Where does humour come from, exactly? Actor Soha Ali Khan prefers wordplay. But her husband, actor Kunal Khemu, and their six-year-old daughter, Inaaya, love slapstick comedy: Slipping on banana peels, dad jokes, pulling faces, tickling for 20 minutes straight. “Their maturity level is the same,” says Khan. Dad and daughter will replace lyrics with words of their own and find it hilarious. “I just look at them, thinking it’s so sweet, but also thinking ‘Really? You’re still laughing? After 25 minutes?’”.

But the tide is turning. Inaaya still loves tickles but she’s started figuring out punchlines and verbal humour from her mum. The child’s current favourite joke: She’ll ask her mum her name, then she’ll point to her nose and ask what it’s called. Once she’s got “Soha” and “nose”, she’ll gleefully announce, “Soha nose nothing”!

As the world celebrates Mother’s Day (May 12) hit pause on those odes to selflessness, sacrifice and sleep deprivation, and see the funny side of being a mom. Six years in, Soha certainly is laughing harder.

Prepare for mix-ups.

Inaaya has spelled cricket with a K and match without the silent T. As a baby, she’d say “gib” and “molls” for big and small. Khan and Khemu tried to correct her. “We realised that she would eventually say it right and this phase would be over. So, we let it be,” Khan says. They’ve shot videos of every cute fumble and emailed it to an account they’ve created for her when she grows up.

It’s a smart move. Because Inaaya has figured out how to use tech, but not how to draw boundaries. She once sent pictures of Khan to people Khan worked with, but was not close to. She also once sent a voice note, saying “I love you” to someone. “Thank God that person knew I have a child and didn’t reply, or the joke would have been on me. It would have been embarrassing to explain,” says Khan.

Stomach it all.

The funniest part about having kids is probably living with little human beings who don’t even know what they don’t know – but who are not short on ambition. Khan was in a car with Inaaya and her little friend when she heard them plan to set up a cookie shop. “She told me she needs three cardboard boxes that need to reach the ceiling.”

Khan set it up that very weekend. “They made halfway edible cookies that they sold for ₹2,” she recalls, laughing. Khan wisely didn’t try any. “Kunal did and said they weren’t that bad.” But she did taste the seviyaan that Inaaya made from scratch last Eid. “It wasn’t nice! But I had to have some because she insisted on feeding me, probably because I feed her,” says Khan.

Khan once asked Inaaya to close the door because she had left it ajar. The child came back and stared at her mum, confused, for a few seconds. She finally asked Khan what a jar had to do with the door and if Mummy actually wanted to bring her some jam. Khan, suppressing every urge to laugh, ended up explaining the difference between a jar of jam and keeping a door ajar.

Brace for déjà vu.

“I don’t know if there’s a funny gene. But a person’s sense of humour has a lot to do with their environment and people around them,” says Khan. Her own idea of what is funny comes from her late father Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi, and brother, actor Saif Ali Khan, she says. “Dad had a sense of humour about life, which taught me that you can’t let things get you down. I’ve imbibed that path of resilience from him. We have the same cultural, self-deprecating dry humour because of the British comedies we’ve grown up watching. If kids see their parents laughing a lot, they also have a tendency to laugh. And it’s crucial to laugh at yourself and things around you and not take yourself too seriously. Often, people use humour to protect themselves from getting hurt or deflect from what they are feeling. But the point is to see the lighter side of things while not negating your emotions.”

Temper the laughs.

It takes courage to laugh, but it takes even more courage to call out when you’re being laughed at. Khan says Inaaya is already starting to do that – a welcome sign. “She is confident enough with me to tell me when I’m not being funny, or making her feel silly or embarrassing her,” says Khan. “Humour is also situational. If she falls during gymnastics, laughing will wound her pride. But we can laugh at smudged paint on her face or when she wears mismatched socks. I would like her to have a thicker skin too. It’s important to embrace being silly and not worry about people laughing at you.”

And it’s just as important to set boundaries. Khan recently wanted to send a picture of Inaaya in a sari to her close friends. At six, the daughter asked her not to. “I was like ‘Why?’, but I have to respect her choices,” says Khan. “Even with this interview, I know that I need to respect her privacy.”

Khan is realising she can’t go up to daughter when she’s with a group of people and ask the little girl to blow her nose. Soha nose nothing, but she’s learning too.

Mums pass it on

Inaaya and her grandmother, actor Sharmila Tagore, write letters to each other once a month. When Inaaya asks why she can’t just send voice notes or get on a call, Khan explains it simply: “Mum says that once a call is done, you can forget the conversation. But you can take a letter out years from now and read it.” Khan herself was given letters she had written as a six-year-old to her grandmother Ira Baruah, when she passed recently.

Mums hug hard.

Inaaya and her parents do a three-person hug every morning, before Inaaya goes to school, even if Kunal is still in bed or Khan is on the phone. The parents also have a bedtime routine with Inaaya. They finish praying before they start to cuddle. “She really believes that Kunal’s prayers prevent her from having bad dreams,” says Khan.

Mums are more than parents.

Khan makes sure she makes the time to hold on to adult friendships. There are friends who’ve known her long before she got married in 2015. “It’s a bonus if you’re friends with people who have kids because the kids can play together,” she says. It helps to know from fellow parents if a child is being bullied or having a hard time at school. “But it’s crucial to hold on to the people who know you outside of your parenting.”

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