Remember 'Aashiqui' fame Anu Aggarwal who shot to overnight fame after her debut opposite actor Rahul Roy?
Well, the former diva who was among the very few in the Hindi film industry to make it on her own and to redefine beauty standards to rule out the 'fair is beautiful dictum, Anu recently opened up about the 1999 life-threatening accident that changed her life completely and how lonely she was in Mumbai despite fans lining up outside her house for autographs.
After a brief stint in modelling, and VJ-ing, and her appearance in the 1988 Doordarshan serial Isi Bahane, Anu debuted in Bollywood. She had plenty of offers from down South as well as from Hollywood. And while in Bollywood too she had good offers from the likes of Rakesh Rosha and Mani Ratnam, Anu discloses that she lived a lonely life in Mumbai and did not have 'sugar daddies'.
She told ETimes in an exclusive chat, "After the success of 'Aashiqui', the kind of attention and love I got from the people was overwhelming. I was all by myself in the city as my parents used to stay in Delhi. When I would go out for a swim or dinner, fans would come and take my autograph; people used to stand outside my house to get a glimpse of me."
Anu said that she wasn't prepared for stardom. She also revealed that she never dreamt of being an actor. IN fact, all she wanted to do was work for the people and be associated with the United Nations.
She continued, "I was also managing a house alone and single. I didn't have sugar daddies. I had a boyfriend, but he was out of the city. And with long-distance, our relationship was getting destroyed."
Anu then spoke about how her uncle introduced her to yoga and in 1997, she joined Yoga in Bihar School of Yoga and stayed there as a Karmayogi.
"I used to live in an ashram before the accident where I had a spiritual name," Anu told Etimes.
Anu also revealed that after the 1999 life-threatening car accident that left her in a coma for 29 days, when she regained consciousness, she knew nothing except for her spiritual name.
"After the accident, I knew nothing, but I knew my spiritual name. In 2001, I took 'sanyas (renunciation)' and kept my head shaved. I lived with a bag in one hand, in humble surroundings. just studying the mind and human psychology. In 2006, I came back and started meeting people and the press stationed outside my house. I would greet them with humility," Anu said.
Speaking about her life after the accident, Anu told ETimes, "After the accident, I had forgotten how to apply lipstick too. Soon people started to post my 'before' and 'after' pictures. My no-makeup look pictures went viral. I was so shocked to see so much happening around me. I was trying to get better, and the least the press and the newspapers could have done was keep quiet rather than write stuff and post pictures about me. If they couldn't help me in my recovery, they shouldn't at least say horrible things about me, right?"
"Around 2007-2008, I was offered an overseas film, but I didn't want to do all this. I wanted to work for the people...If I had to only do movies, I would have done so 10 years ago and signed international projects 20 years ago. But my search was for something else; my needs, desire, and hunger were to do something for the people," Anu said. "And to do this, I had to separate myself from the world of Bollywood," she added.
Besides, 'Aashiqui', Anu has made her presence felt in films like 'Khalnayika', 'King Uncle', 'Janm Kundli' to name a few.
