Actor Mandana Karimi is back with more hope and renewed strength. She faced a tough time when she separated from her husband, businessman Gaurav Gupta, just five months after their January wedding, last year.
Mandana, who filed a domestic violence case against him and his family in July, says that initially, this upheaval did take a toll on her. “You do feel like everything is just over, and think about how you are going to start over again, dream again. I didn’t feel like getting out of the house. I was lucky I had some amazing friends around me at that time to support me,” says the Iranian actor, who got associated with an NGO to help underprivileged children after her separation.
Quick to bounce back, she says, “It took me three months to get back into shape. I had always been strong and independent. It was unfortunate that what I thought about marriage (it didn’t turn out to be like that). But this doesn’t make my ex-husband or me a bad person. In the beginning, I would question ‘why me?’ Now, I know it’s just life and could happen to anybody.”
