In an interview with Zoom, Operation Safed Sagar actress Dia Mirza opened up about parenting her son, Avyaan Azaad Rekhi. She said she maintains open communication with him and explains the challenges she experiences as a working mother, helping him understand her responsibilities, struggles, and the demands of balancing work and family. Dia Mirza has been exploring diverse stories across films and OTT platforms. In recent months, she has had three major releases—Alpha in theatres, Still on Netflix and Operation Safed Sagar as a Netflix series.
She played significant roles in all three projects. While continuing to experiment with different subjects, characters and genres, Dia is equally focused on her responsibilities as a parent. Her son, Avyaan Azaad Rekhi, whom she shares with Vaibhav Rekhi, remains her priority after completing shoots. In an exclusive interview with Zoom, Dia spoke about managing her personal and professional commitments while maintaining a healthy balance between both aspects of her life.
Dia Mirza Opens Up About Being a Working Parent
Dia Mirza spoke about the rules she followed over the past decade to create the balance she wanted in life. Stressing the importance of making time and space to pause, reflect, live, grow, travel, and experience new things, the actress said: “If you become a parent, your priority shifts completely. If you’re a working parent, then there are responsibilities and priorities. Your child, home, husband, and family need you.”
Why Does Dia Mirza Oppose 18-Hour Workdays?
She further added, “Finally, we then kind of learn to work with new groups of people, critical directors, actors, and there are all kinds of people. One of the things that you end up doing when you choose good stories is that you also choose good people. I am doing more work right now than I have in a very long time, and it’s so exciting and exhilarating and beautiful. I am trying to find that balance. So, some of the things that I used to do before, like if a producer asks me to work for 15 hours, excluding the travel time, I can’t do that. Even if you’re shooting in Mumbai or anywhere, your travel time to get to shoot is one to one and a half hours.
This makes your workday about a 17- or 18-hour workday. As a mother, I can’t do an 18-hour workday non-stop. If I’m shooting for 21 days or 30 days or 35 days, I can’t be doing 18-hour workdays for 5 days. That will leave me with no time to handle many of the things that I need to. Then it’s a certain approach that comes from a place where you want to be collaborative; you don’t want to be disrupted. But at the same time, I think it’s important for everyone to recognise that there is a way to work and we have to make work happen within a certain discipline. We cannot push each other in a way where we don’t have time to do the things that we also need to do as we work.”
Dia Mirza on Balancing Motherhood and Film Shoots
Dia further explained, “It’s interesting. I’m trying, I’m learning, I’m learning to find a new balance. I had a conversation with my son Avyaan, and I said, ‘The next five days are intense. You are going to see very little of me. I’m really sorry.’ But he knows I live in his heart, and he lives in mine, and he always will. He gets it. He’s like, ‘I really miss you’. I said, ‘I know, I miss you too. After five days, work will ease up, and I will be able to make time for many more things that we need to do together and we will do those things’. He understands it.”
Dia Mirza concluded that parents should communicate openly with their children, helping them understand that some things are beyond their reach or control, while reassuring them that the situation would soon ease.