Speaking to the magazine, Richa recounted the first time she knew this was love. “We were at my house watching Chaplin - the 1992 British-American biographical comedy-drama starring Robert Downey Jr. I was happy to see him enjoy the movie and was grateful to have found someone with similar tastes. That is when I said, “This is really sweet, I love you.” to him. It took him three months to say I love you back to me.”
But Ali has a special reason why he loves his Kuki (as he affectionately addresses Richa). She is Ms Butterfingers, he says fondly. “She thinks I fell in love with her only because of her clumsiness - and it surely is one of the reasons. She is as clumsy as it gets. If she is eating, there will be glasses spilling , food will be all over the place, and cutlery will definitely fall. Her most embarrassing clumsy moment was in Venice. It was at a fine dining event and Judi Dench was sitting at the next table. Suddenly a bean went flying over - of course, it was from Richa’s plate. She calls it her Pretty Woman moment!”
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But of all the glorious proposal stories you’ll ever hear, here’s the most heartwarmingly romantic woman. On being asked how Ali proposed, Richa said, “He had planned a romantic dinner on a small, secluded island in the Maldives. I thought it was for my birthday - I didn’t suspect a thing. We had finished eating and were sipping on champagne when Ali, being his spontaneous self, asked me to marry him. He didn’t go down on his knee, nor did he have a ring but that’s all right. After that he took a 10- minute long nap on the sand - I think it was because he may have been stressed about the proposal!”
After decades of celebrating stories of elaborate proposals, here’s a couple that committed to a lifetime of companionship with a simple promise of being there through thick and thin. Richa quoted Javed Akhtar’s iconic line, “Hamari dosti itni pakki hai ki shaadi bhi iska kuch nahi bigaad payi…”