Why does the internet keep rediscovering faces like Malini Sharma

Roughly two hours from Pune, in the Sahyadri Hills, is a farm stay run by Malini Sharma, the female lead of the famed 2002 Bollywood film Raaz. She stepped away from the limelight soon after the film, but returned to the screens once again in the last week of August 2026 in the series ‘The Slow Local Diaries’, documenting her quiet life running her organic farm.

The song that made her recognisable in 2002, Aapke Pyaar Mein, introduced the audience to the farm, vegetables grown for its guests and a protagonist who is not acting.

Over two decades ago, Sharma decided to step away from acting and a career in the film industry just two days before shooting commenced for the film then titled Gunaah, starring Dino Morea. Reports say that she began looking for work behind the camera. By withdrawing from the film, she retreated from public life. However, while she had indeed “vanished” from the film industry, she was at work on other projects.

In Mumbai’s Versova neighbourhood, she was part of a community project built around local food, handmade products, workshops and storytelling sessions. This was followed by the farm-stay. Until Sharma actively made this consumption-ready for an audience, she was out of public life and view. With the launch of her new project, her Instagram following leapt into the tens of thousands.

The words “vanished” and “disappeared”, while true in reference to her public life, also indicate how intricately a public figure’s life (even private life) is intertwined with their profession, which is the only public aspect. A retreat from that profession, from the public, is often spoken of with a negative connotation, diminishing their value. This is despite our awareness of the fact that the profession on which their fame rests is merely one aspect of their life. It also highlights the all-encompassing and blinding nature of the work they do. As members of the audience, we conflate their private life with their public life, not only in the way we perceive the two, but also in the way we accord value to the two. The value accorded to their public image is conflated and intertwined with their private life, so that when their public image diminishes, it is often considered an end-all. The audience forgets that their retreat from public view may very well have nothing to do with their private life or might even spur personal growth.

In ‘The Future of Nostalgia’, Svetlana Boym separates two kinds of longing. Restorative nostalgia stresses nostos, the home and attempts to reconstruct it. But it does not consider itself as nostalgia; rather, as truth. On the other hand, reflective nostalgia lingers in algos, the ache and can afford irony and humour. Articles on the ‘where is she now’ theme incite restorative nostalgia. It wears the garb of news and, under the guise of providing information, reconstructs the memory. The 2002 face is the lost home, and the article exists to resurface it in the audience's or reader’s memory, closing the gap between then and now. This becomes more meaningful when we consider the fact that nostalgia is subjective and deeply private. The same subject can invoke different nostalgic feelings in different individuals. Invoking nostalgia is as much about the transition of the subject through time as it is about the audience or reader in whom the nostalgia is invoked.

With the launch of ‘The Slow Local Diaries’, Sharma has also taken control of the way her transition through time is perceived. Relocating ‘Aapke Pyaar Mein’ in the series enables reflective nostalgia. It not only brings back memories of her from the film, the film itself and the early 2000s, but offers it a new context, a new backdrop, infusing it with the introduction of something unfamiliar but real and rooted in the present moment. Nevertheless, nostalgia has a cost, too.

Sharma’s surge in Instagram followers was not solely due to the farm-stay. Her former fame from Raaz functioned as a context-setter for the farm-stay. It was against the backdrop of her identity and public image as a former actress that the farm-stay and the series garnered attention. This in turn implies that a significant portion of the attention accorded to the farm-stay comes from those seeking the recognisable face from Raaz.

A slow life has now become aspirational. A public figure who walked out of a fast life long before it was fashionable to do so has now built a retreat that is now a product in itself. She has re-entered public life through a different format and perhaps with more ownership. Renunciation has its own market, and a lifestyle is communicated in a hashtag. This story is not the first of its kind. It evidences the existence of a bargain in all our life choices, be that stepping into the limelight or retreating from it into the countryside.

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