"I wasn't marrying a Pakistani. I was marrying a person I liked and he was marrying a person."
This was Indian tennis ace Sania Mirza response in her first media interaction, four days after she tied the knot with Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Malik(28), when asked about her cross-border marriage that hogged media limelight for days.
"It didn't matter if he (Shoaib) was from Timbuktu. He could have been from anywhere," Sania (23) said.
"I was marrying a person, not a Pakistani, people try to make it political but we were very clear that we were two individuals who were getting married just like normal people... Everyone had an opinion... but the most important thing is that now we are relieved as we are married," she said.
Sania said now that they are married, she wants to forget all the hullabaloo surrounding her wedding and lead a happy life.