'Vinod Khanna asked Mehmood if I could play his heroine in a film.'
'He asked Mehmood if we were married.'
'Mehmood just looked at me, smiled and didn't say anything.'
Aruna Irani made some startling revelations in a podcast with Bharati S Pradhan for Lehren Retro, when she said she dated two married men.
The two men that Irani was referring to were Mehmood and Kuku Kohli, the director who launched Ajay Devgn's career with Phool Aur Kaante in 1991.
She went on to marry Kohli.
Irani revealed that her love story with Mehmood began when Dance Director Suresh Bhatt asked her to 'entice' him into giving her work.
'But there also, I kept saying yes and no to Mehmood ('s advances). But he started giving me work and slowly, I developed a soft corner for him,' Irani said.
'Then we became friends and then more than friends.'
It was thanks to Mehmood that she acquired fame and wealth, Irani acknowledged.
But he 'ruined' her career too, Irani said, as he did not address the marriage rumours that were circulating around them.
'Vinod Khanna asked Mehmood if I could play his heroine in a film. He asked Mehmood if we were married. Mehmood just looked at me, smiled and didn't say anything. So he made my career and ruined it too,' Irani said.
Mehmood and Aruna Irani did many successful films -- Humjoli, Bombay to Goa, Warris, Do Phool.
Speaking about her marriage to Kuku Kohli, Aruna Irani said, 'I tried to get out of the relationship but he did not let it happen.'
'Sometimes when a person is alone and if h/she gets attracted, you get carried away. Your mind does not work. You feel good. You don't realise what pains you will undergo in the future,' she said.
'I tried to marry someone else too but he (Kohli) did not let me. He did not leave me for a second.'
Aruna Irani married Kohli at age 40 but the couple never had children.
She was Kohli's second wife; he was married to Rita Kohli.
'My father had two marriages, I am the second wife's daughter. From his first marriage, he had no children. So he married my mother.
'After marrying my mother, he had a line of kids. But we were never allowed to call our father 'papa' in front of anyone. My father didn't like it. His first wife used to object to it. As a child, I did not like that,' Irani recalled.
'I thought my children should not have the same feeling as I was the second wife. If my child falls ill in the night and asks for his father, I cannot tell my husband, who is married, and staying with another woman to come in the night at that very moment.
'I would have no answer where my child's father was in the middle of the night. That's why I didn't have kids.'
Irani praised Neena Gupta for having a child outside wedlock, saying, 'She has courage. I didn't have courage like her. I never wanted my child to go through the feeling that I underwent. Children are very emotional and their minds are never the same.'
'I can do without a child but I cannot bear having a child and see him suffer.'
Irani, who will turn 80 next year, added that she brought up her younger siblings like her own children and lived a complete life.
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