Motherhood is splendid, says Aishwarya Rai Bachchan

London: Aishwarya Rai, who has been heavily criticised for not losing her baby weight in stellar time, is not letting cruel weight jibes spoil her baby bliss.

The 38-year-old actress couldn’t help but gush about her six-month-old baby girl Aaradhya as she posed on the red-carpet at the Cannes premiere of Cosmopolis this evening. “Motherhood is wonderful. You ask the question and I beam!” a leading daily has quoted her as saying. “It’s splendid... It’s inexplicable. The joy, the bliss, is wonderful. A smile from my daughter and that’s it! She’s good. She’s great,” she said. The former Miss World, who is married to Abhishek Bachchan, the son of one of India’s best-loved stars, gave birth to her daughter, in November last year. She found international fame in the Hollywood film ‘Bride and Prejudice’, and Julia Roberts billed her as the world’s most beautiful woman. But an unfortunate recent photograph that captured her with a double chin, sparked a flurry of cruel criticism, with some suggesting that she has a “duty” to her fans to regain her pre-pregnancy figure. One website posted a video of the star looking less than her usual svelte self, flicking between photographs of her pre-birth, and photos now. Called “Aishwarya Rai’s shocking weight gain”, the clip, which came accompanied by elephant sound effects, has been seen more than 500,000 times. Dozens more videos in a similar vein have been posted, each with viewing figures in the tens or hundreds of thousands. Comments left after the video prove that many of those watching have little sympathy for the star. However, she has commendably remained cool-headed about the criticism, and has been open about the fact that she is in no hurry to lose the few extra pounds she gained during her pregnancy. She has said that she simply wants to “enjoy motherhood”. ANI