In a recent interview with ETimes, veteran actor Shabana Azmi shared insights on the key to her successful marriage with lyricist Javed Akhtar. Shabana, who married Javed in December 1984, revealed that their secret lies in not meeting too frequently.
Reflecting on their dynamics, Shabana mentioned, “He (Javed Akhtar) says the success of our marriage is that we don’t meet too often, we are both busy running in different directions. We come from similar backgrounds – our fathers were poets from UP and communists, we have a common view on things – so people say considering these factors we should have had an arranged marriage.”
Shabana and Javed have frequently highlighted their profound friendship in numerous interviews throughout the years. Continuing to delve into her relationship with Javed, Shabana remarked, “Touchwood we have a happy and strong relationship. He (Javed) says ‘Shabana is my best friend and even marriage could not change that’.”
Javed Akhtar had reflected upon his relationship with Shabana Azmi in one of his previous interviews, where he opened up about how Shabana Azmi had to cope with his alcoholism after his marriage with the veteran actress.
During an interview with the Mojo Story, Javed Akhtar shared, “Somehow she managed it for the first ten years of marriage. She managed a person who was drinking like this. One day I just left it because I realised that if I keep on drinking the way I am, I will die in my early 50s.”
He added, “I started drinking at the age of 20-21 and left when I was 42 years old. I could afford a bottle and used to drink almost a bottle every night. It’s very common for Urdu poetics to become big drunkards because they believe that if they are poets and artistes, they should be carefree and you should drink. I think I had those wrong values. On the other side, all the tehzeeb that I learned in Lucknow didn’t allow me to use foul language, so all the bitterness was compressed inside me. But when I used to drink all those barriers will break and I would become a very nasty man and would use foul language. I used to become another person. It was unhealthy, irrational and causing problem to many people. It impacted my marriage with Honey. If I was a sober and responsible person, the story would have been different.”
Prior to his marriage with Shabana, Javed Akhtar was previously married to screenwriter Honey Irani. Following his divorce, Javed tied the knot with Shabana in 1984. Javed and Honey are parents to two accomplished individuals – filmmaker Zoya Akhtar and actor-filmmaker Farhan Akhtar.
Comments
0 comment