Why is Bollywood's Meenakshi Seshadri keen to do an 'item number'?

It was her former neighbour, the late actor Rishi Kapoor, who spotted Meenakshi Seshadri in the US and posted a photo of her on Twitter that drew attention to her a few years ago. So, when she came back to India to get back to her industry she realised how important it was to have a digital footprint in the entertainment industry and also have a following. Her son helped her out with his ‘constructive criticism,’ though her daughter is not keen on social media. Her channel is filled with reels of her dancing.

At the peak of her career, Meenakshi quit the industry and married Harish Mysore, an investment banker. Life in the US was challenging. “Initially I was very insecure about completely quitting the film industry. Harish and I even considered finding avenues for him in India through American companies. To his absolute credit he tried his best, but his future lay in the US and not India. He did his higher education there and was well entrenched into investment banking.”

Also she was ready to put down her roots and start a family. “The US forced me out of my comfort zone to become self-sufficient. Since she was a simple middle-class girl despite being a famous movie star, she could adjust. “At home too, back in Mumbai, I wasn’t surrounded by staff. We had two part-timers and the rest of the time [it] was just mom and me.”

"Dallas has huge expanses of land and it was a joy to drive there,” she adds. She recalls finding it tough to understand the Texan accent and would ask people to repeat sentences over and over again!

Meenakshi, who is trained in four classical dance forms — Bharatnatyam, Kuchipudi, Odissi and Kathak — soon started teaching dance there at the behest of friends. “I started learning music and dance by the age of two and each classical form takes six years [to learn], and I perfected all before my foray into Bollywood at 20,” she says.

Which is why she is keen to do an item song. “I would like to let my soul free and bring to my dance what I [have] learnt from the last 28 years of my life. I [want to make a] come back with a fresher perspective.”

As for body shaming and age shaming, Meenakshi is vehement in her response. “Recently I was in Dubai and posted a Reel. While most of the comments were positive, a small percentage of people told me to ‘behave my age', 'wear a saree and hair bun'. It is strange that when you have crossed the threshold of 30-40 years of age, a lot of people try to straitjacket you behind a veneer of their expectations.“

"In fact," she adds, "a dancer or an actor should not have an image and flow into what her character demands.”

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