Each Day Is a New Experience For Me - Jayasudha

She burst on the screen as a fresh teenager in short skirts. She danced around trees with countless heroes and then played the role of a mother with equal ‚lan. Now in the rough and tumble of active politics, Jayasudha's life has come full circle. Holding all the contrasting pulls and pushes together is the spiritual side of the actress-turned-politician.

A couple of months into politics, and the actor-turned-politician knows there is lot to be done. "I can't really say how politics has treated me. I joined the Congress party in April, got elected in May. In September, the man who offered me the role of a real politician passed away and now we are in December and I am still learning. Each day is a new experience for me," she says.

Dressed in a beige jute kurta teamed with a silk hand-printed dupatta, Jayasudha sans the airs of an actor and a politician, welcomes you with a warm smile. "I felt sick suddenly. I had lunch with a friend and I don't feel too well," she said as she plonked herself in a single-seater leather sofa.

"I panic when I fall sick. I start imagining the worse. I am quite a timid person with health issues," she confesses. "Doctors have asked me to exercise, to control my weight and to avert other ailments which are caused due to hormonal imbalances, but I hardly get the time to do anything," she regrets.

Jayasudha says that in real life too she is quite the timid sort. "When my husband and sons are not at home I would ask my mother to come and stay with me. But of late I am becoming courageous."

Ask her how she celebrated her birthday on Dec 17 and she replies with a laugh, "I usually do not celebrate my birthday. But this time my guest list reached up to 2,500. Some of my colleagues did everything, including the job of inviting the guests and I was completely unaware." What about celebrating Christmas?

"I am the only believer in the family so there is no Christmas at home. But I am all excited about spending time with my two boys in Singapore, for New Year," she says with excitement. Ask her, what she is looking forward to most and she says: "To cooking and spending time with my family. My sons have been asking me to watch Avatar but I haven't had the time. Maybe when I am in Singapore, holidaying with my sons who are studying there, I will watch it," says Jayasudha, who doesn't enjoy shopping for anything else except elegant cotton saris.

To the actor, her husband and kids are her best friends and says with pride that her sons treat her as their friend too. "They discuss everything with me from their day at college to their girlfriends and while I don't want my sons to be cheated or taken for a ride by anyone, I ensure that my sons too do not think of hurting or causing pain to anybody. I fight with my husband but he is also my best friend," she giggles.

The actor is married to Nitin Kapoor who is Hindi actor Jitendra's nephew. She met him in the early '80s and after marriage loved visiting her in-laws in Mumbai when they were alive. "They used to pamper me a lot." What about friends from outside the industry. "Not too many. I either talk about sports, books or spirituality and I know that people get tired with my spiritual talk and with no common topic to discuss, I'd rather not make friends and sit and gossip. Gossip is not healthy, besides tarnishing someone's reputation it doesn't do anything," she says.

A sports enthusiast Jayasudha recalls telling her friends as a young girl that when she gets married she will have 11 kids. Eleven specifically so that she could form a cricket team. "I love cricket and that love comes from me being born into a house that overlooked the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Chennai. I grew up on cricket. But I love other sports like soccer, tennis too.

Keeping the faith

Jayasudha has a little private trust of hers through which she helps the needy with funds for medicines. Arogyashree is very close to her heart and that is one reason for joining politics.

Her popular sari sale just concluded and she is gearing up for the summer sale. She wonders what makes people go gaga over her cotton saris on screen and the same when put up in exhibition finds no takers. In 1985 when she was honeymooning in Pataya beach, Jayasudha who doesn't know to swim was about to drown.

As she fought for air and to be rescued, a face appeared in front of her. She saw the piercing looks in his eyes and his golden locks and even while she was drowning she spoke out loud, `Tanu Yesu Prabhu kada?'

The incident she says is still fresh in her mind because she feels blessed by that encounter.