Vinod Khanna walked away from his stardom in the late 1970s and moved to Oregon to live in Osho’s ashram. Years later, he returned a changed man and decided to start a new chapter in his life. It was during this time that he met Kavita, and they fell in love with each other, and stayed married until Vinod’s passing in 2017. In a new interview, Kavita spoke about how her family showed some resistance towards the relationship in the early days and recalled that they had a “perfect marriage with all the flaws.”
In a chat with Loveena Tandon on her YouTube channel, Kavita shared that her family supported her marriage with Vinod, but was “horrified” by their idea of dating each other. “He was the heartthrob of so many people, and after he got divorced, he had quite a few girlfriends, so my family was worried that this was just a passing phase for him,” she said and added that the family was very “concerned” that Vinod would leave her. Kavita recalled that after their initial meeting, Vinod would call her 5 times a day, and kept insisting that they should meet up until she said yes. After many telephonic conversations, which Kavita found engaging, she called him to meet, and thus, they started their relationship. Seven months later, they were married.
Since Vinod was one of the top stars of his time, he always received a lot of female attention. Kavita was asked if she ever felt “insecure” and she shared that she was confident of the love and commitment they shared with each other. “I knew he loved me, he was committed to me,” she said and added that theirs was a marriage that had its own flaws.
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“Was it a perfect marriage? It was a perfect marriage with all the flaws that a perfect marriage has and all the challenges, and there were many but I never doubted him,” she shared and added, “There was not a single day when I wanted to be without my husband, but does that mean it was a bed of roses? No.”
Vinod Khanna was previously married to Gitanjali, and the two share two sons Akshaye Khanna and Rahul Khanna. Kavita said that Akshaye and Rahul were her children “because they were Vinod’s children”. She added that she never tried to be a ‘mother’ to both “because they had the best mother they could have.”
Akshaye Khanna and wife of Vinod Khanna, Kavita Khanna at the National Film Awards. (Express Photo by Tashi Tobgyal)
When asked about her relationship with Vinod Khanna’s first wife Geetanjali Khanna, she replied, “We were very cordial. There was no discord whatsoever. There was a lot of mutual respect and there were boundaries. We should not be conditioned by fairy tales about someone being a victim and the other one being a cruella. These are just fairy tales. In life, when you are a sensible adult, you behave sensibly. We make the choices we make, we stick by them and life moves on.”
