Neena Gupta recalls the first phone call she made to Viv Richards after learning about pregnancy: ‘If you don’t want this child…”

In an interview with Humans of Bombay, Neena recalled the conversation she had with Vivian, and said, “I was not very giddy with joy. I was happy because I loved him. I called him and asked him that if you don’t want this child then I won’t have it.  He said, ‘No no I would love for you to have this child’. Everyone told me, ‘No, no, no how can you do it alone?’ because he was already married and I couldn’t marry him and go to Antigua to live there. But what happens is jawani mein you are blind. (You are blind in your youth) When you are in love, you don’t listen to anybody. No children will listen to their parents and I was the same.”

Neena and Vivian met in Jaipur when the actor was shooting for a film with co-star Vinod Khanna. She met Vivian when the queen of Jaipur invited the cast of the film and the West Indies cricket team for dinner. Their daughter Masaba is now a well-known fashion designer and actor in Bollywood. While Masaba has spoken about having a strained relationship with her father till the age of 18, Neena said that she never kept her in the dark about who her father was and why she didn’t have conventional upbringing.

 

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“We (Vivian and Neena) were in touch sometimes, sometimes not. But I told her (Masaba) everything frankly. It’s important to tell the child the truth otherwise he or she will find it from somewhere else. So, it’s better to tell her and let her adapt,” Neena said.

Raising a child as a single mother was not easy for Neena. Balancing her work and personal life was difficult, but she revealed that her father was her bigger supporter.

“It was very tough but my thing is that I am that kind of a person that if I have decided something, then I will do it on my own. I never asked for any financial or emotional support,” Neena said, and when asked who supported her the most, the actor was quick to reply, “Dad! Absolutely. He was the man in my life.”