A Star Kid Grows Up

With a stunning performance in Kho Gaye Hum Kahan, Ananya Panday has come into her own

- Suhani Singh

Ananya Panday, at 25, has officially entered the ‘adulting’ club. Or so she’d like to believe. She’s got her own pad, albeit one in the same building as her folks—actor Chunky Panday and Bhavna Panday of Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives fame. “That’s the furthest I will go away from them, at least at this point in my life,” she says. Ananya is currently obsessing over shopping for crockery and hanging with her friends at her new abode. “My house is like a museum right now, because I don’t allow people to eat, wear their shoes or touch anything,” she says with a laugh. Cutting the umbilical cord, she admits, is proving harder than she imagined—she is still sleeping at the family home to be close to her dogs and her younger sister, who is visiting from New York. “At the start, it took some convincing for my parents when I said I’d move out. My mom was being dramatic and saying you are breaking up the family,” she says. “Now they are like when are you moving out?”

The adulting Ananya is also showing up on screen. She earned the best reviews of her burgeoning career when she played Ahana, a needy 20-something seeking attention and validation from an ex on social media, in the Netflix film Kho Gaye Hum Kahan. It’s the second time after