I had no friends till class nine: Disha

After almost three-and-a-half years, Disha Patani returned to Greater Noida recently. The actress was pursuing BTech from one of the colleges in Greater Noida, but after studying for a few months, she decided to move to Mumbai to try her luck in acting. And she was back in NCR as an actress to promote her upcoming film Baaghi 2. “It was after years that I drove past my college. All I remember about my brief stay in Noida is my outings to Connaught Place with my best friend. I loved going to that place and the Metro was the easiest way to commute. Now, I can see that there are so many colleges that have come up in the area,” says Disha, adding that acting was never on her agenda while growing up. “Acting just happened by chance to me, an opportunity came my way and I grabbed it. I wanted to be an Air Force pilot because my family background has been such. My father was an ACP and my sister is a captain in the Army. My family always stressed on education, but surprisingly, they were very supportive when I told them that I wanted to move to Mumbai, may be because they knew that I was mature enough to be on my own in Mumbai,” adds Disha.

The actress, who made her film debut with MS Dhoni: The Untold Story and has worked with Jackie Chan in Kung Fu Yoga, says that people still don’t know much about her. “I don’t have many friends in Mumbai. I go for dance classes, I do my training, I come home, I go to the gym, I sleep early and I don’t go out to party. I think people don’t know enough about me, but that’s how I’ve always been,” says Disha, who grew up in Bareilly and says that she was a shy kid. “I had no friends till I was in class nine, then I got one friend. I could not speak to anyone; my sister would come and have lunch with me as I would sit alone during lunch break. My sister was my best friend,” she recalls, adding that she loved playing basketball. “I was a state-level basketball player. Apart from basketball, if there was anything else that interested me, it was dancing. I didn’t learn dance in my childhood, but since last two years I have been learning hip-hop,” says Disha.

It was apparently her love for dancing and martial arts that helped her make at least one ‘friend’ in the industry – Tiger Shroff. “Since my childhood, I have been interested in martial arts and gymnastics, but I never got to learn it. When I came to Mumbai, I met Tiger and I saw him and his team doing martial arts and kicking and punching and I thought I should learn it. It’s been two years now that I have been learning the basics of gymnastics and martial arts,” says Disha.