Neena Gupta regrets not asking her father about his second marriage: ‘Now there’s nobody to tell me’

Neena Gupta has said that she was surprised by how little she knew about her family members when she sat down to write her recently released autobiography, Sach Kahun Toh. In the book, she wrote about her parents, and how her mother ‘tried to end her life’ after finding out about her father’s second marriage.

In an interview following the book’s release, Neena Gupta said that she regrets not asking her father about his second marriage. Sach Kahun Toh was launched earlier this week by actor Kareena Kapoor.

In an interview with Pinkvilla, asked if the chapters about her family were the most difficult to write, she said, “Yes, these chapters were the most difficult to write, because while writing, I felt that I know nothing about them, that I know so little about them. When your family — your brothers and sisters — are there, you never think of having open discussions with them. And when they are not there, suddenly you say, ‘oh God, why didn’t I?'”

She continued, “I’m very open with my father, because he lived with me. Even then, when I was writing the book, when I was on his chapter, I thought, ‘why didn’t I talk to him and ask him exactly what happened when he got married, why did he have to get married (again)’. All those things I didn’t ask. Now there’s nobody to tell me.”

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In her book, as quoted by a Zoom report, Neena wrote that it took her a while to realise that her family situation was far from normal. “This betrayal from my father shattered my mother to the extent that she actually tried (and thankfully failed) to end her life. It took me a while to realize that it wasn’t normal for fathers to leave after dinner every evening. That fathers didn’t come home in the morning for breakfast and a change of clothes before leaving for the office. That fathers didn’t spend the night with some variation of ‘Seema Aunty’ (that’s what we called his other wife; name changed),” she wrote about the impact her father’s second marriage had on her and her mother.