Sanjay, Manyata finally become Mr. & Mrs. Dutt
Noreen Aslam

MUMBAI—A visibly happy Sanjay Dutt married Manyata according to Hindu rituals at a friend’s house here Monday, five days after their court marriage in Goa. The Bollywood star’s two younger sisters, Priya and Namrata, and other family relatives did not attend the ceremony.
The Munnabhai star, accompanied by a few close friends, arrived at Versova, a posh locality in north-west Mumbai, for the ceremony in the morning with the band playing music.
The merry-making baratis comprised only a few close childhood friends of the actor. Except for Suneil Shetty and director and TV presenter Sajid Khan, his colleagues from Bollywood were also not present.
He had married Manyata, his girl friend of two years, at a quiet court marriage in Goa Thursday, Feb 7.
The marriage rituals Monday were held at the seventh floor flat of a friend in a high-rise residential building in Versova. Since, according to Hindu custom, the girl has to be ‘given away’ in marriage by her parents or close relatives, Manyata had arranged the sacred formalities at the house of one of her friends.
“It was a private ceremony held at a friend’s house. So, Sanju called only his closest friends. He may host a reception for the industry later,” said Bunty Walia, a close friend of the Dutts.
When asked why she did not attend, Priya Dutt, Congress MP from northwest Mumbai, feigned ignorance about the ceremony. She said she had come to know about it after television channels telecast the proceedings live.
The newly weds interacted freely with the media and both were courteous to journalists, unlike in the past when they tried to avoid them.
Happiness was writ large on their faces as they came down from the seventh floor after the rituals were over.
It was years since Sanjay has let himself go in public as uninhibitedly as he did Monday, as a band played the beat of a popular marriage movie song.
Suddenly, the lines of anxiety observed when he had come out of jail last time disappeared from his face as he mingled with the invitees and the waiting media-persons.
On Monday, the couple was no longer cagey about the whole affair, which was the subject of much speculation since October 2007.
They went out of the way to portray themselves as a happily married couple, unmindful of all the controversies dogging them. They also willingly posed for photographs.
When we first broke the news about their being husband and wife after they put in an advertisement as “Mr. Sanjay Dutt and Mrs. Manyata Dutt” in Shiv Sena’s mouthpiece Saamna offering their best wishes to Shiv Sena supreme Bal Thackeray on his 82nd birthday Jan 23, the duo had not reacted.
On Feb 9, Manyata attended a public function sporting vermilion, traditional mark of a married Hindu woman, on her forehead, and admitted that she and Sanjay were married.
“The point is, Sanju is happy and so is Manyata. That is all that matters today,” quipped an invitee, a production executive of many Sanjay starrers.