A Quote by Shabana Azmi
As children, my brother Baba and I would be taken to mushairas when my mother Shaukat Kaifi was touring with Prithvi Theatres, because we couldn't afford a maid.
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Performing at Prithvi was a novel experience, because unlike other theatres, it was very different - it didn't have any curtains and the audience was at close proximity to the actors.
When I was between 2 and 3 years old, I got to know my first non-human being. The non-human was a cocker spaniel named Baba. We weren't friends, Baba and I, nor enemies. He wasn't my dog. He belonged to the people my mother worked for, and he lived in the house with them and us.
Yet I would not die a maid, because I had a mother, As I was by one brought forth, I would bring forth another.
What I will not do is continue to perpetuate stereotypes. I'm the daughter of a maid; why do I have to also play a maid? My mom was a maid so I didn't have to be a maid.
I have been blessed in my career and I was able to afford the extra procedures and everything to have my children. Does that make me a better mother than someone who cannot afford it? No, of course not.
My grandmother spent her whole life working as a maid, a cook and a babysitter, barely scraping by, but still working hard to give my mother, her only child, a chance in life, so that my mother could give my brother and me an even better one.
I live the most boring life, away from what you see me on camera doing. The other 300 days out of the year [not touring], I'm just the most normal person in the universe. I'm a wife. I'm a mother to my doggies. I'm a maid, and I clean the house. I'm pretty boring.
I lost my mother when I was 7 and they put her in a mental hospital. My brother and I watched her being taken away in a strait jacket. That's something you never forget. And my stepmother was like in the movie 'Precious.' I couldn't handle it. So I said to myself, 'I don't have a mother. I don't need one. I'm going to let music be my mother.'
Baba dropped the stack of food stamps on her desk. "Thank you but I don't want," Baba said. "I work always. In Afghanistan I work, in America I work. Thank you very much, Mrs. Dobbins, but I don't like it free money."...Baba walked out of the welfare office like a man cured of a tumor.
We in the West do not refrain from childbirth because we are concerned about the population explosion or because we feel we cannot afford children, but because we do not like children.
My childhood was lonely. Both my parents were away a lot, working, and the maid basically raised me. And I think that's where a lot of my comedy comes from. Not only was the maid very funny and witty, but when my mother came home I'd use humour to try and get her attention. If I made mommy laugh, then maybe everything would be all right. I think that's where it [my comedy] all started.
Of course one can't eat in a civilized fashion while touring in theatres. But I still manage to get my three meals a day. I find that is sufficient for training.
I always tell people, if a young girl read "Beloved" as her first novel, she'd have to kill either herself or her mother, because in "Beloved" you have a mother killing their children. This is not something a child would accept very easily. And would never understand.
Bombay was an expensive place and I didn't want to spend my nights without food in my stomach. For 400 a month, I would make bills from morning till evening and then would head to Prithvi Theatre.
I've always taken pride to be the white guy that can talk to the black people, that can refer to them truly as a brother from a different mother.
I know it's become a cliche of sorts, but, nonetheless, it is true. This is the only planet we and our children and children's children will call home. We can't afford to lose this home because we didn't protect it.
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