When her relationship with Kabir Bedi ended, Mahesh Bhatt and Parveen Babi started dating. However, their happy relationship abruptly took on a sad tone.
In Bollywood, romantic relationships are nothing new. On the sets of their movies, actors and actresses frequently fall in love, and their relationship quickly becomes public knowledge. Mahesh Bhatt and Parveen Babi’s purported romance was one of those rumored pairings that caught B-town off guard.
Parveen was devastated following her split from actor Kabir Bedi and turned to the director for comfort. As the two started dating, gossip spread throughout Hollywood. Although it would appear to be a standard love story, it wasn’t.
Author Karishma Upadhyay tells one tale from the complicated lives of Mahesh Bhatt, Kabir Bedi, and Parveen Babi in an excerpt from her upcoming biography of the actor. According to Zoom Entertainment, the author stated, “Parveen was living with Kabir the last time he (Mahesh Bhatt) had met her.”
Despite the fact that Mahesh Bhatt and Kabir Bedi got along well, Mahesh did not develop feelings for Kabir until after he appeared to have broken up with Parveen Babi. The director provided solace to Parveen Babi as her relationship with Kabir broke down. The two got into a love relationship as a result of a number of events.
However, their happy relationship abruptly took on a sad tone. Parveen Babi’s mental health was recently discussed by Mahesh Bhatt in an interview with a reputable journal. He recalled a time when he witnessed an actor shivering uncontrollably while performing in a costume for a movie and holding a kitchen knife in her hand.
The said incident has also been described by Karishma Upadhyay. “He walked into the house and headed straight for their bedroom. ‘Here she was, curled up on the floor like a beast in one corner of the room,’ he says. ‘She was still in her film costume. She was holding a knife; it was the knife she used at the breakfast table”, he wrote.
Leading psychiatrists claim that Parveen was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Mahesh Bhatt observed that despite his best efforts, convincing her to abandon her illusions proved challenging because they kept becoming worse. Karishma Upadhyay quotes Mahesh Bhatt as saying, “When I was a kid, I had seen a south Indian actor named Ranjan in our neighborhood. He was said to be a victim of schizophrenia, and that was my only reference.”
2005 saw the passing of Parveen Babi, and Mahesh Bhatt penned the article “For Me, She Died Twice, Once When She Had the Mental Breakdown and Now” for Outlook. Everything I am today is a result of my brief friendship with this exceptional woman. She was a rebel who lived her life on her terms and passed away on the same terms.