Filmmaker Suneel Darshan, who has worked often in the past with Karisma Kapoor and had a strong bond with the Kapoor family, spoke about her marriage with the late Sunjay Kapur. The industrialist died recently in a freak accident, when he went into cardiac arrest after swallowing a bee while playing polo in England. Karisma attended the funeral in Delhi, with her sister Kareena Kapoor and Kareena’s husband, Saif Ali Khan. Karisma has two children with Sunjay, daughter Samaira and son Kiaan. In an interview with journalist Vickey Lalwani, Suneel Darshan opened up about their marriage, and said that it was ‘an ugly turn in her life’.
He said, “I’ve known the issue too deeply. Right from the first day, I’ve known exactly… Karisma and Sunjay’s sister were actually best friends from childhood. So, I know the whole story. Some things just need to be buried. I thought that it was an abrupt decision (to get married). Abhishek (Bachchan) and Karisma’s falling apart was abrupt, it has something to do with the stars. It was really, really sad, because she was a good girl.”
He said that Karisma was close friends with Sunjay’s sister, but had shown no signs of being romantically interested in Sunjay. He also spoke about the culture clash she felt after moving from Mumbai to Delhi. “They were friends, they had never been a couple. We went to Delhi several times, we never saw them as a couple. Some things are destined to happen. It was an ugly turn in her life. She wanted to be a domesticated type of wife, but she became a character from a doll’s house. She had seen the world, had done everything. She didn’t want to be playing golf on a Saturday evening. She wanted to spend time at home, with her family. She was more of a homely girl. It’s very sad. I feel for her,” he said.
Asked if she became a sort of ‘trophy wife’, Suneel said, “I think that’s where the problems came from, for the family. That’s what she had become. She was placed into a world that was not hers. Delhi has its own culture, and she wasn’t fitting into that culture. They lived in a huge, palatial house, with an endless number of cars. She had seen everything, she was Raj Kapoor’s granddaughter; fame, success, she was the number one heroine for a duration. When she decided to recede, she wanted to live the life of a wife.”
Karisma and Sunjay tied the knot in 2003, and divorced in 2016. Sunjay subsequently married Priya Sachdev, with whom he had another child. In an interview before his passing, Priya and Sunjay had both spoken about their blended family. She admitted that Sunjay and Karisma’s marriage was ‘not conventional’, and said in an interview on the Kin and Kindness YouTube channel, “Sunjay’s previous marriage was not a conventional marriage. He had two beautiful children from that marriage. We love them dearly and today we are one beautiful blended family.”
