3 min readNew DelhiMar 25, 2026 06:00 AM IST
Sameera Reddy and Akshai Varde make for a sweet couple. In fact, how they met is even more adorable. Recalling the incident, Sameera and Akshai shared in a conversation, “The way we met is the fun part. I saw Akshai on a shoot. I was riding a bike for my film Tez‘s promotions. And this big bike came in for a PR shoot. And Akshai was on the bike,” Sameera said.
“Akshai continued, “It was from our company. I got an opportunity to do a promotion. Someone called and said… there’s this actress, and they are doing some promos. Send your bike, you will get good credits. He said the actress is Sameera Reddy. In my head, I am picturing Lara Dutta. You know, I was not connected.”
First meetings can be fun (Photo: Freepik)
Laughing out loud, Sameera remarked, “He thought I was Lara Dutta. That’s why he came to the shoot.”
In his defence, Akshai told Hauterrfly, “No, no…It didn’t matter to me…who it was…When I reached, she is the actress….then I realised I was wrong…It doesn’t look like the person I was picturing.”
When Sameera Reddy shared that her husband, Akshai Varde, showed up to meet her thinking she was Lara Dutta, it sounded like a funny, harmless mix-up. He had already formed a picture in his mind — and reality did not match it. But what makes this story powerful is not the confusion, said Delnna Rrajesh, psychotherapist and life coach.
The human mind is constantly creating images. Before we even meet someone, we imagine:
* how they will look
* how they will behave
* how we will feel around them
According to Delnna, this is called psychological projection — where we place our expectations, past experiences, and fantasies onto someone we barely know. And this is where most relationships begin to go wrong. “From a psychotherapy and emotional healing perspective, people don’t struggle with finding love. They struggle with letting go of the version of love they have already created,” said Delnna.
It is what happened after that that all of us should take back. “He stayed. He connected. And he allowed the moment to unfold without being attached to his expectation. This reflects one of the deepest truths in dating psychology and relationship psychology — we don’t meet people as they are… we meet them through the lens of our projections,” reflected Delnna.
