HT Brunch cover story: Look, ma, I’m famous!
A designer, actor, musician, content creator and chef, explain what it means to be popular and recognised today
The newcomer Ayesha Kanga
In the world of show business, Ayesha Kanga, 27, is practically brand-new. She debuted with Netflix’s Class in February. And already, there are 104K followers and verification on Instagram to show for it. She’s recognised on the streets – on a recent trip to Jaipur, she was stopped at least 10 times by fans seeking a selfie.
“I thought, I should probably start dressing better,” says Kanga, laughing. She hadn’t planned to be famous. The design graduate wanted to be a creative director, make art and live off her laptop. She started modelling “because I’m tall and skinny” and interested in fashion. And when the agency asked her to audition for the show, she was sceptical. It was in the middle of the lockdown. She did it out of boredom. “I never thought this would be the journey for me,” she says.
It was a gamble. “We were 11 newcomers starring in the remake of the hit Spanish series Elite,” she recalls. “People would either hate it or love it. I thought we would just be ignored – I’m a Negative Nelly that way. The attention and laurels are a complete slap in the face.”
Kanga admits to feeling awkward around big-name celebrities and creating a public persona for herself. Helping her cope is her mother, Suneeta Kanga. She’s watched the show three times, follows her daughter’s co-stars on social media and comments on their pictures. She even tries to film people asking Ayesha for a video and shares it on the family WhatsApp group. “My family is starstruck. They are living their Bollywood fantasy through me, with questions about Ranveer Singh, Varun Dhawan and Tiger Shroff. Of course, I spill the tea!” she says.
Right now, Kanga is so fresh to fame, even the hate messages are a novelty. “No one has cared about me enough to hate me online before,” she says. “The benchmarks of being famous will just keep evolving. Maybe in another decade we will have verified Meta characters and people won’t even recognise us when we step out as they don’t know what we actually look like.”
The grudging celebrity Taba Chake
Fingerstyle guitarist and singer Taba Chake, 31, made his debut in 2016 with his EP, Bond with Nature. He followed it up with the 2019 album Bombay Dreams, which got over 25 million streams on Spotify. Earlier this year, his Reel, covering Harry Styles’ As It Was, got more than 1 lakh views in a few days. On the Bengaluru leg of his album tour in 2019, he lost his voice on stage due to the flu. Fans simply picked up when he couldn’t and sang as he played.
Fame, it is a bit of a mixed bag, he says. “Some people don’t really care about being famous, and they get better and better. Then, there are others who can’t improve because they’ve let fame get to their heads.” Those who find a burst of attention on social media are particularly susceptible, he believes. “You get a night or two, or a week or two of being famous. But you will not be remembered. That’s why it’s tagged as a trend; it won’t stay.”
Chake left his hometown in Arunachal Pradesh in 2013, when he was 21. In retrospect, he says he’d have chalked a different road to fame. He didn’t grow up with musician friends or family, or Hindi and English music. “If I would have left in 2008, I would maybe have had a better understanding of the outside world, from basics like navigating Ola and Uber.”
There are some perks of fame. Money rolls in, it opens opportunities to earn. “When I started playing, I was borrowing the guitar from my friends. Today, I can splurge on the best strings.”
Being well-known online can sometimes backfire. During one gig, soon after his viral Harry Styles Reel, the crowd started chanting As It Was, demanding he perform the song. Chake didn’t care for the idea. “You don’t go out of your way for your followers.”
The one we watched grow up Sejal Kumar
At 28, Sejal Kumar is already among India’s OG content creators. She started off on YouTube nine years ago, when India’s online obsession was just getting started. She’s branched out from making fashion videos to singing, writing songs, acting and directing short skits. Her fandom has kept up. She has 1.41M subscribers on YouTube and 843K IG followers. She also represented India at a YouTube creator summit in Australia in 2017. Last year, she was one of four creators representing India at an environment summit, rubbing shoulders with Emma Watson and Leonardo DiCaprio.
It’s been a lonely, tough road. Most young folks, facing live cameras excitedly at home, shooting videos that they hope go viral, have no idea how prickly fame can be. Social media is a beast that must be constantly fed – and criticism comes flying, viciously, in real time, from anonymous viewers. “For the first five years, I was just trying to prove bullies wrong and wanted validation for what I was doing,” says Kumar. She’d find herself getting anxious when she met someone who didn’t seem happy to bump into her. “You do get over it, but it takes a while,” says Kumar. “I’ve had many burnouts and felt saturated with the content I was making.”
Fame feels sweeter now. She knows she’s not a movie star, and that she’s earned a seat at the table nonetheless. “I have literally grown up in front of people, on social media,” she says. “I’ve evolved in leaps and bounds in terms of self-confidence.” Being recognised opens more doors and strangely allows for more freedom. “I control my hours. I don’t have to ask for work. I employ my own people and resources. I know where to get the money for it,” she says. “That’s fame.”
The one who’s figuring it out Anahita Dhondy Bhandari
Fame isn’t quite what it used to be, and Anahita Dhondy Bhandari, 32, is glad for it. The chef, author and culinary consultant is excited to live in a time when people in different fields also have a shot at fame.
“I’ve seen it happen so quickly during the lockdown, when everyone was on their phones and there was talent coming just out of every screen. You could be sitting in any corner of the world and have a chance at going viral,” she says. She aced her IG game during the pandemic too, now clocking just over 174K followers.
It’s a great first step, but hardly a goal. For more lasting success, “it’s crucial to have your own voice, and find your path with people who want to be part of your journey,” she says. Her own journey began as the head chef at the Parsi restaurant SodaBottleOpenerWala in 2013, in Delhi. Four years in, she became a partner. “It gave me my life some definition,” she says.
And it got her a little fandom of her own. On Instagram, Dhondy Bhandari shares tips, recipes, glimpses of works in progress and travel clips. “It empowers me as it connects me to so many people. It empowers them too,” she says. “The flip side is that you are easily judged on social media too. I put up a Reel recently, which got a lot of negative comments because it was a religious celebration. I deleted the comments and put up a post stating that this is my page, that I will not stand for hate. I blocked every mean commenter.”
Meanwhile, fame is changing even for the traditionally famous. Dhondy Bhandari recently messaged actor Zeenat Aman on Instagram. To her surprise, Aman replied. And they got chatting. “That would have been impossible a decade ago,” she says. “But today, no one is big or small. Reach out because you can. There is a 90% chance that they won’t respond. But they just might!”
The one who’s seen it all Suket Dhir
Suket Dhir, 43, isn’t the kind of person the public would recognise on the street, let alone go wild for. He’s a fashion designer, for one thing. And not even the kind that dresses Bollywood starlets in ornate wedding wear and sends them down the runway. “I might be famous in our fraternity, but that’s about it,” says Dhir.
In his fraternity, though, he’s something of a legend. Dhir launched his eponymous label in 2011 and won the 2015-16 Men’s International Woolmark Prize. The award, worth close to ₹50 lakh, recognises work that displays the versatility of Merino wool in fashion. It’s previously been won by globally recognised designers such as Karl Lagerfeld and Yves Saint Laurent. It brings prestige, of course, but also major hype. “I didn’t quite ride that wave,” Dhir says. “By the time I realised I was famous, I was already not the flavour of the season.”
He didn’t mind. It’s not the kind of fame he wants. But it’s the kind of fame that the fashion world seems to chase. “Today, you don’t see talents like Madonna, whose career spanned decades, and she just kept getting better,” he says. Instead, someone arrives in a flash, burns brightly for a while, and is forgotten forever.
Dhir’s loyalists include Mira Nair, Sanya Malhotra and Anil Kapoor. “Sustaining the fame is what’s crucial,” he says. “You need to know how to stay out of controversy. You need to come across as humble and at the same time maintain the awe people have for you.”
The humble bit comes easy when one is presented with the odds. “There are some 1.4 billion people. You just happened to be the right person at the right place and right time. Be grateful for that. Responsibility is one of the most underrated virtues of the 21st century. It’s now been relegated to superheroes, which is screwed up.”
