A shoulder to cry on

Raj Babbar was stricken by grief. He had lost his wife Smita Patil, a woman he loved deeply and for whom he had left his earlier spouse Nadira Babbar. However, tragedy struck when Smita passed away following complications after giving birth to their son Prateik. Raj found solace in his work and the very same work also provided him with a shoulder to cry on – his beautiful, sympathetic co-star Rekha.

Rekha herself had been going through a series of troubled relationships. Her last liaison in particular had landed her in an emotional mess. A shared crisis brought Raj and Rekha together. Raj even accepted that it was a vulnerable moment and had a soothing effect. “Yes, our relationship helped me in a way,” he admitted. “We drifted together because of certain circumstances. At that time, Rekha had broken off from a long-standing relationship. She wanted to get away from it. I was in a similar situation. At the same time, we were also working together and we clung to each other for emotional support. We tried to understand each other’s problems.” Yet, he honestly declared, “I was not as involved with Rekha as I was with Smita. The intensity wasn’t there. At the same time I cannot say that we were friends.”

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She refused to accept it

Raj opened up candidly about his affair. “Yes, I have never denied it; after all, I am a human being. Being a man, I was attracted by the way she was behaving with me. At that time, Smita died and people wronged her. Rekha made me feel that I wasn’t the kind of man magazines wrote about it. Just being with her made me feel like that.”

Rekha, on the other hand, refused to comment on the relationship. Raj tried explaining it thus - “Though we may not have shared the intensity, there was something between us. She may feel shy to admit it but I feel strongly that it gave me a new life.”

A threat from a friend

There was a strong rumour that when Raj tried to get too friendly with Rekha, he allegedly received a threat from Habib Nadiadwala. However, the real scoop was that Nadiadwala was supposedly acting on behalf of a male friend of Rekha’s who was feeling upset by the developing scene between Rekha and Raj. Talking about it Raj had said, “I won’t use the word threat, because I don’t think Habib Nadiadwala is capable of threatening me. He had come to discuss a few things and it was followed by a heated argument when he said, ‘Hamare haath bahut lambe hain’.”

However, the relationship had evidently run its course. Raj was quoted, “The feelings for her are always there, though the arrogance is not, it is all in the past now. I had a person with whom I shared my emotional moments. I was there to share her emotional moments. One does not forget such a relationship very easily. Though we aren’t together today, we still have fond memories of those special moments.”

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All’s well…

Soon after the split with Rekha, Raj returned to his previous wife Nadira. He refused to draw comparisons between the two women, saying, “Not just I but no man can make comparisons between two women. Nor can any man point out, what quality one woman has that another lacks. When God could not make comparisons, how can I?”