Actress Shahana Goswami of Rock On! fame recently opened up about her take on open relationships. She said that, at this point she does not have a “primary partner” and described the arrangement with a simple baseline: “love and friendship.”
What’s Happening
- In a recent podcast with Siddharth Kannan on YouTube, Shahana Goswami said, “It means open and honest communication with whoever you are with, being able to truly understand what kind of person your partner is and working on yourself. At this point, I don’t even have one primary partner like that. I have many people with whom I have long-standing dynamics, but it’s not casual. None of it is casual for me.”
- “So for me, at this point, openness means there’s no clear-cut partnership with anyone, but there is this feeling of long-term bonding and connection that stays with you, no matter what form it takes. Sometimes it’s just friendship. Sometimes it might be physical too. There’s no need to force it into some specific direction. The baseline is simple: love and friendship. I have so much love to give, then why should I give to just one person?”
- She added that nothing is secret with her partners, who know she is intimate with others too.
Ghosting In Open Relationships
Shahana Goswami also shared her views on ghosting in open relationships, and remarked that it does not happen with her.
She continued, “Actually, that doesn’t happen. I mean, it’s not like I ghost people, but this just doesn’t happen. Because I also know the thing is, when you’re this free, you know, it’s not like this just comes out of nowhere.”
“It’s not something from childhood. Maybe there was some potential leftover from childhood, but to get to this point, you really have to work hard on yourself. It’s not easy. It looks easy from the outside, but you have to deal with your own jealousy,” she added.
“I always felt that love should be free, that it should not become something that limits or confines the people involved in it. That belief has shaped not only the relationships I have chosen but how those relationships have taken shape over time,” the actress concluded.
On Her Whirlwind Romance With Milind Soman
In the same conversation, Shahana Goswami shared her love story with Milind Soman.
Milind was 43 and Shahana was in her 20s at the time.
“When I was 16-17 years old, I was in Delhi and one of Milind’s films had released. My school friends and I went to see that film. I also thought, why are we going to watch a model’s film? It would have very bad acting, but I was mesmerised by Milind in the film,” she told Siddharth Kannan.
Smitten at first sight, Shahana searched for Milind’s contact on the internet and ended up finding his cellphone number.
“After the film, I was obsessed with him. See how destiny played out. I was trying to find his address on the internet to send letters, and I came across his landline number. During that time, my father had gifted me a cellphone, which was very uncommon to receive at my age. Milind had left his cellphone number on his answering machine. I texted him and wished him on his birthday, and he immediately replied,” Shahana recalled, calling herself a “stalker fan.”
After the initial text exchange, the former couple didn’t speak on the phone for the next six years.
“We had an interaction over text for six years, never spoke on calls. Basically, I was a stalker fan, but whenever I even used to write letters to him, it was me trying to connect with the person. I never wrote ‘I love you’ like a crazy fan. I moved to Mumbai for college, and we met only three times. We bumped into each other. Six years later, when we were both single, I messaged him and then we started dating,” Shahana shared.
Breakup
Shahana Goswami also explained why they called it quits in 2013. “It’s just about timing. Till the very end, we were in love with each other. When you see that a relationship is not able to sync, you have to let it go,” she said.
The Santosh actor added, “I was in a phase of realising that I am not someone who can be in a conventional relationship. I believe in love very deeply but I believe in freedom. I have learnt over time that if you keep people trapped with yourself, that’s not love. Let them be. That was also a difference between us. It was a natural realisation that we are no longer compatible. We have a lot of love for each other but we don’t want the same things in the relationship.”
About Shahana Goswami
Her breakout performance in the 2008 film Rock On! is what caught everyone’s attention. Since then she has given some critically acclaimed performances in mainstream and independent cinema, such as Firaaq (2008), Midnight’s Children (2012).
She is also part of Santosh which premiered at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, but did not get a theatrical release in India due to censorship issues. It was scheduled to release on January 10, 2025, but then was indefinitely delayed due to CBFC demanding cuts.
Shahana Goswami was last seen in the Hindi film Despatch.
