Thaindian News

By Radhika Bhirani
Candolim (Goa), Sep 19 (IANS) Rakhi Sawant got engaged to Toronto-based businessman Elesh Parujanwala on national television and they are now learning the hardships of parenting on a reality show being shot here. The item girl confesses she is jittery about marriage and motherhood after having to change diapers and sing lullabies for a baby boy.

“I am very scared of being a mother now. I don’t know what will happen when it happens in real life,” Rakhi told IANS at a villa here that has specially been hired for the show.

Rakhi is participating in NDTV Imagine’s show “Pati Patni Aur Woh” with her fiance Elesh.

The duo, along with four other celebrity couples, have been relocated to five individual villas here and they have to take care of infants as well as adolescents in the course of the show that goes on air Sep 28.

Rakhi and Elesh, who seemed quite comfortable in each other’s company, are quite upset with their experience so far after playing parents to an infant named Jai under constant vigilance of six cameras in the house.

“It’s been a very bad experience till now. It’s like ‘aasmaan se gira khajoor mein atka’. There is no enjoyment here. The only enjoyment is probably that we are together,” said Rakhi, who is sporting a new hairdo that she called “cute and Barbie-like”.

“It’s very difficult. We haven’t even got married yet. I had never imagined I’ll ever have to take care of kids like this and that too manage a kid who only cries and doesn’t sleep. I had to change nappies when the kid pees and poops. It was disgusting. I didn’t eat food for two days after that and couldn’t even sleep properly,” she whined.

The item girl-turned-actress and her fiance, whom she chose in a ’swayamvar’ on national television, are also distressed with the fact that in the process of taking care of the child, they hardly get time to know more about each other.

Said Elesh: “Finding little things about each other is the last thing on our list because there is a kid to take care of. Whatever time we have to ourselves, we either say ‘why don’t you take a shower or watch the child, or take a nap or let’s make something quickly or clean the house’. That’s all.

“We had thought we will learn a lot about each other through this show. But instead we are learning about kids and running a household.”

That is also a reason for their marriage being put on hold indefinitely.

“Wedding is a far-fetched talk right now. I have to settle down for now. And this is just our beginning. We are gradually getting to know each other. This show is teaching us a lot about life and ourselves,” said Elesh.

Added Rakhi: “Wedding is surely a long way (off).”

Rakhi is also upset at missing out the fun of receiving compliments for her dance with actress Rani Mukerji in Yash Raj Films’ just released “Dil Bole Hadippa”.

“I haven’t got any feedback. There’s no time to see TV and there is no cable connection here,” she rued as she snuggled up in Elesh’s arms.

The other four celebrity couples participating in the show are Shilpa Saklani-Apurva Agnihotri, Juhi Parmar-Sachin Shroff, Mouni Roy-Gaurav Chopra and Gurmeet Chaudhary-Debina Bonnerjee.

(Radhika Bhirani can be contacted at radhika.b@ians.in)