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Actor Kennedy John Victor, best known by his stage name Vikram, spoke about his three-decade plus marriage. He also looked back on the first-ever meeting that he had with his now wife, Shailaja Balakrishnan, as he opened up about how their relationship has evolved over the years. Vikram admitted that he told his wife that she would always be his ‘second love’, after films, and that marriage means a lot of compromise.
Appearing on Ranveer Allahbadia’s podcast, Vikram hinted at the difficulties that they experienced before they got married, primarily because of their religious and cultural backgrounds. “She’s Malayali, and I’m Tamil… Today, you can have live-ins, but then, it was considered taboo to even talk to a girl, and somebody who’s not… I’m half Hindu half Christian, and she’s Malayali, there’s all of that happening. But I’m glad I met her, and I’m glad she’s there,” he said.
Describing her as a ‘very good mother and friend’, Vikram continued, “As a child, whatever that happened to me and everything that I’ve become now is because of my mother. And after I got married, it’s always been my wife. She’s always been that source of support. She’s a psychologist, but she’s constantly helping people. She’s an angel of sorts… When I saw her the first time, I just felt something. She told me later that bells rang for her, and something happened for her to know that I was the guy.”
He said that his wife was initially not in support of him becoming an actor, also because he was on crutches when they first met. But he told her that acting would always be his priority. “She always sees things in the correct perspective, unless she’s having a problem with me, then nothing makes sense… She’s so different from me, we’re like chalk and cheese. If I want the air-con, she’ll says she doesn’t even want the fan; I like to dress flashy, and she’ll say, ‘What is wrong with you’… Her family had poets and scholars, and I’m just an actor. In the beginning, she was trying to change me, but I said, ‘Let’s get one thing straight, that’s my first love, you’re my second love, if that’s not going to work, this isn’t going to work’. At times she would hope my films don’t work, but now she’s obsessed about my films working.”
He said that over the years, they’ve ‘come to understand’ that both of them have their faults, but they realise that’s what marriage is about. Vikram agreed that ‘true love’ can be felt only after the ‘pink clouds go away’. “You don’t think of it as a habit, but you become so used to the other person that you can’t be without them,” he said. Vikram and his wife have two children, a daughter and a son, who is also an actor.
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