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Raksha Bandhan| Rhea Chakraborty and brother Showik: We have gone through a life experience no other siblings would
On Raksha Bandhan today, Rhea Chakraborty and brother Showik Chakraborty talk about their special bond and how their unique life experiences have shaped it
Imagine a loving sibling pair from ’80s Bollywood and add a bit of Tom-and-Jerry-isque equation, and you have actor Rhea Chakraborty and her younger brother, entrepreneur Showik Chakraborty. Right from the bat, their cheeky responses and banter establish their fun equation, but on Raksha Bandhan today, their love takes the forefront.
“Raksha Bandhan is really meaningful for me. I share the deepest bond of my life with my sibling. Growing up, there was a time when I used to make rakhis also with different coloured wool. That's the only day in the year when I can tell my brother, ‘aaj to ache se baat kar le, lad mat’,” Rhea Chakraborty quips, adding, “ As I've grown up, the meaning of it has come to light to me. Showik has been there for me, by my side through thick and thin. We often joke that no one can understand our bond because we both have gone through a life experience that no other siblings would have gone through.”
Showik Chakraborty adds in saying, “From childhood, I've always had Rhea protect me, but the roles have changed in the past few years. Now, we both protect each other. With her, it's more like having a best friend in your sister, and also sometimes having your sister, mother and everything in one person, which also gets irritating at times.”
While Rhea is the celebrity, she reveals that it’s her brother who actually becomes the centre of attention when they are out together. “Showik gets so much female attention, it is insane. At events, I’ll see four to five girls hovering around him and they will randomly be extra nice to me. And because he calls me Rhea di, there are some 30 girls in Mumbai who call me Rhea di just to be in his good books. So, every girl who calls me that, I now know that she likes Showik,” she laughs. Ask Showik how he handles the male attention towards his sister and he says, “I am protective with any man around her, even if they are giving her attention or not. It’s an instinct as a brother to scan the person near my sister, but it’s easy as she hardly gets any attention.”
Rhea admits that while she always loved to ‘show off’ her brother due to his cuteness, in recent years, she has gone on to admire him for his inner strength. “I feel proud of the way he has healed and overcome the trauma that he has been through. While the spotlight was on me, he was silently healing and he just put his head down, he didn't complain, he didn't whine and he built from scratch. Today he is the CEO of a company that we have started together. It’s a proud moment for me to see how he's taken control of his life and rebuild himself not even from zero, but from minus,” the proud sister says.
Overwhelmed, Showik also reciprocates the love admitting that the way Rhea left her preparation for engineering to pursue her dreams at the age of 17, really inspired him. “She suddenly left everything she was doing and chased her dream of becoming something. That's when I realised my sister is something different. To come to Mumbai alone with only mom, and make a life for herself, her entire journey has been brilliant as you need to have guts to do that,” he says.
