Hema Malini has denied Rishi Kapoor’s statement with an incident she remembered when she met Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. Rishi Kapoor had earlier blasted stars who had the time to attend Priyanka Chopra’s party and avoided the Last Rights of veteran actor Vinod Khanna. Hema Malini contradicted his statement but not directly. She said that the actors this generation are more respectful and respect their seniors than their times. In a recent interview with the Hindustan Times, she stated an incident she had with Aishwarya Rai Bachchan while being felicitated from the Dadasaheb Phalke awards held in Mumbai.
She said, “After the ceremony was over, I was waiting for a while for my car to come. I guess the driver had parked it some distance away, and it took him some time [to reach me]. I realized that Aishwarya was just standing there with me, refusing to leave. When I asked her, ‘Why are you still here?’ she replied, ‘Aapki gaadi aane do (Let your car come). I will leave after that.” Aishwarya even became Hema’s bouncer for a while and helped manage the crowd around her.
“There were so many people who were trying to click photos and were trying to take selfies. [Aishwarya] was making sure that I don’t get pushed or nudged by them. Then, after [my] car came, she opened the door, made sure I sat inside the car, and only then did she move to her car, which had been waiting for a while,” she recalls.
Touched by Aishwarya’s gesture, Hema, 68, believes that younger actors or filmmakers “understand and give due respect” to the industry legends. “I was so touched by that,” Hema says of the way Aishwarya kept her company and also kept the over-enthusiastic fans under control. “Now who’d do such a thing? It shows that there’s a lot of respect and regard for me. I don’t know if everyone in the industry is like her, but there are people who, just like Aishwarya, understand and give due respect to those who are senior to them. I don’t think it’s right to say that everyone is the same,” she adds.
