FINDING NARGIS

From the chaos of fame to the silence of a 10day Vipassana retreat, the actor chats with Akshaya Pillai on beauty, belonging and the search for a slow life

Before any interview, I try to trace the tiny ways in which I’ve crossed paths with the person I am about to speak to. A quick search leads to Nargis Fakhri popping up in my inbox thrice. The first instance, in 2011, was in the middle of a heated debate with a friend about Imtiaz Ali’s ‘Rockstar’. Another time in 2014, my boyfriend had forwarded a swimsuit shoot starring Fakhri. And most recently, a friend from Mumbai sent me a snippet mentioning the actor in a conversation about haunted places in her city. It’s funny the many ways a celebrity can play cameos in our personal lives, their images and stories cropping up like familiar landmarks in our own journeys. When you consider it from this angle, it becomes easier to ask them questions like ‘What part of your story do people always get wrong?’

"I felt misunderstood when I first came to India. People thought I was born and raised here, that I was this proper Indian actress," Fakhri says. "I was the only one laughing at my jokes at times,” she reflects on her experience in those early days on film sets. “But I’m so glad that despite that, I was still shown a lot of love, and now I have so many fans who I also love in return and am grateful for."