By: Entertainment DeskNew Delhi | October 8, 2025 02:15 PM IST 4 min readMusic director Ismail Darbar, best known for his collaborations and subsequent fallout with director Sanjay Leela Bhansali, opened up about his second marriage and his wife’s conversion. He said that he didn’t force her to convert from Hinduism to Islam, and that she did it off her own accord. His second wife, Ayesha, originally went by Preeti. In an interview with Vickey Lalwani, Ismail said that he and his first wife, Farzana, had been at loggerheads for a decade, and had been living separately when he proposed to Ayesha. He said that Ayesha was herself engaged to a wealthy businessman at the time.Asked if his sons held it against him when he left their mother, Ismail said, “It is their greatness that they haven’t spoken rudely to me even once in their life. They still respect me.” He said that he simply didn’t get along with his first wife, but there was no problem between them otherwise. Ismail also claimed that his second wife wasn’t made to convert to Islam, but did it herself. Asked if it’s true that his first wife protested against this union by publicly getting together with some friends and singing his own heartbreak tunes at him, he said, “The thing is that she never expected me to do something like this. In any case, I was giving her the signal for around 10 years.”Also read – ‘It’s Zaid Darbar’s right to stop Gauahar Khan from working after marriage; I don’t watch her work because I’ll confront her’: father-in-law Ismail DarbarHe explained, “She trusted that I wouldn’t take a step like this, but when two people don’t get along, this is bound to happen.” Denying that he cheated on his first wife, he said, “One day, after we had had an argument, I called Ayesha and we went for a drive. After an hour, I stopped the car and asked her to marry me. She said yes. To be very frank, I started developing feelings for her. I had no idea at the time that she was engaged to a wealthy man. She had a bright future ahead of her. She would hang on to my every word; she thought I was a great music director. She became too attached to me after these heart-to-heart conversations.”Ismail said that after Ayesha said yes, he called up his mother and told her that he was going to get married again. Asked if he was still living with his first wife, he said, “Yes, but our differences were at a peak then. I had actually moved out and had been living in a different house for two months… I didn’t tell her anything, and I straight away went and got married to Ayesha in Surat.” Ismail denied having previously said that having two wives is a recipe for disaster, and credited Ayesha for sacrificing her career in the ‘glamour line’ to be with him, and take care of him. “She dresses me till this day, she ties my shoelaces,” he said.Ismail’s sons are influencers Awez and Zaid Darbar, who call Ayesha ‘Ayesha mummy’, and praise her for the way that she has raised their half-sibling, Imaan. In the same interview, he said that the ‘greatest thing’ that his wife has done is to sacrifice her career for the sake of their children. “I never had to tell them to call her ‘mummy’, but they did so themselves,” he said.Click here to follow Screen Digital on YouTube and stay updated with the latest from the world of cinema.© IE Online Media Services Pvt LtdTags:Ismail DarbarSanjay Leela Bhansali