Anup Soni is a very happy and contented man. He is happily married to Ritu Soni who is a management graduate from Symbiosis, Pune and has set up her own software company. In his professional life also shares a very cordial relation with her co-stars and his producer and creative director Ekta Kapoor. He shares a very professional relation with the later and has been associated with her since a long time. Actor Anoop Soni and wife Ritu met to discuss a contract and ended up with a much more long-term one.
I was an actor but I was not a star. So I was apprehensive about how my prospective father-in-law, an Air Force officer, would react to me. He had seen me on television already. Ritu took me over to meet her parents who were posted in Trivandrum at the time. When her father came to receive us at the airport, it was funny because on the way home I was saying something and he was talking about something else. We didn?t know what to talk about. I stayed at the Air Force Mess. And I remember Ritu telling me later that her father had asked her whether she was serious about me or whether she was just testing me. Now her father, brother and I are on the greatest terms though I don?t get to see them often. They live abroad.
When I first met Ritu, she was a fresher from Symbiosis, Pune, who had just joined Lintas. I happened to be doing an endorsement with the company and she was handling my account. We started interacting so regularly that we became friends. It remained that way for about a year and a half till we both felt there was more to our relationship than just friendship. But there was no proposal or any such stuff. But we finally got married in September 1999.
When we got married, we were both starting out in our individual professions. She left advertising and ventured into software while I was acting full time. So we shared a lot about our professions which are absolutely different. Trust was an important factor in our relationship from the beginning. My wife knew she was marrying an actor, so she would have to live with the ups and the downs. In the beginning, I made sure I had my Sundays off. Now I can take any day off during the week because Ritu has opened her own company. And we also have a one-and-a-half-year daughter to take care of.
The thing that I admire about my wife is that she is very clear about what she wants. So when she was pregnant, she decided that she would not go back to a nine to five job. She worked till the last month of pregnancy and put in her papers. After the baby was born, Ritu took a year off and then launched her own company. I consider myself lucky. At the same time I am happy that she didn?t sit at home.
We have just bought a new house. I have to say Ritu is very patient and takes care of all the contractors and the labourers. I am sure I wouldn?t be able to do it so smoothly. She is nice to them and yet knows how to get the job done.
We do have our occasional fights. But when you are living under the same roof how long can you ignore each other? What matters is how one reacts to a particular situation. We usually come around on our own when we realise where the quirks lie. But when she is angry, Ritu becomes Ritu Duggal.