Natasha Coutinho (MUMBAI MIRROR; January 3, 2019)

New-age Bollywood twosomes are establishing gender equality early on in their households by lending both the parents’ surnames to their children. A look at the neo-hyphenate star kids in the industry:

NITARA KHANNA-BHATIA
Twinkle Khanna and Akshay Kumar christened their second child, a baby girl, Nitara, in 2012. The addition of ‘Khanna’ in the young ’un’s surname is said to be a tribute to her late maternal grandfather, Rajesh Khanna, who’d passed away in the same year.


AZAD RAO-KHAN
Aamir Khan and his filmmaker-wife Kiran Rao’s first child was born in 2011 through surrogacy. The actor had subsequently unveiled the name on the social media, adding, “I left the final choice to Kiran, and she has named him after my great-granduncle Maulana Azad, the great freedom fighter, whom the family is most proud of. Azad means free or liberated.”


RAYNA MOHAN-DATTA
Author-scriptwriter Durjoy Datta, who has penned hit shows like Sadda Haq: My Life My Choice and Kuch Rang Pyar Ke Aise Bhi, and his airhostess wife Avantika Mohan, welcomed their baby girl, in 2017. Durjoy, who thinks the naming trend is healthy, was quick to add, “When Rayna grows up, it’d be up to her to keep both surnames, just one or none.”


NIHAL PANAG-ATTARI
Former pageant queen-turned-actress Gul Panag and her commercial pilot husband Rishi Attari managed to keep their pregnancy hush-hush, but the name of their son, who was born in August 2018, is no secret. “We wanted to give Nihal a sense of an equal world right from the beginning where both his mother and father are equal partners in life—and he grows up looking at the world in that way,” Gul, when contacted, told Mirror.

MEHR DHUPIA-BEDI
Neha Dhupia and Angad Bedi, who had been friends long before their courtship and subsequent wedding, made their pregnancy public six months after tying the knot in May 2018. They debuted their daughter’s name soon after her birth in November. The new actor-father, when contacted, had said cryptically at the time that he is working “on a bigger solo setup”.