Please leave Nayanthara & Vignesh Shivan alone

If there is one thing for sure about us Indians, it is this: we are a nation of party-poopers. We can’t bear to see others happy and will find ways to dampen the joy-recipient’s spirit. Barely had the wonderful Chhello The Last Show been selected as India’s entry for the Oscars when loud murmurs of disapproval rent the air. Arrey, let us celebrate a film that is so joyous in tone.

In the case of Tamil actress Nayanthara and her filmmaker husband Vignesh Shivan , their twin bundle of joy born earlier this week, has prompted the finger-wagging custodians of the Great Bharatiya Sabhyata to come forward in all their glory, demanding details of their surrogacy process, right from the time when Vignesh secreted his semen in a little bottle to the time they brought their twins home.

The couple is being accused of skipping the normal procedure and breaking the queue to bring their twins home. I say, let them be. This is the couple’s happiest moment together. Why are we spoiling it for them by questioning their right to happiness? How does it matter to anyone how they got their babies as long as they got there?

I’ve seen Karan Johar getting there. His twins via surrogacy are the joy of his life,the raison d’etre. Their smile is his reason to live. Reading stories to them every night is any day preferable to script narrations. And partying with the twins is so much more fun than partying with the film fraternity.

Karan’s conversations are about Ruhi-this and Yash-that. They are being brought up not as star kids but as normal children who think Karan’s mother is their Mama and Karan their Dada.

In spite of the uniqueness of their birth, Karan is making sure Ruhi and Yash are getting a normal childhood. Most important of all, Karan has made sure that the twins have friends and a life outside the entertainment industry. Oftentimes, children born into film families grow up thinking the sun rises and sets in Bollywood’s backyard.

It’s not the same for star kids in the South. Mahesh Babu and Namrata Shirodkar’s two kids Gautam and Sitara do all the things that kids their age are supposed to. They were aware of the fact that they are born super-privileged. But this privilege was never allowed to colour their worldview. Every few months, Mahesh’s family goes on a holiday abroad where they are like any vacationing family.

It is very important for star kids to spend quality time with their parents to know and appreciate the world outside the film industry. Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor’s superstar-son Taimur is now beginning to understand why the shutterbugs have been chasing him from the time he was born. His father has been sitting Taimur down to slowly explain about the family that Taimur is born into.

Nayanthara and Vignesh’s twin boys would at some point need to be told about the special circumstances that brought them into the world. But there is no hurry. Let the couple enjoy the blissful innocence of the toothless smile of two newly born babies…Provided the party poopers would allow them to.

And yes, Nayanthara and Vignesh should connect with Karan Johar for some very valuable tips on how to raise twins born of surrogacy as normal children.

Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha.

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