Winning At Life

Intelligent. Fearless. Unapologetic. Actor Esha Gupta Sits Down for a Tête-à-tête and Reveals How She Is Living by Her Own Rules.

- Meghna Menon

Nothing can bring Esha Gupta down—not trolls, not naysayers, not even the excruciating cramps that debilitated her through the course of the cover shoot. (You would never be able to tell looking at the photographs. “Just give me a steady supply of coffee guys, and I’ll be ok,” she had laughed.) It takes minutes into my conversation with her to understand that that’s just who the actor is. Tough and cool, with a the-work-must-get-done and the-show-must-go-on attitude. She tells me that even as a child, no one dared mess with her. It’s no surprise then that when trolls came down heavily on her after pictures from her semi-nude photoshoot went viral on social media (each picture received a minimum 75,000 likes on Instagram), Esha was the least bit shaken. “If they (trolls) can’t add anything to my life, then they can’t subtract anything from it either. I’ve never given anyone, except my friends and family, the power to upset me. In fact, they made me the national news—so I should be thankful to them,” says the 32-year-old. “While I did expect the negative comments, I didn’t anticipate the love I got, from both men and women, and from the media.”

Esha’s always been a non-conformist. After winning the title of Miss India International in 2007, she didn’t dive straight into the world of films. Instead, she decided to study further, bagging herself a law scholarship at Newcastle, UK (where she picked up two jobs on the side, including mopping floors at McDonalds, when she had to deal with rising expenses). It’s only after that that she joined the fashion industry, starring in the very popular 2010 Kingfisher calendar, eventually debuting in films with Jannat 2, in 2012. Today, after performances in movies like Rustom and Baadshaho, the hazel-eyed beauty&mdas