by Tahir Bhat
SRINAGAR: Ever since, Bollywood actress, Sara Ali Khan discovered Kashmir, she seemingly has fallen in love with the Vale. She is here again, for the second time in a few months. It is Kashmir that dominates her social media platforms.
“Home is where the brother is,” Sara Ali, captioned a few photographs she shared on Instagram featuring herself with her brother, Ibrahim Ali Khan, and their friends. She has 39.1 million followers on the photo-sharing platform.
The recent cache of photographs suggests the brother-sister were in a Kashmir hill station sitting on the trunk of a saffron-coloured SUV with snow in the background. In subsequent photographs, she is seen building a snowman with her friends.
Sara and Ibrahim are the son and daughter of Pataudi Nawab scion Saif Ali Khan and actress Amrita Singh. They live separate from their father Saif Ali married Kareena Kapoor. Saif married Amrita in 1991 even though she was elder to him by around 12 years. They separated formally in 2004 and Amrita Singh got custody of their son and daughter.
Later in 2012, when he married Kareena Kapoor, it made headlines again – this time the bride was 10 years younger than Bollywood’s Chotay Nawab. They have two sons – Timur Ali and Jehangir Ali.
Unlike Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi, his cricketer father, almost everybody in Bollywood – mother Sharmila Tagore, Amrita Singh, Saif Ali Khan, Kareena Kapoor and Sara Ali. Slowly but surely, the youngest Pataudi is currently working as an assistant director of a Dharma Productions’ film. Saif Ali Khan’s sister, Soha is also in Bollywood.
In her ongoing Srinagar leisure trip, Sara Ali has revealed that she also did a bit of skiing, obviously at Gulmarg. Last winter, she was seen on snowmobile and skies – a set of photographs that reached millions. In one Instagram post, she was even seen watching the local music.
Sara Ali was in Kashmir in April 2021. In September, she shared a lot of visual stuff from her Kashmir visit on Instagram stories. In one photograph, she featured her night stay in a tent in Seshnag lake. She is seen sniffing the air while in a Shikara on Dal lake. In yet another, she is seen praying near a shrine with a caption: “If there is a paradise on earth, It is this, it is this, it is this,” Sara Ali Khan captioned a post recently.” Now, she is again in Kashmir, enjoying snow and skiing.
By her frequent foray to Kashmir, Sara Khan is explaining the bewitching beauty she has fallen in love with. In its outcome, she is gradually emerging as a brand ambassador of Kashmir at no added cost. She has finally revived the Bollywood-Srinagar axis. Unlike Saif Ali Khan, Mrs and Mr Patuadi would visit Kashmir, even at the peak of militancy – for duck hunting.
