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“Ours was a child marriage,” Bollywood actor Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub joked while speaking about his marriage to theatre actor Rasika Agashe. In a recent interaction, Zeeshan opened up about his interfaith marriage to Rasika and shared how it came naturally to him, as his parents, too, belonged to different religions. While his mother is a Brahmin Hindu, his father is a Muslim.
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Speaking to Shubhankar Mishra, Zeeshan spoke about getting married soon after finishing theatre school. “We got married right after passing out from NSD. It was my first successful love story. I thought this was the first time a girl has said yes to me, before she understands me fully, let’s rope in and get married to her.”
When asked about his interfaith marriage to Rasika and whether religious differences ever affected their relationship, Zeeshan said that love made everything seamless. “Love takes care of everything. It was not difficult. When it comes to cultural differences, it was easy for me as my mother is a Hindu Brahmin and since childhood, we would sit in Diwali Pooja and only eat vegetarian food while visiting my mother’s side, but when I was visiting my father’s side, we would eat non-vegetarian. So religion was not a problem, main difference was cultural, but the one thing that brought us together was art because we both were theatre enthusiast.”
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During the interaction, Zeeshan emphasised that friendship formed the foundation of his relationship with Rasika. “We became friends first and there was no proposal between us. After passing out, we realise that we want to spend more time together, and that’s why we got married.” Calling his wife his anchor, Zeeshan added, “She has become my anchor. It is like now I can go and explore my career and do whatever I want in my life, but in my heart, I know that she is there at home. This gives you a different strength.”
Zeeshan’s statements stood in contrast to some recent sentiments shared by other Bollywood celebrities. When asked about Jaya Bachchan’s recent remark suggesting her granddaughter, Navya Naveli Nanda, not to get married, as well as Kajol’s statement about emotional intimacy being a bigger dealbreaker than physical intimacy or how marriage should have an expiry date, Zeeshan shared his perspective. “Everyone has their own experiences. I am just myself with my wife, and I don’t have to lie at all. She is my safe space.”
He further reflected on how the foundation of love plays a crucial role in the longevity of a relationship. “It also depends on how you fell in love. If you had lost yourself in love and found a new person, which was a combination of you and your partner, then you will be happy. But if the beginning of your love is about, ‘Wow, she’s such a beautiful woman’ if you marry a trophy wife then, after a point, you can feel that this trophy has accumulated rust. Also, if a woman gets into a relationship thinking that her husband should have these many things, then after a point of time, she might get bored, you might find it mundane, but if you had connected deeply, then it does not happen.”
