When Alia Bhatt Spoke Of Mahesh Bhatt’s Reaction to Her Panic Attack During SOTY: ‘I Thought He’d Hug Me But…’ – News18

Alia Bhatt shares a close bond with her father, filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt. While many fathers try to protect their daughters from failure, Mahesh encouraged Alia to face it, teaching her that failure isn’t a bad thing. For instance, when Alia had a panic attack the day before her first day on the set of Karan Johar’s Student of the Year, Mahesh had her stand in front of a crowd and talk about her feelings to help her cope.

In a past interview with Karan Thapar for India Today, Alia called her panic attack the “strangest” experience. When she called her father, crying and shaking, he told her to come to the office. “I thought he would hug me, there would be silence in the room, but I walked into a room with eight people. He made me stand up in front of everybody in the middle of the room and said ‘now talk about the way you are feeling’,” Alia Bhatt recalled.

Alia’s first reaction to Mahesh’s advice was, “That’s so mean. Why would you do that?” She went on to add, “He said just do it. I did it and actually that was the best thing that he could have asked for because automatically I felt normal. Because Emraan was over there… Emraan Hashmi and he said ‘Alia, you are going to feel this before every film, before every shot’.”

Alia also mentioned that Mahesh Bhatt was never a “regular dad.” She said that he didn’t sit down every Sunday with her, take her to movies, or remind her to do well in school. “He is the opposite, he would tell me to fail. He would say you must fail, if you don’t fail, I will be very upset with you,” she recalled. When asked how he reacted if she failed, Alia said, “He would say it’s good. He completely took that idea out of my head that failure is a bad thing,” she said.

Alia Bhatt will be next seen in Vasan Bala’s Jigra.