BH CORRESPONDENT, Mumbai: Badhaai Ho actor Neena Gupta, one of the most strongest and powerful female faces in Bollywood has had a hard life. She had to face the added struggle of raising a child all on her own whilst pursuing a career.
The child in question is none other than designer Masaba Gupta, Neena’s daughter born out of wedlock with West Indies cricketer Vivian Richards. Though society had raised eyebrows and even told her to get married so that her daughter would have a surname, Neena bravely remained a single mother with the help of her own father.
“I was never a single mother. I was a single mother for maybe two years, Then my dad came. He left everything and stayed with me. He looked after my household, me, my daughter. He was my man. He was the man in my life. God always compensates. My mom had died a long time ago. And also I had no man in my life who was living with me so it was easy for him to live with me,” said Neena in an interview to Pinkvilla.
Neena, who was devastated by her daughter’s divorce, has changed her outlook in the past few years. Now she willingly gives her daughter blessing to be in a live-in relationship because what is the point of spending so much is time, effort and work into a marriage and then end up divorcing. Live-in is much more convenient, she told in the interview.
She also called out the sexist culture of Bollywood as she can’t romance younger actors like Shah Rukh Khan and Hrithik Roshan in films even though they romance actresses much younger to them.