Maanyata shocker: I was no fan of Sanju

Sanjay Dutt is no stranger to controversy and has been the enfant terrible of Bollywood. Wife Maanyata quietly entered his life and inspired him to clean up his act. Sanjay is now a changed man but in the process has ruffled many a feather. He lost many of his so-called 'friends' as it was buzzed that wife Maanyata did not approve of them. The recent strife between sister Priya and him has made headlines. Pursuing a political career Sanjay has shifted loyalties from Congress to Samajwadi and is also contesting the up-coming Lok Sabha elections on a Samajwadi ticket. This has not gone down well with his immediate family and it has been buzzed that it was a politically ambitious Maanyata who is said to be behind the recent developments.

Being in the eye of the storm it is but natural that Maanyata be interviewed. And she made it to the The First Ladies with Abu Sandeep, an in-depth chat show which is produced by SRK's Red Chillies Idiot Box.

Here are some excerpts from the interview.

Revealing that she planned a book on Sanjay titled 'The roar of the lion' Maanyata shed light on the two contradictory images of Sanjay. "From outside Sanjay is the typical macho man, to me he looks like a Greek God at times and I have no words to describe him. But if you look at him as a person, his heart, his emotions, his mind, his thoughts, he is just like a child, very docile, vulnerable and gullible. He is a person who will give everything for love," she reveals.

On whether peoples' attitude had changed now that she was Mrs. Dutt she retorted, that her being Mrs Dutt only mattered to impressionable people. But her friends who always had faith in her, and knew that she would be the "final Mrs Dutt", have not changed their behaviour towards her.

On how she relates to Sanjay Dutt as an actor she states, "The day I start relating to Sanjay Dutt as an actor, I don't think my marriage will work. I relate to him as a person. Koi subah uthke mujhe autograph nahin lena hai, nashta banana hai."

On when she watched Sanjay Dutt films as a teenager she hastily added, "I was never a Sanjay Dutt fan!"

On her childhood she said, "I was born in Bandra, Pali Hill. My parents split when I was a kid, so I have been living in bits and pieces with both my parents. But I have learnt a lot from being in a broken family. Being an optimistic person that I am, I took it positively and decided that when I get married I am going to make it work."

On her first meeting with Sanjay, she said, "We met nine years ago, for six years we were friends and we were seeing each other only for the past three years but nine years is a long enough time to know someone and to realise that you want to be with him forever."

About the enormous 19 year age gap between the two she responded, "I have always been mature for my age and Sanju has always been a little childish for his age, so it makes no difference now."

On going to all the way to Goa to get married, Maanayata said, "We didn't go to Goa to get married; we were already in Goa shooting for the movie Kidnap, which was planned four months ago. And Sanju was always an impulsive person, especially when you look at his second marriage. So on the 14th of February he just woke up and said lets gets married, and we got married in a temple at 4 a.m. in the morning. At that time, we had wanted to get married for quite some time but there were quite a few legal settlements pending with respect to his second wife. So those were settled on the 6th of Feb, the lawyers faxed us the papers and Sanju was just celebrating, and he turned around and said let's get married tomorrow. And there was ignorance of law as we didn't know that Goa has Portuguese law which is very different from Indian Law so you can't just get married. And Sanju is a big name, anything he does gets reported."

On Sanju's family and her family not attending the wedding she said, "Sanjay's sisters were informed but they chose to keep out. Even my family was informed but they stayed away as they weren't happy with the situation but then I told them ? "If loving Sanjay is not right then I would rather be wrong all my life."

On her supposed ex- husband casting all sorts of allegations she retorted, "I would like to clear this and ask the media and all the people watching this show. How can they believe a con man that has 365 cases pending on him with an average of almost one case a day being slapped on him?"

In the confession segment, she indignantly confessed that she would like to kill, "All the press reporters and people who write b******* about me without knowing anything about me."