Meena Iyer
[ 4 Nov, 2006 2324hrs IST, TIMES NEWS NETWORK ]
MUMBAI: Enter the sanctum sanctorum of Mumbai’s Iskcon temple and the last person you expect to encounter is Mick Jagger’s heroine from the 1970 outlaw adventure Ned Kelly.
But there she is. The pleasantly plump Australian film and television actor Janne Wesly. Clad in a red-printed sari, her head covered with her pallu and a daunting chand tilak on her forehead, Jane stands out tall. In her new avatar Janne Wesly is called Ma Jagattarini Devi.
Wesly says life changed when she met Srila Prabhupada, the founder acharya of Iskcon in the United States way back in 1970, the same year her film with the Rolling Stones star Jagger released.
Wesly says she was barely 22 then. And had the world at her feet. “In fact I was in LA to attend the premiere of Ned Kelly. And later I was to join Mick Jagger in London to pursue my film career. But after I visited the Krishna Temple in Los Angeles everything else lost meaning for me.”
About co-star Mick Jagger she says, “He was very restless too. He was basically a musician at heart and couldn’t handle the slow pace of an actor’s life. He was hugely famous, but somewhere within I sensed he was bored.”
Wesly says behind the arc-lights, she longed for a more spiritual existence. “I was sure the world of films couldn’t get me the answers I was seeking. I thought of people like Marilyn Monroe who were up there on the list of famous faces. But I just felt that deep within, even Monroe longed for something different.”
Wesly continues, “Since I would have to drop my standards radically to pursue a film career I knew I wouldn’t be happy with the compromise. So I chucked it all and opted for a purer form of life.”
With her husband Bhurijana Prabhu, Wesly plunged into working selflessly to build the first Hare Krishna temple in Hong Kong.
Though she currently resides in Perth, Australia, Wesly is constantly on the move, helping to spread the message of Lord Krishna. She has never looked back at her showbiz career.
But life has come full circle for Wesly whose son Jay Weinstein is now in Mumbai trying to find a career in Bollywood.
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