Not many can lay claim to knowing the real Sonakshi Sinha. If I told you that the actor, best known for playing the love interest in testosterone-fuelled blockbusters, is also a whiplashing drummer in the making, you probably won't believe me. (But we'll get to that later.)
Ever since Sinha made her debut in 2010 with Dabangg, her small-town-girl image has made her an easy target. She has been on trial by Twitter for many reasons—her choice of roles, her choice of clothes, her far-from-hourglass figure and, yes, the size of her forehead—things that lead many actresses to cut down on public appearances or, in extreme cases, give up food altogether. But not this girl.
When I meet her at her nine-storey family bungalow in Juhu, Sinha seems to have found the perfect rebuke for any fashion magazine writer. Dressed in trackpants and a monochrome ASOS T-shirt that reads 'Nothing to wear,' Sinha declares her stand on all the newsprint misspent on her public appearances and personal style.
This take-it-or-leave-it attitude predates her gracious laugh on being referred to as "carb" at the much-spoken-about AIB roast. "Honestly, I've been called much worse things in school," she says, "So this was really mild… it was actually funny."
Bollywood’s Every Girl
It was this refusal to fit in with the facsimile built by her contemporaries that has made her an instant favourite with many women across the country. Sinha is neither obese nor skinny, but she has managed to spin her natural assets into a blockbuster empire. She is the real girl in Bollywood—she's had her bad days (in life and on social media), she's made her mistakes and she's had a style evolution. It's our fascination with finding the real in celluloid that has made Sinha a heroine one can identify with—even when she plays a working-class bimbo (Action Jackson) or a choreographer's dream (Rowdy Rathore).
Early on in her career, Sinha had said: "I'm here to act and not be size zero." And four years on, with over 15 films to her credit, it's a working testimony of her acceptance as an actor. Of course, she was a talked-about name even before her debut—she is after all the daughter of Shatrughan Sinha, Bollywood's famous no-nonsense actor who is now a political heavyweight.
Only last week her Instagram feed shared what she calls her "Amitabh Bachchan moment". A group of 50 college girls from Gujarat gathered outside her Juhu bungalow—chanting her name until Sinha made an appearance. "I thought I was dreaming! I woke up to them shouting 'So-nak-shi' repeatedly. When I went down to meet them, they went ballistic," she says, sounding as excited as her fangirls.
What makes her a role model is this: Sinha may have the face of a pin-up, but she has also faced the same challenges as her fans—a body-shaming past that she has confidently left behind. "I've been on the other side of the weighing scale—I've been overweight (90-plus kilos)—and I know how hard it was to get where I am today," she says.
Sinha is equally vociferous in combatting any unwonted digs about her frame. "So when I hear people still going on about it (my weight) and calling me fat, I'm like, 'Just get a life!'" says the actor who famously showed her middle finger to internet trolls on her 27th birthday.
It hasn't been so easy after all. The longest relationship Sinha had in college, while studying fashion design at SNDT, was with junk food. "I ate Schezwan noodles for lunch everyday," she says.
To read the whole interview, subscribe to the print edition or get the single digital copy of the May 2015 issue of Vogue India now.
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