Ahilya Bamroo on Sing Geetham, music and finding her own lane
Ahilya Bamroo calls herself an incidental as well as an accidental actor.
The 26-year-old made her Telugu film debut in veteran filmmaker Singeetham Srinivas Rao’s directorial comeback, the musical fable Sing Geetham. Ahilya plays Gauri, a tree lover, in the fictional village of Kuberapuram in Andhra Pradesh, where everyone has lost their ability to speak and instead converses in musical notes. Her character is pivotal to the narrative, as she becomes the focal point of the village’s resistance to outside forces.
Green light from the Universe
Recalling how the opportunity came to her via a message from producer Nag Ashwin on Instagram, she says “he told me it was a musical project and then he told me who the director was and I was like, wait a second, isn’t that a 90-year-old legend of cinema?”
That apart, it was almost as if the Universe was aligning with her wishes. Just the fact that it was a musical was great, because she loves both music and acting, says Ahilya. “And when they told me that it was about the environment, that my character loves protecting trees, it was as if the green flags from my own life were aligning—I’ve grown up in Auroville, which is very much about ecological restoration and preservation.”
Fluent in Bengali, Hindi, English and French, Ahilya shares that learning Telugu and singing in the language, though a challenge, was something she embraced. “I’d done a theatre musical and though it was in English, I understand the form of sing-talking, so it was not too crazy to me. But what was different here is that we wanted to make something that was theatrical but also realistic,” she shares. Talking of the challenge, she says, “I had to sing in a Telugu style, which I had not done before. It’s a little bit traditional, a little bit classical and I had to pick up those mannerisms.”
From experiments in life to experiments in cinema
Having grown up away from the arc lights Ahilya says though she loved to act, she had never thought of a career in films. She credits social media with helping her reach people, though she is of the opinion that not everyone popular on social media can be cast in films. Ahilya, who is not professionally trained, says she does suffer from imposter syndrome. “I feel like I’m bluffing my way through,” she confesses.
To silver screen and beyond
The Mumbai-born, Puducherry-raised Ahilya became an Instagram favourite with her spot-on accents, music mash-ups and her ability to turn everyday life into quirky videos. In 2024, she made her Bollywood debut in Shoojit Sircar’s I Want to Talk, where she played daughter to Abhishek Bachchan. “There was nothing over-the-top, glamorous about it. It was the story of a real family, so every step was about the real-lifeness of it. It was about those moments between father and daughter—I spoke about my own life. That experience felt so much like a collaborative project amongst a family. I was in the presence of people who are masters of their craft, big names in the industry, but at the same time it was such a grounded and vulnerable space and the film required that.”
A career in movies is not all that Ahilya seeks, given her varied interests. “I think I realised very early on that I want to be someone who does many different things, and while one of those loves is acting, for sure, the other love is music. I would like to explore music, make an album. I’ve already spoken to a couple of musicians and people I admire in India who make music that I’d like to collaborate with. I also really like working in education, which is something I’ve done in Auroville before all of this started—working with kids, contributing to ecological work. I would love to direct things, and maybe even learn a new language,” she says with a smile.
