You could call it a mic-drop. On Rendezvous with Simi Garewal, Sushmita made it clear she had no intention of apologising for being with a filmmaker like Bhatt when his own marriage was in tatters. ‘I wasn’t going to wait to tell the world that I love him just because he hadn’t got through the divorce yet,’ she said. There is a certain sting to that kind of honesty.
Why her stance still lands
Sen put it all on the table. She pointed out that Bhatt and his wife were apart and she wouldn’t be the one to pass judgment on a failed marriage. ‘I don’t feel guilty because I have done something very openly,’ is how she put it.
To put it in perspective: ‘His wife and he were not living together. I can’t condemn a man or make him feel guilty if he had a bad marriage.’ And for the record, ‘He was in a divorce when I met him.’
In a nutshell, here is what she made a point of:
– They were separated, not under the same roof
– We didn’t hide anything
– I won’t be policed by the public
From sparring to slow-burn chemistry
It wasn’t always smooth sailing. Back in the day, Sen would have you believe Bhatt was the ‘biggest snob’ on set. He, for his part, thought she had an attitude and was too fond of reworking her lines. You’d hear him in Mahesh Bhatt’s ear about it more than once.
But then things took a turn. She remembers breaking a finger on set and him coming right over. The ice was broken, some words were exchanged, and a friendship of sorts formed. ‘We ended up in an affair long after. It was a slow chemistry,’ she says.
She’ll be the first to admit she couldn’t stand him at first. He will tell you he found her hard to work with. But that edge mellowed into something else, and before you knew it, the whole industry was talking about them.
The timeline, in Vikram Bhatt’s words
Sometimes you have to know the when to get the why. Bhatt doesn’t mince words: ‘Not when we started seeing each other but when we started working with each other. Before the chemistry set in, I was married.’ It’s a fine line, but one both he and his detractors have to deal with.
Sen never made it out to be some romance novel. She came into the business with Dastak after her Miss Universe win in 1994, and the set politics were as real as they come. He would grumble, she would have a word. The draw between them was a latecomer.
What you have is two people who are unafraid to lay out their history. No hushed tones, no half-truths. In a town run on gossip, they prefer to be direct.
After the breakup, the respect stayed
They did go their separate ways, but the bridge was left intact. When Sen was on the receiving end of some vitriol and ‘gold digger’ comments following her short-lived link with Lalit Modi, Bhatt was there to put in a good word for her. A small thing, but it shows where the dignity lies.
That is what makes this interview worth a rewatch. It’s not just a matter of who was with whom. It’s an actor not taking shame, a filmmaker with a sense of proportion, and two former partners looking out for one another well past the parting of ways.
If you cut through the rest, it comes down to one thing: being open about it. Sen said it, and she meant it. She never needed anyone’s leave to be in love. That’s the story in a sentence.
