Suhas Yellapantula (BOMBAY TIMES; February 14, 2020)

It’s Valentine’s Day and love is definitely in the air when we catch up with Shriya Saran at a studio in Hyderabad. She may be four thousand miles away from her husband of almost two years, but mention his name and she still blushes like a new bride. “I am in the happiest phase of my life and all credit goes to Andrei Koscheev,” she gushes, speaking of her hubby, a Russian tennis player and entrepreneur based in Barcelona.

Having moved to the Catalonian coastal city to live with Andrei, away from the hustle-bustle of Mumbai, Shriya says she has discovered a whole new side to her. She’s pursuing new hobbies, reigniting her love affair with dance and is on a quest to fulfill her insatiable thirst for travel. The actress, who’s been hitherto hushhush about her private life, opens up for the first time about her marriage. Excerpts:

You look happier than ever before. Are you enjoying married life?
Yes, I’m very happy. God has been kind and I’m blessed to have such a supportive partner like Andrei. I somehow like the word partner more than husband. Because Andrei is like my partner-in-crime, partner-in-fun and everything else. He’s really proud of me and my work. Whenever I’m stressed or worried about what I’m doing, he always tries to calm me down. He’s the best thing that’s happened to me and I’m loving every minute that I spend with him.

You’ve always been tight-lipped about your private life and that hasn’t changed after marriage. In fact, your wedding itself was very hush-hush and you promptly shot down reporters who asked you about Andrei. But you’ve slowly started opening up about your relationship to the outside world, be it by posting his pictures on social media or attending Ramesh Taurani’s Diwali party together in Mumbai last year. What changed?
I felt like there were too many negative comments going around. People would say stuff like, ‘Why are you marrying a white boy?’, ‘Couldn’t you find someone here?’, etc. But when you fall in love, you fall for the person he is and not where he comes from or what he does. And that’s what happened with me. Yes, I’ve always been quiet about my personal life and I’ve never really spoken about what I was doing apart from work. That’s because I’m a very private person outside of work. Of course, I’m a happy-go-lucky person, I have a lot of friends and I love people. But we all have a right to personal life. But yes, now, little by little, we’re slowly talking about each other publicly. It’s just so happened that I wanted to post a picture and in all the pictures, he was there. So I told myself, ‘Let us start with one’. We both were very nervous about it. Because if you’re on social media, you will get 90 bad comments and maybe 10 good ones. I told myself, ‘Concentrate on the positive and don’t bother about the negative’. After a while, I reached a stage, where I could tell myself, ‘Don’t concentrate on anything. You like a picture, just go ahead and post it’. In my case luckily, 99 per cent of the comments were good and only two-three were bad. So I thought to myself, maybe it’s not so bad after all.

Tell us more about your love story. Where did you first meet Andrei?
I’m not too comfortable going into the details, but yes, my love story with Andrei is beautiful and magical. We first met while I had gone diving in Maldives. He didn’t even know who I was when we first met. It was only later that he found out I’m an actress. A few months after we met, he asked me, ‘Do you have a movie online?’ and I said, ‘Yes I do’. So then, he went ahead and watched it. That was really sweet.

What’s the most romantic thing Andrei has done for you?
One gesture of his that surprised me the most was when he once took me to St Petersburg. I had shot for a song with Mahesh Babu there for Arjun (2004). Obviously, he didn’t know about this — or so I thought. When I reached St. Petersburg, he picked me up in his car and he took me to all the places where I shot and he kept asking me, ‘Do you remember?’ And I was like, ‘No, I don’t remember anything’. And then he started laughing and said, ‘You shot at all these places’. I was stunned and asked him how he knew this, and he replied, ‘Because I saw it’. That was the cutest thing he had done.

Ever since you got married, you’ve been shuffling between Mumbai and Barcelona. What’s that been like?
I love Mumbai... India is where part of my heart lies. Everytime I come back home, I gorge on paranthas and dosas and it makes me happy. I simply love Indian food. But I’m a completely different person when I’m in Barcelona. There’s no make-up and I get to walk around in shorts, without worrying about how I look or what I’m wearing. We live in the central part of the city, so I get to walk around everywhere. I have a foldable bicycle, so everyday I take it out and cycle around town. It’s great fun. I have a problem with directions a bit, whenever I want to turn right, I go left (laughs). And Barcelona has a completely different driving style. I do a lot of yoga and I’m learning Spanish. So I’m doing a whole lot of things that I really love. But I do love India and I get excited whenever I come here for shoot. So, I’m currently enjoying the best of both worlds.