Life happened to me, I think,” said Ekta Kapoor, reflecting on her showbiz journey almost a month after she received the Padma Shri, the nation’s fourth highest civilian award. An incredible validation on all counts, the honour assumes special significance for Ekta. For her, praise for churning out massively successful small screen productions, since she was but a teenager, has been peppered with a generous dose of criticism. More than once, it has crossed over to her personal choices.
In January last year, the TV czarina-filmmaker welcomed son Ravie, born via surrogacy, as a single mother a decision that raised eyebrows. “But now I meet so many young women who say their parents feel it’s okay that they aren’t married and point to me as an example. It makes me very happy, because, in this country, the pressure to conform particularly on girls is so high,” she notes, adding, “Even I feel it.”
She goes on to share that she has been often asked, ‘When will you settle down?’ “Which is odd, because I feel I’m very settled. But such questions are raised. And, if people can find strength by looking at my life, then I’m delighted,” Ekta said, adding that she was told she’d have to re-organise priorities when she became a mother. “But I don’t see it that way. I love my job, and if I stop, I’ll regret it later and blame my son when he never asked me to give anything up.”
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The defiant streak has also driven some of Ekta’s key career decisions. By her own admission, she had received a lot of criticism for her daily soaps. She acknowledges that those shows, which catapulted her company to success in the 2000s were heavily stylised and melodramatic. “But they actually gave Indian women a voice,” she argues. “There’s research that shows that after cable penetration, from about 2001 to 2005, which is when my shows ran, India, for the first time, saw women take decisions on family issues. This had never happened before, and it was directly linked to the fact that we made the women in our shows do this.”
At the same time, she concedes that some things could have been done differently. In hindsight, the very idea that a bread-winning woman should be compared to a man reeks of patriarchy, but at that time, we were fighting a different war: We wanted to gain acceptance for the idea that it’s fine for girls to support their parents financially,” she informs.
With two decades of experience, Ekta knows what she needs to do to avoid the pitfalls of film-making. But parenting is a whole new ballgame, and it helps to have a strong support system, she points out, talking about the guilt that’s every mother’s burden. “My brother Tusshar is amazing,” she says. “He is a fantastic father to his son, and never hesitates to include my son in his plans. And he always has good advice to offer, whether it’s about parenting apps or how to teach Ravie to walk.”
And while she loves exploring new themes and formats at work, her at-home persona is far less adventurous. “My family calls me Velcro because I hate shifting from any place I am comfortable in,” she says. Her bedroom may still be the same shade of yellow it was when she was 15, but Kapoor said she’s certainly not the same person. “I’m a lot stronger, and I think I’m a better person, and I have prayer to thank for that. Otherwise, it’s quite a lot for a 20-year-old to read articles saying, ‘You’ve arrived’ and three years later, articles that say, ‘You’re finished’.” Which is why, while being cognizant of the tremendous honour that comes with a Padma Shri title, Ekta is determined to not let it get to her head. “The people who put you on a pedestal can be as quick to pull you off. So, I don’t want to be on a pedestal. I just want to be heard.”
