Television actor Shweta Tiwari has seen a lot of ups and downs in her personal life. The actor got married in her teens to Raja Chaudhary, divorced him at the age of 27 after accusing him of domestic violence. Years later, the Kasautii Zindagi Kay fame actor married Abhinav Kohli in 2013. However, her second marriage didn’t last long either amid domestic abuse claims.
Shweta, who has a daughter from her first marriage and a son from the second, opened up on walking out of two exploitative marriages, being a single-parent, being at the receiving end of sexism and much more in a new interview.
Talking about her being subjected to domestic violence in the first marriage, Shweta spoke about how society normalises a wife-beater and expects a woman to stay in the marriage. “In a middle-class family, since childhood, you are told to compromise, to adjust. People tell you one-two slaps are nothing. But my mother never said any such thing. They asked ‘what will happen to the kids (if she walks out of the marriage)?’ But when I first got separated at the age of 27, I realised what can happen because as a kid, seeing your parents fight every day or seeing their father walking in drunk is worse than being brought up by a single parent,” the actor told Bollywood Bubble.
Shweta said that people walk up to her and advise her not to marry again. “You be in a live-in relationship for 10 years and leave, no one will question you but you walk out of a marriage after two years, everyone will say, ‘How many times will she get married?’ People walk up to me to tell me ‘Don’t get married a third time.’ Will I ask them? Who are they? Are they paying for my wedding? This is my decision. This is my life.”
She added that her marital status has built an image of her daughter Palak Tiwari in the public eye, “People on Instagram tell me that I got married twice and my daughter will marry five times. But maybe she won’t get married at all. Whatever she has already seen, maybe she won’t. Maybe because of what she has seen, she can choose wisely.”
Talking about her children, Shweta said both Palak and Reyansh are her pillar of strength. She said while she is not proud of the mistakes she has made, she feels proud when she looks at them. “She saw me getting beaten-up. She has seen everything. She was just six years old when I ended my first marriage. She has seen my trauma. She has seen ‘darwaaze pe aake tamasha karna, police ka aana, mummy ka police ke paas jaana.’ I used to carry her along.
She added that her 4-year-old son knows about police but not because of her. “I am not able to save them from the whole situation. To lead a happy life, to come out of the mess, I have only one way which is to be with them as well go to the court or police station. I know they are suffering because I chose the wrong men. That was my fault, not theirs. But they are going through this strong, they are smiling through it. I never tell them don’t talk to your father, don’t miss them. They don’t because they are scared of the trauma,” Shweta stated.
Shweta said that her children are becoming stronger and learning from her journey.
