Navya Naveli says grandmother Jaya Bachchan ‘liberal, open-minded’: ‘If I can imbibe her confidence, I will be set for life’

Asked who she looks up to the most in her illustrious family, Navya said in Hindi, “Because I work for women, I’d say the people in my life that I look up to the most are the women — my mother, my grandmothers, my aunt. They have inspired me so much, their strength and their outlook towards the world… I have learned so much from them. When I was young, I used to watch my ‘nani’ handle the household by herself, and I would want to imbibe her confidence. If I can inherent even one quality from them, I’d be set in life.”

Navya, her mother and grandmother joined hands to do a podcast together last year, and Navya was asked if their conversations highlighted the generation gap between them. She said, “My mother has raised me exactly how she was raised by my ‘nani’. I thought that there would be a big difference in our thinking, but I was surprised to find that there wasn’t. My ‘nani’ has always been very liberal and open-minded. We’ve all heard her talk. She has always been of the opinion that a woman’s place isn’t necessarily at home. They deserve to be in every field that is run by men, they deserve to sit on the same seats as men. And I believe that as well. She’s motivated me in the work that I do.”

On the same podcast, Jaya had said that she doesn’t appreciate people assuming that she gave up her acting career to take care of her family. “I remember when I stopped working and everybody said, ‘Oh she sacrificed her career for her marriage and children.’ It was not so. I was very happy being a mother and wife. I enjoyed that role more than what I was getting to do, which was a repeat of the same thing. It was not a sacrifice at all,” she said.

Navya shared that her ‘nani’ has always said that women have a natural talent for management and multi-tasking, and that they’d be perfectly suited for CEO positions if they weren’t restricted to households for centuries. Navya heads Project Navya, which works in the field of women’s health.