Before Jaikishan Kakubhai Saraf became Jackie Shroff, he was a 16-year-old in Teen Batti who noticed a girl on a school bus. That girl was Ayesha Dutt, then 13, the daughter of Air Vice Marshal Ranjan Dutt and Claude Marie Dutt de Cavey, a Belgian countess. Their marriage on 5 June 1987—Ayesha’s birthday—joined two very different Bombay worlds, and the courtship story has kept its place in Hindi cinema memory.
The bus, then the record shop
On Rendezvous with Simi Garewal in 2002, Jackie Shroff recalled the first meeting on Warden Road, now Bhulabhai Desai Road. He saw a girl in a school uniform, he said, and the reaction was immediate. A few days later they ran into each other at a record shop. Ayesha made the first move and told Garewal she had thought, “This is the man I am going to marry.”
- First meeting: a school bus on Warden Road, Mumbai, then a chance encounter at a record shop.
- Their ages: Ayesha was 13, Jackie was 16.
- Wedding: 5 June 1987, which is also Ayesha’s birthday.
- Family: children Tiger Shroff and Krishna Shroff.
The letter to the other woman
The most surprising detail emerged when Jackie told Ayesha that he still had feelings for an ex-girlfriend who had moved to the US. Ayesha asked to write to her. According to Jackie, that letter invited the other woman to come back so that both could marry him and live together as his two wives. “I don’t know what I was thinking,” Ayesha said, laughing.
Both Jackie and Ayesha’s mother saw the relationship as a passing phase. Instead, Ayesha left an affluent life and moved into a chawl with him. Simple outings—a double-decker bus ride, long walks—became the foundation of a partnership that would outlast the scepticism.
Why it still matters
The story is more than a star romance. It is a neat counter-narrative to the idea that Bollywood marriages are only about glamour. Before producing and acting, Ayesha was Miss Young Indian 1980; Jackie would go on to Andar Bahar and Ram Lakhan and a career that has lasted over four decades. Their story links the chawl, privilege, a school bus and one very unusual letter into a remembered chapter of Hindi cinema’s off-screen history.
Source: NewsGram – Your Most Trusted Place for News with Substance
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