Farhan Akhtar says he was apprehensive about his divorce: Didn't want my kids to experience what I did

Farhan Akhtar recently shared some rare insight into his first marriage, revealing it wasn't an easy divorce with his ex-wife Adhuna Bhabani. Sharing the tumultuous state of mind that he went through back then, the actor-filmmaker said that he was apprehensive about ending his first marriage as he didn't want to make his children go through the same emotions that he experienced during his parents, Javed Akhtar and Honey Irani's divorce. Farhan and Adhuna were married for sixteen years before they called it quits in 2016. The couple have two children -- Shakya and Akira.

Farhan Akhtar on his first divorce:

In a conversation with journalist Faye D'Souza, Farhan revealed that a huge part of him was against the idea of breaking off his marriage as he knew the kind of impact it would have on his kids. "A certain aspect of it was, of course, that I had been through having divorced parents when I was a kid," the 50-year-old actor said. He revealed that he and Adhuna made the difficult choice of telling their children about it together. He said, "I felt that it came to a place where Adhuna and I spoke to them openly and honestly and explained to them why we are taking this kind of step, that it doesn’t have anything to do with them. It’s not because of them, it’s not because of anything they did, they said, or because they are here. This is something between two grown-up people, who as friends decided that this is something that they want to do.

"It’s something that I am going to have to live with for the rest of my life. It’s never going to entirely go away... the thinking about ‘Did they deserve this?’ It’s going to keep coming up. That’s something I guess I’ll just have to live with. The fact that it happened to me as a kid played a huge role in how I feel about it now," Farhan expressed.

Farhan on how his parents' divorce affected him:

Farhan also reflected on how Javed Akhtar and Honey Irani's divorce affected him as a child. He said, “Back then, it wasn’t common for parents to be divorced. But because of who my parents were, it was public knowledge. If someone wanted to hit you below the belt in school during a fight, they would say, ‘But your father left your mother.’ And it would hurt. So apart from the fact that you were sad it happened, it would make you angry that it could be used against you.”

Farhan is currently married to Shibani Dandekar. The duo tied the knot in 2022 after courting for several years.

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