“When will I be free?”
This used to be Sanjay Dutt’s refrain during the time he was being tried under TADA. Then it was tata to TADA, and Dutt could finally breathe a sigh of relief.
Sanjay Dutt has had the most eventful life imaginable ,with so many ups and downs from drug overdoses to cancer, that one could write a three-volume memoir on him, and still have room for a fourth.
Dutt once told me, “I’ve had a crazy life. I lost my mum (the legendary actress Nargis) when I was was 22. She was my world. She spoilt me silly. Anything I wanted was mine, all I had to do was just ask….not even ask. I just had to think of something I wanted, she would get it for me,” Dutt once shared with me.
Nargis’s death was the biggest blow in Sanjay Dutt’s life. He could never get over the loss. “She couldn’t even see Rocky(Dutt’s debut) film. Everything seemed useless thereafter.”
It is pretty much certain that if Nargis had lived her son would not have got himself into such serious trouble with the law.
“But the miracle was that I survived, thanks to all the goodwill that I’ve in the industry. When I came back (from his five-year incarceration) I got back my career. No one said, don’t sign him. Everyone welcomed me back,” Dutt had said.
Looking back it all seems like a blur of unimaginable activities or an actor who never really grew up. “At heart, I still feel I am Baba. But the mirror tells me another story.”
Sadly, Dutt has not done anything memorable on screen since Lage Raho Munnabhai. And that was in 2006. Ek aur Munnabhai toh banta hai.