March 01, 2026

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THE SOUND OF HER NAME

What does it feel like to have your face on a billboard? You are on the Western Express Highway, zipping across the veins of the city. You look out, and there you are. All glossy, your face retouched to a frightening degree. An actor must get used to the exaggerated proportions of their face. It's the great Indian dream: to have your name appear in a newspaper for your parents to frame the clippings. We like being acknowledged, to be quoted just onceAnanya Panday, though, has had a slightly more complicated relationship with her image. When she was a child, all the joy in the world followed her. She'd pretend to be a forlorn lover and dance to Devdas songs, and then just as seamlessly switch to the hook steps of Main Hoon Na (2004). Her father would always record her--his hazy, flickering lens attempting to capture all the bursts of joy in his daughter. And then life, the perpetual trickster, showed up, except not with the funniest tricks"In my teenage years, I started becoming really, really shy," Panday tells me. If there were an audition for the school play, she would never be confident enough. If all the girls in her school had a dance performance, she'd always volunteer to be in the back row. "I was so scared of my dream. I've always wanted to be an actor, and I was scared about not being good enough." How does a child go from being excitedly recorded for her Bollywood hook steps by a doting father to hiding, quite literally, in the shadows only a few years later? As a teacher at Mayo College, a boys' boarding school, I've seen dreams flicker, barely managing to get to the finish line, hunkered down by frustrating notions of masculinity or simply by being too conscious, too careful. But there are plenty that blossom as well, against all odds. Over the next hour-and-a-half, we will pick apart every strand of Panday's life. I will discover that she is perhaps one of the biggest advocates for stronger unionisation in Bollywood, not just for privileged actors like her but for those who are invisible behind the lighting gear and camera rigs. We will talk about the staggering metaphors in books and songs, the critical importance of living alone, how the first season of Call Me Bae (2024) led her through a hectic phase in life, and the comfort of her four dogsBut first, we must try to make sense of how a child, even someone like her, recedes into the background. More importantly, what does it take for that child to grab the spotlight again and crank it up--letting its luminosity flood all the dreary, anxietyinfested rooms in the mind? TELL ME I'M PRETTY Last week, my student from Grade 8 was crouched over his line drawing of Satsuki and Mei's house from Miyazaki's masterful 1988 anime film My Neighbour Totoro. All the details were faithfully rendered: the lime-green shutters, tiny chairs strewn across the open verandah, even a tiny leaf quivering in the wind stuck under one of the chairs' legs. Except when he showed it to me, he covered his face with both his hands and mumbled: "Don't say anything, sir. I know it's terrible." Panday, contrasting this incident with her own sense of withdrawal as a teenager, has a simple diagnosis of it. "I think I was scared of what other people would say. That's mainly it. Even the boy you're talking about, he was okay showing it to you, but didn't want other people to know," she says. "It is the fear of judgment. Sometimes

Of Craft & Conversations

Harper's Bazaar India curated one of its most anticipated events of the year, LuXperiences, a celebration of luxury fashion, and art, on February 19 at DLF Emporio in Delhi.The conclave brought together renowned personalities from across the world for meaningful conversations about craft, cultural storytelling, and personal influences that shape a brand. From exploring how Indian designers are reshaping ideas of masculinity,and raising questions of identity,cultural memory,and the influence of indigenous narratives in shaping global perspectives, to understanding the current landscape of luxury across the globe and the evolving role of fashion in cinema--LuXperiences 2026 was a day to remember. Some of the speakers were Giambattista Valli, Anamika Khanna, Arjun Kapoor, Amit Aggarwal, Kartik Kumra, Ashiesh Shah,Ayesha Singh, Rahul Mishra, Dhruv Kapoor, Palak Shah, and Antonio FerraioliApart from the sessions, names of the Best Dressed Men (Delhi Edition) were announced such as Vicram Sharma, Tikka Shatrujit Singh, Siddartha Tytler, Rakesh Thakore, among many others.The day concluded with The Fashion Collective, a showcase--directed and styled by Gopalika Virmani--of homegrown designers adorned by 25 muses. LuXperiences 2026 stood as an amalgamation of fashion, art, and design, bringing together the industry's most influential voices under one roof.