From visiting the Indian Institute of Management – Bangalore where she recreated a super quirky 3 Idiots moment in the iconic chairs to savouring some dosae at The Rameshawaram Cafe, Navya Naveli Nanda, the granddaughter of superstar Amitabh Bachchan, made sure to do everything possible to make her first visit to the Garden City memorable.
And of course, her quirky pictures from the trip on Instagram has left her mother Shweta Bachchan-Nanda in splits. “We are doing a lot of eating, a lot of travelling between the campuses, and the weather has been amazing. It’s been fun,” says Nanda about visiting the city.
In the city as part of a youth-centric roadshow powered by We are Yuvaa called ‘You Grow Girl’, where the members visit 25 colleges across eight cities, Nanda went to a few colleges in the city to have conversations with the youth. “We wanted to talk about entrepreneurship, creating a committee for young women and a centre for them. I was really excited when they asked me to join. Actually, the main point of it is to not be on the podium and talk. It is to listen to the students and hear their stories,” says the 25-year-old, whose brother, the 22-year-old Agastya Nanda, is making his debut on the big screen with director Zoya Akhtar’s upcoming musical The Archies.
Being a Gen Z-er, she feels her generation has been slightly ‘misunderstood’. “I belong to a very vocal generation. We have a lot of opinions and generally don’t shy away from expressing them. It is nice to see that people from my generation are standing up for what they believe in and supporting causes that are close to their hearts. I feel they’re often misunderstood for being too young or for having little experience to speak on certain topics. But I think we have access to so much information that we use that to our advantage,” she says.
Nanda is also a social entrepreneur, who has been vocal about many causes, especially ones related to women. You could have a glimpse of it in her podcast What the Hell Navya, where she discusses various topics with her grandmother Jaya Bachchan and her mother. “I was raised to always stand up for what I believe in, and I do that daily, either through my work or my personal life. I was given my voice for a reason,” says Nanda without flinching.
Coming from a famous family, it is bound for her to be in the public eye and along with love, negative attention is also something she deals with daily. However, Nanda handles it in a very logical way. “Everyone has a different way of interpreting things. I will always speak for myself and for things that I am passionate about. People can interpret that in any way that they want, but that will not hold me back. If you are choosing to do something in a public space, you have to be ready for whatever comes your way, whether it’s positivity or negativity. So I am open to receiving any kind of feedback but it’s up to me how I process it,” she says.