Aishwarya Rai Bachchan had once addressed rumours that she had to marry a tree before she married Abhishek Bachchan. The actress, who tied the knot with Abhishek Bachchan in 2007, was reportedly ‘manglik’ and was asked to perform an archaic ritual to ward off ‘bad omens’. The rumours spread like wildfire at the time.

A year after the wedding, Aishwarya finally addressed the speculations. She said the media attention to it was ‘unnecessary’ and added that Amitabh Bachchan met with media to answer all their queries after the wedding.

“Yes, there was so much of that. I just thought it was so unnecessary. To dedicate the kind of prime time, the kind of newsprint, the kind of magazine cover stories for all of that was very unnecessary. The wonderful part was that as a family, we are solid. We are all in the public eye, and we have ample opportunity to voice ourselves, but instead of adding to the din, we decided to have the father of the family… Paa did meet the media at a very decided point in time way after the wedding, and answered all the queries,” she told NDTV.

“It’s shocking. While we would like to imagine that it is a passing phase, it gets logged. And I recognised it at times when you get to travel abroad, of which there is an ample opportunity… So, you’re constantly interacting with international media, and when they start wondering at the sheer ludicrous nature of everything, like, ‘You got married to a tree, and you have this huge curse on you?’ You just think, ‘Oh my god, where am I going to start…’” she added.

Aishwarya Rai, who was eventually dubbed as the Bachchan Bahu after the wedding, has been married to Abhishek Bachchan for 17 years now. The couple shares a daughter, Aaradhya. Abhishek recently made headlines for ‘liking’ a post about divorce.