Soha Ali Khan said that her parents never pressured her to continue studying, but if there were more opportunities for women cricketers at that time, they would have enrolled her for cricket training.
Soha Ali Khan comes from a rich family – while her mother Sharmila Tagore is an actress, her late father Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi, fondly known as Tiger Pataudi, was a great cricketer. Although he retired before Soha was born in 1976, Soha heard stories about his passion on the field after his demise years later.
One story goes that when she was born, Tiger Pataudi assumed it would be a son. He and Sharmila were already parents to another son, Saif Ali Khan. Soha recalls, “When I was born, I think my father was shouting in the corridors, ‘We will make her a fast bowler.’ And then he said, ‘It’s a girl.’ And at that time, there were no options for cricket prospects for girls. Today, of course, is a different thing.
Maybe then he would have invested in me as a bowler.” In the same interview with Soha, Soha said that she enjoys sports, but is more of an aggressive badminton player than a cricketer. She said that despite not being trained in cricket, her excellent hand-eye coordination makes her a good fielder. Soha said that everyone in her family wants to stay physically fit as they don’t want to be dependent on anyone else. She and her husband Kunal Kemmu also have the same idea behind involving their daughter Inaaya in sports.
Soha said, “Often we want our girls to be good and our boys to be strong. But we want him to be physically strong, so that he doesn’t feel like he needs no more protection. Even if someone makes you feel unsafe, you should feel, ‘I have the strength to fight back.’ Even though we are physically the inferior gender, and therefore become easy targets in many ways, the idea is to be mentally strong as well.” She also added that Inaaya would be “shocked” to know that sons are still preferred.
Having said that, Soha said that her parents have never been strict with her. “My mother was strict. Neither of them were academically oriented. They cared a lot about me doing well in school and being focused, and they wanted me to pursue higher education as well. But they weren’t the kind of people to be bothered by report cards and getting A’s in everything. I was more bothered by that.
They were like, ‘Do what makes you happy. Find things you’re good at.’ They came from artistic backgrounds. They didn’t have a formal education. My mother didn’t go to university. My father played cricket. So it was a very unusual upbringing for me, and there was no pressure to succeed. They were very successful, but they took their fame and success very lightly. And there was never any pressure as a child to live up to them, thank God,” Soha said.
Soha studied modern history at Oxford University and did a master’s degree in international relations at the London School of Economics. She followed in her mother’s footsteps and became an actress in 2004. She is also an author, having written her memoir The Perils of Being Moderately Famous.
Soha Ali Khan told that when she was born, her father Tiger Pataudi assumed it would be a son: ‘He was shouting in the corridors that we will make her a fast bowler’
