Skeletons are out: Chunky & Neelam still a couple?

By Joginder Tuteja

It required quite some effort for Chunky Pandey to explain to her daughter that he wasn't having an affair with Neelam during his initial years in Bollywood. Reason being that with new films hardly in the offering, the little girl is glued on to TV and is catching up with re-runs of quite a few of her dad's movies that featured Neelam opposite her.

"I was zapped when she asked me whether Neelam was actually my ex-girlfriend. She has been seeing both of us so on TV so often that she suspected us to be having an affair during our Bollywood stint together", says Chunky with that mischievous grin of his.

Together, Chunky and Neelam have appeared in quite a few films like 'Aag Hi Aag', 'Paap Ki Duniya', 'Mitti Aur Sona', 'Kasam' and 'Khule Aam'.

Thankfully, it was all in good humour as his wife Bhawna too joined their daughter and started pulling his leg.

"It turned out to everyone v/s me", smiles Chunky, "Thankfully my wife was also a party to all the fun so the incident didn't take a serious turn. I am sure Neelam too would laugh it all away when she reads this. We all know how kids are and you can't keep them quiet from saying what they have in their mind."

With an extended TV stint, Chunky is enjoying his new innings, especially so since it has given his daughters an opportunity to witness their father on screen.

"Fortunately or unfortunately my daughters haven't seen much of me on the big screen", Chunky lightens up further here, "All they see of me is in TV shows or re-runs of my old Hindi movies. I guess time is ripe for me to be more prominent on the big screen and being seen alongside the fresh lot. It would be interesting to see whom do my daughters target next."

In Bollywood, Chunky would next be seen in Anil Kapoor's home production 'Shortkut - The Con Is On'. Directed by Neeraj Vora, the film features Chunky as a star secretary of Arshad Warsi.

"Correction, not a star secretary but a star maker", smiles Chunky, "I am like what Rikku (a veteran secretary in the industry) was to so many stars. My role also has shades of being an acting 'guru', just like Roshan Taneja. The film belongs to a different genre altogether and has a serious as well as a funny element to it."

Also starring Akshaye Khanna, Amrita Rao and Simi Garewal along with Sanjay Dutt and Anil Kapoor in a special song and dance appearance, 'Shortkut - The Con Is On' is one of the first films slated for release once the stand off between producers and multiplexes gets cleared.