Sara Ali Khan: 'I Aspire To Be The Woman My Paternal Grandmother Is'

Love It Or Hate It, The Pataudi Princess Has An Infectious Energy One Can't Escape. She's Vibrant With An Intellect To Match, Making Her Presence Felt Both On Screen And Off. Hello! Gets A Dose Of Her Infamous Knock-knock Jokes, While She Lets Us In On Her Relationship With Her Siblings And The Roller-coaster Ride That's Been Her Career

- Anshu Khanna

She's beautiful, intensely bright and blessed with an inborn radiance that lights up every room she enters. Born to blue blood and belonging to Bollywood's cordon bleu, Sara Ali Khan can, with surety, be called a proverbial chip off the legendary old block.

Watching her in action, one relives a series of pleasing flashbacks: that of a feisty Amrita Singh playing the part of a spoilt, rich girl in Betaab. Or of Sharmila Tagore, the demure bride of Apu in Apur Sansar. Or even Rukhsana Sultana speaking her mind and facing audacious situations with great strength.

Of Barech Pashtun Afghan noble and Bengali Thakur blood on her father's side, Sara is the granddaughter of Nawab Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi, the famed cricketer, and cerebral actor Sharmila Tagore, the grandniece of Rabindranath Tagore. Her maternal grandmother Rukhsana Sultana was the front-runner of Sanjay Gandhi's firebrand politics. Her parents Saif Ali Khan and Amrita Singh, too, are people who set trends wherever their toes tread.

Yet Sara makes her mark, indelibly so, on screen, off screen, on social media and through her myriad media interviews. Whatever role she may play, be it that of schizophrenic Rinku in Atrangi Re, a love-struck woman in Kedarnath, or a slapstick performer in Simmba, she impresses with her skill of slipping into her character as hand would into a glove. She shines through with her good looks, girl-next-door demeanour and captivating one-liners that have hordes of youth following her. Intellectual in her disposition, Sara, a Columbia University graduate, approaches her career as an actor with academic resilience and studious depth.