Agastya Nanda opens up about embracing religion after going through ‘bad phase of anxiety’ during Archies: ‘You laugh at me, but…’

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Agastya said that he made progress through meditation. “When you’re living in a world where there’s so much going on, you do one thing that grounds you. And I think our generation are very anxious people. Because we’re so used to getting things in an instant. We’ve lost patience and we’ve lost faith. We’ve lost faith that things will work out, or things will be okay, because we’re so used to things being certain now. I know you guys laugh at me, but I became very religious and spiritual. And it came naturally. It just gives you something to believe in that’s beyond your control.”

Opening up about the anxiety that he went through because of his debut film, he said that turning to religion helped him immensely. He said, “When I started acting, doing my first film, I was like, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do, if I’m going to do well, if people are going to like me, if they’ll think I’m bad’. There are so many things. I did my best, and I was like, ‘God, I leave it up to you’. I have to keep faith in something beyond me. Whoever you believe in, whether it’s God, or energy. If you just pass on that burden, it relieves you.”

But Agastya also found help online. He continued, “Today, in the times that we’re in now, there’s a lot of stuff that can exhaust us. But there are a lot of available platforms to seek help. You can simply go on YouTube and say, ‘How do I feel less anxious? How do I feel more confident? How do I feel happy? How do I feel secure?’ All these things are out there. I searched on YouTube, ‘I’m feeling anxious, what do I do?’ I swear, it sounds stupid.”

Agastya debuted alongside fellow star-kids Suhana Khan and Khushi Kapoor in director Zoya Akhtar’s The Archies, a period adaptation of the popular comic book series. The film received mixed reviews, with the performances of the lead trio drawing criticism.