For a long time I thought this sister of mine was unlucky in love. Guys drooled over her. But she just couldn’t find the perfect match. At times the lack of emotional sustenance would get to her. “I guess the right person will happen when he happens. You can’t push it. If you do, you end up marrying the wrong man.”
And she would point out the marriages of compromised inconvenience in the film industry, her colleagues who quickly married the first man who proposed before they missed the bus. “I can’t do that. It has to be the real thing for me. Find a match for your sister,” she would squeal half-jokingly.
I remember once trying to send her on a blind date with an actor who was in awe of her. Raveena took along a dress designer friend of hers. The three of them whooped up till the wee hours at a pub. The next morning she nearly choked on her laughter.
“There you were trying to match-make for me while I was trying to put him on to my friend,” she laughed.
When Raveena laughs, you can hear her voice at the other end of town. Her extreme pleasure in the humorous side of life is equalled by her emotional insecurity, a typical Scorpio trait and one that cost her plenty in terms of emotional discontent. But Raveena is never one to sit and weep. A more spirited girl would be hard to find in the film industry. Funk and spunk aren’t fashion statements for her. Raveena thrives on these qualities. Her insecurities as an individual and an artiste have never bogged her down.
She can be an awfully affectionate bully. I remember her showing me around her striking new penthouse apartment. Her first home bought with her own hard-earned money. Every brick and artefact paid for by her, she was a house-proud lady.
“And this is where you’ll stay from now on whenever you come to Mumbai,” she said pointing to the swanky guest room.
There were times when Raveena touched rockbottom emotionally and professionally. But she bounced right back. Never as career-oriented as her colleague Karisma Kapoor, Raveena always wanted to be a wife and a mother, more than anything else.
“Being an object of desire and all that jazz is all very fine. But I’ve seen how happy my mother is with my father. I want that for myself,” she once confided in me.
Today she has got what she most wanted. Her two lovely children are growing up into full-on matinee idols. Her two adopted daughters are young women with lives of their own. Recently when we were chatting informally Raveena said, “Career wise, I’ve done it all. Now I look for roles that will challenge me as an actress. Being a wife and mother gives me so much peace from within. I think this is what I always wanted. I couldn’t have asked for more,” she exclaims.
And then chuckles hard, Raveena style.
