Sobhita Dhulipala: “In the first year of our marriage, I probably saw my husband once a month”

Despite all this action, Dhulipala insists this is her era of introspection. “As an actor, you want to feel chosen and validated,” she says. “My role exists for consumption and I become the product, so it’s easy to be wounded. For me, being the main character is to step away from this, to be still and give up the need to belong anywhere or to anyone.”

Presumably, belonging to oneself more than to the world is a process for any public figure. Still, for someone like me sitting on the sidelines, her apparent comfort in her own skin has always been her most attractive quality. Dhulipala laughs, admitting self-assuredness didn’t always come easy to her. She recalls seeing a jewellery ad some years ago, wishing she could star in it. “I knew I had largely done independent cinema and commercial brands are looking for actors who are more visible,” she says. “Two years later, the same brand wanted to work with me because I was doing unconventional roles. That’s when I started to realise, I don’t need to have different feathers to belong, I am exactly who I should be.”

What she’s always known, even instinctively, is that there’s power in showing the world facets of yourself beyond work. If you look at Dhulipala’s Instagram, with a casual seven million followers, you will notice the signs of this expansion. In May, she created a new highlight to share homegrown designers that she wears: Lovebirds, Miuniku and Chorus sit high on the list. In June, she once again began her “book of the month” highlight, which she used to put out long before book clubs, celebrity-led or otherwise, became a thing. Constants on her bedside table: Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West, George Orwell’s 1984 and Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things.

But really, it’s not Instagram where she’s spending most of her free time these days. “I recently got on Substack and it’s so good. I’m reading about things like healthcare, what’s lacking in Indian branding—just everything. I never post. In fact, let me read you my bio,” she breaks into a cheeky smile, pulling up the app on her phone. “It says, ‘Here to read, not to say. Don’t bother following’.”

At different points in our chat, Dhulipala describes herself as an “intellectual omnivore”, “a solitary beast”, “a hyper, self-reliant animal”—all very assertive phrases that hint at someone who has spent time deeply feeling and understanding themselves. It reminds me of a frayed poster with a Franz Kafka quote that was stickered behind the door of my high school library: “A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.”

Whether it’s Substack or paperbacks, the actor spends about three hours a day reading. (If it’s a book, it’s always a physical copy with the corners of her favourite pages folded. “Never a Kindle,” she says.) It’s how Dhulipala makes sense of her world. It’s among her non-negotiable self-care rituals, including working out and spending time in the sun. But where most people journal and meditate, Dhulipala loves “being in traffic, looking out the window and dreaming. Even planes get me in my feelings.”