For Padma, these living room performances and movie nights with her daughter became a new way of seeing herself as a mother. It made her realise that she could be something beyond just a strict caregiver and disciplinarian, as had been the case in the tight-knit Tamil family she had been raised in. She remembers the advice from one of her aunts, Premi, who once told her, “Yes, you have to tell Krishna to clean her room. But don’t forget to also show her yourself, the way you show us and your friends. You don’t just have to be the authoritarian all the time.”
Heeding her aunt’s words healed something long unacknowledged in Padma. “When Krishna was young, I would put on old YouTube videos of Tina Turner dancing,” she recalls. “Having an excuse to go down those rabbit holes was so much fun because I didn’t always have the time to do these things for myself. So now, I make it a point to do them with Krishna and, in the process, end up experiencing them myself too. That’s one of the best parts of being a parent.”
Our relationship with each other is the biggest part of our lives,” Krishna chimes in, “but so much of our bond comes from us being in sync creatively.” Now that Krishna is long past the tinfoil mic stage, Padma helps her run lines for school plays. Meanwhile, Krishna gives Padma notes on how to sharpen her stand-up routines. (“She’s always telling me, ‘Mom, just use me in your stand-up. I give you permission.’”) On TikTok, they riff off each other’s spice preference (sumac for Padma and za’atar for Krishna) and cook dal tadka and lemon rice together. Sometimes, Krishna enlightens her mum with the latest developments in popculturedom (Labubus, Sydney Sweeney’s Bathwater Bliss), to which Padma reacts with a long-suffering sigh that any parent mystified by their chronically online kid’s slang will instantly recognise. In private, they butt heads over stage directions and dialogue delivery. They critique each other’s work, cheer each other on and have a lot of fun doing both.
The way Krishna sees it, having a famous parent does not earn you extra clout among fellow adolescents in the ruthless social scene of a performing arts school in New York. But one area in which it does come with significant advantages? Her supermodel mum’s enviable collection of archival fashion from the 1990s and 2000s, which the teen gleefully admits to raiding at will. This revelation is received with another lovingly exasperated sigh from Padma, who wryly points out that in keeping with the grand tradition of teenage girls sneering at their mothers’ wardrobes, Krishna had to be told by others that the clothes in her mum’s closet—like the green velvet suit from Tom Ford’s Gucci era and the metallic snakeskin minidress that Padma wore to a Tatler party in 2003—were extremely cool. The shoes Krishna is wearing today? Isabel Marant wedge sneakers that had been gathering dust in Padma’s closet for two decades before they suddenly became the hottest trend amongst Gen Z’ers nostalgic for 2008. The vintage ringer tee she’s wearing? Originally worn by Padma in 1995 during a guerrilla fashion show for the streetwear brand X-girl, orchestrated by none other than Sofia Coppola and Spike Jonze, who hijacked the sidewalk right outside Marc Jacobs’s show to stage something akin to a coup of downtown coolness. “My mother’s whole closet is a time capsule of fashion,” Krishna marvels.
