Nikita Deb (HINDUSTAN TIMES; November 22, 2019)

She has always been vocal about the struggles she encountered in her personal life. A proud single mother, who left her life abroad after her divorce, to start a singing career in India, Kanika Kapoor, has served as a source of inspiration for many women who go through marital separations or divorce. But, lately, Kanika felt the need to spend more time with her children. And so, she took “a hundred steps back”, to do that.

“The last five years have been like a whirlwind — from being a housewife for 14 years and a mother to three children, to suddenly moving to Mumbai and starting a new chapter. When I came into the industry, everything was extremely challenging because I did not live here and I had to bring up three children who were solely my responsibility. Balancing between being a mother and a responsible artiste is always challenging; even more so, if you are shuttling between two countries. And of course, I was not allowed to bring my kids to India since they are British citizens, which was yet another challenge. But eventually after creating a strong foundation for myself here, I decided that I wanted to spend more time with them because they need me more than my career and my personal life and anything else,” says Kanika.

So, even though the singer didn’t stop doing concerts, she realised that her kids were “growing up, and they needed more time” with her.

In the midst of it all, she also felt the need to work more on her singing. “I wanted to find myself in the music that I do and create. I wanted to work on my voice, and practice more,” says Kanika who feels positive of the next phase of her career.

Her next song is going to be a peppy number in Ragini MMS 3, which is very much in the same space as Baby Doll (Ragini MMS 2; 2014), and Kanika is calling it her “huge comeback song”. She is quick to add that “it is a very naughty number, much like the mood that I am in currently”.

But the singer maintains that the music that she will be involved with henceforth will have a shift in her “gayaki” and voice. “You will see the artiste Kanika Kapoor. I will not be the Baby Doll singer anymore. Though I am very proud of being known as the Baby Doll singer, I am a singer and I studied music for 12 years. I am not an auto-tune singer. To bring that side out was now important to me for my personal happiness,” says Kanika, who has given other Bollywood hits such as Chittyaan Kalaiyaan (Roy; 2015) and Tukur Tukur (Dilwale; 2015).

Talking about taking a break, Kanika says she did that because she realised there was no rush. “My contemporaries who were releasing back to back tracks kept asking me ‘are you okay’? They asked me if I was depressed, when honestly, I was fine. I just wanted to work on myself before I did anything else. And I did. If I wanted, I could have taken out one song every week, but, sometimes you have to decide what is right and do what your heart tells you. That’s what I have been doing for the last two years. And now, I am in a much stronger place as a mother. I think, it was brave of me to do that at the peak of my career,” she signs off.