Neliima Azeem single-handedly raised Shahid Kapoor, who was only three-and-a-half when she separated from her ex-husband Pankaj Kapur. In a candid interview with Pinkvilla, Azeem had shared how the decision to part ways was not hers. “I would like to say that I didn’t decide to separate. It’s a fact. He moved on and it was a difficult thing for me to stomach but he also had his reasons. We had been friends for a long time. I think I was 15 years old when I became friends with him. He had very good reasons and I understood it,” she revealed. Looking back, Azeem called her divorce with Pankaj ‘painful’ and ‘heartbreaking’.
Image credit: Instagram/@mira.kapoor
She said, “I had this wonderful friend who I got married to, everything was just la-la-la-da-di-da, my parents were wonderful, I had a great crowd around me, toh mujhe ye pata hi nahi tha ke kuch zindagi mein aisa bhi ho sakta hai jisme pav phisal jaye aur hum dup kar ke gir jaaye. Aur rejection ka koi sawal hi nahi hai… because everybody used to love me and adore me and follow me around. So it was, in that way, when you’re young and full of beans, it was the first time when I actually experienced grief, sorrow, rejection, anxiety, pain and fear of the unknown and a whole lot of insecurity.”
Image credit: BCCL
Neliima added, “This was the first time when I slipped and fell on my face so to say… But I don’t see it as a terrible thing that happened to me in life. I just simply think that I needed that bump. We all must understand that we are not extraordinary or entitled, we are simply human beings that can be rejected. It took me a year-and-a-half after that to put myself together.”
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When talking about how she bounced back from the dark place she was left in, she credited her friends, dance troupe and most importantly, Shahid. “I had my own journey which was all about picking myself up. I had friends, my guruji… but most importantly I had Shahid. He gave me an insurmountable belief in life. I was young so I was able to do it again. It took time though, it took me about a couple of years, but then I was fine,” she said. The two were married between 1979 and 1984.
Image credit: Instagram/@ishankhatter
Neliima ultimately moved on from Pankaj, and in 1990, she found love once again in Rajesh Khatter and decided to remarry. The two had Ishaan Khatter together. In the same interview, the actress shared how Shahid was the one to force her into giving him a baby brother.
Image credit: Instagram/@shahidkapoor
“It was Shahid who wanted me to have a child again. He was 14 and we were well settled with our lives. I was happily working and the thought of having a baby again never crossed my mind. But Shahid specifically wanted a brother,” she said. When Ishaan was born, Shahid was so happy he went to a nearby park and did a ‘mad dance’, she recalled. Today, Neliima also shares a wonderful bond with Shahid’s wife Mira Kapoor. The two are extremely close and are full of praises for each other.
Image credit: Instagram/@ishaankhatter
As fate would have it, she suffered in her new relationship too. “The second marriage would have lasted if certain things didn’t happen which were difficult to encounter… It was difficult, it was an impossible feat. I think it would have worked out if there was more control and more logic and sense in it. But it went, it flew out. And it happens in Bombay with all the struggle and with all the pressures, sometimes people succumb to it. But I have the ability to get up and start walking again,” she shared. Neliima later married Ustad Raza Ali Khan but reportedly parted ways with him in 2009.
Image credit: BCCL
Talking about how her life choices have probably impacted her kids, she told Bombay Bubble in a recent interview, “I sometimes even would like to say that maybe children who are watching us taking certain choices and then having those mighty falls might decide to be more stable than us. They must have even learnt from my pitfalls and my impulsive or wrong, silly choices or whatever you may say. In a complete sense, in a larger perspective, I have been there for them,” she said.
Lead Image credit: BCCL and Instagram/@ishankatter
