Nawazuddin Siddiqui Apologises, Withdraws Biography After Going Public About His Illicit Affair With Co-Star Niharika Singh - by Suhel Johar

Extra-marital affair, contemplating suicide, two-timing his girlfriend and what not. Nawazuddin Siddiqui's biography An Ordinary Life: A Memoir, left people trying to pick up their jaws from the floor. The explosive revelations, goes without saying, rubbed people the wrong way.

While Nawaz expected his book to have an effect of the kind, his ex-girlfriend Niharika Singh has torn into him for using her name and their relationship for the sole purpose of selling his book.

Here's what has gone down in the last couple of weeks as far as l'affaire Nawazuddin Siddiqui-Niharika Singh is concerned:

Nawazuddin Siddiqui bared it all in his book. He says that he was in a relationship with Niharika Singh, his co-star from the film Miss Lovely, for a year-and-a-half. During the shoot of the film, Nawazuddin once invited Niharika to his house because she was upset with something. He cooked mutton curry for her, which he later realised, was inedible.

But Niharika did not tell him that. She instead, invited him over to her place, saying that she would cook mutton curry for him. When Nawaz reached her house, he was stunned to see a hundred tiny candles glittering all over the place.

Niharika opened the door, dressed in faux fur, says Nawaz. "She (Niharika) wore soft faux fur, looking devastatingly gorgeous, her beauty illuminated even more in the candlelight," says his book. Calling himself a 'village bumpkin', Siddiqui describes the rest of the night. He proceeded to 'scoop her up in his arms' and "headed straight for the bedroom. We made passionate love. And just like that, out of the blue, I began a relationship with Niharika Singh, a relationship which I did not know then would last for almost one and a half years," says his book.

Around the same time Nawaz was in a relationship with a Jewish girl from New Jersey called Suzanne. She moved in with him in his Mumbai house soon after they began dating and would keep extending her visa for a short period. Even after she left for New York, Suzanne kept mailing Nawazuddin, he says in the book.

By this time, the shooting of Miss Lovely had begun. Siddiqui got into a relationship with Niharika Singh. Nawaz says in his book that he didn't have the courage to reply to Suzanne's emails. And one day, all hell broke loose when Niharika spotted an email from Suzanne when he was checking his mails. Niharika took on the task of clarifying that Nawaz's relationship with Suzanne was over.

"From that day, Niharika began to send emails to Suzanne from my email address. She would type, 'I cannot continue with you...' and sign off as me. Imagine the shock for Suzanne. She would send heartbreaking replies like: 'What happened, Nawaz? Please tell me,Nawaz! ... I am crying, Nawaz! Tell me, please.' It was absolutely awful. I simply could not endure it! It was as if she was screaming, crying out aloud helplessly in unbearable pain. It was apparent that the emails had some sort of a multiple personality disorder. After a few of these email exchanges, Suzanne figured that this was not my voice at all. 'Who is this writing, Nawaz? I know this is not you. Somebody else is with you,' she wrote back," Nawazuddin describes. Soon, Niharika made sure that he snapped all correspondence with Suzanne.

While all the details of his relationship with Niharika might make for a fast read, the Miss Lovely actress is mighty irked with Siddiqui. She hit back at Nawaz with a statement to the media. She also revealed in an interview that she did not know that he was married when they began seeing each other.

"I found out only after I was with him that he had a wife in the village whom he never spoke about. With Nawaz, it's difficult to tell who he's with because he would rarely give me a straight answer," Niharika told a website.

Niharika's statement accuses Nawaz of fabricating stories to tarnish her reputation, only to ensure that his book flies off the stands.

"Nawaz and I had a brief relationship in 2009 during the making of Miss Lovely that lasted less than a few months. So today when he paints me as a woman in fur enticing him into her bedroom with candles, or desperately calling him and mailing other women on his behalf, I can only laugh. He obviously wants to sell his book and it would appear that he is willing to exploit and disrespect a woman just to do so. He has chosen to fabricate stories and manipulate a fleeting relationship. None of what he has written has been with my knowledge, let alone my consent. It is this very aspect of Nawaz that caused me to end my relationship with him in the first place. I have always maintained that he's a brilliant actor. However, I had hoped these acting skills would have remain confined only to the screen. Still, I wish him well," Niharika said in her statement.

So, nobody knew that Nawazuddin Siddiqui had an illicit affair with his Miss Lovely co-star Niharika Singh until the excerpts of his upcoming book An Ordinary Life: A Memoir were published in the print media.

After Niharika Singh, Nawazuddin Siddiqui’s first girlfriend Sunita Rajwar also reacted angrily to his ‘Extraordinary Lies’ and lashed out against the actor. Nawaz's revelations are fabricated said Sunita Rajwar.

She also said that his version that she left him because he was a poor struggler is totally untrue. She says it was his “poor thinking” that prompted the move. It seems the fact that Nawaz was discussing intimate details of their relationship with his friends and laughing about it, made Sunita call it quits. She also says that they did meet at NSD unlike his version of their meeting during a play in Mumbai.

From Sunita’s post, it is apparent that she has taken a dig at what she calls the actor’s attitude to seek sympathy. She also said that he was better off than her unlike what comes across in the memoir. The lady has written that as a man, he is unable to respect women and love and that was her issue with him.

Obviously, the two ladies with whom his dalliance has been described in detail are mighty displeased with the actor’s apparent fabricated version of their relationship with him.

Nawazuddin Siddiqui's biography, An Ordinary Life: A Memoir, published by Penguin, is written by Rituparna Chatterjee, was available at bookstores and online for a few days.

Accused of exploiting and disrespecting a woman to sell book. Nawazuddin Siddiqui later not only apologised but also announced the withdrawal of his book An Ordinary Life: A Memoir after a complaint was reportedly filed against him for outraging the modesty of his Miss Lovely co-star Niharika Singh. According to reports, the complaint was filed by Delhi advocate Gautam Gulati at the National Commission for Women (NCW).

Fearing further backlash Nawazuddin posted an apology on Twitter, “I am apologising to everyone who’s sentiments are hurt because of the chaos around my memoir ‘An Ordinary Life’. I hereby regret and decide to withdraw my book.”