You Glow, Girl

She channels her on-screen personas through perfumes and churns out skin-perfecting potions from kitchen scraps. Actor ADITI RAO HYDARI might be to the manor born but she’s filled with the goofy charm of one who’s supremely confident in her flawless skin. She tells ADITI BHIMJYANI how she stays picture-perfect

- Aditi Bhimjyani

Her hair is down, feet are bare, and nails, colour-free. She flops onto a sofa and puts her feet up—dressed in casual joggers, no make-up. Much like her on-screen persona, understated yet power-packed—she’s every inch the regular girl, yet there’s something striking about Aditi Rao Hydari. I meet her on a Sunday evening at her home in Mumbai, where she tells me she’s laying low; no one (from her professional world) is supposed to know she’s in town. I’m here to figure out how Hydari remains so fresh-faced and fit in light of an actor’s hectic schedule.

FIT START

Hydari measures her words, her hands twist gracefully, acting out her feelings. It’s hard to imagine her as anything other than a performer. “Some kids are born with the drama-queen streak. I didn’t grow up in a home that discussed or watched Indian cinema. But my mom tells me I sang before I spoke and danced before I walked,” she says.

I start with the obvious—what’s her secret to staying so poised? Her elegance can be credited to the discipline and grace classically trained dancers come with. But there’s a free-spiritedness and witticism about her that probably comes from her alternative upbringing at home and boarding school (the Krishnamurti Foundation-run Rishi Valley School, outside of Bengaluru). Her near-perfect manners remind you that Hydari comes from a line of royals from her mother’s side; her father comes from a prominent family from the Nizam’s ministry. “Our home in Hyderabad was on a hill. The house help lived at the bottom of the hill. I was perennially in their home, eating and playing. It was like living in [Enid] Blyton’s The Faraway Tree,” she says.