Alia Bhatt: Inventing Her Own Grammar Of Acting

Never mind her goof up in a general knowledge quiz — Alia Bhatt has proved she has the smarts to overhaul standard romcom stereotypes with persuasive ease.

- Maithili Rao

The weight of cuteness is not to be borne lightly. Only a resolute actor with self-belief in her talent could have transited from the brainless bimbette of her debut — where she can’t decide who to love between two juvenile hunks caught in their own love-hate bromance — to the sex-slave junkie with a ferocious will to survive her victimhood in Udta Punjab, and then follow it up with Dear Zindagi, as the rebellious young cinematographer with a massive chip on her shoulder, holding her own in the charms stakes against our charmer-in-chief, SRK. In between came Highway, 2 States, Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhaniya and Kapoor and Sons. All of them, in their own way, underline the nuanced impact of an elfin with a transparent gaze and an infectious, dimpled smile. There was a spine that held up the petite frame; here was this girl of the fetching teenager look, with the nous to make fluffbelievable.

Alia Bhatt could have been crushed by the burden of being a reinvented Pooh (Kareena Kapoor of K3G) courtesy her fond mentor Karan Johar. He introduced the teenybopper as a dumb fashionista in his fantasy high school that glorified retarded adolescents for others similarly afflicted. In Student of