Driving Naari Programme launched in Chandigarh
Television actors and husband-wife Apurva Agnihotri-Shilpa Saklani remembered late actor Kushal Punjabi, who died by suicide in 2020. He was 37 and the cause of his death was depression.
Kushal Punjabi started his career as a model and dancer. He further ventured into acting with a television series called A Mouthful Of Sky. Apurva Agnihotri-Shilpa Saklani, in an interview with Sidharth Kannan, got candid about Kushal’s suicide.
Shilpa, who still cries whenever she talks about Punjabi, said, “We still can’t talk about Kushal without getting emotional. He started confiding in us and the only grief we had was how could he do this to himself. Shilpa still cries whenever we talk about him and I was angry at him. I didn’t cry when we went for his cremation as I couldn’t believe he did this. We can’t express in words what we went through when he passed away.”
Apurva and Shilpa felt guilty that as friends they couldn’t help him. Apurva said, “We felt a little guilty that as friends, we were unable to help him. In that phase, we almost needed psychiatric help due to that incident. However, a lot of our friends told us that you cannot solve this or help them completely. They need professional help with depression. One cannot continuously act as a shrine for the person who is in depression. We didn’t even pick up a single call to share what we were going through.”
He continued, “We were together the night before that incident and KP had told his whole family that was going to shift to Andheri so that he would be with us and start becoming happy like them. Every relative of his has come and told us this. This was his dream that the moment his lease would get over he would shift with us. He would start working out with us and bring happiness in his life.”
Apurva-Shilpa revealed Kushal’s broken marriage depressed him
“It was all because of the broken marriage. It took a huge toll on him, when the child goes far from you then things become more difficult. He was very upset but in the worst-case scenario, one cannot think that Kushal would do something like this.”
Apurva Agnihotri and Shilpa Saklani participated together in Nach Baliye and Bigg Boss. However, they didn’t win both reality shows
