We saw her as one of the hockey teammates in the movie Chak De India, and recently in the movie Tum Mile. Her acting was applauded even though the movie did not do well. And so it should be, as she is not just another new actress trying to climb the high Bollywood wall but one who is loaded with talent with a tragic past, which she struggled out of into a new life. Despite her young years, Vidya Malawade has known sadness and heartbreak at the cruel hands of fate.

I met her in early 2004 when we were going to the India Pakistan match in Karachi/Lahore. We were invited by Vijay Mallya and she was one of his guests. She told me she was modelling and wanted to join the movies. I nodded “another one amongst the million” I thought to myself. Another one with Bollywood aspirations, but this one was different. She is one of the sweetest people I know and has the strength and character that comes from having gone through the fires.
She wanted to enter the Miss India contest but instead she met the man of her dreams, Captain Arvinder Singh Bagga, who was flying with Damania. Vidya too straight out of school was flying with the same airline, and six months later they tied the knot.
“It was the most beautiful relationship. He taught me the good things in life and how to live. He was a mentor who stood strongly by me,” she said.
On July 17, 2000 (four years into their marriage) she got back from a flight and her key would not open the entrance door to her house. “I had an uneasy feeling as if there was doom lying ahead.” Her husband was on a flight and she decided to stay at a friend’s. Early next morning she flew to Frankfurt on her Lufthansa duty (she had moved jobs). When she reached Frankfurt she tried her husband’s number but could not reach it. Meanwhile, her mother-in-law called her informing her that Bugs (as she called her husband) had crash landed, all was okay, but that she should come back.
Vidya flew back in a daze, uneasy and uncertain. On arrival she found her parents and the chief of Alliance Air waiting for her. Her husband was flying for Alliance then. She felt cold and knew something was dreadfully wrong. Her worst suspicion became reality as she learnt he had died in the crash.
“No” she shook her head as numbness took over. “He always told me that he will take me everywhere with him. I have to just touch him and he will come alive and all will be fine,” she said in a stupor. She reached for his still feet when his body arrived from Patna in vain. “I felt my insides break and a sense of hysteria overcome me like a storm.”
“I knew what I was going to do.” On the third day she walked out of the house on the pretext that she wanted to take a walk and buy some Nariyal Paani and instead bought 150 tablets of Calmpose. “I just kept praying and asking Bugs to give me a sign that what I was about to do was okay.”
“My relationship with my dad had always been one of good times and rarely we spoke anything on a serious note. That evening he sat me down and spoke about how broken they all were looking at me like this. That must have been the sign. I had to look after them, my parents and my in-laws. How selfish could my thoughts have been? I felt ashamed. I threw myself into modelling and took double shifts on my flight schedules. My days were busy and my nights, lonely. Anger swept over me. How could you have left me?”
Time heals and came 2006 when she met Sanjay Dayma. “He is the nicest man I ever met and the wind beneath my wings. I feel this is a rebirth and I have two lives. I could not imagine anyone filling the vacuum in me.” Sanjay has. She married him last year. “Does he not feel threatened by the love you felt once?” I asked her. “He says he is the enlightened one who is strong and feels lucky to have me,” she smiled, her lovely smile that lights up her once sad eyes. “Losing my love again is my fear,” she says looking up “but I know Bugs has sent this love for me and he indeed is my guardian angel.”