Shilpa Shetty on love and heartbreak

After enjoying a successful career in Bollywood, actress Shilpa Shetty has gone on to make a name for herself on the small screen, first as a reality show participant, and then as a judge. Now, as she ventures into a new medium as the host of the reality dating show Hear Me Love Me, she sits down with us for an exclusive chat about love, dating, and heartbreak.

Shilpa starts off by explaining the concept of the unique web series, saying that the show will connect a girl with three different men, whom she can speak to, but not see. The girl will then attempt to find her soulmate based on conversations alone. “The show is well-suited to the current generation. In today’s time, people like such reality shows. And this is a cool, entertaining show,” she says.

Reminiscing on her own experiences with love and dating, she admits that she’s tried to bury everything in her past. “I will have to dig it out from the grave,” she comments.

“There was this boy who would call me up every evening. I was in college at that time, and which girl wouldn’t like the attention at that age? In those days, we just had a landline, and I would wait for him to call every evening. As soon as my father would get home, I would disconnect the phone. The boy would call himself Mr X, and this blind-dating continued for nearly three or four months. One fine day, I asked him to meet me at a bus stop, but he never showed up. I decided to break up with him after that,” Shilpa says.

She also reveals that just like the rest of us, she’s had her heart broken for the silliest of reasons. “My friends made a bet with this boy and told him to start a relationship with me. It may sound totally filmy, but it’s true. Later, the boy ended up breaking up with me because his intention was only to win the bet. I can’t say I was depressed, but I was heartbroken for a while,” she says.

Talking about how she finally met her Mr Right, she adds, “Mr Kundra had a few things of mine, and he flew all the way from London to Mumbai to give them to me. On the first day, he sent me a colourful bag, and the next day, he sent me another bag. I immediately picked up the phone and made it clear to him that nothing could happen between us as I was not interested in shifting base from Mumbai to London. At that point, I was planning to settle down, and he told me that he was planning to settle down as well. He gave me his Mumbai address and asked me to meet him. That’s how I ended up going on my first date with Mr Kundra.”

When we ask her who the bigger romantic of the two is, Shilpa’s quick to respond – “Obviously, Raj is more romantic,”

When asked if she ever had any dinner date with Salman Khan when the two actors were working together, but she says it was nothing more than a friendship. “We didn’t go out on a date as such. In those days, actors shared a great camaraderie,” she says, adding, “Salman is a very humble, loving and grounded human being. I remember, he would come to my house even at midnight sometimes, and by that time I’d already be asleep. Then Salman and my dad would sit down and drink a few pegs together. I remember, when my dad passed away, Salman came home, went straight to the bar table, laid his head down on it and cried.”