Shabana Azmi recalls Javed Akhtar’s ‘generous’ ex-wife Honey Irani for bond with Zoya, Farhan.
Shabana Azmi recalls Javed Akhtar’s ‘generous’ ex-wife Honey Irani for bond with Zoya, Farhan.
In the midst of the success of the Prakash Mehra’s directorial “Zanjeer’Javed Akhtar‘s closeness to Shabana Azmi emerged a topic of media speculation. His marriage with Honey Irani began to fall apart.
Finally, the duo decided to be together. She realised there wasn’t any point in living with a man who was no longer in love with her. She took on the difficult task of explaining the situation to their children, Zoya Akhtar and Farhan Akhtar.
It was 1984, Javed and Shabana got married, while his divorce from Honey was finalised between 1984 and 1985. Throughout this challenging period, Honey never showed bitterness for either her ex-husband or for Shabana, focusing instead on her children’s well-being.
Today, Shabana shares a close bond with both Zoya and Farhan while she calls Honey ‘family.’
In a recent interview, she credited Honey, for the bond she has been able to nurture with the two filmmakers, regardless a painful divorce their parents had to go through.
The veteran actor, speaking on how she bonded with young Zoya and Farhan, futher went on to add that it is because of Honey’s generosity! It could’ve not been possible if Honey would not have been so generous to share them [with her]. She did that from the time they (Zoya and Farhan) were children. When they got that from their mother and released that I wasn’t the ‘stepmother’ they had read about in fairy tales, it became so much easier.
She further opened up on how she didn’t put pressure on Zoya and Farhan to accept her and spoke on keeping the relationship natural and organic. She didn’t push herself on them and didn’t too hard but just let it be. She let the water flow its course – it’s a really beautiful relationship and she would give a lot of credit to Honey for that but also to herself(Shabana) Javed and the children. Today, when you see them, they are like a family. She (Honey) is a family member.
She admitted, no doubt separation between couples, especially if they’re married, is always ‘painful’ and it was no different in the case of Javed and Honey. It also affected her negatively. “A divorce between a man and a woman — something written on a piece of paper — doesn’t change the relationship that they’ve had. That’s was her line in the film, Arth, where my character (Pooja) tells Inder (Kulbhushan Karbanda), ‘Kavita (Smita Patil) tumse woh bandhan chahati hai jo ek dastakhat se bhi toot sakta hai.’ Having said that, I do feel people are hasty in judging. Divorce is very painful for the three people involved, hence people shouldn’t judge. Aisa nahin hai ki it was easy, it was painful and every time there is a divorce, it is always painful.
When Honey and Javed were in the midst of going in for divorce Shabana ensured that she maintained a dignified silence amid her fans questioning her stance on feminism. However, she asserted that both the media and her industry peers weren’t judgmental or harsh about her decision to marry Javed. “Both Javed saab and she are feminists so her fans were startled because they saw it as a blow to the feminism they had associated me with. But at that time, she had two choices — either duck and say nothing or explain myself which would’ve hurt too many people around me. So staying silent was the sensible thing to do because obviously when people were saying, “How could you let us down?” “You’re a feminist! How could you do this to another woman!” the desire to explain myself was very strong but the fact that she didn’t, help the healing.
News Edit K.V.Raman
