When 60-year-old Meenakshi Seshadri said, “I’d love to do an item number,” it drew a lot of unkind attention. At a dinner gathering of film people, including senior actresses, there were comments ranging from her being delusional to something being wrong in her marriage. Even today, returning to a career that was put on hold to raise a family is equated with a failed marriage. Sometimes that may be true but whatever the reason, there is an increasing number of 50+ actresses who are jostling for work. Count Kajol, Juhi Chawla, Madhuri Dixit, Anita Raaj, Sonali Bendre, Zarina Wahab and Neetu Kapoor as some of the women who’ve maintained themselves well and can walk into one another’s roles.

Contrarily, Rati Agnihotri — who too had made a comeback a few years ago when there was trouble in her paradise — has switched off again. Making peace with her circumstances, she has gone into grandma mode. Son Tanuj Virwani is soon to be a father and Rati only wants to look forward.

Meanwhile, a rare interview that I did with Vijayta Pandit, another 50+ actress, has been getting a crazy number of views. The outcome of most interviews lies entirely with the celebrity. Will she be diplomatic or come out all guns blazing? In the comments section under YouTube interviews, one sometimes encounters caustic feedback that flogs the journalist for getting so personal with the questions. But the reality is that a rough idea of the territory we’ll be navigating is discussed before the cameras roll. Both Meenakshi and Vijayta were ready for it. Both had also briefed me on the area each wanted to avoid which was duly respected.

While one knew that after the success of Love Story (1981), Vijayta’s career almost came to a halt because Rajendra Kumar did not want his son Kumar Gaurav to continue seeing his co-star or work with her, the actress made new revelations. One was that even when Kumar Gaurav (Bunty) was briefly engaged to Raj Kapoor’s daughter, he had sworn on Vijayta’s mother’s Krishna Mala that he would marry only Ms Pandit.

There is a bit of a debate on whether a person with grown-up children should talk about her past or not. I’d say there is no universal rule. Besides, with the Internet bursting with information, it would be rather infantile for any actress to try to whitewash her past.

Raveena Tandon, who has never hidden her relationship with Akshay Kumar, once told me that she not only told her husband Anil Thadani everything about herself, she also told her children about it. They were grownup enough to understand that moms too could have a past. It was the same with Mithun’s children who knew about mom Yogita Bali’s brief marriage to Kishore Kumar.

Vijayta told her sons about Bunty because she wanted to instil in them the ethics of not letting down any girl, the value of a commitment to a girl and the consequences it could have on her life. In fact, her son Avitesh has even met Kumar Gaurav, knowing that the man he was talking to had once played a part in his mom’s life.

But it was not only about her personal life and the timeless values to learn from it. Vijayta also repeated something she’d told me when I’d visited her after her husband Aadesh Srivastava’s death. Shah Rukh Khan used to be close to Aadesh and would visit him in hospital when he was battling blood cancer. On his last visit, Aadesh who could barely talk, had held SRK’s hand and pointed to his son Avitesh, wanting the actor to take care of him. Avitesh is a multi-talented musician but the reality is that Vijayta no longer has access to Shah Rukh.

At the end of Vijayta’s interview, the question that lingered was, will SRK step in and help boost the career of his late friend’s son?