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‘Keeping our love a secret added thrill to our lives’
On V-Day, RJ Anmol and actor Amrita Rao tell us how hiding their love life was like an undercover mission
A‘Dilli ka launda’ goes to Mumbai chasing his dreams, runs into his crush, a heroine, during a movie promotion, sweeps her off her feet with his simplicity and marries her in a secret ceremony, lest the news hampers her career. If you have ever dismissed love as overrated, this couple will put your faith in the word again. Actor Amrita Rao and Anmol Sood aka RJ Anmol’s love story has hit the stands in the form of a book, titled Couple of Things.
The two met for the first time in 2007, during Rao’s movie promotion at a radio station in Delhi. They soon figured out that they were unbelievably similar despite contrasting backgrounds. “We clicked like anything! We were so similar in our tastes, our thoughts. We would end up matching clothes without even planning it,” says the Thackeray (2019) actor. Anmol, 43, gradually moved from the “dreaded friend zone” to “boyfriend” status. But they had to keep their “love a secret, which added thrill to our lives”. Anmol says, “Amrita would come to meet me clad in a burqa! Isse zyada crazy aur kya hoga?”
They got married in a hush-hush ceremony in Pune in 2014 after dating for five years. But they didn’t reveal it to the world. “No bookings or payments were done in our names. We also hired a French photographer who knew nothing about Bollywood and was just fascinated to shoot an Indian wedding,” recalls Anmol. When they moved in together, Rao, 41, hid her identity from the house help. “Once, when she became suspicious that I was indeed Amrita Rao, the heroine. I told her, ‘Oh! I just resemble her’,” laughs the actor. When the woman looked unconvinced, they pleaded: “Behen, please kisi ko batana mat.”
The couple, who has a two-year-old son, Veer, adds that their wedding announcement two years later was no less thrilling. Anmol says, “We pulled off our nakli shaadi pretty well. Chilling in pyjamas, we read the news: ‘Amrita Rao weds RJ Anmol’, while we were already married for two years.”