The ongoing dispute between US Israel and Iran has got the entire Middle East in a state of unrest. Many Indians got stuck in the UAE during the bombings, and amongst them was also Lara Dutta Bhupathi who was in Dubai with daughter Saira when the incident occurred. The actor even put up an emotional video on social media about the incident, and now that she is back in India, Lara Dutta Bhupathi got in a conversation with Sonal Kalra, Chief Managing Editor, Entertainment & Lifestyle, for The Right Angle with Sonal Kalra. Excerpts:
What was going through your mind when you decided to speak about the whole incident in that video?
I normally don’t put videos out like this as you don’t want to encourage fear-mongering or create panic. But I was undertaking quite a dangerous journey back with my daughter and we didn’t know what was going to be on the other side. I had this one percent thought in my head that this could possibly be the last thing that ever goes out. But I am back in India now and a lot of people reached out and sent a lot of blessings our way.
The UAE has been home for us for the last three years so I wouldn’t say that I was stuck there. My daughter (Saira, 14) has been playing tennis since she was seven-years-old, and three years ago we made a choice to move to Dubai to allow her to train with an elite performance coach who’s based there. It just happened that Saira and I were on our own in Dubai because Mahesh was away in London for work when this war broke out. Though everybody had an inkling, until the time actually comes when you have bombs being intercepted right overhead and you hear these booms that sound like sonic booms, it doesn’t feel like it’s a close reality. The UAE government is doing such an incredible job of keeping everybody safe, but you can feel safe and protected and anxious and uncertain at the same time.
Would you tell us about how you managed to eventually come out?
So we chose to take a flight that was flying out of Fujairah, which meant getting on the roads. We hadn’t left the house before that, we had these alerts going off on our phones every couple of hours whenever there were missiles being intercepted. The only instructions we were given was to stay indoors. We lived just about 10 kilometres away from the Jebal Ali port which was being bombed and hammered every day. You felt the reverberations every time even if there was an interception or drone debris hitting the ground. So we decided to take a chance as I didn’t want to be on my own. I wanted to be with my husband, my family. So we drove two hours on the roads to Fujairah and just a day earlier, Fujairah port and the oil refinery had been bombed. It was scary. I was joking with my co-star Akshay Kumar that I felt like I was part of Airlift 2.
It was quite a harrowing wait at the airport as well because a lot of flights were being cancelled. Even at the airport, you could hear these booms and you were just hoping that nothing was struck. Hats off to the airlines as well as there were very quick with turnarounds. As we were taking off, we could see this huge orange ball of fire in a very close distance. In these kinds of situations, you just do what you feel is in the best interest to protect your family and your own mental health. But I am very clear that my daughter definitely is going to have some amount of trauma after having lived through this experience.
What’s been going through Saira’s mind, how has she reacted to this entire experience?
I come from an army family, and we’ve lived through a couple of wars. The first thing that I did was that I asked my staff to stock up immediately as soon as the first bomb was intercepted. I packed a bag as I felt that if at some point of time, the government tells us to evacuate, I had to have a bag ready. Saira created a little space for herself underneath the staircase in the house. She had a sleeping bag, pillows and other essentials under there and every time the alerts went off, that’s where we were going until it was safe to step out again.
You were quite emotional in your video. Was it an overall sadness about how things have turned out?
The sadness wasn’t about what was going on because we definitely felt protected and safe. But for me, it was the futility of what war is. We might feel like here in India, we are very protected and isolated by what’s going on, but the world is in a state of war and people are going to feel the repercussions of this war come what may. It is going to impact every single person regardless of the country that you’re living in. I could see people who didn’t have the opportunities that I had and they’re the people that keep a country going when things like these happen. For me, it was that helplessness of there’s not really much that you can do. But in times like this, there’s no right or wrong way to move.
What is that one thing that you’d want to say to the people still stuck in Middle East to give them hope?
I do believe that the government is doing everything in their power, so I would just say follow the instructions that are being given out. It is the best thing that you can do in order to keep yourself safe. When we were in Dubai, I had another friend whose husband was away on work and she has two kids. They lived in a high-rise, so the first day when the Fairmont hotel was hit in Jumeirah, I asked her to get out because we saw this during 9/11 and I lived in New York at that time. So she came and stayed with us. Maybe it’s a military thing that we leave no man behind. So, while the flights were very few and expensive, I refused to leave without them. So we all came back together. I even brought my house staff back who I had taken from here with me. I’m in touch with a lot of our friends and colleagues there on a daily basis. It’s mentally very hard, so all that we can do is pray, be nonjudgemental and really hope that some sanity or semblance of sanity returns to the world really quickly.
