THE ROAD AHEAD

MRS FUNNYBONES UNFILTERED: TWINKLE KHANNA ON CURIOSITY, CREATIVITY AND CONSTANT REINVENTION.

- CHIRAG MOHANTY SAMAL

Twinkle Khanna, former actress, author and reality show host appears on my Zoom screen with an effortless poise on a late evening, she radiates a cool, almost nonchalant composure. She mentions, almost in passing, that she's catching an early-morning flight to London the next day, but there's not a flicker of haste or fatigue. No last-minute flurry, no trace of the mild pre-travel anxiety most of us wear openly. Instead, she sits there-calm and unhurried.

Naturally, I ask whether she's a meticulous planner or one of those enviable travellers who just wings it. Her answer is disarmingly candid.

Then, almost as if flipping to a brighter page, she reveals an adventurous streak. “My favourite kind of trips are the ones where you discover things unexpectedly. I love road trips—I like getting lost and stumbling upon things I never knew existed. I'm not interested in ticking off every Michelin-starred restaurant. I’m perfectly happy discovering a couple of gems on my own.”

Her anecdotes tumble out with the signature Mrs Funnybones blend of wit and wry self-deprecation. She recalls a family vacation to Saint-Rémy, the tiny French village where Van Gogh was institutionalised in a mental asylum. “None of us spoke French, and everyone there spoke only French,” she begins. “But I assured my entire family I’d manage because I'd done five years of French in school. Except my French sounded like Kannada. No one understood a word.”

“So, there I was, running around a supermarket in this beautiful, quiet village, flapping my arms like a chicken, trying to communicate that I was looking for eggs. I must have looked absolutely insane,” she says adding that this memory will stay on with her for a long time.