After four decades of marriage, a childhood romance and many ups and downs, Sunita Ahuja, wife of the actor Govinda, says she now wants to live as herself. Amid talk about her relationship with Govinda, she says she does not want to break down, but to leave everything to God and get on with her work and life.
She spoke openly about her marriage, her children and her plans in a recent interview with the Indian newspaper Anandabazar.
Sunita said she had once been offered a role opposite Govinda in the film Tan Badan but was too young: they were engaged when she was 15, before she had finished class 10, and married when she was 18. On her mother’s advice she devoted herself to her family.
Her advice to women is to stay positive and stand on their own feet. “Love yourself and trust in God. Don’t depend completely on a man. I cry too, alone, before God. After all these years I have gone from being Govinda’s wife to being Sunita,” she said. “Many people troll me, and those who troll me tell lies. I am 56 now. Many people my age think, what’s the point of working? But I want to work.”
Asked about the talk around Govinda and a woman friend, she said she had nothing to say about his life. “I’m human too; when I feel bad I sit before God. And I believe in karma. Whoever hurts a good person, whoever makes me cry, whoever is breaking my home, God will deal with them. I have left it all to Him.”
She recalled that they were engaged when she was 15, married at 18 and she became a mother at 19, and that they had fought all of life’s battles together. “Govinda should think about that too. Why should women always be the ones to think, always be the ones left hurting?” she said. “It takes two hands to clap. Let him be wherever he is happy. I want him to be well.”
The couple have a son and a daughter, and Sunita recently worked on a film with their son. “I never tell the children to leave their father. He is their father. I just tell them to be strong like me,” she said, adding that she hopes her son’s film is a hit.
After she was seen outside a court recently, rumours spread that she had sent Govinda a divorce notice. “Going to court doesn’t mean going to ask for a divorce. I could also go to put property in the children’s names,” she said.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report