Aishwarya Rai

A day after the wedding is over, Aishwarya Rai’s biological clock will tick away loud and fast! Will she be able to continue her busy, globe-trotting career after marriage at age 33? Or will she opt for a quick baby? Advice from all quarters is flooding in!

All systems are Go, say media reports! The wedding ensembles have been ordered, the jewelery identified, the guest list is ready…even the special miracle mehendi from Sojat, a little town near Jodhpur, Rajasthan (this henna is considered very auspicious and colours a deep red and was recently worn by Liz Hurley) has been organized for the beautiful bride.

At Prateeksha, workmen are busy building barriers to keep out peeping Toms and facilitate the comfort of the very carefully selected 200 guests and friends who will share the Bachchans’ great day when finally, Abhishek weds Aishwarya on April 20. The day will certainly bring down the curtain on the biggest drama of the decade!

But what will follow is important. Aishwarya is facing a deluge of advice given by seniors like Saira Banu, who gave up her career to spend time with husband Dilip Kumar. “I had a busy career, but I saw that I was spending no time with my husband so I gave it all up and became a ‘wife’” said Saira.

Others have done this to have babies. Among contemporaries of Ash, Madhuri, Kajol, Raveena and several others are mothers. So will there be pressure on Ash to have a baby as quickly as possible after the wedding especially because she is already 33? Ash looks tense in all her pre-nuptial pix. Will she take a sabbatical for the baby? That’s the question her admirers and fans are asking.

There is no question about her immediate objectives. The first is to make the marriage work. This could be difficult because the Bachchan family has a strong structure and Ash has her own personality, deeply ingrained habits and preferences! The second is to give birth to a Bachchan heir as the traditional seniors will be waiting for his-her arrival in the family! Whether she will put her flourishing career on hold for some time for these twin objectives is the moot question!