Sharmila Tagore was told that she was making a mistake by marrying Tiger Pataudi at the peak of her career. Many also wondered how her husband ‘allowed’ her to continue working in films.
Senior actress Sharmila Tagore married cricketer Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi at the time when she was at the peak of her career and in a recent interview, her daughter Soha Ali Khan said that people told her mother that it was ‘professional suicide’. Soha revealed that her mother was always asked how her husband was ‘allowing’ her to work in films and she always found the question quite awkward.
Speaking to Nayandeep Rakshit on his YouTube channel, Soha revealed that Sharmila started working in films at the age of 13, though it was not considered a good thing to do in those days. “She was earning her own money from the age of 13.
She was working in films, which of course, back then, good girls don’t work in films. And she decided to marry a man from another religion because her heart told her to do so and all her life she was asked, ‘How is your husband allowing you to work after marriage?’ And she would say, ‘What do you mean?’ And my father was very liberal in his thinking. I really think he broke the mold,” she said.
Soha shared that when Sharmila was working in films, female characters in films were either heroines or mothers. “Earlier, in her time, you were either the heroine or the mother, and in between you didn’t know what to do. And she always loved doing new things,” she said.
Soha added that even in a film like Aradhana, where Sharmila played the lead opposite Rajesh Khanna, she also played a role in a film where she played Rajesh Khanna’s mother. “Her hair had turned grey and she had a lot of make-up on, even though she was 26 or something at that time,” she said.
She pointed out that when Sharmila decided to marry Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi, who was from a different religion, at the age of 24, people said it would be “professional suicide”, but she still decided to do it. “She always did what she wanted to do.
At the peak of her career, she decided to marry my father and everyone said ‘This is like professional suicide, how can you do this?’ She said ‘I don’t care, I’m doing this’ and she kept working,” she said. Sharmila and Mansoor’s marriage lasted for 43 years, until he passed away in 2011.
Sharmila Tagore was express that marrying Tiger Pataudi was ‘professional suicide’, daughter Soha said: ‘She married a man from another religion’
