Wasn't talking about Sunita Rajwar, Nawazuddin responds to first girlfriend's legal notice

Mumbai: The impact of the controversy surrounding Nawazuddin Siddiqui's debut biography has been so huge that reports of him being afraid to face the media or slipping into depression or refusing to promote 'Monsoon Shootout' are all being linked to it.

Nawazuddin was forced to apologise and withdraw his memoir ‘An Ordinary Life’ after he received backlash from several actresses regarding revelations of alleged affairs and sexual encounters in them.

While one of them, his ‘Miss Lovely’ co-star Niharika Singh, slammed the actor but still concluded with her ‘respect’ for him, another woman, Sunita Rajwar, who Nawazuddin claimed was his first girlfriend, was furious.

In a lengthy Facebook post Rajwar, who is a married woman now, had said she left Nawazuddin for his ‘poor mindset’ and not because of his poor financial condition, as he had claimed in the book.

She later slapped a defamation suit against Nawazuddin demanding Rs 2 crores for tarnishing her image and causing mental agony.

Nawazuddin has now responded to the allegations through his lawyer and called Rajwar's claims a cheap publicity stunt, and that the Sunita he is referring to is not Sunita Rajwar, according to a report in Mumbai Mirror.

Rajwar has hit back at the charges and explains why she is the Sunita Nawazuddin is talking about in the book, "He is lying that I am not the same Sunita. He himself has given all the evidence in his memoir that says I am the one he is talking about. First, he wrote my name in the book along with National School of Drama, although without surname, but there was no other Sunita in NSD during our batch. Then he referred to that girl as 'Pahadi Girl', again there was no other girl from the hills, other than me. Then he also mentioned that the Sunita in his book was a roommate of famous television actress Achint Kaur, because of whose influence she might have left him, so it's clear as I was sharing accommodation with Achint Kaur."

After the exchanges of legal notices between Hrithik Roshan and Kangana Ranaut few months ago, it seems here's another battle gearing up.

Here's the complete excerpt from the book allegedly about Sunita Rajwar.

"I was performing in a play in Mumbai which was when I finally had my first romantic relationship. Incidentally, she too happened to be an NSD graduate, though we had never met there. It was very sweet, like rain is after a very long spell of drought. Sunita had fallen madly in love with me. Every day, she would come over, hang out at my house in Mira Road and scrawl our names in tiny font all over the wall. You remember those old-fashioned hearts with the names of lovers in it, sometimes with an arrow across it, sometimes without? Her doodles were something like that. It seemed to my roommates that every day she covered one wall with her art of love. We saw each other for about a year and a half. She was a Pahari girl. Then she went off on a holiday to her home town in the hills to see her folks. When she returned, Sunita would not take any of my calls. And when she did at last, I was flabbergasted. After such a deep, passionate love, she simply said, ‘Nawaz, you focus on your career. And I will focus on my career.’ She cut off all contact after that and I plunged into another deep, deep depression. I took a bucket of fresh white paint and began to replace her artwork on my walls with the blank canvas that they were before. With every brush-stroke, I tried to erase her off my heart as well. But, of course, the brush refused to do double duty and erased only the marks on the walls, not the scars on my heart.

"Living in Mira Road meant that the local train was our lifeline. We were at the station almost all the time. Soon after her call, one day I was at the station and stood there staring at the tracks. A train was coming, screaming its arrival with a lusty horn. It would be simple and instant. Should I jump on to the tracks and end it all? End this struggle, end this life? I had nothing. No love, no work, no money. But some being woke up in me and gave me a metaphorical slap. ‘You know this is not your department,’ the voice in my head said. ‘Then why? Why did you go that way? Why!’ it screamed at me. The train sped away, screaming pompously, cutting through the air. Simultaneously, I cut off my emotions like doctors sever an umbilical cord. I decided that I would never again be emotional in any relationship. And I kept my word. Never again did I allow myself to be vulnerable like that again, not even with my wife. Yet it was important to analyse what had happened. My exgirlfriend’s flatmate was an attractive, modern and flamboyant actress called Achint Kaur who was quite popular at the time. I concluded that the only explanation for Sunita’s abrupt goodbye was Kaur’s influence. She must have advised her that for the sake of her career, Sunita should probably date someone successful, not a struggling, desperate actor who was out of work.

"Today, Sunita tells everybody that she was once together with me in a very serious relationship. Incredible, isn’t it? Life is beautiful, just f**king beautiful."