Zeenat Aman, a superstar in the 70s, made her debut with The Evil Within (1970) and Hulchul (1971) but her breakthrough came with Dev Anand's drama film Haré Rama Haré Krishna (1971) which made her an overnight sensation. Despite working with super hit films with almost all leading actors at the time, including Amitabh Bachchan, Zeenat Aman always garnered more attention because of her turbulent personal life. Zeenat Aman, in 1978, married Sanjay Khan but after suffering a highly-publicised domestic violence incident, the marriage was annulled in 1979.
Then, at the peak of her career, Zeenat Aman took a break from acting and, in 1985, married fellow actor Mazhar Khan. However, this marriage also proved to be challenging. Though Zeenat Aman realised her mistake within the first year of marriage, she stayed with Mazhar Khan for 12 years, till his death, for the sake of their two sons.
Opening up about her challenging marriage, Zeenat Aman once told Simi Garewal, "The first year after marriage, I realised I had made a mistake but since I had made the decision and done it against everybody’s will, I decided to live by it and make it work. I’m not necessarily saying that it was the best thing for him either. It was a difficult time since the first year because I was pregnant with my first child and Mazhar was not there. There was a big article in Stardust magazine at that time about the woman that Mazhar was seeing. It’s reality."
Zeenat Aman said that she wanted to end the marriage after her son was born but decided to stay put because of her newborn. "As soon as my son was born, I wanted out and we discussed it but I thought my child deserved a chance and I stayed. But I didn’t just stay, I did everything possible to make it work. I thought about getting into the workforce when my younger son was 5 years old but right before that Mazhar fell grievously ill. I spent 5 years battling for his health and his life and they were very difficult years," she said.
Zeenat Aman took it upon herself to nurse her husband back to health but soon Mazhar Khan became addicted to prescription drugs, which harshly affected his kidneys. It was this addiction that finally opened Zeenat Aman's eyes and she left the marriage for her well-being.
"He had stopped helping himself and was inflicting further damage on himself and I couldn’t stay there and watch him do that. He was taking seven painkillers a day. I and the children would request him. At the end, his kidneys did pack up and this was after I had opted out. When I left, I still cared. I have no guilt because I am sure 99 percent of women wouldn’t have lasted as long and as honestly as I did," she said.
