When Salim Khan opened up about marrying Salma Khan, Helen: ‘I’m lucky that I have two wives who live in harmony’

Salim and Salma’s sons Salman Khan and Arbaaz Khan have spoken about their father’s decision to marry again and how it affected their family. In a 1990 interview with Filmfare, Salman had said that his mother “was very hurt when my father married again. I’d hate it when she’d wait up for him to come home.” Salman that his father made them believe that he would still be around even after he married again, and eventually the family came together. “Dad explained to us that he still loved mom and that he’ll always be around. I was about 10 at that time and it took us quite some time to really accept Helen aunty. Today she’s a part of our family,” he said.

Decades later, Arbaaz, in a chat with ETimes said that he was quite young when the family’s dynamics were changing and recalled that their father never asked them to love Helen as much as their mother but expected that they should “show her the same respect because you have to accept that she’s a part of my life.”

Salim, in the same chat with DNA, admitted that their was some “hostility” from his children’s side in the initial days and even Salma did not accept his relationship with Helen. He said, “As kids they had their hostility. But they reacted the way their mother did. As I told you very honestly, it wasn’t as if Salma accepted the relationship happily straightaway and thanked me for it or said, you deserve an Oscar for it. So at that time, there was hostility from the children.”

Salim Khan, in a chat with his son Arbaaz on his show The Invincibles, described his relationship with Helen as an “emotional accident.” “She was young, I was also young. It was not my intention. This is an emotional accident. This can happen with anyone,” he said.

Salim had an interfaith union with his first wife Salma, whose maiden name was Sushila Charak. In the early 1980s, he married Helen. Despite the many ups and downs in their personal life, the family is now united. Arbaaz, in a recent interview, said that three of them are now “inseparable.”