In a recent interview with journalist Faye de Souza, actor and director Farhan Akhtar opened up about his life, his childhood experiences as a product of divorced parents, handling success and failure and what runs through a parent’s mind when they go through separation.
“I did not want to do this to my kids”, said the 50-year-old actor talking about his separation from his ex-wife Adhuna Bhabaniin in 2016.
“I know what it felt like, and there was a huge part of me that was like I cannot do this to my own kids. I know what it felt like. “It’s something that I am going to have to live with for the rest of my life. It’s never going to entirely go away… the thinking about ‘Did they deserve this?’ It’s going to keep coming up. That’s something I guess I’ll just have to live with. The fact that it happened to me as a kid played a huge role in how I feel about it now,”
Farhan and Adhuna decided to tell their children about their decision together.
“I felt that it came to a place where Adhuna and I spoke to them openly and honestly and explained to them why we are taking this kind of step, that it doesn’t have anything to do with them. It’s not because of them, it’s not because of anything they did, they said, or because they are here. This is something between two grown-up people, who as friends decided that this is something that they want to do,”
Farhan said, adding that he believed that was the best he and Adhuna could have done.
Farhan Akhtar, son of the legendary lyricist and poet Javed Akhtar and Honey Irani, spoke about how he felt when he was ostracised and bullied at school, for his parents’ divorce.
“Back then, it wasn’t common for parents to be divorced. But because of who my parents were, it was public knowledge. If someone wanted to hit you below the belt in school during a fight, they would say, ‘But your father left your mother.’ And it would hurt. So apart from the fact that you were sad it happened, it would make you angry that it could be used against you.” he explained in that heartfelt interview.
Watch the full interview on Faye D’Souza’s YouTube Channel
Separation can never be easy. ItS noT easy on the children for sure.. But it is never easy on the parents, too. What goes in the minds of the parents is something- we will never know. But we are often quick to jump in and start the blame game.
Are you a single parent who has gone through the trials and tribulations of separation and wants to share your experience with the parenting fraternity? Write to us at [email protected] to help other parents on how to go about the process smoothly without harming the children’s emotional well-being.
Meanwhile, on KSP Book Club, we have put together this book theme that has titles dealing with separation and divorce that will help children understand the concepts better.
Dr Manjari Rao
Rushita Sheth
Parul Gupta
Mansi Zaveri
