CHARM OF THE 'VIRAR KA CHHOKRA'

Govinda is in news again. This time not due to politics or films but on a tragic spectacle of breakdown of marriage after 37 years.

- RASHEED KIDWAI

His fans and well wishers pray that divorce reports prove to be untrue and he and Sunita continue in united and marital bliss.

On the personal front, Govinda is married to Sunita, the friend who became his wife when he was barely out of his teens. Reminiscing about the moment of his engagement, he had said, 'I came home one day from shooting and my mother said it's high time I got married. Sunita and I were married the next morning at 4.30 a.m.'

Govinda described it as a 'love cum arranged marriage', since the two knew each other well. 'We used to fight constantly,' Sunita recalls. 'He thought I was too modern for him.' But he married at his mother Nirmala Devi's insistence. 'I never questioned my mother,' he says. 'I just tried to give her all the happiness that was in my hands.'

There is more to Govinda's private life, however, than this bland statement reveals. There were fleeting rumours of his link-up with Karisma (previously known as Karishma) Kapoor when she first started out in films and was paired opposite him. But the love of his life seems to have been his co-star Neelam Kothari.

Film glossy Stardust had run a story on the Neelam-Govinda romance under the heading: 'Why Govinda could not marry Neelam.' According to contributor Suguna Sundaram, the two were from drastically different backgrounds. The actor, who described himself quite unapologetically as 'an unpolished boor', was smitten by his Hong Kong-born leading lady, who seemed to him like 'a Dresden doll - pure, clean, polished and dignified'. He confessed to having felt inadequate in her presence, because his spoken English was far from sophisticated.

Govinda met Neelam for the first time at producer Pranlal Mehta's office, where she had turned up in white shorts, her long hair flowing behind her 'like an angel's', as he put it later. While working together in Love 86, followed by Ilzaam (1986)