In the early 2000s, Malini Sharma was hard to miss. She was in music videos that played on a loop on Indian television, including Bombay Vikings' "Kya Soorat Hai", and she had the kind of face that made channel-surfers pause. In 2002 came Raaz, Vikram Bhatt's supernatural thriller, in which she played the vengeful spirit at the film's centre. The role earned her a Zee Cine Award for Best Female Debut and made her instantly recognisable.
Then, as quietly as she had arrived, she left.
The exit nobody announced
There was no farewell interview and no dramatic statement. According to her public profile, Sharma had signed on as the female lead opposite Dino Morea in Gunaah, only to back out two days before shooting began. She later worked as an art director on films including Thoda Pyar Thoda Magic and Just Married, a job that kept her in the industry but well out of the frame.
Her personal life had also been in the headlines. She had been married to model-actor Priyanshu Chatterjee, and the couple divorced in 2001. After that, she drifted steadily out of public view. Rather than an abrupt disappearance, it was a long fade.
Sharma herself has pushed back on the idea that she vanished. Replying to fans online, she said she had worked behind the camera for a while before her children arrived and took up her time. As for acting, she has been plain about it: "I never had the ambition to become an actor," she wrote, adding that Raaz simply happened and she went with the flow.
From Versova pop-ups to a farm
What she built in the years away was The Slow Local. It began modestly, as community-minded pop-ups in Mumbai's Versova neighbourhood selling homemade bread, granola, jams and handmade goods, alongside storytelling workshops for children. Over time, the project outgrew the city.
Today Sharma runs a farmstay in the Sahyadri hills, roughly two hours from Pune, on land she and her family treat almost like a private forest. She grows vegetables, cooks with what the farm yields, and serves it to her guests. Slow living is a fashionable phrase now. For Sharma, it was simply what her days turned into.
Facing the camera again
This week, that life became public. Sharma launched The Slow Local Diaries, a video series documenting her days on the farm. In the opening video, she greets viewers and says she is facing a camera again after 23 years. It is a deliberate echo of where it all started: the film she's remembered for.
She even revisits "Aapke Pyaar Mein", the song most closely tied to her Raaz character. But the setting is entirely different. Where the original was shot on a film set, this version was filmed at her farm, among the vegetable beds and the hills.
The response has been immediate. Videos and photos of her farm life began circulating widely, and fans who had long wondered what happened to the actress began calling and messaging the farmstay.
Not a comeback, a window
It would be easy to read all this as a star plotting her return. Nothing suggests that. There is no film announcement, no reality-show deal and no publicity push attached to the series. When a fan asked whether she might return to the big screen, her answer was a light, open-ended one: let's see, it will happen if it is meant to.
What The Slow Local Diaries offers instead is a window. For two decades, audiences remembered Malini Sharma as the ghost of Raaz. The series shows what she did once the film lights went off: she planted something, tended it, and built a life around it. The ghost, it turns out, was never haunting anyone. She had simply moved to the hills.
References:
- Open Magazine. "She vanished after Raaz. 23 years later, Malini Sharma is growing vegetables in the Sahyadris". https://openthemagazine.com
- Gulf News. "Famous Bollywood 'ghost' who haunted Bipasha Basu in Raaz, quit films and now lives in a forest". https://gulfnews.com
- Brut India. "Remember Malini Sharma From Raaz? Here's What She Does Now". https://www.brut.media
- The Daily Observer (Bangladesh). "Malini Sharma reveals why she quit acting after 'Raaz' (8 September 2026)". https://observerbd.com/news/592304
- Times Bull. "Raaz Famous Ghost Malini Sharma Is Back in the News After Years, Fans Flood Her With Calls and Messages". https://www.timesbull.com
- Wikipedia. "Malini Sharma". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malini_Sharma
- IMDb. "Malini Sharma, biography and credits". https://m.imdb.com/name/nm1133218
- The Indian Express. "Malini Sharma reveals why she quit films after Raaz; doesn't rule out acting comeback". https://indianexpress.com
- The Indian Express. "From 644 to 28K followers: Raaz actor Malini Sharma reacts as quiet life story goes viral". https://indianexpress.com
Compiled from the following published reports and reference pages. Facts about her early career, marriage and the Gunaah exit come from Wikipedia and should be verified against a primary report before publication.