.” That was how the suburb used to be described. It pointed at the predominantly Christian demography of Bandra with a culture of its own that stood apart. Most spoke their own brand of English, some of the Anglo-Indians claimed French ancestry, and they were generally awkward with Hindi. Marathi didn’t figure anywhere.

Mangalorean Christian Genelia was a pucca Bandra girl before Riteish whisked her away to South Mumbai.

Riteish, second son of Maharashtra’s late chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, was born in Latur, his father’s political constituency and hometown. He was raised in a Maharashtrian family that wielded political power.

What Genelia and Riteish shared when destiny threw them together in the romantic film Tujhe Meri Kasam (2003) was that they were both outsiders. Even though they dated during their debut film and that chemistry lasts to this day, it took a while for Riteish to get used to the idea that acting was his profession. He would introduce himself as an architect (which he is) until films like Masti (2004) made him comfortable enough to accept Hindi cinema as his workspace.

It was the same for Genelia, who thought she’d go into the corporate world like her parents. But she modelled, did movies in the South and landed where her beau had settled: in Hindi cinema. John Abraham used to find it wonderful that with a name like his, he could find a fit in Hindi cinema. Genelia too stuck to the name she was christened with.

None of it turned into human interest stories. Was it because Genelia had a simple, grounded upbringing? Madhuri too came from a non-film, middle-class family where education mattered more than glamour. But she could sizzle as a dhak-dhak girl.

Genelia made no such headlines. More giggly-girly than chest-heaving, she did no kissing scenes (until husband Riteish turned director and picturised one between them) and dated nobody but Mr Deshmukh, that too quietly until they were ready to say “I do” in 2012. The marriage was timed to happen six months before Riteish’s ailing father passed away.

None of that turned into headlines.

Even when she returned to acting with Ved (2022), the film Riteish directed, there were no waves of the kind that Deepika and Alia made about juggling movies, marriage and motherhood. Yes, she’s never been an A-lister but celebrities with less social pull (read Malaika Arora to Nora Fatehi) have PR machinery spewing stories on them all day.

Genelia is a portmanteau, a blend of her parents’ names, Jeanette and Neil. Like Adira is a blend of Aditya Chopra’s and Rani’s names. Genelia means unique, like Nayaab. Good to have another happily married woman and mother report for work again.