‘When you’re told people want to rape you, it’s frightening’

Actor Dia Mirza, who was in Delhi to walk for designer Anju Modi at the India Couture Week 2017, has not just a lovely face but also a strong mind. And that is something Twitter trolls couldn’t digest. In this era of non-stop trolling, Dia recalls how, in her early days in Bollywood, she was targeted for expressing her opinion on various issues. In recent times, Dia’s tweets have advocated water conservation on Holi and a noise-free Diwali.

“In the earlier days, when I did get trolled, it frightened me. Because when you’re told that people want to throw acid on you, or they want to rape you, or kill you, or call you anti-national because of something that you’ve said... and they ask you to move to another country... and it’s all new to you, then it really alarms you,” she says.

The 35-year-old actor was trolled when she had tweeted and urged her fans to play a dry Holi. She had written: “The irony of the times we live in: farmers commit suicide due to drought and people waste water to ‘play’ #Holi. Go ahead call me antiHindu.” The trolls were quick to tag her as antinational. Dia was also called intolerant when she had tweeted about wanting a cracker-free Diwali.

Now Dia takes such crude reactions in her stride. “When you express your opinion on something that deeply matters to you, it doesn’t matter how people construe it. Those who are faceless, who make it their business to harass people, [don’t] need to be taken seriously,” says Dia, who will be seen in the Sanjay Dutt biopic; she plays the role of Maanyata, Dutt’s wife.

I’ve been in the public sphere long enough now to understand that we need to be like ducks and let this [trolling] be like water sliding off our backs DIA MIRZA, ACTOR

PHOTO: YOGEN SHAH