Juhi Chawla broke many hearts when she secretly tied the knot with Indian businessman Jay Mehta in 1996. The Bollywood actress was at the peak of her career at the time. In a recent interview with Rajeev Masand, Juhi opened up about why she kept her marriage under the wraps initially.
Juhi recalled that she first met Jay when she had not even joined films. That was briefly and with friends,” the actress revealed, adding that they both lost touch soon after. Years later, they reconnected at a dinner party hosted a mutual friend.
It was in the year 1998 when Juhi was shooting for the movie Duplicate, when she received the bad news about the untimely demise of her mother Mona Chawla, in an accident. Jay, who had seen his own share of misfortune as he lost his first wife Sujata Birla in a plane crash in 1990, comforted Juhi and helped her recover. “That was a very difficult time for me, because I felt I was going to lose everything I loved,” the actress said.
“From then on, everywhere I went, he turned up. Everywhere I looked, he was there with flowers and notes and gifts. Every day! On my birthday, I remember he sent me a truckload of red roses. I was like, ‘What do you do with a truckload of flowers?’ He really did all he could. After a year, he proposed,” Juhi recalled.
The two have been married for over two and a half decades now and have two kids, Janhavi (19) and Arjun (16).
On managing to keep her wedding under the wraps, the actress said, “That time you did not have the internet and you did not have cameras on every phone, so you could do it that way. I was just about established and doing well. That’s the time Jay was serenading me and I was afraid of losing my career just when I had kind of got there. I wanted to carry on and this seemed the midway.”
