After a long sabbatical, Neetu Kapoor has made a comeback with JugJugg Jiyo which will release this Friday, 24 June, 2022. She revealed that she decided to come back to acting to cope with the loss of her husband Rishi Kapoor, and that she took Ranbir and Alia’s advice on it too.
In the past, she has spoken at length about her dynamic with Ranbir and Alia, and that it made her happy to see them married. She further opened up about her post wedding relationship with Ranbir Kapoor and Alia Bhatt.
The infamous ‘saas and joru ka ghulam’ dynamic
Image credit: Instagram/neetu54
On being asked about the post wedding life of Ranbir and Alia, Neetu Kapoor has always maintained she is ecstatic about their marriage, and that she has an excellent dynamic with Alia and Ranbir. She says that Ranbir balances his time between her and Alia perfectly, and that it is problematic only when the husband becomes “joru ka ghulam”.
She told the Indian Express, “People asked me how will be my relationship with Alia, and it will be the same as it was for me and my mother-in-law. Alia is a lovely person. She is a beautiful, simple, uncorrupted human being. So, I feel the relationship between a mother-in-law and daughter-in-law is the husband’s fault. Because you love your mother so much, and jab tum joru ka ghulam ban jaate ho na, fir maa ko problem hoti hai.”
Neetu Kapoor points toward an age-old dynamic concerning the husband’s relationship with his mother and wife. The parenting angle on this issue holds valid but it is also essential to know that your child beginning a new chapter in his/her life, in no way, translates into shrunken attention to the parents. In times like this, parents ought to lend the extra support required by their child and help them experience this new phase in their lives.
Neetu on rebuilding her identity after being widowed
Credit: Instagram/neetu54 and Dharma Productions
Neetu Kapoor has spoken about leaving acting at the peak of her career at the tender age of 22 owing to her marriage to Rishi Kapoor.
The actor said, “I don’t know how I did it, himmat aa jaati hai (you find the courage). Maybe it was my love for their family, my love for him. From childhood, I just knew Rishi Kapoor. I was 14 when he came in my life, so after someone being a part of your life for so long, they become your own person, so you want to do everything ke woh thik ho jaaye (you want only the best for them). When he (Rishi) had to go, he did, but you want everything to be okay. I think basically you just have to love that person. I say this quote often, if you love your husband, you love his family; if you don’t like their family that means you don’t love your husband.”
She is all set to return to the silver screen after a long time. Kapoor said that her comeback to acting is a way of coping with her husband’s loss. She also said that she had lost her confidence but is slowly regaining it.
She told the Indian Express, “Once an actor, always an actor. But, you need a lot of confidence, which I had lost in the interim because I had not worked for so long. Then I lost my husband… When I started shooting the film, I didn’t have it. But now I think I am confident, I can do it and I’ll now keep doing more work. It keeps you busy, it is like a job. Acting is my occupation. What else can I do, I am all alone. Nobody lives with me, both my children are married. So, what do I do? I’d be very sad thinking about my past and my husband. So, I decided that it is better to be busy, kaam karte raho, dil behel jaataa hai (keep working so it keeps you occupied in a good way). So it’s a good thing.”
Women quitting their careers to look after their families, unfortunately, was normalised in Kapoor’s as opposed to today. Although, this issue sparks a debate of choice, diluting your identity to blend it with your family’s hits hard at a later stage. Women, who spend their lives devoted to their husband and children, often feel lost when they no longer have their families around them.
Neetu Kapoor, with her comeback with Jugjugg Jeeyo and resolution to rebuild her career, is an inspiration to such women who want to resume their careers after a long time and establish their own identity again.
The ‘normal girl for wife’ obsession
Credit: Instagram/neetu54
On her marriage with Rishi Kapoor, Neetu mentioned that Rishi Kapoor chose her because he wanted to marry a ‘normal girl’: “My husband used to tell me how he felt that I was a very normal human being. He would say, ‘there is no air about you. No show.’ He used to have very very beautiful girlfriends but he left them all. So I used to ask him why he left them, to which he would say, ‘woh apne mein hi lagi rehti hai (they are all too self-engrossed). But you’re very normal, I like normal people’.”
Although, not a lot can be deduced from the term ‘normal girl’, it is certainly common to hear Indian men obsess over finding a so-called ‘ideal girl’ to get married. From experience, it can mean one to many things like — a girl who gives more attention to the family than to herself and is not too-career-oriented. The ‘normal girl’ obsession with Indian men is problematic in several ways – it discourages women to pursue their careers after marriage and attaining motherhood, to be independent, and build their own identity.
Social and lead images credit: Instagram/neetu54 and Instagram/aliaabhatt
