5 min readMumbaiJun 3, 2026 08:25 AM IST
It’s been 15 years since Madhuri Dixit relocated back to India with her family for good. The actor, who moved to Denver in 1999, after tying the knot with Shriram Nene, a reputed heart surgeon in the US, she was at the peak of her acting career. Over the next six years, the couple became parents to two sons — Arin and Ryan. While Madhuri slipped back into doing films, shows, and other commitments upon her return, it took Dr Nene some time to warm up to the life in Mumbai.
Madhuri on how Nene embraced India
“He used to come to India as a kid to meet his grandparents,” recalls Madhuri, in an exclusive interview with SCREEN. “But once you move to the higher echelons of education, it becomes very hard to visit. It’d been a big gap that he hadn’t come to India,” she adds. But Shriram Nene has now completely ingrained himself into the Indian culture, whether it is as a husband or as a content creator, his newfound profession.
“He’s amazing. Wherever he goes, he’ll get into the culture. He knows everything about everything. That’s what he did when we came back to India. He completely immersed himself,” says Madhuri, adding, “He loves India. He loves being here. He loves people. As you’ve seen on his Instagram, he’s enthusiastic about everything. He’s a doctor, but he’s also a techie. He loves to travel, cook, and those kinds of things.”
After tying the knot with Shriram Madhav Nene in 1999, Madhuri Dixit relocated to Colorado, eventually becoming parents to two sons, Arin and Ryan. (Express archive photo)
Madhuri even reveals that Nene has more knowledge about how a camera works than she does. “He knows everything about the camera. When photographers come home to click pictures, he’d ask them, ‘Kaun sa lens hai? Did you try that one?’ Even I don’t know so much about cameras, but he does,” she says, laughing. Nene even turned producer with Madhuri in 2019, when their banner RnM Moving Pictures bankrolled Marathi films 15 August and Panchak (2023).
Madhuri admits that before meeting Nene, she spent a good part of her life just running from one film set to another. It’s only after she tied the knot with him that she could realise her dream of having her own family. “A lot of people ask me, ‘How’s life after marriage?’ Before marriage, I was only working. My life started after marriage. That’s when I actually lived. I’m so glad I found him as my life partner, and we have a life together that’s amazing,” she adds, smiling.
Madhuri Dixit Nene with Dr Shriram Nene (Photo: Madhuri Dixit/Instagram)
Madhuri, Nene’s relocation to India
Dr Nene earlier shared a video on his YouTube channel, when he recounted how his parents were initially upset about him abandoning his lucrative and reputed job in the US to move back to India. “My parents certainly weren’t happy that I was leaving the prototypical job of a heart surgeon — kind of every Indian’s dream life — with a perfect situation, lots of friends, and being the head of the hospital. But later, when they saw the work I was doing with startups, they actually wanted to invest in them,” he said.
He also revealed the motivation behind quitting clinical surgery in the US and starting a new career in healthcare technology in India. “I could operate on at most three to five patients with open-heart surgery in a day, and maybe 500 patients in a year. It was incredibly rewarding to see patients leave the hospital healthy and to support their families, but when I looked at the world, I thought — there are billions of people. What if healthcare could reach the last mile through media and technology? What if you could put a doctor in everyone’s pocket?,” he added.
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Earlier this year, Madhuri also shared that there were personal reasons behind their relocation to India as well. “My parents were getting older, and they wanted to come back to India. All my life and career, they were with me, and I didn’t want to leave them alone,” she said on The Ranveer Show. Madhuri was also juggling her career in Mumbai and her family life in the US, shuttling between both so frequently that she ended up being “under the weather” during the shoot of her popular dance song “Dola Re Dola” from Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s 2002 blockbuster period epic Devdas.
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“I used to come to India, do my work, and then go back to the US. That was becoming very difficult because of the distance,” reasoned Madhuri, adding, “We both thought that maybe this is a calling, because everything was falling into place. I already had my work here, and he wanted a change as well, so we thought that moving to India would be a great move for the entire family.”
