‘You know Shatrughan Sinha’s house, I stay behind it:’ Sonakshi Sinha says she didn’t tell her college classmates who she was

Sonakshi Sinha reveals how she kept her identity hidden in college to avoid being treated differently as Shatrughan Sinha’s daughter. (Express archive photo by Prakash Yeram)

Before the flashing bulbs and movie premieres, Sonakshi Sinha was just another college girl trying to make it to class during the Mumbai floods. “I was in SNDT college in the second year, the floods happened,” she recalls. “We used to not take our cars to college at that point in time. There was this one girl who lived behind my house who used to have a car.”

“She asked, ‘Who all are going to Juhu?’ So I said, ‘I need to go to Juhu.’ Whoever she could take in her car, she took,” she says. “She said, ‘Where do you stay?’ I said, ‘I stay on 9th road.’ She goes, ‘You know Shatrughan Sinha’s house? I stay behind his house. Where do you stay?’ And that’s when I told her, Shatrughan Sinha’s house…I stay there.’ She’s like, ‘What do you mean?’ I was like, ‘He’s my dad.’”

What came next was shock. “These girls had been with me in college for two years, and they had no idea,” Sonakshi reflects. “Because there’s no point in saying…Then they start behaving weird and different.” Her decision to keep her identity under wraps speaks volumes; not just about her humility, but the emotional minefield that comes with fame.

According to counselling psychologist Priyamvada Tendulkar, the emotional terrain is complicated when you are close to fame—whether born into it or partnered with it. “Emotionally, insecurity thrives on irrational beliefs,” says Tendulkar. “‘If my partner is loved by so many, I must not be special to them.’ Or, ‘If I don’t match their success or charisma, I’m unworthy of them.’”

Sonakshi’s story shows the flipside, where the star doesn’t brandish their fame, but conceals it to preserve genuine connections. Her choice to blend in rather than stand out perhaps also offered her a healthier emotional space, free of performance or pedestal. “It’s just nicer to have that neutral ground with everyone,” she said in the interview.

But not everyone has the tools to navigate this dynamic. As Tendulkar points out, the family members of a public figure might slowly “lose their individuality, feeling like an extension of their fame.” This loss of self-definition can lead to a silent existential crisis: Who am I outside of this relationship? The journey back, she says, requires “pursuing passions unrelated to the famous person in the family and finding meaning in one’s voice.”

By not flaunting her lineage, Sonakshi seemed to have intuitively understood the value of letting people know her before knowing whose she was. For her, it was about protecting the soul of relationships from the distortions of celebrity.