The first time I saw Alia Bhatt in front of a camera, she was barely eighteen. It was 2012, a Filmfare cover shoot alongside Sidharth Malhotra and Varun Dhawan, and there was something unmistakably raw about her presence. A flicker of nervous energy but also a startling ease, a natural understanding of light, frame and movement that most actors take years to acquire. Even then, she seemed instinctively aware of how to occupy space. She wasn’t performing. She was owning.