EXCLUSIVE: Dia Mirza opens up about childhood; “I lost two fathers within one lifetime, it was very hard”

Dia Mirza turned environment activist, has always been rather vociferous about environmental and climactic change. In fact, Dia has been drawing attention to issues that have cropped up due to negligence of the environment. But away from all that, just recently Dia became a proud mother, and it seems like her joy has been growing each single day. Recently in an exclusive Bollywood Hungama interview, Dia opened up about her past, and shared what her childhood was like. In a candid conversation the actress and activist narrated what her late biological father Frank Hendrich, and her step-father Ahmed Mirza were like and the relation she shared with them.



When asked about her childhood memories, Dia started off with her biological father and narrated what she thought of him. “It was interesting; I can write a book about it. I have spoken about this before, I come from mixed lineage, my father was German and my mother is Bengali; my father was a very interesting man, someone who I really look up to and admire. Unfortunately, I lost him when I was only nine years old, but I have newspaper clippings that talk about his workshops that he conducted with teachers, that talk about his art... the paintings that he made or the sculptures that he made. I know people who still have pieces of his furniture. In fact, just recently someone reached out saying that they had a dining table set which he made, and offered to let me have it. So people are actually sending back certain pieces of his crat to me. He was a dynamic person, very well read. He travelled by road from Germany to India twice conducting workshops in the countries that he visited along the way through Max Mueller Bhavan, he was a deep sea diver, a rally driver, a painter, a photographer... some of my most beautiful childhood pictures are all shot by him. But I lost him when I was very young, my parents were separated when he died, and it took me some time to not just accept that he was no more but is like closure nahi mila, because I didn’t see him, I didn’t see his body, I didn’t fully understand that he was gone and I would never see him again.”