Yes, you Kayan

The multi-hyphenated artist on Is Love Enough? and the one thing she can't do.

- By Ananya Rai

“I'm messing with you, Ananya,” Kayan cuts me off when I ask her age (and instantly regret it). “There's this running joke I have online where I tell people I'm over 40. It’s really funny because I'm like, why do they keep asking me my age?”

Born Ambika Nayak and raised in Mumbai, Kayan’s childhood sounds like almost straight out of Malgudi Schooldays [by RK Narayan]. “During my summer holidays in Tanjore [now Thanjavur], I'd pick flowers in the garden, feed kittens and puppies on the street, water the backyard plants, and drink Boost on the terrace,” she shares. Does this sound like she’s speaking in tongues, iPad kids?

This calm, almost old-school upbringing was far from ordinary. Creativity pulsed through the walls of her home—her mother was a Hindustani singer, her grandmother a Kathak dancer, and her aunt a writer. “I grew up around a lot of creative people—and we're really tight-knit—who encouraged me to do my own thing.”

And do her own thing she did. From being one-half of the duo Nothing Anonymous to performing with experimental band Kimochi Youkai, it was during the COVID era that Kayan flipped her surname and released her first solo single, Please.

I ask how different Kayan is from Ambika. Is it a Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus kind of thing?

“I have to switch off from anything personal or emotionally draining when I become Kayan,” she says. “We're all adulting—I've got things to do at home, bills to pay, chores to manage. Sometimes life doesn’t go my way, but I have to flip a switch and become this person who, in a way, is also an escape for me.”

In her cover interview, Kayan and I begin with the obvious:

Cosmopolitan India: Is there anything you can’t do?