MUMBAI: Actress Kajol Srivastava, who was last seen on Karmphal Daata Shani, is all set to get engaged to Ankit Khare, an IT engineer, on November 24. The engagement will take place in her hometown Bandha, Uttar Pradesh. Interestingly, her relationship is a classic ‘didi-tera-deewana’ tale. Ankit is Kajol’s sister’s brother-in-law and it was during her sister’s wedding in April last year that they first met. 

Kajol shares, “My sister had asked me to help my jiju (brother-in-law) with shopping. I, along with my family, went to Pune 20 days before the wedding and that’s when I first met Ankit. I hated him initially, because he came across as arrogant. However, I soon realised that he was an introvert, who took his time to open up to people. He is a genuine and loyal person. We kept in touch after the wedding and became really good friends by November. What helped us bond over was our love for travelling and the fact that both of us are family-oriented. Soon, we realised that what we shared was more than just friendship. The rest, as they say, is history.”

The two have been in a long-distance relationship, as Ankit has been working in Denver (US) for the past four years. Ask Kajol about the challenges of being in a long-distance relationship, and she replies, “The challenges are trust issues and time difference. However, he made sure to keep in touch with me through phone and video calls. We trust each other blindly, and would constantly update each other about whatever we were doing. Ankit has put in a lot of effort to make it work.”