Why did you change your name from Prakash Rai to Prakash Raj?
Director K Balachander changed it. Apart from launching Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan, he was also responsible for launching me. He had changed Rajinikanth's name and felt that at a time when the Cauvery dispute was hot between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, the surname Rai represented just a local community and a state, but he saw a national actor in me and wanted my name to represent that.
How did you come into films?
I am the son of a nurse from Bangalore. I went to St Joseph's, but was not made for studies. I did my first play in Class VII and realised that I got a high from the claps of the audience. In college, I was more interested in arranging strikes and forming gangs. Once, during second year of college, one of my professors said, 'You are wasting your time in college.' Something hit me and I just walked out of the college for five kms and walked straight into Kalakshetra. For the next six months, I did not tell anyone at home that I was actually not going to college, but was doing theatre rehearsals. I started taking acting seriously. I then did TV and got small roles in Kannada films. Things were not happening till one fine day, Geetha, a senior Tamil actress, who was working with me in a Kannada film, spoke to Balachander about me. I met him in Chennai and he liked the fire in me. While he did not give me a role immediately, he cast me in his film Duet, a year-and-a-half later. I was then cast by Mani Ratnam, as he had faith in Balachander having launched me. After that, there was no looking back. Down South, I am loved in my negative roles, positive roles and old roles and I have done so many roles as a father that they say that after Mahatma Gandhi, I am the father of the nation. Bollywood started with Wanted and Singham, as I had done the South films from which they were adapted.
Let's talk about your mother?
She is my queen and is with me wherever I go. She is an innocent soul who was brought up in an orphanage as her mother died when she was 12 and her father was unable to take care of her. She became a nurse, which was when she met and fell in love with my father, who had been admitted as a patient.
They got married, but he did not want to work and wanted to only drink all the time. He was a vagabond, who would stay three months in the house, collect some money and leave and not be available for the next six months. She brought us up and is a strong Roman Catholic. She did not want to leave him and thus brought up all four of us together, my father and her three children. I like the way she fought life, got all her sisters married, gave us as much education as she could afford to and always helps people in need.
She is extremely grounded, happy that her son is being talked about and is worried only about what I am eating and whether I am getting enough sleep. She finds it difficult to even spend 500 as she feels how can she spend money that her son has earned and does not know how much money I make. She always asks me, 'What have I done in my life that you look after me so well?' I keep her like a child and would never do anything which would make me fall in her eyes. I envy her for her strength, don't know from where she gets her integrity, how she can be so simple and live only for others. I can never question her or talk back to her. I have never fought with her. As the elder son, I have seen her struggling, sitting in an auto going around Bangalore looking for my father, drunk in some wine shop. I would use people to carry my father back and would question her as to why she would not leave him. But for her, children without a father was not acceptable and she has this great quality of giving and wants to always forgive. He died 20 years back and she always says, 'Poor guy, he did not know how to live.' She saved and got him two autos to run, but he had sold that too. But surprisingly, she told me that my father told her before he died, 'Your sons will look after you. They will not let you down. They will hate me
forever, but will love you always.' I don't hate him, but I just wish she had a better man.
I have this habit of having my breakfast and dinner with her and just the two of us go out for dinner, where we talk. She is someone I can just go to and hug and cry. I am her security and never ask her whatever money she needs and who she wants to help as she is a giver. She is possessive about me and feels I cannot ever be wrong. My problem is I live with only women — be it my mother, wife, daughters, cook and nurse — who are all drama queens, ranging from the age of 8 to 75, all wanting a slice of me. But it's mind-blowing to have these women in my life.
You divorced your first wife Lata and have re-married choreographer Pony Verma, who is 12 years younger to you. How did Pony and you get married?
My first wife Lata (who was also a Tamil actress) and I had differences. We had three children — two daughters and one son — but we lost our son when he was five. My younger daughter was born after that and we divorced three years back. I live life the way I am and I didn't want to lie so I sat my daughters down and explained to them why I wanted to divorce even though Lata did not want to let me go. My daughters are both with me and her. My office still runs her home and while I have divorced her, my mother, daughters and friends have not. During the period that we were separated and had applied for divorce, I met Pony who was choreographing for one of my films. I spoke to my mother and my daughters and said, this is what I want to do, but I wanted Pony to spend time with my daughters. I knew it was her first marriage, though I came with baggage. She also met Lata and my daughters, who said, 'Cool dad, please go ahead'. Then I went to meet her father and told them that I was divorced. They were shocked initially, but then blessed us. I was going to shoot in Australia for 15 days. She took her father and I took my mother to spend time together, post which we decided to get married.
How is Pony?
She has been such a breath of fresh air in the family. I love her energy. I got married to her at 45. Probably, I would have become a little serious in life. But she brought romance and music in my life. It's great to have a beautiful young woman next to you when you go out and can escape for a holiday. Suddenly, you feel younger and there is so much joy in my life. Otherwise, I would have been a senior actor and like some other senior actors would have turned into a tharki. Being alone, you need a woman in your life. And then you have a woman who is 12 years younger to you, who is mature, who hugs you, who makes you feel like going back home. I love the way she has become a friend to my elder daughter Pooja, who is now 17, the way they talk and have secrets.
Your father was a Hindu and your mother a Catholic, yet you chose to bury your son Sidhu in your farm. Why did you do that?
I can't forget him, even though I have removed all photographs of his. I am a non-believer and wanted to bury him in my farm. I just go, sit there many times. He is the one who made me realise how helpless I am and how unpredictable life is and how small it is and how weak you are in front of nature. I love my daughters, but just miss my child even though it's been nine years since he died. He was just five when, while flying a kite from a one-foot-high table, he fell on the ground. For a few months after that, he would have fits, after which he died. Nobody could understand what was the reason. His death was more than any other sorrow for me. I don't take life for granted anymore and live in the moment.
