The dad–daughter drift

Among the barrage of good wishes that Sanjay Dutt received on his 60th birthday on July 29, the one that was conspicuous by its absence was from the actor’s elder daughter Trishala.

Trishala has been living in the USA since her birth, away from her father.

But by the looks of it, the rift between dad and daughter has grown beyond geographical distances. We’ve understood that just a week before Dutt’s birthday Trishala had posted a heartrending message on social media about the death of her boyfriend. And Sanjay, we are told, had exhibited no reaction to this life-changing tragedy in his daughter’s life.

“It seems Sanju has shut the door on Trishala. They don’t communicate at all. He has zero knowledge of what goes in her life. There is no connect, direct or indirect, between them,” says a friend of the actor.

Even earlier, eyebrows were raised on the complete omission about Trishala from the Sanjay Dutt biopic Sanju. Filmmaker Mahesh Manjrekar, a close friend of Sanjay, had even commented on how cruel it was to leave out such an important part from the actor’s biography.

And now, the estrangement, which has gone beyond the denial of a daughter’s existence in a film, is out in the open for the world to take notice of.