Farah talks about family and Om Shanti Om

Director Farah Khan of Om Shanti Om – Smiling Away
Farah Khan

What could she possibly celebrate for? Well for those who don’t know director Farah Khan of Om Shanti Om is expecting triplets. Om Shanti Om is not just going to fetch her fame and success but lots of happiness and luck too. She will watch her big movie go on screen with her little babies living inside her. Now this is a moment to capture. Is’nt it!

Here’s Farah Khan’s interview with Mumbai Mirror where she talks about her married life, Om Shanti Om and her expected triplets.

• Did the news of triplets come as a pleasant surprise?
Yes. At 40, I didn’t know whether I’d have even one kid. At 43, I’m going to have three. It’s not something that I was dying for, but now that I’m expecting, I like the idea. For Shirish (Kunder, her husband, maker of Jaan-E-Man), who’s an introvert, the idea of having a big family is even more important.

• Was it Shirish who wanted kids, then?
Yeah, he told me right at the outset that I should see him only if I were ready to get married and have kids. He asked me not to do ‘time-pass’ with him. Left to myself, I’d have happily settled for just such a time-pass relationship.

• How does he handle a high profile wife, who always speaks her mind and has Shah Rukh Khan for her best friend?
He doesn’t care. He doesn’t talk much because he doesn’t feel the need to express his opinions, that’s all. Also, being eight years younger to me, he comes from a more irreverent generation. I’m the conservative, sometimes I get shocked at the amount of money he asks for his work. But he goes ahead and gets these huge amounts.

• Have you both thought of working together, as in making a film together?
No thanks. Shirish would kill me if we worked together. His vision is completely different from mine, and he’s so dominating. We almost killed each other when I choreographed for him for Jaan-E-Man.

• Are you shopping for the kids?
I’m not allowed to go shopping. Kids apart, I need maternity clothes for myself too. Karan (Johar) is doing that for me. He travels a lot, and travels with my list. Recently he called me from London, saying that he couldn’t believe he was standing in the lingerie department of Marks & Spencer, buying maternity bras for me!

• Isn’t Shirish shopping?
I’ve told Shirish to hang on, otherwise he’ll go berserk, shopping. And he hasn’t the faintest idea of what to get. He’s buying things like computers, etc – for the kids.

• That’s an exaggeration.
It isn’t! The other day, he actually bought a keyboard for the kids. I’m trying to tell him that the kids are going to be very small for a while!

• How excited is your brother Sajid?
Sajid is now too excited about the success of his film, Heyy Babyy, to think or talk of anything else.

• Are you ready for the changes that the kids will bring in your life?
I guess so. I’m going to take a year off, be with them. I guess I’ll be feeding all the time. How often do babies feed?

• Every two hours.
Oh God! That’s impossible. Anyway, I think my kids will have to grow up leading a bohemian lifestyle. I’ll take them to the sets, and they’ll have to play there. They’re already at ease on the sets. In the first couple of months, when I used to retch all the time, my stomach would always settle down when I went to the sets.

• Have things been a little easier with this film, being the second?
I’ve calmed down. For Main Hoon Na, I was really hyper. Even one bad review made me feel that there was a huge conspiracy theory going on around me! This time, I know I’ll give a damn. Also, there was less panic on the sets. If anything went wrong, I’d shout at my ADs for 10 minutes and get over it.

• You’ve said that you’ll have SRK in every film of yours. Isn’t that a limiting condition, since you’ve to work around roles that suit him?
What do I do? Shah Rukh spoils you for working with anyone else. But he needn’t be in the main role always. He can play a cameo, produce the film… I just want his involvement in all my films.

• How much time do you spend with him, apart from work?
I haven’t met him for two weeks. I like to give a lot of space to people in my life. I don’t get obsessive about people.

• Do you ever feel stifled with your work, feel the need to get away?
Not with filmmaking. But yes, I’m going to stop choreographing now. I can’t think of anything new now, so it’s better to stop. Especially choreographing for others’ films, where I have no control. If it’s a wedding scene, it’s a wedding scene. Whether it was KANK or Heyy Babyy, I didn’t do anything new, and I felt stagnated. For my own films, yes, at least I can decide that I want six packs for Shah Rukh, or shoot with 30 veterans…

• How much work went behind the six-pack?
So much that by the end of it I was begging Shah Rukh to please eat something! He couldn’t even drink water for hours during shooting because there would be water retention and it would show on his stomach. His a#*e would ache while shooting, he’d get cramps. It all seems frivolous, but it was hard work.

• Is the film industry still regressive? Does it still need a little more spunk to be a woman here?
Well, the distributors are fine. They’ve stopped caring whether they buy a film from a man, woman or eunuch, as long as they recover their money. But yes, male directors still don’t want to let us join the boys’ club. Which is fine with me. Besides, plenty of male directors make pseudo-sensitive women-based films, which they accuse women directors of making. So what are they talking about, anyway?

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