I didn’t breakup anyone’s marriage: Shilpa
Noreen Aslam

BOMBAY—Tall, handsome and most of all rich... nearly everything about Raj Kundra shouts ‘eligible’. So when the 32-year-old millionaire and Shilpa Shetty were first seen together last summer, a bit of speculation was inevitable. Shilpa, after all, was famously single despite voluptuous good looks that stare down from the bedroom walls of millions of teenage boys. Raj, meanwhile, already has a financial toehold in the Bollywood film industry.
They were first seen publicly at the London launch of her perfume, S2, in June, 2007. They were together again at the IIFA awards, the Bollywood ‘Oscars’ held in Leeds. Then, as the months went by, they seemed inseparable. As an Indian woman of 32, Shilpa is coming under increasing pressure to marry — and her forceful mother, Sunanda, is said to approve of Kundra as a match. If the auguries are promising, however, the woman herself has remained curiously coy. Time after time she has refused to comment about her handsome shadow, save to issue firm denials. Raj Kundra, she said, was no more than a business partner.
Until now. Prompted perhaps by a new-found sense of happiness and security, Shilpa has confirmed to The Mail on Sunday that she and Raj are an item, her first romance since she arrived on British television screens last winter. In an unusually frank interview, the actress-turned-reality TV star reveals that the new relationship has transformed her life, bringing a long period of loneliness to an end.
Love, actually
She also admits, remarkably, that her glossy good looks have not always been a source of contentment — far from it — and that at one point anxiety about her appearance drove her to undergo a near-disastrous ‘nose job’ that even today she regrets. For the moment, though, such worries are well behind her.
“I am dating somebody,” says Shilpa, shyly. “I have known him for some time but I have only just started to know him better. “I hope he will be the one but I don’t want to say too much because it is still very early on in our relationship.” It is pretty clear that the man in question is Raj, a London-born entrepreneur, who, it is claimed, has made a fortune with jewellery and film businesses here and in India — although few formal records of his wealth exist in this country.
“I’m not going to deny that it’s him but please don’t say it is because I don’t want to frighten him off,” she says. It is a slightly puzzling sentiment. Raj does not look like a man who will be frightened away. He arrives with Shilpa when we meet, and is there to take her away afterwards. Their body language is unmistakably intimate. “He respects and understands what I do and it is nice to be cared for,” she says. “I have been very lonely for a very long time and it is nice to know I have somebody to look forward to seeing at the end of the day. At last I feel normal.
“It has been an incredible year for me but I have also been very lonely. I have been away from home, in a foreign country and I haven’t had a boyfriend for a very long time. “I need someone to woo me. Magazines are always saying I am beautiful and millions of men want to woo me, but none has come forward because they are all so scared.
“I can go to a party and sense that men really like me but they are in awe of me and won’t come and ask me for a date. Being an Indian actress is bad enough but now I’m a celebrity in the UK, it’s too much. It would take a really secure man to handle the media attention. “I’m eulogised by a lot of men, but they wouldn’t take me home to meet their mothers.”