Asha Parekh: “I hope people remember me as a nice girl”

Bollywood’s retired ‘Jubilee Queen’ continues to be a happy soul, in spite of her movie career being a thing of the past. Asha Parekh who turned 76 on October 2, is happy to share her birthday with Mahatma Gandhi.

But there is the downside too. “Every birthday of mine is a dry day. So my friends never get to toast my health and well being with a glass of wine…ah, never mind! I am happy to be alive, well, healthy and still not pushed into oblivion, as many of my colleagues are.”

Oblivion is far from Ashaji’s ambit of activity. In fact 2017 has been a particularly eventful years for her.

“That’s right. My memoirs The Hit Girl came out. I was apprehensive that it may hurt some. But I was determined to tell the truth. Or else, no point in writing about your life. My co-author Khalid Mohamed and I were very careful about the lives that were touched in my memoirs.”

On the downside, the year saw Ashaji’s dream project her hospital for the poor, being shut down.

She sighs, “This is not the first time, we’ve had to close down the hospital. It had been closed in 2007. Now ten years later it looks like it’s going to be taken over by a hospital chain. My hospital will now be turned into a 5-star health facility. That means the facilities will no longer be available to the poor and the underprivileged. Poor people die due to medical negligence. The government hospitals are overcrowded and understaffed. That’s why I ran this no-profit hospital for the poor. It was my parents’ dream that I tend  to the poor. Alas, the dream has ended.”

But quickly Brightening up, Ashaji says that she is thankful for what life has given her. “I am still around and healthy. I had a great innings . I was called the ‘hit girl’ because of the success ratio of my films. I don’t know how so many hits happened in my career. It was God’s blessings, I guess and my parents’ good wishes. It’s sad to lose friends at my age. Watching them go one by one is a very scary experience. I just wish when I go, I go without pain. And people will remember me as a nice girl.”