Dia Mirza opened up about her desire to have some of her late father’s items in her home and how she eventually settled for what she had. Dia has opened out about her biological father, German artist Frank Handrich, who died when she was nine years old in a recent interview.
Deepa, Dia’s mother, is an interior designer from Bengal. When Dia was five years old, she and Frank split up. Frank went on to create a new family later in life. Deepa married Ahmed Mirza, a Hyderabadi man who subsequently adopted the surname Dia.
Dia said in an interview with Harper’s Bazaar that she wishes she had some of her father’s belongings but that they all went to her step-brother. “Everything dad owned was given to my step-brother, who was born after he departed. My step-brother came to visit my mother and me in Bombay a few years ago, and I was showing him around the home. He entered the corridor where I keep several portraits, including one of myself as a new born with my parents. All the years of anguish and baggage I’d been carrying over desiring my father’s possessions vanished in that moment… What I realised was that what I had was perhaps more valuable: my memories of him.”
Dia travelled to Germany in 2018 to meet her father’s side of the family. She showed them images and spent her days researching her family history. Dia talked about her father in an interview with Miss Malini. “At the age of four, I was completely devoted to my father; he was my idol.” In the scene in Lage Raho Munna Bhai where I am discussing how my father lied to me in the cab with Jimmy (Shergil) and how upset I am with that deception; I claim he is my Hero. “I always saw my father as a hero,” Dia said in the interview.
