Actor Juhi Chawla tied the knot with businessman Jay Mehta in the mid-90s, but they kept it a secret initially. In an old interview, Juhi explained that this was common in those days, because actors felt that they would be less desirable to the public if they weren’t single. Juhi had also lost her mother around that time, and was convinced that she would have to stop working if the world came to know that she was married. In an interview with former journalist Rajeev Masand, Juhi recalled how Jay serenaded her, and how supportive her mother-in-law was during that difficult time.
Asked why they kept their wedding a secret, she said, “Everyone did it those days. You didn’t have the internet and you didn’t have cameras on every phone, so you could do it that way. Also, I was just about established, and just (starting to do) well. And that’s when Jay was serenading me. I was afraid of losing my career, just when I’d got there. I wanted to carry on, and this seemed the midway. Then my mum passed away, and I felt like I was going to lose everything I had.”
Recalling their courtship, Juhi continued, “We met when I was younger, before I had even started out in the industry. But that was briefly, and with friends. He had another set of friends, but south Mumbai is small. But then, I lost touch (with him) because I started working, and I was in Andheri, doing my thing. It was at a friend’s dinner in town that I saw him, and then we got talking again. From then on, everywhere I turned, he turned up. Everywhere I looked, he was there with flowers and notes. Every day. On my birthday, I remember, there was a truckload of red roses. What can you do with a truckload of flowers? But there it was. After a year, he proposed.”
Juhi said that she was absolutely devastated when her mother died, and was sure that she would have to give up her career after marriage. She added, “When a door closes, a window opens. It was Jay, his parents, and his mom especially. There were times when I was really down and out, and she always said to me, ‘You’re like my daughter, don’t think of yourself as my daughter-in-law, do what makes you happy’. She allowed me to go out and work. I’d just got my bearings in (the industry) and everything was falling apart.”
Jay Mehta with his wife Juhi Chawla. (Express archive photo)
At an earlier event, Juhi had said that her wedding invites had to be revoked after she confided in her mother-in-law and told her that she wasn’t comfortable with a large wedding. She said at the Gujarat Chamber of Commerce & Industry, “I was shooting for some of the really big films of my career and I was supposed to get married. My mother had just passed a year ago. When the marriage date was coming close, I was thinking my mother is gone, whom I loved the most, and now my career will also go away. I didn’t know how to be happy about it. So, I broke down one day and I told my mother-in-law and she said, ‘It’s okay.’ She convinced the family to not have the big wedding and I got married at home with just the family and closest friends in attendance. So with just 80-90 people present. Imagine your mother-in-law cancelling the invites that had already been sent out.”
