A well-known name in Bollywood in the 1990s, Shilpa Shirodkar, known for working with stalwarts such as Ramesh Sippy, Mithun Chakraborty, Amitabh Bachchan, Mukul Anand and Gulshan Kumar, took a 13-year break from showbusiness to raise her family in London.
She returned to Mumbai in the early 2010s, and though she eventually made a comeback to television, it wasn’t part of her plan initially. In a candid chat with Pinkvilla, Shilpa opens up about her journey back to India, not with the intention of returning to films or television, but to be close to her sister Namrata Shirodkar and to find solace after a personal tragedy.
She said, “I didn’t get films and I didn’t even try. I didn’t even try for television. Actually, when I came back to India, I was not in a very good state of mind. I had lost my parents and I was in a very deep depression. And I actually came back to India to stay with my sister (Namrata Shirodkar). Work was not on my mind. I came back in 2010, and I didn’t even ask for work from anyone or show any desire to work.
But when Diya ji and Tony ji called… I didn’t know anything about PR, nor had I done any photoshoots etc. My only thought was that I don’t want to go back and I want to stay with my sister.” She further added, “My daughter Anushka started studying and slowly everything started falling into place. Soon we decided that we will start a production house and I will produce content for television because it was an emerging industry at that time. It was obviously big, but there was still space in regional languages, so we wanted to do something there.
So when I got “Ek Mutthi Aasman”, I don’t know how I got it. I was just told that it is a good production house and I had already seen “Banegi Apni Baat”, so I knew these are good producers and I really liked their story. Zee was also happy to take me on board and I got it just like that. I didn’t have to go anywhere else for it.”
Shilpa also spoke about the tough phase she went through after her parents’ demise, which led her to go into deep depression. “It happened after my parents passed away. It was very tough. I was in London, alone, with my husband and Anushka. And Aparesh was very, very, very successful. He was doing very well in his field. Anushka was settled in her school.
She had her friends. Everything, everything was fine. But when my parents passed away so quickly, one after the other… I don’t know, I couldn’t handle it. And I was undergoing treatment there, but I just wanted to come back. You know, there is a saying that behind every successful man, there is a woman. I think, and I say this from my own experience, behind every successful woman, there is a very understanding husband.
And a very tolerant man. And if it wasn’t for my husband, I wouldn’t be able to do this today, I wouldn’t be sitting in front of you. Because in 2010 when I decided to come back, Aparesh’s career was at its peak, but he realised that I have to come back, and he left everything and came back.
He quit his job and came back and said that Let’s do something new.” Talking about the symptoms and depth of her depression, Shilpa said with heartbreaking honesty: “I used to cry a lot, I had no control over my tears. Even when something good happened, I couldn’t stop crying. I had become a robot, I didn’t feel like doing anything.
I had gained a lot of weight, I had dark circles on my face, I had no interest in life. I wouldn’t go out, wouldn’t do anything, just kept working because I had a little daughter, I would drop her to school and pick her up.
I wouldn’t talk to anyone at home. Even if I did, there would be misunderstandings. Basically, I just wanted to bang my head against the wall. I was seeing a counsellor, I was on anti-depressants, I was so upset.
And I was only talking to my sister because I felt she was the only one who could understand me. I would get very angry at Aparesh and I would even hit my daughter to vent my anger because I felt that she was the only one who could understand me. It seemed like only she could understand me. I couldn’t understand what was happening. I would do this.
