Once sex symbol, now glam-mom. In her first interview in years, Kimmy Katkar opens up on her gritty fight for her son’s life and life after Bollywood

For starters, she was never Kimi. “It’s Kimmy Katkar. Someone spelt it wrong and it stuck. I hated it,” says Katkar. She of the arched eyebrows and long legs, desi Jane to an eminently forgettable Tarzan, Jumma to a lusting Amitabh Bachchan in Hum, has just welcomed me to her home with a cool glass of iced tea. Google her and the search throws up a collection of Tarzan and Hum tidbits and a few video clips on YouTube. There is a fan asking: ‘Where is Kimi Katkar?’ Where indeed? “But were people looking for that answer? I don’t think so!” Katkar says candidly, as she sits across me, clad in blue jeans and a white shirt at her apartment in Pune, the city that has been home for the past three years.

The sex bomb of the Eighties is now 47 and mother to a 16-year-old. She has put on a few kilos and remains a striking woman. But she seems to have happily shed the starry life. So, she shows me the exquisite embroidery she does, chats about the pastas she makes for her son’s dabba or the bonsais she’s trying hard to nurture and, most of all, takes me through the pages of her life through the exhaustive scrapbook she has put together of her family. It takes prodding to get her talking of her film career. “I think I left at the right time. What more could I have done after acting opposite Amit (Amitabh) in Hum? I had been modelling since I was 17. After 10-11 years of continuous work. I knew I needed to settle down,” she says.

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