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Actor Priyanka Chopra’s mother, Madhu Chopra, admitted that she might have made some mistakes in her parenting. She said in a new interview that she shipped Priyanka off to boarding school when she was all but seven years old, and then to the US when she was 12. Her son, Siddharth, was raised mostly by his grandmother, because Madhu had dedicated herself to aiding Priyanka in her career by the time he was entering his teens.
In an interview with Bollywood Hungama, Dr Chopra expressed some regret about her decisions, but said that neither Priyanka nor Siddharth have ever accused her of abandoning them. She also admitted that she didn’t spend much time with Priyanka, who was closer to her father. Asked about sending her to the US, Dr Chopra said, “I used to miss her a lot. We didn’t have mobile phones in those days, so the only time we’d connect was when my younger sister would call. Priyanka was staying with her. We were in the Army then, and phones weren’t available easily to everybody. We’d talk maybe once a week or in 10 days. It was very tough. And before that, I’d sent her to boarding school, which was also very tough.”
She continued, “We weren’t worried, because she was staying with family. But she was a teenager, and it’s important to spend time with parents at that age. It isn’t easy for relatives to understand a child of that age like her parents can. And it isn’t easy to take care of someone else’s child. Hormones are running wild at that age, you have to be really careful. She left at the age of 12, she returned when she was 15 or 16.”
Madhu said that Priyanka started preparing for her board exams as soon as she returned to India, so there wasn’t any time for her to ask about why she was ‘abandoned’ by her mother. “I didn’t spend much time with her, she was closer with her father,” she admitted.
Speaking about her parenting, Dr Chopra said, “Priyanka was beloved. She was the first girl in the family, and everybody loved her. I often regret the steps I took. She was four or five years old when she snapped at her father. I realised that these were the same words I’d use on her, and it made me doubt my parenting. Perhaps I wasn’t doing the right things. And when she was seven, I put her in a boarding school without my husband’s approval, without my family’s approval. I didn’t counsel Priyanka either. Those four years were very tough… But neither of my children have accused me of abandoning them yet.”
In the past, Priyanka has spoken about the difficulties she faced in high school in the US, where she was the target of racial discrimination. And when she returned to India, she suffered from an identity crisis and received unusual treatment from her friends. In an interview with Harper’s Bazaar Spain, Priyanka described her childhood as being full of ‘love, laughter and family’.
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