From the moment she walked in to the Landmark bookstore in Bengaluru’s Forum Mall, where she launched her book Mrs. Funnybones , a compilation of her newspaper columns, actor Twinkle Khanna had people eating out of her palms.
The self-deprecating star-child and star-wife (she hates the word and finds it misogynistic) described herself as a “nerd” who doesn’t shop or party much, and reads at least one Isaac Asimov science fiction story before hitting the bed everyday.
And when someone bandied the word superstar at her? “Twinkle twinkle little star….,” she chanted ending it with “like a teapot in the sky” — saying that’s how she was teased for being fat when she was young.
She chose to read from the chapter ‘Karan Johar loves Karva Chauth’ from her book and had the audience in paroxysms of laughter. Twinkle said she tackles her mother-in-law about whom she writes, by showing drafts to her sister-in-law, and how she gives a heads up to people from the Bollywood fraternity who feature in her column before it is published.
She won hearts telling people how she writes about the ubiquitous Indian woman, and she’s one too, who led a normal life travelling by Mumbai local trains and rickshaws till she stepped into filmdom, and how she too is a mother who goes to work everyday (she runs an interior design store). “I never thought that on the other side of 40, I would have this sudden burst — the book just blew the midlife crisis out of the planet for me.”
While she did write half a book when she was 16 that also had terrible poems about bombs and death, she says she didn’t write anything for at least 20 years after that. “I always had a peculiar way of looking at things…my mom usually told me to shut my big mouth. You know, you always tell your children to behave this way or that, but I’ve gone on to show that it pays to be different.”
She took up writing these columns when her friend, a newspaper editor, asked her to pen a celebrity column. Daughter of superstars Rajesh Khanna and Dimple Kapadia, Twinkle quit her acting career pretty quickly to settle down with actor Akshay Kumar. “I can’t really act…I’ve suddenly discovered many people love me despite Mela ,” she said, triggering much laughter among the audience.
She’s already on to writing her second book — a work of fiction on “love, middle-age, women and mortality”. Speaking later on the sidelines of the event with MetroPlus , Twinkle spoke of how “for almost eight months no one even knew I was writing and then suddenly everyone was talking about it”. Excerpts from the interview:
If you hadn’t put down your thought in these columns, what would have happened to them?
I was eventually going to write a book, when I was 60! ( Laughs ) I had my look ready — with a white kurta, white hair, short nails… you know we always have a look ready ( laughs ). I thought that I would write it when my kids would grow up and I had time. It just happened 20 years sooner…which is good, no?
What quality of your parents do you think you inherited?
I’m not the woman that my mother is, and I would like to be. She is extremely kind hearted. I wish I had inherited a quarter of that. I have my father’s…I would say he was very erudite and I have a little bit of that maybe. And he was a big reader, which I found out much later. I don’t remember much; I remember only snippets of him saying that.
My mum is also a big reader. I don’t know what I wanted from my parents, but I’m grateful for whatever I got. I didn’t get their perfect genes, but whatever mangled version I got was good enough for me!
You had no qualms about baring your life, the happenings inside your house, to people…
If you read my columns, you will realise people actually don’t know anything about me. Do they know whether I’m religious or atheist? They don’t. Do they know if I’m actually a feminist or not? They don’t. They don’t even know whether I really believe in love or not. So what do they really know about me? None of these things — all these columns are about our everyday life — they’re not about the essentials. Half of this is made up — half fact, and half fiction.
Which half? You’re not telling?
That would take the fun away, right? (crinkles up her eyes and smiles wide)
Tell us about your husband, Akshay Kumar the editor, who edits your columns before you send them off to the paper…
A week ago — my deadline is 12.30 on Friday — I sent it to him and he said: “You’re not sending this column in”…. the whole column! And I agreed. I had to re-write the entire column in two hours on a totally different topic. And I can’t tell you what it’s about (laughs) … It was a political column.
Your mom’s made a comeback, when will you make a comeback?
Never… why should I?! Give me a good reason…
Everybody is…
Is that a good reason?!! Everybody is also going insane and shouting around places… no… that’s not good reason, right?
You believe you’re not a good actor?
I wasn’t good at it… it didn’t come easily to me. It wasn’t easy.
