Zeenat Aman had broken her mother’s heart when she eloped with actor Mazhar Khan, the Bollywood veteran confessed in her latest Instagram post on Tuesday, sharing family anecdotes along with black-and-white pictures of her parents and German stepfather.

“It’s true that I broke her heart a little when I eloped,” she wrote alongside a picture of her parents Scinda Heinz and Amanullah Khan. “But it mended with the birth of my first son, who shares a birthday with her,” she added.

The only time Zeenat and her mother would ever fight was when the latter believed that no man was good enough for her daughter. “Mummy never thought any man was worthy of me (she was onto something there), and it was the only matter that we ever locked horns on,” she mentioned, recalling such moments of heated debate between them.

The actress, however, went on to say that no matter how intense their falling out would be, she would always crawl into her mother’s bed at the end of the day, lay by her side and hold her hand.

Reminiscing about the good and bad times she spent with her mother, Zeenat called her mother a “safe harbour” and a “woman ahead of the curve”. She also emotionally recalled the time her mother gave up on her career to help Zeenat when she decided to become an actor.

“When I made up my mind to pursue a career in acting, she gave up her own work to be my manager. She negotiated my contracts, invested my earnings, packed my tiffins, ran my lines, inspired my style, and bolstered my confidence to the nth degree. All this while maintaining her own exciting social life within the expat community in Mumbai,” she wrote.

The actress, who shot to fame with 1971’s Hare Rama Hare Krishna, opened up about how her mother studied business and became a working woman after she separated from her father in the 1950s. Highlighting her mother’s efforts in providing her with the best of opportunities and love, the actress wrote, “She sent me to the best of boarding schools and never missed a visit, whence she would come laden with parcels of tuck.”

Zeenat also mentioned that when her mother passed away in 1995, she felt “as though a veil of protection was snatched off my shoulders”.

Earlier, Zeenat had courted controversy by advising her Instagram followers to go for a live-in relationship with their partners before marriage. Her opinion garnered criticism from some quarters, notably from her industry colleagues Mumtaz and Saira Banu.

Zeenat last appeared in Ashutosh Gowarikar’s 2019 epic war drama Panipat alongside Arjun Kapoor, Sanjay Dutt and Kriti Sanon. She will be next seen in Bun Tikki and Margao Files.