Filmmaker Karan Johar says he is bringing up his three-year-old twins Yash and Roohi by giving them emotional encouragement and is making sure that they don't fall into stereotypes. “All of us are very proud parents, we all love our children. And it’s very integral that we give them all the love, the attention and the care. We also really make their home feel beautiful, we make them love their home, we make them feel like home is where the heart is,” Karan said.
“But we sometimes miss the point, we sometimes pretend that their home is just their residence, but that’s not true. Our planet is also our home. There are few things that I have done with my kids at a very young age apart from the emotional encouragement that one has to always give them about making sure that they don’t fall into stereotypes,” he added.
The filmmaker continued: “The other thing that I do is I tell them about plastic, single-use plastic and about how it’s important not to consume single-use plastic because you know that it’s a big deterrent to our planet and we must be very careful. So, saying no to plastic is the one thing that I’ve been actually inculcating within their sensibility.”
Now, Karan has joined hands with Neha Dhupia, Soha Ali Khan, Esha Deol, Tusshar Kapoor, Pragya Kapoor, Kunal Khemu, Amrita Arora and Neelam Kothari to take a pledge to protect the planet through a campaign by Simone Khambatta’s parenting and motherhood blog Mama Says.
Neha Dhupia said: “Apart from all the other conscious work that we are doing, I also pledge that we continue buying wooden toys for our daughter Mehr, try and keep her away from plastic toys as much as we can.”
“And more importantly we are totally open to hand me downs. Mehr has got a lot of friends who are six months or a year older and we believe in hand me down toys, clothes, books, all of it. It’s great on the pocket and more importantly, it’s very good for the environment,” added the actress.
To this, Soha added: “I pledge to use a reusable water bottle with me every time I step out of the house instead of buying plastic bottles because I care about the future of our children and our grandchildren on our planet.”
“The pandemic has made us realise many things with the most important one being that we need to care for Mother Earth! We don’t have to do big things, we have to do small things but have to do it together,” Khambatta said.