Veteran actor Asha Parekh has achieved numerous milestones in her life. From being one of the highest paid actresses of her time to giving one box office hit after another, the actress has managed to carve an unprecedented place for herself in Bollywood. However, the actress never shied away from the fact that she was unmarried and at a time when it was a rarity she proudly proclaimed her singledom. In a recent interview, she opened about love, life and career and also revealed why she chose to be unmarried and unattached to any man.
In the interview, she candidly opened up about her choice of embracing singlehood. She said, “Staying alone was probably one of the best decisions I made. I was in love with a married man and didn’t want to be a homewrecker so, in retrospect, it was the only choice I had, and according to the way I wanted to live my life. I was always aware that epic love is only found in the movies. But romantic ties weren’t the only kind of relationships I paid attention to.”
The actress had revealed in her biography The Hit Girl that she was in love with director Nasir Hussain but chose to distance herself from him because of his marital status. She said, “I know I admitted to being in love with Nasir Hussain in The Hit Girl, but as much as I loved him, I could never consider breaking up his family and traumatising his children. It was far simpler and satisfying to be on my own. Make no mistake, it wasn’t like I didn’t want to get married. In fact, my mother was very keen on it and had even assembled my trousseau in advance. I met my share of boys but the end result was always the same - they weren’t the right kind of men for me. Over time, my mother also gave up her dream of seeing me as a bride because whomever she showed my horoscope to would say my marriage wouldn’t be a successful one. It was not the kind of thing I believed in, but it did grant me some semblance of peace.”
Parekh also spoke about the boys she was constantly being set up with by her mother. Talkning about them she said, “When I went out with the boys that my mother set me up with, I was completely put off by the whole premise of marriage. They were so fussy! They’d take longer to get ready than I did and would keep preening in the mirror. The narcissism was repulsive. I know it seems silly but these little things really nettled me. There was also the case of my heroes Rajesh Khanna and Vinod Khanna getting an earful from their girlfriends during outstation shoots because they were gallivanting and making merry at night instead of being in bed. I would’ve never been able to take someone dictating terms to me — I was just not cut out for it.”
However, during the course of the interview, she did reveal that she came very close to marrying a professor from the US. Speaking about the incident and how she broke up with him she said, “I was visiting him and we were in a cafe at 2 a.m., when he turned to me and nonchalantly said, ‘I have a girlfriend and you’ve come in the way’. It completely caught me off guard. In a way, that was the final straw for me in this whole wedding business. My friend was travelling with me at the time and when I told her that we were returning to India that very instant, she asked me how I wasn’t gutted that I was cutting ties so unceremoniously with the man I was supposed to be marrying. When I gave her the unedited version, she was livid, but I told her to let it go and, with time, got over it myself. However, his birthday came around a few months later and I expectantly sent him presents, hoping to give the relationship another shot. When I called him, he began rambling in Gujarati and that seemed odd to me because we normally conversed in English. That’s when I learnt that he was in bed with his girlfriend while talking to me. It upset me, and I took it quite badly for a while, but eventually, I got over it. I am a firm believer of the phrase ‘This too shall pass’. And it did.”
Asha believes, “Marriage is not all rainbows and butterflies; you have to give in to your partner’s whims every now and then, and that’s a two-way street.” Considering the fact that she has been ‘self-partnered’ all her life, Asha was asked if friends played an important role in her life to which Asha replied, “Absolutely. My friends are why I’ve managed to hold on to my sanity and fight bouts of depression. Shammiji (Nargis Rabadi) was always with me before she passed away last year. I remember that I was shooting for a dance sequence when the episode with the aforementioned professor happened. She was on set at the time and she could tell that something was amiss. I didn’t want to cause any kind of drama in front of my co-stars so I kept brushing her off, but she could tell I needed a shoulder to cry on.”
She further added, “Finally, I told her the whole story in between shots and her first reaction was to cuss him. It was like instant therapy. And so I really believe that one should have friends. Saira (Banu) and I go years without meeting, but then we make sudden plans and catch up on everything. She can’t leave her home because of Yusuf (Dilip Kumar) saahab’s health. When I visit her she adorably complains about the fact that I stopped dyeing my hair black. I am closer to Waheeda (Rehman) and Helen because we travel together. Recently we went to Turkey and did a Scandinavian cruise. Waheeda and I then went to Alaska and Canada, and just a month ago, we went to Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve. You can never completely confide in your mother or a sibling, but close friends will never judge you.”
(Source: Verve)
