From Badminton to Movies to TV to Politics. Happy Birthday Kirron Kher

As a youngster, Kirron Kher played badminton with legend Prakash Padukone. So did her sister Kanwal, who went on to be an Arjuna Awardee in the sport. The two sisters, children of Colonel Thakar Singh, were known as the Thakar Singh sisters of Chandigarh. Kirronji, however, moved on to films and much later to politics. In the 2019 general elections, she retained her Chandigarh Parliamentary constituency by defeating a strong Congress candidate, Pawan Kumar Bansal, by 47,000 votes. In 2014 she had won with an even more comfortable majority.

On her birthday on June 14, lets reminiscence a trivia of some of her popular and hit films.

Sardari Begum; This movie was directed by Shyam Benegal. KirronJi plays the title role of a singer and courtesan who achieves excellence in her profession but has a sad personal life. The movie won 3 awards at the 44th National film awards, including special jury award for KirronJi, best supporting actress for Rajeshwari Sachdev and best Urdu feature film for producers Mahesh Bhatt and Amit Khanna.

Devdas; In this movie, Kirronji plays the role of Sumitra, Paro’s (Aishwarya’s) mother. This Sanjay Leela Bhansali creation also stars SRK, Madhuri and Aishwarya. The movie received 5 National Awards and 10 Filmfare awards, KirronJi herself winning the Filmfare best supporting actress award.

There are several other movies in which Kirron played important roles, usually as the hero’s mother. It has been said that while she has often been typecast as a Punjabi mummy, she has managed to reinvent the role and put in something slightly different every time. Some of these movies are as follows;

Main Hoon Naa; KirronJi plays the role of Zayed Khan’s mother in this SRK movie. Another SRK movie in which KirronJi plays an important mother’s role is Om Shanti Om.

In Rang de Basanti, KirronJi received the Filmfare award for best supporting actress for her role as Mitro, Aamir Khan’s mother. In Dostana, she played Abhishek Bachchan’s mother in a comic role. In Khoobsoorat her role as Manju, where she played Sonam Kapoor’s mother but was more like a friend to her, was highly appreciated. “Maa ka phone aaya, maa ka phone aaya” is Sonam’s caller tune and every time the phone rang, it drew peals of laughter from the audience.

As a television personality, KirronJi is probably best known for her role as a Judge in “India’s got talent”. The show is popular and her popularity ensured that she became judge for each and every season.

Badminton, movies, TV Judge, social activist, filmstar, Member of Parliament. Kirron Kher wears many hats with aplomb.

Happy birthday KirronJi