When Alaya F tearfully defended her ‘upbringing’, stood up for Pooja Bedi on reality show Maa Exchange: ‘You can’t say this about my mother’

Things between Alaya and Anuradha became heated almost immediately, when Anuradha commanded Alaya to stop making noise with her friends. “Mujhe laga koi celebrity aane wala tha, kyunki mujhe laga koi celebrity aur celebrity ka swap hone wala hai (I thought this was going to be a celebrity swap),” Alaya said, when she realised that Anuradha was a regular housewife and not famous.

But things erupted completely when Anuradha complained that Alaya’s ‘upbringing’ wasn’t right, and she broke down. “You cannot say this about my mother,” she said through tears, and countered that Anuradha’s upbringing was wrong, which is why she was making such comments.

In an interview with TellyChakkar, Pooja praised Alaya for standing up for her. “I am proud of Aliya. I am so overwhelmed about her, as she stood up for me and supported me wherever she could. She was against anything and everything, which was against my self-respect. I got an unbelievable response from people, even on Twitter. Everyone wants to become like my daughter now. But, that horrible woman made Aliya cry, whereas I was so wonderful with her son. I tried to put in all my efforts for his progress. That was so wrong on her part. Not only with Aliya, but she created negativity in the whole family, which was a wrong attitude from a literate woman,” she said.

In a post-release interview, Pooja was also questioned about why she described the Nigams’ houses ‘kachre ka dher (a pile of garbage)’. “It is more difficult to keep a palace clean because it is bigger. It should be easier to keep a small house clean. It doesn’t matter if a house is big or small. What matters is if it’s clean. And as you saw, when I entered their house, it was a mess. There was garbage everywhere, there was dust on the temple, it was unhygienic. I’d left a gift hamper to welcome her in my house, but I was greeted with dirty dishes. Of course, I cleaned them,” she said.

Anuradha said that she wasn’t mentally prepared for the show, and was away for two weeks before filming began. She said that unlike Pooja, she doesn’t have help to clean her house, and does it all herself. “I should get the benefit of the doubt, I am a housewife, and this is all my responsibility,” she said.