Face-off

Pooja Bedi tells Anagha Sawant that motherhood is so easy that she's writing a book about it Age?"I shouldn't have told everybody I was...

Pooja Bedi tells Anagha Sawant that motherhood is so easy that she’s writing a book about it

Age?
"I shouldn’t have told everybody I was 16 when I entered the glamour industry. Now, everybody knows my age," Pooja chatters.She loves to talk. So, she says all this and more, before she actually admits that she’ll "turn 28 this year". "But wait, I still am 27."

Married?
Very much. Bollywood’s flattest tummy and one-time sex symbol probably broke many hearts when she married Farhan Ibrahim, the owner of Kondor Furniture. But her marriage was always on the cards. She had known Farhan for seven years before she said `I do’.

Actually she didn’t, for her’s was a nikaah. She converted to Islam to marry beau..

Her new name?
Nurjahaan.

Does she answer to Nurjahaan Ibrahim?
No. "I deliberately chose a horrible name so that no one would use it." Her only concession is Ibrahim. "Nurjahaan means the light of the world which I like tobelieve I am."

How does the light of the world feel about being a mere house wife?
"What I do is immaterial. Happiness is what matters." And Pooja says she is happy.

Her claim to fame?
The question ought to be `her claims to fame?’.

Four … to be precise.

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Claim number one:
She’s the daughter of Protima Gauri and Kabir Bedi. The former, an Odissi danseuse, known for her gurukul near Bangalore and her sanyas (besides other things) and the latter, an actor, a part-time model and full-time casanova who split with Protima and tied the knot with the half-Indian Nikki, about the same time as beti Pooja said kubul.

Claim number two:
Her fab figure. The babe didn’t have problems flaunting it. So what if it kind of slotted her as `fit-only-for’ roles like the one in the Amir Khan starrer Jo Jita Wohi Sikandar; remember the Marilyn Monroe pose and other films like Vishkanya?

Then, along with Marc Robinson,Pooja set television screens on fire with the Kamasutra ad.

Claim number three:
Bedrooms — the shop for bedroom interiors, that happened after her marriage.

And claim number four:
Motherhood. How logical!

But nobody expected tinsel town’s sex symbol and social butterfly, Bedi, to `marry and settle down like a good girl’. Did they?
"I got married because I was ready for marriage. I found the right person."

What happens to showbiz then?
She’s given it up. "There’s so much gossip going around. Besides it used to take too much of my time." She couldn’t spend anytime with Farhan. Now that she’s married she can’t remain apart from him "even for a second" — "I talk to him even when he’s on the pot."

Bedrooms was conceived when boredom set in but even that has taken a back seat. Her only priority: her husband and her baby Aalia.

And now, after motherhood, she has found a new vocation — writing. She’s going to write a book onmotherhood and mothering.
"I can’t begin to tell you the world of difference that there is between the medical awareness and knowledge in the US and here."

Excuse me, but you would think that the world’s second-most populous nation might know a thing or two about motherhood?
Yes, but she’s not asking the chachis and nanis of Indian households to "mount a horse and ride away into the sunset." — "One baby comes into the house and everything goes upside down. In America, every woman is a one-woman army." Her book is going to deal with things right from the attitude towards motherhood, the diet during pregnancy, breathing techniques during labour, how to get back to shape after delivery, should you keep toys and pillows in the baby’s crib to should you feed the baby honey. "My book’s going to be complete, it should be given to every girl as part of her wedding trousseau." Phew!

Does she assume that people here don’t know much about the issue?
Not really.The untitled book’s aimed at making every Indian woman a one-woman army, pitting "old wives’ tales against medical science. Like, if you eat ghee, `Baccha phisal ke bahar ayega‘ they say. That’s not true. Child birth is a beautiful process".

For her it sure was — what with 10 people in the labour room.
"Dad, Mom, Nikki — my stepmother, Farhan and some friends were with me. My labour was a party."

What is the proud mother most likely to say?
Oops. "I’m so clumsy, I keep dropping everything." Including the baby?

And least likely?
Bad words apart from `shit’. "I didn’t swear even in my labour. Nikki bet I would, but she was disappointed."