Aamir Khan says Reena Dutta's family cut ties with her after their secret inter-faith wedding: ‘Her father suffered heart attack, ladies started to cry'
Aamir Khan and Reena Dutta's love story is no less than a Bollywood film. There was love, complications, drama and an emotional acceptance. They fell in love when they were teenagers living opposite each other's house, communicating through their windows. However, when Reena's parents found out about their affair, they made her promise to never meet him. This caused stress and fear of losing each other between the couple, who came up with the idea of getting secretly married to secure their relationship. However, this decision, when came in open brought a huge storm in their life with Reena's family cutting all ties with her and her father even suffering a heart attack.
Recalling those days, Aamir Khan shared that he first read the special marriage act to understand the legalities of it. 'I first read the special marriage act to understand if what Reena and I were planning to do was politically sound. I was not yet 21 when I decided to marry. In 1986, when I turned 21 in April, on the 18th of that month we legally got married.' His friend Satya (creator of Satyameva Jayate), his wife Swati and cousin Anand were the witnesses for the court marriage.
He added, 'We got married on April 18, two days after me turning 21. Those two days we waited because it was a weekend. We got married and went to our respective houses.' Their secret marriage went on for some time when a situation created by Reena's sister Anu made her reveal her marriage with Aamir Khan.
Aamir recalled, 'Reena ended up revealing about our marriage to her sister Anu. She was shocked. Her parents didn't react too well. Now that Reena's parents knew this, I thought it was time my parents know it too. I called her to meet my parents. I assembled all my family members to break the news. My parents thought she was my girlfriend. They were blushing. My father was a dynamite. Unka gussa kabhi bhi phat sakta tha (He was short tempered). But once I started to tell them the details of our love story, all the ladies in the house started to cry. Surprisingly, my dad got up and hugged me. I didn't expect this. He said, 'Now you are both married, now what's bothering you?' I said, 'Reena's parents are returning from Chennai in 30 minutes and that's bothering me.''
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After the chat with Aamir's family, they all decided to head to Reena's family to convince her parents. Aamir Khan shared, 'Reena's mother denied her from coming home. She spoke to her and said, 'You don't come here. We don't want to meet you.' This left Reena shattered. 'You are married now. You must be happy. We don't want to meet you.' It took them four months to cool down. One time, I remember Reena's mom secretly called us in the absence of her dad. Four months later, Reena's dad suffered a heart attack and we rushed to the hospital. I went to see him in the ICU along with Reena. She was very close to her father. They got emotional and cried a lot. I touched his feet and he didn't react but later nodded at me.'
He added, 'They eventually accepted me after I spent some time with him. He said, 'I should have met you the first time you came to meet me, I can tell I couldn't ever find a guy like you for Reena.''
Aamir shared that her family became so close to him that his sister Farhat got married to Reena's brother Rajeev. 'Despite our divorce later, Reena's father was very close to me and only listened to me. We lost him last year due to cancer,' shared Aamir Khan.
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Sitare Zameen Par isn't just entertainment. It's a collective funeral for the myth of normalcy. It's a baptism in the messy, magnificent truth: Every human has a star, a sitara, inside them; it's just that the darkness stops us from seeing it. The darkness isn't out there. It's the shadow we cast when we refuse to acknowledge our own light, and the light in every shattered, beautiful piece of humanity around us. Go. Be broken. Only then can we begin to mend this fractured world, one raw, authentic, perfectly imperfect heartbeat at a time. The stars on Earth aren't in the sky. They're sitting next to you, waiting for you to finally see them. The greatest disability is not in the body or mind but in the soul that refuses to see its own reflection in the broken mirror.
