For the first time, Neha Dhupia broke her rule recently and introduced her kids — Mehr (3) and Guriq (nine months old) — to the public. But the actor indicated that it (keeping her kids in the public glare) wasn’t a permanent thing. To celebrate 20 years of being crowned at a beauty pageant, Dhupia was accompanied by her kids and husband, actor Angad Bedi, on stage. “I think it is still one glimpse and go. I am in a phase where I want to keep them under wraps and protect them. It was just one special moment on stage, which was really important to me. I would have never thought that I would be recrowned after 20 years,” she says.

The 41-year-old adds that she wanted her children to be a part of her special day. “I thought to myself that many years from now, there might come a day when they would ask me, ‘What were we doing? Wasn’t it special for us?’ It was a mixed feeling,” shares the Sanak (2021) actor, adding, “I did break my own rule. But I think that this occasion was way too special.”

However, Dhupia admits that she was nervous about “exposing” her children: “I have complete respect for people who do. But I will go back to my notorious ways of hiding their faces. It was just a moment of joy, and not an indulgence or a promise that they will forever be on social media.”

Dhupia embarked on a journey in the Hindi film industry in 2003 with Qayamat: City Under Threat. She’s done films like Chup Chup Ke (2006), Shootout At Lokhandwala (2007), Tumhari Sulu (2017), Helicopter Eela (2018) and A Thursday, among others, in the last 20 years. Today, she juggles multiple roles in reel and real life, from being an actor and a producer, to a wife and mother.

Talking about her two-decade-long journey in the entertainment industry, Dhupia says, “If I look back at the entire journey, it has been great. I have paved my own path and place. There have been ups and downs. I made some new friends and lost touch with a few. It is impossible for me to sum up the past 20 years, but I can say it has been an adventure,” ends the actor.