Designer Haseena Jethmalani gets candid on her busy life — plans to help with Mumbai’s civic issues, efforts to remove the stigma toward in-vitro fertilisation and family time.
It’s a very rainy day, the sort that’s got a storm brewing
outside the Jethamalani’s sea-facing home and when you chat with designer Haseena Jethmalani, you realise there’s one gathering a vent in her heart too. “Every year in Mumbai we have so many civic troubles during this season. But now, enough blaming the babus and bureaucracy! We need to save the city’s soul. I want to get together just 20 women — no need for known faces — with a strong commitment to look after their areas,” she says.
That she’s also got her next fashion exhibition coming up in Singapore may leave little time on hand. But Haseena admits a busy schedule can put her on a high. “I’m a person that needs that something else. Not like a burning desire to do 100 things, but selectively so. I think I’m too bohemian to be idle. Mahesh has tried to change me and I have to give him 10 on 10 for trying,” she laughs.”
Also, with her kids — daughter Serena (14) and her four-year-old twin boys Amartya and Agastya — growing up nicely, it leaves more room for fashion designing, writing and travelling too. All this, after a long sabbatical of three years that she took post the birth of her boys. They have also given her a reason to take up another cause, that of in-vitro fertilization (IVF). “I couldn’t conceive, so I took the help of IVF and Tony (Mahesh) was very supportive through it all. I think IVF is one of the ways forward for women but most people shy away from it as unfortunately there is a certain stigma attached to being infertile. Sadly, men blame the women for this. I found that it’s among the affluent set that men are less understanding, which was an eye-opener. I’d like to do more for IVF, like reaching out to anyone going through it as it’s an emotionally difficult time.”
For someone who has “no mottos”, preferring to take life as it comes, the greatest pleasures come, “When someone says my kids are well-mannered,” she says. “For Tony and me, we have a ‘no rules’ home — where we eat or go out together when we can, but giving the right principles to our kids is our biggest commitment.”
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