‘I am like a bad penny, I just keep coming back’

Oh my God! Really?” was Kajol’s first reaction when Madame Tussauds, Singapore approached her with the proposal to create her wax statue and install it in their prestigious museum. The museum features personalities such as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Hollywood actor Marilyn Monroe.

“After the initial euphoria, I realised that it was such a big honour for me to be featured alongside such figures. Being compared to some of them is too much,” says the actor, who has been a part of Bollywood for more than two decades.

How did her husband, actor Ajay Devgn, and her two kids, Nysa and Yug, take the news? “Being happy and proud is everyone’s general reaction. But I haven’t been really able to explain it to Yug (since he’s too small) in detail. I have just told him, ‘There’s this thing of me in Singapore’. His only question was, ‘That’s cool! Are we going to Singapore?’,” reveals Kajol.

The daughter of veteran actor Tanuja and director Shomu Mukherjee, and the niece of actor Nutan, Kajol is the first from her family to get her own wax statue.

“First of all, let me say that I am super-proud of my entire family! All of them deserve to have much more than me. I don’t think I’ve achieved even a little of what they have had. My family is very proud of the fact that I’m going to be ‘waxed’,” she laughs.

Kajol is going to be back in Bollywood after a gap of three years, last seen in Dilwale (2015).

Her only release after that was the Tamil film with Dhanush, VIP 2. As female actors disappearing from the screen for even one year are deemed as being out of the race, many are already calling Ela, Kajol’s next film, as her ‘comeback’. However, she remains unfazed. “I’ve had so many of these ‘comebacks’, I’m now like the ‘comeback queen’! I’m like a bad penny, I just keep coming back,” she signs off.

Kajol talks about getting honoured with a wax statue and making a ‘comeback’

Kajol’s mother and aunt are veteran actors Tanuja and Nutan, respectively