Nothing about Mahesh Bhatt is conventional. His family, his childhood, his films, his vision, his relationships, or his knowledge; nothing can be put into a box. The man who would be leaving behind a rich legacy for his kids has had a troublesome childhood himself. So it doesn't come as a surprise when his kids say he wasn't the ideal father to them back then.
"But I don't know what a father really is. I never really had one. I have no worthwhile memories of my father, therefore no idea of what a father's role should be. I am the bastard child of a single Muslim mother, of Shirin Mohammed Ali," Bhatt had told HT while talking about the absence of a father figure in his own life. He also said that he couldn't become the son his mother dreamt that he would. He tried but couldn't do it. He revealed that he was never good at school, couldn't get a job and was a disaster when he tried to do things the way the world wanted him to.
"But I came into my own when I stumbled upon my autobiographical idiom – where I got to say things the way I wanted to. To be able to talk about the 'hidden' things, about what I was embarrassed, about who I really was. So, all my dysfunctional relationships, beginning from my absent father, have helped me become who I am," he had further said.
Talking about the void in his relationship with son Rahul Bhatt, the ace director had said, "There was a wound there... I left home when he was around three and he felt I had abandoned the family for another woman. And this was a grievance I couldn't deny him because it was true. The father-son bond even though in tatters was never fully broken, so when the David Headley crisis happened, the family came together. Sunny (Rahul Bhatt) realised that the father he thought wasn't there, had never really left. Slowly we began rebuilding our relationship and I urged him to use his anger against me to fuel his goals. And he managed to do that."
