Vimla Patil was associated with Femina, India’s number one women’s magazine, published by the Times of India Group for 29 years. Femina is Vimla Patil's personal success story. Today, FEMINA is one of the strongest international brands with a vast readership in India and abroad. She initiated the Miss India contest in the mid-sixties for the journal and brought it to its present international stature. Vimla Patil promoted Indian textiles and fashion garments – especially handlooms – for decades by presenting over 4000 fashion shows in India and most countries of the world. After finishing her long stint with Femina, she built a brand new career for herself as a freelance multi-mediaperson with writing, events, public relations, shows and many more activities in her portfolio!
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Two recent news items have created a shock wave among media watchers. In the first, Sanjay Dutt, talking about his marriage to Rhea Pillai – after her alleged affair with Tennis-pro Leander Paes was revealed to the media by Mahima Choudhary – claimed that ‘all those who claim to have happy marriages are faking it’. He said that women’s financial and emotional independence has caused most marriages to fail. The other news item, which also shocked readers, was the cracking up of the Saif Ali Khan and Amrita Singh marriage. With ‘quickie divorces’ offered by psuedo lawyers and notaries setting up shop outside the family court in Mumbai, can Sanjay Dutt be right? Are tinseltown marriages doomed to failure?
Sanjay Dutt has let loose a scary canard in the filmi world, when he recently said that there are no longer any happy marriages around. “Show me a happy marriage,” he challenged the media, saying that all so-called happy marriages were ‘fakes’! He claimed that celebrity marriages and relationships are falling apart because of changing times. Women, he said, have become emotionally and financially independent and men find it hard to accept their new ‘avatar’. “Men never imagined such liberation in women. Collapsing marriages are a sign of changing times,” he declared. The recent news that he has gone public with his relationship with Nadia Durrani, has confirmed his break up with Rhea. And as if to support Dutt’s views, one more Bollywood marriage – that of Saif Ali Khan and Amrita Singh – collapsed under the stress of Saif’s scintillating success in ‘Hum Tum’ in recent weeks, with rumours of his romance with Javed Akhtar’s daughter Zoya and once again, Preity Zinta!
Past Info About Bollywood Marriages : Dutt’s rather stark statement has caused Bollywood-buffs to pause and think! It is time go back into the history of filmi marriages and draw conclusions, which seem to be entirely contrary to his statement, they say. To go back to the 50s and 60s, one of the steadiest and rock solid marriages happened between Sanjay’s own parents Sunil Dutt and Nargis. Raj Kapoor, though known to have had notorious affairs, kept his marriage to Krishna Kapoor going till his death. Dev Anand has stuck to his marriage despite his self-confessed ‘distancing’ from Kalpana Kartik. Dilip Kumar’s marriage with a much-younger Saira Banu has lasted through all ups and downs. Dharmendra has lived happily with his two wives: Prakash and Hema Malini. Shashi Kapoor was happy with wife Jennifer till her tragic death. Shammi Kapoor has lived peacefully with wife Neela Devi after the death of his first wife Geeta Bali. Jackie Shroff, Anil Kapoor and other heroes of their generation respected their marriages.
Bollywood Marriages Started Breaking in the Seventies/Eighties : The majority of on-the-rocks filmi marriages happened in the seventies. The most noteworthy among them was that between superstar Rajesh Khanna and Dimple Kapadia. Vinod Khanna divorced wife Geetanjali Taleyarkhan and later married Kavita Daphtary. Kamalahaasan divorced Vani Ganpathy after a rollicking affair and out of wedlock children with Sarika. He is now separated from Sarika as well and has several love interests according to rumours. In the same cadre is the broken marriage of producer Boney Kapoor, who discarded his wife Mona Shourie and children in favour of a second marriage to actor Sridevi. Sanjay’s own first marriage ended when his wife died of a brain tumour, leaving daughter Trishla behind. His romantic midnight marriage to model and Art of Living teacher Rhea Pillai, by his own confession, is now an ‘arrangement rather than a marriage’.
Not long ago, in the aftermath of the huge success of Lagaan, Aamir Khan and wife Reena separated with the superstar being caught up in rumours of romances with foreign journalists, starlets and an assistant director of Lagaan. He was reported to have fathered a child with an American writer! The truth is that Aamir and his wife have obtained a divorce and the actor is now a free man who claims that ‘he has coped with his personal life by not talking about it.’ This is tragic in view of the fact that Aamir-Reena’s love story and runaway Hindu-Muslim marriage – which was opposed by their respective families – was publicized relentlessly by the media – including how Aamir wrote his love letters in his own blood!
And now comes the news of the break up Saif’s marriage, which occupied so much media space when it took place in the early nineties. To begin with, it was known that his parents Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi and Sharmila Tagore disapproved of the marriage since Amrita (daughter of Ruksana Singh) was quite a few years older than Saif. They also minded that the pair had married secretly without the knowledge of the parents.
Success Stories of Bollywood Marriages : Despite these sad stories, a nineties overview suggests that the majority of young filmi marriages have not only been successful but also touchingly romantic. Take Akshay Kumar’s marriage with Twinkle Khanna. They seem to be settled well and are now expecting their second baby after the birth of Aarav, their son! Juhi Chawla is in the seventh heaven after her marriage to Jai Mehta. They too have two children.
Kajol, who married Ajay Devgan in a very private ceremony at the height of her top-slot career, has almost given up acting, is the radiant and confident mother of daughter Nysa. Shah Rukh Khan can’t stop singing litanies of his children Aryan and Suhana and wife Gauri, who, he says, runs his life most efficiently. Hrithik and Susanne Roshan are celebrating their marriage quietly. Ravina Tandon designed her own hi-profile marriage with Anil Thadani earlier this year and the couple seems still to be in a honeymoon mode.
Most important, Madhuri Dixit, the sensuality barometer of Hindi cinema, is laughing her way to a maternity hospital in the US with her second pregnancy. She is so happy with husband Dr. Sriram Nene and son Arin that even lucrative offers from top producers to return to Bollywood have not tempted her. With television stars joining the ‘happily-married’ bandwagon (Varun Badola and Rajeshwari Sachdeva are planning a November wedding and Hitesh Tejwani and Gauri Pradhan are newly-weds), celebrity marriages and relationships will continue to make news in the coming months! Meanwhile, the romantic singles of the industry – namely the eternally eligible Salman Khan, the bouncy Vivek Oberoi and the solitude-seeking Akshaye Khanna, cross-over queen Aishwarya Rai, the enormously successful Preity Zinta, the quietly-triumphant Rani Mukherji, the sexy Sushmita Sen and oodles of other singles – cannot be called the ‘lonely hearts’ of the industry. They continue to hog the gossip headlines with their real or imaginary affairs and relationships!
Source: http://www.sawf.org/newedit/edit09272004/vimlapatil.asp
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