"I come from a broken family. I was very young (in my fourth grade) when my parents split. They never got divorced but they were living separately. It was a rather traumatic time for me. My whole childhood, I was living in different places with them; changing schools, changing friends, changing my life. My earliest memories of school and college are of happen with me. I guess, at the end, it all depends on how your mindset is. If you're optimistic in life, you can handle any kind of a situation. That's what I've learnt from my life. There's no point weeping or crying or fighting over any situation. You just have to keep going on"
Ulike what most people believe, Maanayata has been a Mumbai girl and eventually, that's what led her to the arc lights. She did an itsy-bitsy song number in prakash jha's 'Ganggjal' but that's where her Bollywood dream ended. "You know, life is very strange," she says, looking back. "Actually, I never had any ambitions of getting into movies. Since I never really had much of a family lif, I was into extra-curricular activities - like working out, mainly. I had joined this very so-called filmy gym called Barbarian. All my fiends over there were either wannabes or actors. I know people like Zayed Khan from my gym days. And when you are young, you're really inspired by your peer group. You want to do what they're doing, irrespective of whether you're meant to do it or not. That's how I met prakash jha's daughter, Tisha - she used to be this motu and she'd come to the gym to lose weight. One day, she told me her dad was looking for someone to do a song in his film. That's how I ended up doing 'Gangaajal'. But my family wasn't happy with my decision. They didn't respond well to it. They were very conservative Muslim background, I had to stop. I didn't want to hurt them so finally, I said forget it. I decided to choose my family over my career."
Maanayata wast never a Sanjay Dutt fan even though he was a major star when she was still studying. "I grew up watching Amitabh Bachchan movies but I was a hardcore Vinod Khanna fan. In the later years, I had seen many Sanjay Dutt films but I was a die-hard Salman Khan fan. For me, Sanjay Dutt was definitely someone who had an aura. He looked like a Greek god then; he still looks like one. I remember I was in the ninth standard when 'Sadak' was released and I was real life changed all that. "I first met Sanjay more than nine years back. I was sitting at Hotel Regent in Bandra, Mumbai (now Taj Land's End) with some of my friends and Sanjay was there too; he was sitting a few tables away with his gang. One of Sanju's friends is a builder in Pune and owns the E-SquareComplex; he is married to my friend. He was sitting with Sanju. When he saw me, he came over to my table. Thenhe introduced me to Sanju. We were both seriously into workouts at that time so we hit it off really well. After that, we kept bumping into each other at parties, clubs and even coffee shops. We had away in 2005, Sanju was going through a very bad time. He was very lonely. He would call me often and we would talk for hours. In those four-five months, we actua became close."
They really started to get to know each other better when they were friends. "I used to go across to his gym to work out with him. At that time, I was going through my own personal problems. And he was always there for me. Most of my growing-up years, I lived with my father. After he died in 2003, I was really alone. I'm not close to the maternal side of my family. So there were marriage. Sanju was someone I could trust. I'd gone through my own mess and he knew everything about it. He was going through a bad time and I understood him completely. So there was a lot of understanding and love for each other."
Maanayata was taken aback when Sanju took a deeper interest in her. As she says, " One fine day in October 2005, he just called me and said, 'You are the woman I'v been waiting formy whole life.' It was around 3.30 in the morning and to be very honest, I just thought he'd had a couple of drinks and that was just a statement in that moment. I didn't say anything. Then, the follwing night, at around 8.30 pm, he called me and said, 'The whole day I waited for your answer. Am i that bad a person?' And i wondered, what's he saying? is he serious? Then, in December two months later, he proposed marriage to me."
The fact that Maanyata was previously married and divorced didn't affect Sanju's decision one bit. She has no reservations talking about that part of her life. "Are we not allowed to have a past? Everybody has a past. If anybody says he or she doesn't have a bad past, he or she is a liar. I'm a very optimistic person. If I start deciding my present and my future depending on my past, I won't be able to live. When I look at my parents' marriage, it gives me all the lessons I need. It was a love marriage and yet it didn't work. If I had to go by their experience. I would've probably never got married. You have to let the past go. Everyone goes through their ups and downs. I knew Sanju for nine years. I knew exactly what problems he was going through. I knew exacly what he wanted in his life and more than me, he knew it too. My being there or not being there didn't actually make a difference. He had actually made up his mind. Like I said, we started going out in October and in December he proposed marriage to me. He wasn't standing on a shaky ground. He knew exactly what he wanted."
Maanayata can not forget the first time she actually realised she had some sort of a connection with Sanjay. "The first night we met at the coffee shop, we hit it off really well. The night after that, we were partying and he had an early morning flight as he had to shoot for 'Kaante'. I remember, when Sanjay was leaving, he came across and hugged me. Sanjay is a very warm person and when you hug someone, you can feel that warmth. I went number; I actually went cold. I didn't know what happened to me. Then he started walking towards the exit while I made my way towards my table. And I don't know why, I just turned around to look at him and he was still standing there, looking at me. I can't define that moment. But there was something that clicked there; there was a connection. The strange part is that we hadn't even exchanged numbers even though we kept bumping into each other at various places."
Sanjay's sudden marriage proposal to Maanayata may have come across as a surprise to the public in general but people close across as a surprise to the public in general but people close to him knew it was going happen sooner or later. "Sanjay is an introvert," says his wife. "But when you're sure of what you want in your life, you find that confidence. Even before he proposed to me, all his friends knew that he wanted to marry me. And when I realised this, even I found it strange because Sanjay is a very private person. Once we were sitting on his terrace, much before he proposed to me. I was chatting with all his friends. And they all told me that Sanjay had told them he was intending to marry me. A few days later, Sanjay had a mata ki chowki in his house. At few days later, Sanjay had a mata ki chowki in his house. At that time, I hadn't met all his friends. He had invited me for it. And he'd told all his friends that the woman who's going to come here today is the one for me. Whem his friends told me that, I was taken aback. He was in another room so I called him out and asked him what this meant. I told him that everyone here knows you're marrying me - except me. He then asked me, 'So what's the problem? Don't you want to marry me?' I said I'd love to marry you but at least I should know that you want marry me. 'How do I tell you that? he asked. So I said he'd have to go down on both his knees and propose to me. So six days later , on the 31st of december, he threw a party. That's where he presented me with a two-carat diamond ring and proposed to me. It was truly romantic. He didn't know my ring size so he went and got just the diamond. Then, at the stroke of midnight, he went down on his knees and proposed marriage."
It's only after Maanayata accepted his proposal that Sanjay decided to go public with the relationship. He made an entry with her at an event early last year and people couldn't stop talking about them after that. " It was totally his decision." says Maanayata. "I was a bit reluctant because I wasn't sure how my familly would react to it. I hadn't told familly would react to it. I hadn't told them about me and Sanju till then -they only got to know of it through the newspapers. See, Sanju was sure of marrying me so he announced it in public. I was still unsure because I wasn't clear whether Sanju would actually marry me. I didn't want my family to hyperreact, which is what exactly happened. My mom was very unhappy. The only thing that I told her then was that if loving Sanjay wasn't my whole life."
Onec they were in the public eye, Maanayata discovered the uglier side of fame. People close to Sanjay heaped accusations on her; the media questioned her credibility. She wasn't prepared for such scrutiny then. "Whenever there is power, money and position, there are bound to be controversies. When I came into Sanju's life. his whole life was totally messed up be it his finances or on the personal front. I came into his life like barricade. I was filtering the right from the wrong. From the perspective of some people around him, I wasn't supposed to be there. Sanjay was supposed to live alone and die alone. I was like a surprise package for a lot of people who didn't want me. But I had to happen and I was ready for it. There were stories about me in the media. First, they didn't know my name so they called me Dilnawaz. They didn't know anything about me but they pretended to know. Somebody mentioned that I was a ninth grade failure in school. My only request to everyone is - please know a person first before judging that person. People thought every time something about me came in the papers, me and Sanju would fall apart. But that didn't happen because we know each other so well. Once, somebody wrote that by the looks of it, when I'm 80 years old, I'll be giving tough competition tho Elizabeth Taylor. We laughed and that's how we learnt to tide over these issues."
