Wind At Her Back

It may seem like no time has passed between having her baby and returning to the screen, but Alia Bhatt has quietly been centring herself and building a new life with her five-month-old daughter Raha and husband Ranbir Kapoor in tow.

- SADAF SHAIKH

On the day Alia Bhatt and I speak, she is perfectly exhausted— and understandably so. The actor has just returned from a work-cum-birthday trip to London, where she also shot for Vogue India’s cover, and straightaway proceeded to debut three snatched looks back to back at the launch of the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre (NMACC) in Mumbai alongside shaking a leg to the Oscar-winning number ‘Naatu Naatu’ from her movie RRR (2022). Acting has always come instinctively to Bhatt since she appeared in a minor role in the psychological thriller Sangharsh (1999) when she was just six, but she has lately come into her own as a discerning clotheshorse: a fact that everyone present on the set of the cover shoot can attest to. Kitted out in an array of avant-garde ensembles—including a billowing electric blue dress from Richard Quinn, a frothy tulle skirt from Molly Goddard, and a skirt-jeans-jacket assemblage from Simone Rocha and Karu Research—the 30-year-old seemed as at home posing and primping in Gunnersbury Park in London as a seasoned runway model would. It’s perhaps this new-found penchant for fashion that put her on the radar of the MET Gala, which she attended for the first time this month.

Today, at home in Mumbai, she’s taking it easy and allowing herself to kick back. She’s also giddy with happiness despite being enervated because her five-month-old daughter has “touched my face and squeezed my cheek for the first time”, a milestone moment that the newly minted mother wants to hit replay on over and over again.