Sharmila Tagore was the ‘breadwinner’ of the family, Tiger Pataudi played cricket for fun; there was no money in it: Soha Ali Khan | Bollywood News

Soha Ali Khan, who is the daughter of veteran actor Sharmila Tagore and late cricketer Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi, recently shared that her mother was the primary breadwinner of their family as professional cricket did not pay much back in the day. Soha’s father Mansoor was the ‘Nawab’ of Pataudi,which was one of the princely states in pre-independence India. Soha shared that her father, also known as Tiger, played cricket for fun, and not as a source of income.
She shared with Just Too Filmy, “We are often influenced people who are close to us and one big role model for me was my father, and the time I was born, he retired from cricket but he played for the enjoyment of the sport. There was no money at all, if you can believe, it in cricket when my father was playing in the 1960s. No IPL, no endorsements, nothing.”
She continued. “My mother was the breadwinner in the family so I always saw him saying, ‘You should do what makes you happy’, and I also saw my mother who also has been an actor her whole life, and she still chose to do whatever her heart prompted her to do,” she said, and added, “At the age of 24, she got married even though you typically don’t do that if you are a woman. You know that when you get married your career takes a bit of a hit. She had a child a couple of years later, and she continued to work and she had some of her biggest successes after that.”
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Sharmila and Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi got married in 1968 amid much tension due to their inter-faith relationship. At the time, her parents received many threats and one among them was “bullets shall speak,” she recalled in a chat with Twinkle Khanna on Tweak India. She shared, “My family had organised the wedding at Fort William because they were very worried about what might happen since there were a lot of threats. But, Fort Williams refused at the last minute because some of the baraats that were coming had some Army connection. In the end, they found some Ambassador friend’s big house.”
Sharmila and Mansoor were married for 43 years till he passed away in 2011.