Distinction: She is not the smartest PERSON overall. She's pretty much horrible at having knowledge about the world etc as exposed on many many occasions lol. She's also objectively bad at forming coherent thoughts, or even processing them in the way that is directly/indirectly implied by the other person. Example - Salman asks her what is L3 and L4. She just adds the number and tells him L7, because she wasn't able to grasp the meaning behind L3 and L4 as concepts, she just went with numbers and did some math because she thought that's what you do with numbers. Also, she could have just been zoning out when Salman told them what the spinal disks thing is because he hadn't yet explained the implications (Devo leaving due to medial issue) so she didn't really care yet.
BUT she is extremely smart in terms of critical thinking, subliminally taking clues from authority, and presenting her well-thought out position as genuine/impulsive/natural. Couple of clues:
- When she explained to Sid that he should ignore Asim's taunts so Asim looks like the bully.
- When she explained Asim's mentality of not needing unanimous support because the people the around him are so openly supportive towards him.
- When Arhaan/Rashmi/Vishal said if Gautam Gulati encourages her to be with Asim, she'd flip to him. She took this very sportingly but her reaction was one of shock. As in, hm that could happen, and these people have figured me out well.
- When Sid, Sana, and Bagga were in the couch together, and Bagga got up, Sana immediately switched her posture, expression, command over the space. She knew Sid needed to hear about his mistake and she made a conscious choice to not appear advisory at all when Bagga was around. We all know well, Sid has an extremely fragile ego and advice needs to be sugar-coated to the point of almost seeming like compliments for him to take it seriously. Eg - Sid won't listen to anyone saying you're too aggressive. He'll immediately reply with I was sick, I was weak, He is annoying, etc. But when someone tells him you are an amazing player with only one small weakness of being aggressive, he listens. Sana understands this extremely well, and handles Sid with the kid gloves he needs.
- Code-switching between the conversations with Asim and Sid. With Asim, she was genuinely upset about the Paras situation and just blurted out the fact that she's interested (maybe even this was planned, we'll know later). But her speech was 100% different. She was talking like a vulnerable girl who just needs a friend to comfort her. Switch to the Sid conversation, and now she's commanding the space completely differently. The pitch, cadence, authority in her voice is totally opposite, because now she is bitching with him about ASIM, the very guy who was comforting her. She likes feeling in control, and she loved feeling like she's playing a guy who considers her a friend.
Plus, the usual Weekend innocent-dumb and Weekday manipulative-vengeful double personality wala cheez toh hai hee. Plus, over two months, that switch has been consistent. She has not ONCE acted like her weekday self infront of Salman. Literally not even once. Even when Salman was bashing her she complained by saying "Sir, aapne mujhe rulaya hai aaj" as if they are very close and she is hurt by how he talked to her.
Don't know if this is conscious, sub-conscious, or totally involuntary but jo bhee ho, she's really really smart. One of the best 'people skills' person I've ever seen.