By Hindustan Times
While growing up, their one-room apartment in Gulla Wadi Chawl, Mumbai, was rather bare. But siblings Sanjay Leela Bhansali and Bela Bhansali-Sehgal had enough love, bonding and dreams to maintain them warm! From that one room to the glitz and glam of Bollywood was a wonderful reward. “We have lived together, dreamt together and achieved together,” says Bhansali. Today, on Raksha Bandhan, Bhansali, certainly one of India’s biggest filmmakers and his editor/director sister Bela, take us through their experience of sibling love.
Memories
Bela: Those days, we didn’t have enough to sustain us, but we cherish them even now. Circumstances can have made us bitter, but thank God they didn’t. My childhood memories include Sanjay giving me chocolate on Raksha Bandhan, but then eating all of it by himself! We used to do a small puja at home and that i put a tika on his forehead. I do the similar even now, though I’m married and we don’t live together.
Sanjay: My childhood memories of Bela and my mother are my biggest strengths. As Bela said, we had only like to see us through that period. We stayed in that one room but there has been such a lot love that we didn't miss the large things.
Rakhi gifts
Sanjay: We couldn’t afford a square meal, not to mention gifts! I didn’t earn enough. Even my first salary, about Rs. 1,000 that I earned from working in Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s movie, Parinda, as a choreographer, wasn’t enough to gift her something worth remembering. A peck on her cheek was my readymade gift for her.
Today, I'VE enough money, but I don’t have the time to move out and search for an acceptable gift for my sister.
Bela: He's my younger brother, so I never checked out it that way. I’d rather give him everything I have, including my life. If he brings me a sister-in-law, will probably be great!
Relationship
Sanjay: My day starts with ‘Baby, I LIKE you’ to her and ends with a promise to not see her face again! Our relationship could be very honest and real.
Bela: Sanjay was very caring since our childhood. He would oil my hair or even comb it. He wanted me to seem good all of the time.
Sibling Squabbles
Sanjay: We fight like cats and dogs, but we all know we won't live without one another. Mom tells us now that Bela was very jealous of me after I was a child. She removed me from the cradle and slept in it herself, while I lay crying at the ground!
Bela: Fights are a robust a part of our lives but they're only temporary. We don't carry them on for long. He's an excessively strong-headed and personal person, but I WILL be equally stubborn.
