Happy Birthday Shabana Azmi- Unique Love Story With Husband Javed Akhtar

Bollywood’s unconventional actress Shabana Azmi has always been known for her power-packed performances in films as well as Indian theatre. Five times National award-winning actress knows the craft of moulding herself for any genre or kind of character/cinema. Today, she turned 68 and on this day let’s take a small recap of unique love story of Shabana Azmi and her husband and renowned writer and lyricist Javed Akhtar.

Shabana Azmi fell in love with already married Javed Akhtar in the late 70s. At that time, their affair news had started printing on every gossip magazine’s front page. In fact, before Javed, Shabana was reportedly dating Shekhar Kapur whereas, Javed was married to 10 years younger Honey Irani.

Javed was having a great family time until he met Shabana. Interestingly, in 1970s Javed Akhtar used to learn the art of writing from Shabana’s father Kaifi Azmi, however, he never thought that Javed would date his daughter Shabana. After learning about Javed’s affair with Shabana, his first wife Honey got disappointed as they already had two kids – son Farhan Akhtar and daughter Zoya Akhtar.

As Shabana entered Javed’s life, his married life went for a toss. Javed had also decided to divorce Honey Irani. On the other hand, Shabana’s father Kaifi Azmi did not approve of their relationship as he didn’t want his daughter to be a home- breaker and also he did not want Shabana to marry a married man.

However, Shabana managed to get approval from her father assuring him that the conflicts between Javed and Honey are not because of her. Finally in 1984, after divorcing Honey Irani, Javed got married to Shabana. They don’t have kids but Shabana still considers Farhan and Zoya as her kids.

In her interviews in the past, Honey had given her opinion on her relationship with Shabana. She said, “I never spoke a word against Shabana or Javed. I didn’t want the children to develop feelings of hate or anger. They’d go over and meet them. Javed would come over. Touchwood! Their relationship never went wrong.” She further added about bonding with her by saying, “I have no rapport as such with her. I go to Javed’s house on his birthday. Shabana and I greet each other. It’s cordial. There’s a lot of respect. That’s it. But it’s not as if we are sahelis. Not at all.”

Everything is going fine now and all are living busy and happy in their respective families!