The Hyderabad Literary Fest’s first panel after the lunch session was titled “Reel and Real Lives”, but it may have been called “The Real Housewives of Yoga County” for intents and purposes, as actress and model Anu Aggarwal took it as a platform to plug yoga and her book, also about yoga, leaving only a few minutes for the other panelists, film critics and authors Maithili Rao and Rinki Roy, to speak.
The session began with each talking why they wrote their books — Anu about Anusual: Memoir of a Girl Who Came Back from the Dead, Maithili about Smita Patil — A Brief Incandescence and Rinki (who replaced a missing Shriya Saran) about Bimal Roy’s Madhumati: Untold Stories from Behind the Scenes, but quickly turned into ‘Anu-thing’ but a panel discussion. The actress began talking about how yoga saved her life after she experienced a serious car accident in the early ’90s. Questions from the audience also seemed to revolve mainly around Anu’s life, with Maithili briefly getting to speak about her research process while writing about late actress Smita Patil and how her death may or may not have been the only reason she was propelled to cult status, and Rinki explaining that her father Bimal Roy’s Madhumati was historic, successful and also one that strayed away from his “realistic” mainstay. Audience members were heard saying, “Anu’s hijacking this session,” when Anu went on a tangent about how husky her voice is, when Maithili brought up one of the reasons why Smita was as popular as she wa — her voice. “She’s answering questions she isn’t even asked,” a member added.
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