and paid the price for it jayas face was a delicate mirror of the heart out outstanding song piya piya bina basiya baje nain doosri sita 1974 she played an abused pregnant wife who murders her husband in this gogi anand directed offbeat film the uneven film assumed greatness from jayas stark brutally raw performance one still gets goosebumps when we recall her in the sequence where she pummels her belly to kill her unborn child would there have been the resplendent neorealism of shabana azmi and smita patil if jaya had not paved the way one of her last performances before marriage and retirement was in mili directed by her favourite hrishikesh mukherjee jaya excelled as the sunshine girl who dispels the clouds in the life of a dark brooding alcoholic amitabh bachchan this role could have been an oversweetened genderreversed version of rajesh khanna in anand but jaya made it all her own imbuing the childwomans role with an aching humanismjayas role as mother matters more to her than any other thats precisely why she gave up superstardom in 1973 when she ruled the box office to become wife to amitabh bachchan and subsequently mother to shweta and abhishekjaya had commented in the past everyone saw it as a big sacrifice and painted me as mother india but the fact is i did what i wanted to there was no martyrdom involved because im not that kind of a person no one can make me do what i dont want to when i decided to pause my career to look after my children i never saw it as a sacrifice the love affection and respect that the children give me today are more important to me than any other kind of success in the world i dont care what the world thinks as long as the children have faith in me and doesnt that apply to all parents i dont think im an extraordinary mother i come from a decent middleclass family ive just behaved normally with my childrenthat this woman of substance wont do something only because its expected of her goes without saying jaya is a woman of steel in the truest sense in spite of being the first lady of filmdom with the accompanying baggage of obligations and responsibilities shes as real and rooted to the ground as anyone can getjaya ensured that her two children abhishek and shweta got a normal upbringing the families in our film industry are very normal im not saying the industry is perfect it just seems more imperfect than other areas of activity because of the constant media attention im fortunate to have come from a decent family thats why i could give decent values to my children my father taroon kumar bhaduri was an eminent journalist he was out making a living for his large family but i never felt that my father wasnt around i never felt the need for anything that i didnt have i was