The one thing a bachelor girl who wants to go alone misses is a child. This woman found a fab answer which allowed her not to cling to the first eligible that came her way, and here she is a successful and independent — the vibrant
Sushmita Sen! She is the poster girl for today’s thinking and many want to know what it takes to go her way. Taking on adoption of two girls without the conventional male support — how did she assess all this in life’s weighing scale and what about the need of a psychological father figure? What guidelines would she give? Would growing up children not miss the peer group conventional ‘dad’? Sush deliberates at my outpouring queries, taking them on with her trademark panache “You just said it! I have multifaceted dreams Nisha, and you can call having babies multifaceted — apart from being multifarious and multitasking! I have always known that my first two children shall be born from my heart. A knowing that you don’t question — it just is...and it wasn’t so early” she smiles broadly, “I had Renee at 24, Alisah at 34, I wanted them at 18!” she laughs throatily.
Was this a selfless act? Did Sush not worry about the impact on marriage or relationships? She says,“It is not selfless. At best you could say that it is a virtuous selfishness. I am their mother and they are my children, I am as blessed to have them, as they are to have me. and yes, my children do have an impact on my relationships, but not the worrying kinds. The loving, expanding, happy and nurturing kinds.”
To balance life in this fast paced entertainment industry is a tightrope walk! “I look at life as being multidimensional. And work hard at every dimension without mixing them up! I function from the source. I AM an all encompassing and inexhaustible energy. I am not defined by any perception of me, if at all, it is I AM that defines me.”
Do you feel that an average woman can adopt and multitask like you, I persist, to which there is a reflective pause as she says, “I feel the average woman handles much more. They cook before going to work, come back and cook again. They tend to husbands and in laws — definitely more in their favour. Here I am the boss! The buck starts and stops with me, the crown and the cross both. For me, there are no average human beings, only beings who have not yet realised their full potential.”
“Be like the sun” says Sush She quotes — ‘Even after all this time, the sun has not said ‘You owe me’ to the earth. Look what a love like that does. It lights up the whole sky’ says Hafiz. So, be like the sun, the centre of the universe, the centre of your family, magnificent, powerful and radiating in its brilliance. Enveloping all in its glow is that broad smile throughout our tête-a-tête that reiterates the joy that Sush and many others feel at adopting a child, the ultimate happiness that they could have given to a child who otherwise might have grown up lonesome. They now have a beautiful life looking up to them for love and guidance while giving that delight to the parents that only a child can.
The author is a lifestyle columnist and a designer