Mandira Bedi, an actor, recently shared her thoughts on why she chose to adopt a child. She named the infant girl Tara Bedi Kaushal after her late spouse, Raj Kaushal. Mandira stated that she had informed Raj during their courtship that she had always wished to adopt one child. The actor also talked about Veer’s reaction to Tara’s adoption. Veer was nine years old when Tara was adopted.
Sharing that she told Raj early in their relationship, “I want to have one and adopt one,” Mandira Bedi recalled how she didn’t want to become a mother during the early years of her marriage. She told Humans of Bombay, “When we got married, I was not ready to get pregnant for a while. I was too busy doing cricket; a couple of my contracts didn’t allow me to get pregnant, and then there was someone in my family who was trying to get pregnant and was doing IVFs, and the IVFs were failing. And then I realised, I do want to be a mother. I am not going to let life pass me by. I do want to be a parent.”
She added, “The day I decided, three months later, I was pregnant. It was 13 years into our marriage when I got pregnant. I was so busy running around. Once I became a mother, I realised, ‘This is the best thing I’ve ever done.’ Then I was like, I want more. So, when Veer was six years old, I put the paper for adoption.”
Mandira and Raj had to wait three years to adopt and bring home a girl. In their adoption documents, they said that they were open to adopting a kid from any part of India, which added their name to the list.
“When my son Veer was about six, I put in the papers for adoption. It’s a long process, and I don’t know why it’s not easier. I mean, I understand the reasons, but when it’s clear that this is a good family, it should be simpler. It took a while—Veer turned nine, the pandemic hit, and I told Raj, ‘It still hasn’t happened. Why?’ We had gotten caught up and didn’t follow up much. So, I thought, it’s now or never, and we pushed forward.”
They eventually received images of Tara, who was born in Tikamgarh, Jabalpur, over the mail, and they decided right away that they wanted her to be a part of their family. Raj took her on a private jet flight from Jabalpur to Mumbai during the height of the coronavirus pandemic.
