FOR box-office queen and ardent sports-lover Deepika Padukone, Diwali is among her top favourite festivals. “Generally, either my parents come here or I fly to Bengaluru for the Diwali festivities. Frankly, I terribly miss my doting parents and every occasion that I can get, I try to be with them. It’s an emotional luxury, I feel, to have your parents staying with you,” insists the ‘Tamasha’ heroine, wearing her dimpled smile who this year attended the star-studded late night Diwali homely yet lavish bash hosted by mega-star Amitabh Bachchan and his family.
Had she ever felt like ‘accepting defeat’ in times of adverse situations?
“No, I am not the types who will give up easily. Things will not always go the way you want them to. One thing I have learnt from my mentor Shah Rukh Khan, is to be ‘very patient’. When I am alerted that I can’t do something, I work that much ’harder’. Initially I was a very shy and reserved person. But gradually as I signed on more and more work, I acquired the confidence and the layers of ‘bashful’ sheets were peeled off,” laughs the ambitious ‘Bajirao Mastani’ diva Deepika, who assures us that she has not let ‘superstardom’ make her ‘heady and haughty’.
“Recently after dinner, at night, I was washing and cleaning the dishes at my parents’ home. Our unsophisticated lifestyle at Bengaluru still remains the same. If I changed, my modest dad would perhaps lock me up in a dark store-room, the way he would do, when as a kid I had misbehaved,” asserts the outspoken Padukone whose fond fetish is “handling filing work and scrap-paper-shredding and diligently cleaning up any messy place and keeping everything in spick-and-span order.”