Performer Of The Year: Alia Bhatt

At 26, this prodigiously talented actor seems to have achieved everything. She sits with Rega Jha to discuss success, living in the spotlight and how she keeps it together

- Rega Jha

Alia Bhatt knows she runs the risk of losing her mind. By her mid-twenties—when our minds fully develop rationality— her face was on billboards, the world was filtered for her through a swarm of publicists and her private decisions were under public scrutiny. Imagine coming to full cognitive clarity in those conditions. I arrive to interview her primarily wondering how she stays intact. Let’s say…I’m asking for a friend.

My first glimpses don’t paint a helpful picture. She’s in the pool at the JW Marriott Mumbai Juhu in a gold zip-up swimsuit and a rainbow-sequinned drape billowing off her shoulders. Eight people are doggy-paddling around her, all in swimwear. Vogue’s fashion director, Anaita Shroff Adajania, is in the pool directing—“arch your back”, “float higher off the floor”, “bend this knee like this”—and Alia obeys.

EYES WIDE OPEN

As the sea roars and Rihanna instructs off a speaker to “Work, work, work,” I wonder what Alia is thinking. “I was thinking about the shot,” she tells me later in her vanity van. But her mind isn’t always so focused; rather, it’s unruly. “The worst thing is my mind doesn’t stop,” she says. “It goes left, it goes right... It’s goes in five hundred directions and that’s my biggest drawback. That’s why I like the camera so much. Because I’m only thinking about that moment.” Focus is holy respite to a jittery mind.

When she was four, baby Alia sang with a group at school and the teacher pulled her to the front to say, “Everybody, sing like Alia.” It’s a prized memory. “I remember being the centre of attention and I loved it. That was the day I decided: something similar for the rest of my life would be nice.” Not acting necessarily. But being in the spotlight. Being On.