Ash and Abhishek blessed with a baby girl

Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Abhishek Bachchan welcomed their first child, a baby girl, on November 16, 2011, at Seven Hills Hospital in Andheri, Mumbai — bringing one of Bollywood's most celebrated families cause for widespread celebration.

The announcement came the Bachchan way: on Twitter. Amitabh Bachchan, the new grandfather, tweeted "I am Dada to the cutest baby girl," while Abhishek wrote that both mother and baby were doing great and confessed he was too excited to sleep. The pregnancy itself had been announced the same way, by Amitabh on Twitter, on the night of June 21, 2011.

The birth was greeted with enormous public interest — understandably, given that the baby is the daughter of two film stars and the granddaughter of Amitabh Bachchan, widely regarded as the greatest living actor in Indian cinema. Aishwarya, a former Miss World and one of the most recognizable faces in global cinema, had carried the pregnancy under the kind of enthusiastic public attention that is reserved in India for the Bachchan family, whose lives are treated with an intensity of interest that has few equivalents elsewhere.

The family later revealed the baby's name — Aaradhya, meaning "one who is worthy of worship" — again via Amitabh's Twitter, putting to rest months of speculation.

The birth also rekindled a conversation that had surfaced during Aishwarya's pregnancy: the scrutiny of a woman's body during and after pregnancy, the expectations placed on a public figure to look a certain way, and the double standard that applies differently to women and men in the spotlight. Aishwarya would later face significant commentary about her post-pregnancy appearance — commentary that drew widespread criticism as intrusive and sexist.

For the moment, however, the news was simply what it was: the birth of a child, welcomed by a family, and celebrated by a nation that had long since adopted the Bachchans as something more than entertainers.