Dia, Madhavan in Rehnaa Hai Terre Dil Mein; En Swasa Kaatre (right)

As told to Natasha Coutinho (MUMBAI MIRROR; November 13, 2018)

After my Standard 10 board exams, I decided that rather than sit at home twiddling my thumbs, I would do a summer job. This was in the mid-90s and for a girl in a conservative city like Hyderabad it was an unheard-of request. When I broke the news to my parents, they laughed at me and airily gave me the nod provided I found a job. I stumbled upon a media agency which was about to launch a touch-screen kiosk, like Hyderabad’s digitised Yellow Pages. I immediately set up an appointment with the owner, Dr Neeraj, and told him that my friends and I were done with school and there was time yet before junior college started. We were open to a job. To our delight he was ready to have us explain the features of the kiosk to customers after it launched at a bookstore. With my three friends I spent a week working at the store and made some extra pocket money. It was such a high!

When I went to collect my cheque, I enquired if I could continue juggling the job with college. They agreed and that was how, at the age of 16, I had a part time job. After a few months, I was proudly flashing a visiting card which listed me as a marketing executive. All this without an MBA. Woah!

I took the job very seriously. I would go to work religiously after college and actually enjoyed the experience. Many years later, I discovered that Dr Neeraj was my father’s friend. And the bubble burst! All this while I had believed I had actually earned the job when he might have just been indulging. But then I consoled myself with the thought that if I had not been halfway decent at it, he would not have kept me.

While doing the job, I was spotted by a model coordinator at Secunderabad Club. She insisted I looked good and should give modelling a shot. She even offered me a show that was happening that weekend and required me to walk the ramp. She was clear I had to attend rehearsals and be ready on time. She promised that I would get paid for my efforts. By then I had understood the independence that earning your own money gives you because I already had a regular flow of income. I did the show and it went off well. After that I got more offers and I would keep taking off to Bangalore.

My father’s friend who owned an advertising agency in Mumbai found out that I was modelling and was upset because I hadn’t approached him first. I told him I wanted to get the opportunity on merit. But that led to my first ad campaign.

Along the way, one of the first things that helped me pay for my portfolio was a lavishly-mounted song, “Jumbalika” in the Tamil film En Swasa Kaatre. I was one of the background dancers. I still watch it sometimes, I’m looking like this little child at 16. I also did a music video for composer M M Kreem.

Then, I was approached by The Times of India, Hyderabad, for the Miss India contest after I did a feature for Bangalore Times in 1999, portraying the woman of the millennium. They asked me to audition. I met Pradeep Guha and Femina editor, Sathya Saran. They liked me and that’s how I ended up in the Miss India contest in 2000. I was the second runner up. Lara Dutta won the crown while Priyanka Chopra was first runner-up. Lara bagged the Miss Universe title while Priyanka became Miss World. I won Miss Asia-Pacific crown.

After Miss India, I did a couple of music videos, among them Alka Yagnik and Babul Supriyo’s “Khoya Khoya Chand”. I also did a Sonu Nigam song directed by Ken Ghosh and another one by Anubhav Sinha. Soon I started getting film offers.

The first call was from Rajkumar Santoshi. I was training for Miss Asia Pacific and wasn’t sure if I wanted to do movies at that point as I was not allowed to shoot films before the pageant. So, I declined Mr Santoshi’s offer. After I won the pageant, a homecoming party was thrown for me at a five-star hotel in Hyderabad. I walked to the porch to see my friends off. Anil Kapoor and Anupam Kher were standing there. They noticed me and congratulated me for making the country proud. Mr Kher told me he is directing his first film and wanted me to act in it. I told him to meet my parents. He visited my place and assured my parents that I would be well taken care of. I moved to Mumbai and started doing workshops with Saroj Khan, prepping for my big debut opposite Abhishek Bachchan. The film was to be produced by Vashu Bhagnani. Suddenly two other offers came from the same production house and I ended up debuting with Rehnaa Hai Terre Dil Mein. The film was directed by Gautham Menon and a love triangle opposite R Madhavan and Saif Ali Khan. I didn’t do the other film.

Priya Gupta (BOMBAY TIMES; June 14, 2014)

Dia Mirza, 32, is sensitive, strong and pure, who may have become Miss Asia Pacific in 2000 when she was just 18, but has learnt from the many knocks she has got from life. She may have been cussed due to her German blood in the past, but has today learnt to be accommodating. Ahead of her second production Bobby Jasoos, she talks about her loving fathers, her strong mother and why she wants to marry her fiancé Sahil Sangha more than ever before. Excerpts:

Are you a Muslim since you write Mirza?
I was born and brought up in Hyderabad. While my father was German, my mother is Bengali. My father was a German architect and graphic designer, who travelled all over the world, teaching teachers on how to teach. On one such visit to the Max Mueller Bhavan in Delhi, he met my mother. Interestingly, my mother had taken German as a foreign language to study, so she could speak and read and write the language fluently. They had a whirlwind romance and they got married and I was born as a much-desired child. When I was just four-and-a-half, my parents separated and both my parents remarried. But my first father passed away when I was just nine. I hate calling my second father my step-father as he is not my biological father, but he was wonderful, was a fantastic parent who did not try and take my father's place and he too passed away in 2003. He was a Muslim from Hyderabad and I took my surname Mirza from him.

Talk about your upbringing?
I am the only child as both my parents did not have another child. But I was still not pampered as my mother, knowing that I was the only child, did not want me to be overindulged. She brought me up to be very independent and wanted me to be able to do things on my own, right from my formative years and so I would always be encouraged to cook or repair a broken gadget. I remember my early life vividly, be it conversations with my own father or what he taught me. Ours was a very creative home. He was my hero. He was everything that I could hope any man to be. He was incredible in communicating with me and was so creative and inventive. I know of parents flying kites with their kids, but he would actually make the kites and then fly them with me. I was just over four years old when my parents were undergoing their separation and I would stay weekdays with my mom and weekends with my dad. Once I had come back from school and was sitting on the steps outside his house, waiting for him as the house was locked. He got in a little later and saw me looking upset. He asked me, `Why are you looking so upset?' And I said, `That's because I have too many problems.' It's an amusing line for a child my age to say and he chuckled and said, `Really? Come, I will show you something.' He took me into my room in his house, which he had built with his own hands right from the bed to my cupboard to my toys. And he pulled out the earth map. He pointed out to the earth and the various continents, then he pointed out to India and then showed me Hyderabad on it that was just a dot. And I looked at him bewildered and asked, `Hyderabad is just a dot, papa?' And he said, `Now, can you imagine how big your problems are?' At such a young age, he had put perspective in me. And that story has held me in good stead over the years. Every time I am upset, I remind myself of that story .

Who do you love the most in the world?
My mother. I feel that the umbilical cord was never cut. My relationship with my mother goes beyond the normal because we have shared an incredible experience for most of our lives. Life has really pushed her around, she has lost a lot. I have seen her pick herself up and fight and work and make things happen. She was working for many years, but after losing my second father to multiple organ failure, she now lives with me in Mumbai and is working with alcoholics and addicts.

How did you become a Miss India?
I had just finished 12th standard exams when I got a call from a lady who was a family friend from the Times of India office in Hyderabad, who had seen me doing some fashion shows. And she told me about the auditions and was wondering if I'd like to come for it. I had never thought of it before. For me, vanity and beauty was not of much significance. But one of my close friends wanted to participate, so I tagged along with her. Even though I am 5'6“, they found me short. But to my surprise, I got a call later saying that I was selected and that I would need to go to Mumbai. Now they pay for everything, but, at that time, we had to take care of our own boarding and lodging and travel. I had some money that I had saved, working for a multimedia company at the age of 16. I started working as I wanted to buy a fancy pair of shoes and my mom had refused, saying that my feet were still growing and that I could buy them later when I made my own money. I was angry and told her, `You wait and see, I will own my car at 18 and my house at 21.' And, in that fit of anger, I took up that job parallely while studying. I used that money to come here. My mum was very against it, as she wanted me to go to law school in Bangalore, but my stepfather convinced her. There was an insane situation I had been in. There was this boy who was obsessed about me and I was going through hell about it and so my father told my mother that the best thing in such a situation was to allow me to go from Hyderabad, as he felt it would give me perspective. We did not have an affair but he was a really messed up influence. I thought I was in love and wanted to marry him even though he was much older. Coming to Mumbai worked. I got over him, participated in Miss India and then became Miss Asia Pacific. Participating in Miss India was a paradigm shift and I had a blast. Going for the international pageant was the first time I had gone out of India. My passport was first made for the Miss India pageant. From being a regular kid, I suddenly got a lot of attention, adulation and respect and I started getting a lot of Bollywood offers.

What is the biggest knock in life that affected you?
My father's death. I was holding on to him as he meant everything to me. His second wife was pregnant when he passed away and she went on to marry again. So I was the only child in his life. I did not get to see his dead body as we were not a part of his cremation. Before we could even get there, it was all done as his family did not wait for us. So I didn't cry as I didn't believe he was dead for a long time.

Did you ever get attached to your stepfather?
I got really attached to him only much later while I was in my teens and that attachment was born from deep respect for him. He never tried to take the place of my father, but only tried to form his independent relationship with me. When I was younger, he did not know how to communicate with me. But I really got attached to him after I left home and it's only when I moved to Mumbai that I realised what a significant part he had played in my life and how much I really loved him.

I couldn't go back to Hyderabad to live with him, but I am happy that I got a chance to express my love to him in his last few years. I can never forget the day he came to Mumbai and stepped into the house I had bought and made at 21, exactly the way I had said it in my fit of anger to my mother. The name plate outside my house reads `Mirza.' I didn't know whether he would notice it. But he got off the lift, noticed it, stopped outside and had tears in his eyes and he hugged me. And he said, `Tu meri beti nahi, tu mera beta hai.' He died about a year after that. I was shooting in London for a film and mum was with me.

While usually, she never travelled with me ever, that was one time when I had pleaded with her to come with me as it was a long shoot. At night, we got a call from my cousin saying that my stepfather had been hospitalised and that he was in a coma. She rushed back. She had heard that even when a person is in coma, you can hear what is being said to you so she started talk ing to him. She called me and said, `Do you want to talk to him?' And I said, `Yes.' She put the phone in his ear and I said, ` Appa, you promised me that you would get me married. So you can't go anywhere before you do that. You have to wait for me.' And apparently, in his coma he blinked. And that is the last thing I said to him.

You are now getting married to Sahil Sangha in October. Talk about Sahil?
I like his mind the most, his values, the way he thinks. I have never seen him treat people differently. That, for me, is the biggest thing. It's rare to come by a person who has the ability to put everyone before themselves, and to just treat everybody with dignity. In my mind, I have been married to Sahil from the day we have known each other. I am a great believer in God's timing. And there must be a reason why it didn't happen when it didn't. But I think, now more than ever, I want to be married to him. We have fixed October 2014 and if it does n't happen then, I will not marry him.

Have you changed?
I am very cussed. I don't believe in giving in and I don't believe in giving up. When I was growing up, I felt that life has handed me a raw deal, which I feel stupid about now. I may not have had things written out in a story book, but I had much more than most people do and I have learnt to become grateful for that. I have become extremely accommodating now and have under stood that my German blood some times needs to take a backseat. I am a stickler for attention to detail. I like to see things done in a meticulous manner, but have understood today better than ever before that not everyone will function at the same pace and manner in the way that you do.