Bollywood star Sonam Kapoor talks jewels and culture

Gulf News

Just like the diamonds that she was wearing, Bollywood actress Sonam Kapoor Ahuja’s sparkling, multi-faceted personality shone bright on a recent afternoon in Abu Dhabi. As soon as we entered her beach-facing suite in the capital, we spotted her sitting in a chair wearing velvet trousers and a jacket with her vertiginous heels removed, feet tucked in and her spine ramrod straight like a ballerina ready for a day of press interactions.  Read the full article here: https://bit.ly/2vDLWFL  See more videos at https://gulfnews.com/videos  Read more Gulf News stories here: https://bit.ly/2HLJ2km  #SonamKapoor #Bollywood #India

Transcript

00:00I'm a public figure, whether I like it, people, I don't know about looking up to me.

00:04I guess I have a voice. I have a voice. I've had, I have the privilege of having a voice.

00:13How did your collaboration come about? It's with the UAE royalty as well.

00:16Yes. So I've worked with Bulgari before on a couple of things. And I think, you know,

00:23I've launched one of the other collections before, but over here, they wanted me to be

00:26the face of their collection as well because Her Royal Highness thought it would be nice for me to

00:31be the face of it. And so did Bulgari. It's a great collection to be a part of because

00:37it celebrates similarities between two cultures, as opposed to the differences that

00:41we these days have been highlighting in the world amongst cultures. Right. And I think it's

00:46the perfect time and place to talk about similarities of between cultures. And I

00:53thought it was such an important collection because of that. I also thought it was quite

00:58amazingly sweet that it was a granddaughter paying homage to her grandfather. It's also

01:03about heritage. It's also about design. It's about art. We have so much intolerance these days,

01:09you know, so it's about celebrating each other. Right. And I think that is something that we

01:15should be very, you know, proud of. How can you be the strong voice? Because you've always been

01:20the same voice as well. On Twitter, you try to be as sane as possible. Well, I think, you know,

01:26I'm a liberal. But I feel like any form of extremism in any for any side is wrong. You know,

01:35the whole idea is to have a choice and not berate anybody for their choice. And as an artist,

01:40I feel like, you know, you just you have to have a certain moral compass that speaks about

01:46freedom of choice, freedom of speech, freedom to be who you are, to have equality, no matter

01:53what your sex is, no matter what your, you know, strata, what strata of society you belong to.

01:59I'm a public figure. People look up to you. I don't know about looking up to me. Of course we do.

02:03I guess I have a voice. I have a voice. I've had I have the privilege of having a voice.

02:10When you have that, it's also a huge responsibility to use that voice. I have a lack of self

02:15preservation when it comes to certain things. And, you know, and I feel I feel also you have

02:22to use your voice with the right intentions. Right. But you've done that quite well, though.

02:26I feel you have mellowed down. It could be just me. But I feel somewhere you're more careful now.

02:31I mean, there's less controversies around you. Well, I don't I don't use my voice for

02:36things that make good copy, but I use my voice for things that matter a lot more.

02:40So I don't know if you'd call that mellow. I think I would call that wise.

02:45I guess so. But yeah, I rather speak for, you know, rights of freedom of speech, freedom of

02:54choice, freedom to education for education. I'd rather speak I'd rather speak of myself as a

02:59feminist about pay disparity. I speak for, you know, LGBTQI rights. Those are the things that

03:06I'd like to speak about. You know, I don't want to speak about someone's dressing sense or

03:12someone's acting capabilities. I don't think you don't want snarky. I don't believe I've never

03:18done that. Yeah, but I mean, if that's what you mean by mellowed down. But yeah, I think I'm

03:24pretty I still have an opinion. Do you think less is more? Well, well, I'm an Indian. I think more

03:30is more. Bring it on. Bring it on. I think, you know, as Indians, we love jewelry. We love wearing

03:36a lot of jewelry. And it's part of our heritage is a part of our culture. You know, 90% of the

03:41stones that are cut in the world, you know, cut in India, most of the stones in the world are

03:47sourced from India. A lot of the jewelry is made in India and the world. So it's a part of our

03:52heritage. So yeah, we should flaunt our heritage.

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