Shruti Haasan on her ‘abnormal upbringing’, says atheist dad Kamal Haasan hates her talking about religion: ‘We didn’t have God at home’

‘Tamil is weak’

Shruti Haasan grew up in Tamil Nadu with her family – father Kamal Haasan, mother Sarika Thakur, and younger sister, Akshara Haasan. During a podcast with Ranveer Allahbadia last year, she opened up about her Tamil and Hindi language roots, and dealing with the pressure to carry both her mother and father’s legacy forward. “It’s because I grew up there, I have a huge influence of my mom as well. We used to talk in Hindi and English only at home, which a lot of people don’t know. My mom was paranoid that these two kids will never learn Hindi because they will only speak in Tamil. So, our Tamil suffered for many years because of it,” she revealed.

Shruti Haasan with her family

She continued, “I went to an English medium school, so my Tamil was weak for the longest time and it still is. As I travelled the world and started living in Mumbai since the last 15 years, it has had an emotionally historic connect to me. I moved here when my parents separated as well.” She moved to Mumbai in 2010, had made her Bollywood debut with the action thriller film Luck, in 2009.

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‘My parents never went to school’

Considering the fact that both her parents are actors, Shruti had a unique and interesting childhood, or as she likes to call it an ‘abnormal’ one. “It was fun, it was exciting, because of my father and mother’s career. I had an abnormal childhood in that sense. Like, we grew up on movie sets where we had elephants and pomeranians that would walk up to you. That’s insanely cool when you are five years old. We used to meet all these incredible artists, got to travel and see amazing places.”

The actor further added, “I had two very unique and individualistic people as parents. It was a cloud of creativity and chaos going on. Both my parents were artistically mercurial people. They both also had never been to school, so they didn’t really have an idea about how to raise academic kids. I could see them learning to parent us while we were kids.”

‘We grew up in an atheist home’

Shruti Haasan has talked about belonging to a non-religious, yet spiritual house in several interviews. Moreover, instead of following superstitions, the family believes that ‘art is God’. “We also grew up in an atheist home, a non-religious home. My dad hates it when I say this. We didn’t have God at home, or your Sabbath and that we don’t have to eat non veg food on Tuesday, none of that stuff that other homes have. The concept of religion and God was so alien. Somewhere, I knew in my child brain that art was God,” she shared in the interview.

Her father, who is a self declared rationalist, had to accept her rebellion in several day to day beliefs. “If you went and said astrology to my dad, he will be like ‘Get out’. He is very creative and practical. On a basic day to day level, he is pragmatic. I feel that my father is God’s child. He has seen me wear demon lenses and pink hair, poor father of mine. He has really seen the rebellion and he let me do it, that’s sweet of him. And he doesn’t like tattoos, hates them,” she said.

Shruti Haasan with her father Kamal Haasan

‘We are the granddaughters of witches’

Having said that, the actor believes in wicca (a modern, nature-based pagan religion that emerged in England), and feels her female ancestral bloodline. “It’s the women ancestors before me, which is why I moved towards wicca and the history of pagan and pagan worship. There was this beautiful saying that we are the granddaughters of the witches that you couldn’t burn. I love that because I feel the bloodline of my ancestral females. I feel those lessons,” Shruti expressed.