!!!!!! Well, this is a big news story to wake up to on a sleepy Saturday! Can’t wait until after the watchalong, must talk NOW!
Thank you Gwyneth Paltrow for giving us the phrase to describe this kind of divorce: “consciously uncoupling”.
As I see it, there are three options when you read a statement like this. Option 1, there are hurt feelings and anger and sadness like all people would feel at the end of a marriage but like many people do, they have worked through those emotions for the sake of their child and found a new way to be together. It’s just they managed to keep the public in the dark during that whole messy time.
Option 2, there was no hurt feelings and anger and sadness and you are left saying “wait, why are you getting divorced then?”
Option 3, there is a MASSIVE SCANDAL that they are trying to hide by being extra EXTRA nice.
I prefer to assume that celebrities are people, in which case Option 1 is my go to. It is entirely possible for a divorced couple to be friends and partners, we see it allllllllllllllllll the time. But that does not mean the divorce wasn’t a sadness in their life, that they didn’t feel miserable for a long time in the marriage, and so on and so forth. Does that make sense?
In terms of what this all Means, it means Aamir has an interesting PR challenge. His first marriage was one of the first public romantic love marriage stories in the industry. His first divorce was one of the first public romantic love marriage divorces. And now a second divorce? How is he going to spin that?
I don’t mean “spin” like “blame it all on the woman!”, I mean, integrate it into his public persona which he wants to maintain in order to continue to do his charity work and so on. His first divorce and then marriage to Kiran sort of organically made sense related to where he was in his career. He moved on from being a pretty boy working actor to a Serious Actor and Serious Producer. Marrying Kiran was part of that, instead of being with his First Love, he was married to a serious woman who shared his new interests.
How is he going to explain this second divorce without making people say, for instance, “why should I give money to the Paani foundation, the guy at the head isn’t reliable”?
This statement is a good start. He and Kiran are going to be modeling maturity and responsibility. You can still trust him, see his movies, donate to his foundation, etc. The real challenge is going to be, can he ever have a relationship again? Despite the documented 2 year gap, people still think Kiran is the woman who broke up his marriage to his first wife. If he starts dating another woman even 5 years from now, it’s going to be twisted into a “cheater, bad man, playboy” storyline.
Heck, I am having a hard time grasping it myself! The first divorce and remarriage to Kiran made perfect sense to me. He got married really young, we could see how he was changing as an artist and a person, clearly his first wife and he no longer wanted the same things. And here was Kiran, interested in the same issues, working in the same industry, etc. etc.
But this second divorce? Obviously all marriages can fail and so on, but I just saw him and Kiran as so lockstep in their public interests. I can’t make sense of it. None of my business of course, presumably there were personal issues we can’t know about, but it’s gonna be hard to just accept that this seemingly perfect couple had something going on.
And in other news, T-Series just announced a Saroj Khan biopic. How do you think they will handle her pedophile dance teacher/first husband who married her at 13 and divorced her at 17?
dontcallitbollywood 
mmm…..
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`But they had such great eyewear together!
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They really did!
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Well, considering his constant cheating, good for her. Anyway, he should celebrate by taking a bachelor’s trip across Europe to meet deeply hilarious and attractive women who are taller than him and love Govinda.
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Multiple deeply hilarious and taller than him woman who love Govinda? Why not a trip across Europe to meet a woman who loves Govinda, another who loves Maddy, and another who loves SRK? And then hop over to England for a second SRK lover?
On Sat, Jul 3, 2021 at 10:17 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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I mean, if that won’t fetch him, nothing will.
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I came here to tell this and you have already a discussion post. I find it strange that there was nothing in gossip columns until now.
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There’s been stuff about his cheating for decades, and during quarantine I also saw a bunch of stuff about how he had installed his affair partner in his house and it was causing tension.
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I was surprised by this too. Not that I know anything about anything but agreed that they presented well together in public. And I also tend to blame him, while knowing nothing about anything? It just feels easier to believe that he’s high strung and difficult or restless or warped by fame or some other factor that would make being married to him not that fun over the long haul. Whereas Kiran seems pretty down to earth.
Also, hmm, pandemic separation. While being privileged enough that when they wanted to live separately during this crazy time of upheaval, they could choose to do so. I see a lot of people around us making big life changes during this time. Wonder if being cooped up together without the outlet of constant work was the thing that caused the cracked places to break.
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So many celebrity break ups about 3 months in! Which I found darkly hilarious. I’m talking American gossip, not Indian. My theory was that either they had been separated without acknowledging it, the way you can be with two traveling careers (“we aren’t separated, I’m just filming a movie and haven’t seen him for 2 months”) and not working meant they had to acknowledge they really were separated. Or they were separated and privately acknowledging it, but with the pandemic everyone would notice if they didn’t quarantine together so they HAD to announce it. And I suppose a small number who were just like regular humans and discovered they hated each other when they had to be together all the time.
In this case, I am very curious about how it worked. I suppose they could have been separated for 2 years? Starting pre-pandemic? And waiting to announce until the crisis was over? Or like you say, they are privilaged enough to make a pandemic separation work.
On Sat, Jul 3, 2021 at 3:56 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Option 3 probably but maybe mixed with the other things too.
Here’s Aamir’s private Instagram account. Adding insult to injury, Chotelal is what Kiran’s nickname for Aamir was/is. It only has two followers and one of those is Fatima Sana Sheikh.
https://www.instagram.com/aamirchotelalkhan/
There were rumors about these two for years to the point that Aamir/Kiran had even staged some paparazzi photos of themselves kissing in front of cameras to show how everything is great.
Anyway, I don’t think it matters that much for Aamir. He has a curious sort of fame – has the big hits but isn’t really a celebrity with that kind of stardom. People will move on in 2 days. He can easily follow the Farhan Akhtar path, who is also divorced twice. Nobody really cared and he’s happily dating a TV actress now. Aamir isn’t really seen that much anyway so he just has to lay low until his movie releases.
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Maybe it is because he isn’t really known as a romantic lead? He had his chocolate hero era for sure, but his movies aren’t romance focused. So you can find it impossible to believe him when he declares Undying Love for the heroine after knowing about his personal life, and still enjoy the film.
If it is Option 3, we of course don’t know what arrangement Aamir and Kiran had in their marriage. Kiran to me seems more like the type who would agree to an open relationship within certain rules, rather than be naively blind to her husband’s behavior, or constantly forgiving and hiding her anger. With their plan to continue working together and being friends, I would suspect something more like “after years of you spending your time with your girlfriends, and me spending my time writing movies, it just seems like we don’t have anything in common any more, we aren’t a couple”. Like, the same way you might feel about your husband playing golf all the time, if you see what I mean. It’s not the activity itself, it’s that he is doing it instead of spending time with you.
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Yeah, your last paragraph pretty much covers it. Their statement said they were separated for a while and now feel comfortable formalizing it. So they probably weren’t spending much time together anyway. They must have come together for family or kid’s events but done their own thing the rest of the time. That would explain why they don’t sound upset although that could just be an act. They sound like two people who were already done and bored of each other so there isn’t really any anger and they can be amicable.
Unless something really big comes out, I think this will be forgotten soon. Indian media is lazy and has never been good at digging anything up. The only way any secrets will be spilled is if Kiran spreads them. She seems too low key and uninterested in fame to bother doing anything like that.
I do feel sad for uber-cute tiny Azad. Aamir gave an interview a few years ago that he is not that involved with his kids and more into himself but has spent more time with Azad than his other kids. It sucks for a little kid to not have both parents around all the time.
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Btw, I think Aamir was planning for this news to come out. That’s why he deleted all his social media accounts 3 or 4 months ago. He probably wanted to avoid the trolling and hate.
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Oh, I almost forgot about that! Yeah, I am sure you are right. If they’ve been separated for a while and moving towards a divorce, that would be something where you would have meetings with lawyers and stuff months back. And part of that would be to say “you know, getting rid of my social media accounts will help me make this story die fast”. You know how it goes, even if he put up something like an announcement related to his foundation, the talking heads in the media would turn it into “spending time with his foundation to avoid his homelife” or something.
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Aamir and Kiran have released a video
Hindi Translation:
Kiran: You must have heard our divorce announcement yesterday. You all might have felt hurt.
Aamir: Shocked too.
Kiran: Shocked too. But we’re here to reassure you that we still stay together and work together.
Aamir: Paani Foundation is like our child, like Azad is our child. We will work together. We also make films together. We wanted to let you know so you wouldn’t be hurt. We’ve thought about this for 4 or 5 years. We want your blessings.
(network problem)
Aamir: You must have heard about our announcement – Kiranji and mine. You must have felt hurt and shock. We just want to tell you that we’re both very happy and are one family. There’s been a change in our relationship but we’re still together so don’t think like that. Paani Foundation is like Azad for us. We will always remain family so please pray for us and wish for us to be happy. That’s all we wanted to say.
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Thanks for translating!
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I hope they really are amicable and happy, at least for the sake of Azad, who is the cutest. And I hope Kiran finds a handsome and very tall young man who treats her like a queen.
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I wish Kunal Kapoor was still single.
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Why this kind of statement and video…because of the Paani Foundation???…my guess …
I don’t believe in those words (and I don’t have to), but I care for Kiran (not for Aamir)…hope that her creativity won’t suffer.
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And their foundation really is doing good work so far as I can tell. So I appreciate them coming together to try to maintain stability for the people they are serving.
On Mon, Jul 5, 2021 at 10:28 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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