Mumbai: Amid the ongoing debate around Deepika Padukone’s reported 8-hour shift demand, actress Rani Mukerji shared that she also worked for fixed hours after the birth of her daughter, Adira.
Reflecting on her journey of balancing work and parenthood, the National Award-winning actress revealed that her daughter was just 14 months old when she shot for ‘Hichki’ in 2018.
She used to start work in the morning so that she could wrap up the shoot early to be at home for her daughter.
“When I did ‘Hichki’, Adira was 14 months old, and I was still breastfeeding her, so I had to pump the milk and go in the morning… I was shooting in a college in town,” Rani told ANI.
“From my house in the suburbs in Juhu to that place, and the traffic takes about two hours. So I kind of made it a thing where in the morning I would leave at 6.30 after expressing my milk, and I would shoot. My first shot used to be at 8 in the morning, and I used to wrap up everything by 12.30-1. My unit and my director were so planned that for those 6-7 hours I used to finish my shoot, and before the traffic would start in town, I used to be home by 3 o’clock. And I did my film like that,” Rani elaborated.
Emphasising that flexible working hours can be worked out based on mutual understanding, Rani added: “These things are up for conversation today because maybe people are discussing it outside. But this has been the norm with all professions. I’ve also done it where I have worked for certain hours. If the producer’s okay with it, you go ahead with the film. If the producer’s not okay with it, you don’t do the film. So it’s also a choice. Nobody is forcing anything on anybody.”
Rani further stated that female actors need to maintain a balance between personal and professional life, whereas the same thing doesn’t apply to men in the industry.
“Men don’t have to go through a physical transformation. Additionally, I think we undergo a physical transformation, along with our emotional transformation, as we become mothers. And I’m very happy being a woman,” she said.
“I would not change this for the world because I think men have really got left out on this beautiful, I would say, amazing… amazing thing that we women go through is giving birth to a child. You know, and that’s the closest we come to God, I think. You know, because we are creating a life. And God creates life. And mothers, in those nine months, they become closest to God because they are creating life inside of them. And that beautiful thing, men will never understand. And I feel sorry for them,” Rani said.
“I feel it’s like okay, when they say that God probably entrusted us with having children, imagine if men had to have children, they would drive people mad. Right now, they have a lot of time on their hand, that’s why they’re having wars. If they had to have children, maybe there would be no war in the world. Because they would be busy just preparing for the baby,” the actress concluded.
Rani was recently received the National Award for Best Actress for her performance in ‘Mrs Chatterjee vs Norway.’
