Simone Talreja, a student of Goregaon's Oberoi International School, has never feared the stage. At the age of three, she enthralled shoppers at a Gurgaon mall by climbing onto a makeshift arena during Christmas celebrations and breaking into an impromptu jig.

A decade later, her fascination with the stage continues. The 13-year-old dabbles in professional theatre, just like her father, adman Navin Talreja, who is the brain behind the Fogg and Carvaan ads. "Nautanki is in my blood," she jokes. She watched her first play at Prithvi Theatre when she was five years old. "It was called Ravanleela and I remember it was hilarious." Later, as a family, they would watch movies almost every weekend. Actors fascinated her, she says. "I always wondered about their lives, and the kind of efforts that went into what they did."