"I Am Terrified of Rejection": Ananya Panday

Ananya lets us in on the one thing she’s terrified of. “Rejection! I’m such a people pleaser that whenever I meet someone, I want them to feel like, ‘Oh, she’s my best friend’. I want them to feel comfortable in my presence and just have fun. I don’t take it well if someone doesn’t like me or rejects my personality.” Ananya reveals that while she’s single-AF currently, being rejected is something that plays on her mind while she’s in a relationship, too. “I’m such an overbearing personality sometimes, like I get really loud, and it could be a reason to reject someone, you know?! So that can be frightening.”

When it comes to love, Ananya is the 20-year-old you’d expect her to be. “My crushes change every week and, at the moment, I’m just enjoying myself and having fun. I don’t think I can be in a relationship right now because I’m at such a good point in my career, and so much is happening...so much is about to happen...that I just want to focus on myself.” But mention dating apps, and Ananya goes back to being an old soul in a (very) young woman’s body. “I’ve never tried a dating app. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against it, I think they’re really cool. But I’d much rather meet someone in person and have an organic conversation.” And that goes out to all the people professing their love for her by sliding into Ananya’s DMs as well. “I mean, it’s impossible to go through all of them, but I do read them sometimes,” she laughs.

With 3.2 million followers on Instagram, Ananya tells us that she doesn’t have a social-media strategy or feel the pressure of being politically correct all the time. “I’m just super-real. I think when my account used to be private and I only had my close friends following me, I was more conscious about what I was posting. But now, I’m shocked at myself because I post such random things. I just want to be real on social media and not set unrealistic expectations. A lot of younger girls follow me, and I just want to be a friend to them. Like when they meet me, I don’t want them to be intimidated,” she says. As for all the neggy vibes floating on the World Wide Web, Ananya says she’s “getting so much love that I’m not even focusing on the negativity!”

Ananya’s future plans (along with movies and brand endorsements) include raising awareness about online bullying. “I have had my fair share of it and I feel like it’s really important. Not everyone can deal with it, and some of the people are really vicious and say extremely hurtful things. I don’t think people realise that their words and actions can have a huge effect on people—you could say the smallest of things, and that could really hurt someone,” she shares.

We’re almost out of time and the one thing Ananya is ready to divulge after this heartfelt chat is the people she stalks on Instagram on the regular. “I used to stalk Varun [Dhawan] a lot (I still do!) because I used to follow him and he didn’t follow me back. But honestly, I love seeing his Stories because he’s so funny—whenever I am sad, I just look at Varun’s profile, because he always posts something funny. I also stalk Kareena Kapoor Khan’s fan pages (because she’s not on the ’Gram officially). She’s super-stylish and I always save her pictures.”