ANEET PADDA IS MORE THAN YOUR GIRL NEXT DOOR

The actor has been catapulted into a once-in-a-generation stardom through Saiyaara, but her head is firmly on her shoulders. Here, she speaks about her Amritsar to Mumbai journey, having an 'emotional' reaction to much of life and the anxieties of what comes next.

- J Shruti

On a video call with me on a Saturday afternoon, Aneet Padda has adorned loose waves, and a smudge of kohl—the minimal makeup look—similar to her character Vaani Batra in Saiyaara. Unlike the introverted Vaani, who opens up through the prodding of Krish Kapoor—played by Ahaan Panday—22-year-old Padda needs no such nudge, as she seamlessly stitches her heart and syntax, offering unfiltered clarity that belies her age.

It has been a few weeks since the romantic drama produced by Yash Raj Films, and directed by Mohit Suri, released to a sweeping (and weeping) response. In a filmic landscape that was presumed to have shifted to thumping male bravado, Saiyaara, which underscores the softness of the lover's starry eyes, feels like a unicorn sighting. And this is not just because of the box office numbers—worldwide the film has grossed ₹578 crores approximately—but also because of how it has catapulted its two young stars, Padda and Panday, into a stratosphere of stardom that has evaded newcomers (and even bigger, established stars) in recent years.

Padda has been processing the love through a levelheaded space, of “acknowledging” it and “taking responsibility” for it, even though one of her idols, Alia Bhatt, took the initiative to effusively praise the film and its two leads on Instagram, and “gushed” about the film for 10 minutes on a phone call with her. Dropping the term “parasocial relationship”— generally used to critique the entitlement of fans—in an optimistic sense, she states that the “beauty” of being an actor—and here she is referring to Bhatt—is the ripple effect that their film persona can cause. “I would talk to myself in the bathroom mirror [when I was young] and practice all the [Bhatt’s] monologues and think ‘how can i do it?’, and then it would be ‘how can I do it my way?’” Padda recalls.