The ‘Iqbal’ actor states that he has always been a man obsessed with work and running around like a “mad dog”. He explains, “Deepti had been telling me to slow down and I never listened to her. One of the examples was ‘Pushpa: The Rise’. She said, ‘You’re already shooting for two films and you want to go and dub for this one early in the morning when will you rest?’ and I would keep telling her, ‘This is the time. I don’t want to miss out on this opportunity.’ And she said, ‘These opportunities will come back.’”

Things however changed for Shreyas on December 14, 2023, at 6:30 pm. “Whatever happened in that split second, I had no control over it.” 

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Shreyas, who is a doting dad to his daughter Aadya maintains that it is important to not take our life and health for granted. He says, “I want to slow down. I don’t want to be the same person who was madly after work because there is work and you will end up doing the amount of work that is there in your destiny. I am worried about what if I am not there to spend time with my daughter. She has been equally understanding for her age because we play a game where I pick her up and move around the house and she’s flying like a bird but from the time that I’ve come back from the hospital she has not mentioned that because she knows that something has changed and I cannot be troubling my dad the way I used to earlier. And I feel bad about that because I am the one responsible. I want to see her grow up and it is only possible if I take care of my health as much as I can.”

Shreyas married Deepti in 2004 and is happy that he met the right person to spend the rest of his life with. "When I saw her it was dil mein baji guitar kind of moment and immediately in four days I told her, 'I think I’m in love with you and I want to get married to you.' Today when I look back I think I was extremely fortunate that I found the right person who sacrificed a lot for me and my career. She decided to take the backseat and take care of the family,” he avers.

“With the number of divorces and separations happening, you feel sad for people. I believe in the institution of marriage and I like it when I have to go back home and tell certain things to my family and my wife, share it with them. There is someone to listen right, there is someone for whom you’re doing all of this. There’s no fun in doing it for yourself. When you do things for them, the happiness on their faces is priceless. If they’re happy for you I think you’ve achieved a lot more and that is success for you,” adds the ‘Om Shanti Om’ actor. 

Meanwhile, on the work front, Shreyas will be seen in ‘Welcome To The Jungle’ directed by Ahmed Khan. When asked if things have changed for him on the film front owing to his health, the actor says, “My doctors have permitted me to shoot but it’s only as far as saying the dialogues is concerned. Right now no heavy-duty action or intense scenes for the first 3-4 months and gradually when my heart pumping starts getting better, I can slowly start going onto the next phase and change gears.”

“Ahmed knows about what has happened and that there will be certain changes. He assured me that we would go slow but sometimes these things are a blessing in disguise not only for the person but also for the film and you never know with this the character might shape up in a manner which wouldn’t have ever been thought of. So I am just looking at it positively,” he concludes.