BREAKING BARRIERS WITH KALKI

Here's something disarmingly real about the way Kalki Koechlin speaks. No performative polish, no distant celebrity gloss—just stories, reflections, and lived truths woven together by her unmistakable voice.

- RUPAM JAIN

HERE'S something disarmingly real about the way Kalki Koechlin speaks. No performative polish, no distant celebrity gloss—just stories, reflections, and lived truths woven together by her unmistakable voice. And when she talks about education, it's not as an ambassador reading off a cue card; it's as a woman who's felt the impact in her bones—as a child, an advocate, and now, a mother.

"I still remember laying bricks for a new classroom in 2015," she says, speaking of her first visit to a P&G Shiksha-supported school in Delhi. "Back then, they were impacting 4 lakh children; it's more than 50 lakh now. That kind of scale...it's powerful. But what really gets me are the individual stories." She pauses, reflecting on a film she just watched about Bindiya, a girl who's grown up with the initiative. "Seeing her journey—20 years of it—just hits you. It's real. It's in their eyes." And while advocacy has long been a part of her public life, motherhood has deepened her understanding in ways she hadn't imagined.