Lisa Ray Reflects: From #BombayGirl to Geriatric Mom and Everything In-Between

[00:00:08] [SPEAKER_03]: Lisa, it is so fantastic to have you in the studio in the country. Welcome to India now and to your old love Bombay.

[00:00:16] [SPEAKER_00]: I know. Well, you know, I don't think of myself as displaced or not living in India because, you know, living in Dubai basically is, you know, there's a bridge between the two nations.

[00:00:26] [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm always in and out. And I think that once Bombay, so I'm saying Bombay, we still say Bombay, right?

[00:00:34] [SPEAKER_00]: It's infected your bloodstream. That's it. You're a goner for life, right? So it's I'm a Bombay girl. I'm a Bombay girl.

[00:00:41] [SPEAKER_00]: But you lived around the world. Yeah. Right?

[00:00:43] [SPEAKER_00]: That's true.

[00:00:44] [SPEAKER_03]: You grew up in Toronto. You've lived in Paris. You've lived in Greece for some time.

[00:00:50] [SPEAKER_00]: No, that was that was a that was a quick visit.

[00:00:53] [SPEAKER_00]: There was a visit. Sorry. I forgot.

[00:00:54] [SPEAKER_00]: I lived in the UK, London, London, Paris, New York, LA, did the whole.

[00:01:02] [SPEAKER_03]: And after all of that, you still say that at heart I'm a Bombay girl.

[00:01:05] [SPEAKER_03]: Why? For sure. What is it about Bombay? I can never explain to people when they see what would India should I take a pit stop in Bombay and I'm like, or maybe not.

[00:01:14] [SPEAKER_03]: Maybe not. I know.

[00:01:15] [SPEAKER_03]: The streets and the shade.

[00:01:17] [SPEAKER_03]: And it is daily looks parts of Delhi are beautiful.

[00:01:20] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, exactly.

[00:01:21] [SPEAKER_03]: But in Bombay, what saves us? I'm just a Taj. I can just go to the Taj for the night. Taj my hotel and then go straight to the airport from there.

[00:01:30] [SPEAKER_03]: So what is it? What is that?

[00:01:32] [SPEAKER_00]: Exactly. That's not my version of Bombay at all. You know, I think I think again, having come here so young.

[00:01:37] [SPEAKER_00]: And even though in a sense I grew up in Canada, I actually grew up in Bombay.

[00:01:41] [SPEAKER_00]: Because landing here at 16 alone, making my way in the big bad city, although it wasn't quite as big and as bad as it is today.

[00:01:51] [SPEAKER_02]: Surviving.

[00:01:52] [SPEAKER_00]: And thriving.

[00:01:54] [SPEAKER_00]: But like actually creating this relationship with the city that it was like almost like a living entity with me.

[00:02:00] [SPEAKER_00]: And so I grew up in Bombay. 16 to 30. Those are what you call your formative years.

[00:02:06] [SPEAKER_00]: And I always call the city, it's like it's my father. You know, it disciplined me. It kicked the shit out of me many times over.

[00:02:15] [SPEAKER_00]: And still I remained, you know, during that period of time and learned a lot and grew.

[00:02:22] [SPEAKER_00]: That's the way that I describe it. I don't even think like Bombay's name is city. It's like this entity that enters your bloodstream.

[00:02:32] [SPEAKER_00]: So I think, you know, that's the easiest way. But of course, I also had this very special relationship having landed at 16 at a time when it was not glamorous to come to Bombay.

[00:02:42] [SPEAKER_00]: Today it is right today all these half breeds like me, you know, half blood, you know, half Indian have something else are obviously flooding Bombay and you know looking to make their mark or

[00:02:58] [SPEAKER_03]: in fact, they're replacing models now. Most campaigns at least that you see campaigns have Eastern European or these half mixed models or mixed models.

[00:03:09] [SPEAKER_00]: And that just wasn't the case back then, you know, because I mean Bombay first of all wasn't as accessible, easy, or even as glamorous as it was today, as it is today from the outside.

[00:03:21] [SPEAKER_00]: But there was something, there's something in the water. There's something in the relationships that we made at that time in the 90s.

[00:03:29] [SPEAKER_00]: Like those relationships that I made, they sustained me. I still know those people today. And even we've gone off in different directions.

[00:03:38] [SPEAKER_00]: We definitely diverged. But those relationships really nurtured me and fed me and at times restricted me and at times, you know, it was a lesson I learned through these people.

[00:03:50] [SPEAKER_00]: But I don't know, it's like this weird sentimental thing. So I have to say for me it's Bombay in the 90s.

[00:03:55] [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, not the current Bombay.

[00:03:57] [SPEAKER_00]: Not the current Bombay. I mean, look, we tried to live in Bombay twice. In fact, we even moved back at the tail end of COVID. And it was my dream to come and be like, I was so excited.

[00:04:13] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm back. And finally, my husband was out of the corporate world. So he didn't have to live in Hong Kong or Singapore, which is these other big cosmopolitan places that we've lived.

[00:04:25] [SPEAKER_00]: So I was like, okay, good, we can live here. Enroll my kids into school, went about my routine. And then I just something started changing inside me.

[00:04:34] [SPEAKER_00]: You know, like energetically, I was starting to feel overwhelmed by the city.

[00:04:39] [SPEAKER_00]: I was sick all the time. Like there's just the practicalities of life. I was sick every two weeks, the kids were sick, the traffic.

[00:04:47] [SPEAKER_00]: I hibernated. I never left my apartment. I said, if you want to meet me, you come to me. You know?

[00:04:53] [SPEAKER_00]: And I just realized that the relationship had shifted. And I have a much better relationship now living outside of India.

[00:05:01] [SPEAKER_00]: Like now I relish it. I'll even very cheerfully sit in two hours of traffic because I don't have to do it every day now, you know?

[00:05:09] [SPEAKER_00]: So it's my relationship with Bombay of the 90s. There's a strange sort of sentimental connection and seed.

[00:05:17] [SPEAKER_00]: I still love Bombay because, you know, obviously there's a coherence and there's a consistency that's lasted. But a lot of things have changed.

[00:05:25] [SPEAKER_02]: You were just speaking before we started this conversation about how if you had to come today and try to get into modeling, it would have been very difficult.

[00:05:35] [SPEAKER_00]: No, not even difficult. I wouldn't have done it. I wouldn't have done it.

[00:05:40] [SPEAKER_00]: First of all, I think just nature-wise. I mean, both of you know me, but Shunali and I have had these conversations.

[00:05:47] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm genuinely an introvert. But I was somehow able to navigate this industry or these systems in the 90s as an introvert because you would be called to your, you know, your shoot.

[00:06:03] [SPEAKER_00]: You would show up, you do your shoot and you would go away and nobody would know you. Nobody would follow you.

[00:06:09] [SPEAKER_00]: There was no paparazzi. There were no stalkers. There was nothing.

[00:06:13] [SPEAKER_00]: You could still live a semi-normal life outside of what you were doing.

[00:06:17] [SPEAKER_00]: And so that was one thing. Secondly, my friend Colleen Khan and I were discussing this because in fact, you know, the funny thing is I had seen Colleen's image in magazines, Gladrags.

[00:06:31] [SPEAKER_00]: Even before I remember Gladrags.

[00:06:35] [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, that's a different story. But I had seen the story.

[00:06:38] [SPEAKER_01]: That's a big story.

[00:06:38] [SPEAKER_00]: No, no. I don't want to even go into that story. But I was talking about Colleen. I saw her in Gladrags.

[00:06:46] [SPEAKER_00]: I think on a vacation like once when I was coming by and I thought it was just very intriguing because again she looked very interesting and very confident, very like body confident.

[00:06:59] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:06:59] [SPEAKER_00]: I had not seen that in India before then as much. So it was funny. I kind of upheld Colleen as like almost like an idol, you know, like a model.

[00:07:11] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. And I didn't want to become a model. I literally did not want to become a model. But having said that, we all of a generation literally lived that fairy tale of being discovered, being discovered.

[00:07:26] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think it happens today. Today, everything is very deliberate. Today, everything is very a lot more mechanized and well plotted and all of that. Systems are all in place.

[00:07:39] [SPEAKER_00]: Systems are all in place. But we were genuinely of that generation where it was so organic you would walk into a party in Bombay and somebody would spot you and say, Hey, do you want to come in?

[00:07:50] [SPEAKER_00]: You know, maybe shoot this campaign or do you are you interested in being a model? And often we would say, I don't know. But you know, I'm free tomorrow. So I'll come by.

[00:07:59] [SPEAKER_00]: And there was also such a beautiful almost naivety. Yeah. You know, of actually on a stranger's word showing up alone in a photographer studio and you know embracing whatever there was whatever would roll out.

[00:08:14] [SPEAKER_00]: And so where that generation say Colleen myself and definitely quite a few others where we stumbled into the industry. Literally, it was that discovery moment. Yeah, we remained for you know, everyone has their own individual reasons why we remained and continued rolling with it.

[00:08:32] [SPEAKER_00]: But I think that you know there would have been there would not have been a loss if we had not also done it because it wasn't part of our life plan didn't enhance our life probably in certain ways.

[00:08:43] [SPEAKER_00]: But we weren't looking for it. We weren't we weren't groomed for it. This is even before all the entire Miss India kind of took hold of everything in the in the mid 90s, you know when Ash and Sushmita and all this was before that.

[00:08:57] [SPEAKER_03]: This is much before that much before that much before that but now little girls from the time they eight and nine are looking at social media and they want to be in some models and they want to be actors and they want fame.

[00:09:10] [SPEAKER_03]: They want fame. You know, Kiran and I often have been I know it's just like what are you can help it we get what do you what do you feel about what's going on in this planet or younger people today.

[00:09:22] [SPEAKER_03]: It's not the same plan where we live but what is going on? What is your view about it? What is your take on it?

[00:09:29] [SPEAKER_00]: I think the main thing is like we have to go to the root cause which is big tech and social media right the root cause is big tech like if you go back and I mean you know I told you about this I've been waging a little bit of a campaign about excessive tech in my kids school.

[00:09:47] [SPEAKER_00]: So I made it my business to go deeper into all of this. I look I co founded a tech platform and has been in FinTech and all of that so I'm clearly not anti tech.

[00:09:58] [SPEAKER_00]: It's very hard to be anti tech first of all in today's world, but I think that we have to take a step back and understand what this war is being waged over today in terms of what is big techs main objective.

[00:10:13] [SPEAKER_00]: And it's your attention and your data. Yeah, that's right. It's it's it's become an attention economy. Yeah, that's all it's about and tech has been devised in such a way that you've got behavioral psychologists you've got you know you're tapping into the best minds and scientists in the world today to formulate their apps in such a way that you get addicted.

[00:10:41] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's it. It's just as simple as that you know you have to understand that on a fundamental level and then make your decisions around that like do I want to expose my children and then you can also understand that your children are addicted and again.

[00:10:58] [SPEAKER_00]: It's so hard and you look at like a lot of these tech titans today. You have to ask yourself why do they not send their children to schools that are tech heavy. Yeah, why do they ban the children.

[00:11:10] [SPEAKER_00]: Or they send them to the green school in Bali which was like my dream my dream you know we're almost went there but we landed up somewhere else.

[00:11:19] [SPEAKER_00]: And at the same time obviously you can't completely deny it. You can't deny the force or the or the utility. So what do you do as a parent so what do you do as a parent is the question like I'm going to be a hard ass.

[00:11:31] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to be that really unpopular mom because we have these conversations see unfortunately you guys were the test generation are the guinea pigs.

[00:11:39] [SPEAKER_00]: I mean children right like we weren't having exactly the same conversations about like how much should we give her get a smartphone. Should we give into the pressure.

[00:11:49] [SPEAKER_00]: But everyone else has a smartphone and they communicate only on Snapchat and I mean I'm going to be that horrible mother is just going to say no we went and give them a dumb phone like now by the way there's an interesting movement.

[00:12:04] [SPEAKER_00]: I know.

[00:12:05] [SPEAKER_03]: It's very interesting in the US this time. Yeah, those people are not into WhatsApp at all they find it intrusive because what's have shows you when you're online Americans prefer using I mess it up.

[00:12:19] [SPEAKER_03]: They're not into what's happening right. Secondly when you go to anywhere within South Asia and you know even the UK I noticed people are always glued to their phone in the US I noticed people are not glued onto their phones.

[00:12:33] [SPEAKER_03]: Why don't it talk is a big thing that yeah but you see people because they do so much outdoorsy stuff there.

[00:12:39] [SPEAKER_03]: I think it was where you were in California I didn't see the root to their phone and I think it depends on where you live in India at the time that our older one asked for a phone a smartphone.

[00:12:51] [SPEAKER_03]: You know we did put up a fight and we put it off and I was telling you yesterday I was to ration and television timing I used to say you can only watch TV on the weekends.

[00:13:00] [SPEAKER_03]: And I did manage to pull their top but a stage came where all her friends were on chat groups with each other and you also don't want to go to the other extreme.

[00:13:08] [SPEAKER_03]: I know exactly and then feels bullied for some reason because she has no clue what was going on in the classroom.

[00:13:14] [SPEAKER_00]: But that's like therein lies the rub right like and how much can we do his parents as well it's very, very much and then we carry that guilt.

[00:13:23] [SPEAKER_00]: It is thank you very much and on top of that I'm a geriatric mom of two twins exactly up twins.

[00:13:33] [SPEAKER_00]: Girls going on six going on 16 yes they are they're incredible and you know and we all want to cultivate strong girls right like that's definitely the party line these days and I stand behind that but who has to suffer.

[00:13:50] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah mama you know the arguments all the arguments you're the meanest mom in the world over and over again I will use it as a vocabulary lesson.

[00:14:04] [SPEAKER_00]: I'll say think of another word instead of like like find me a synonym you can't say me all the time.

[00:14:11] [SPEAKER_00]: What do you mean would call me horrible terrible.

[00:14:13] [SPEAKER_00]: I know everything was very hard.

[00:14:16] [SPEAKER_02]: What are the land riskers use Hindi also.

[00:14:20] [SPEAKER_02]: What about Bengali.

[00:14:22] [SPEAKER_03]: Or Bengali.

[00:14:24] [SPEAKER_03]: How has mother who changed you I know I'm privy to the fact that you didn't want to act in all the shows that were being offered to you on OTT because you said this is what you enjoy most and writing is what you enjoy most.

[00:14:37] [SPEAKER_03]: And clearly you've made your picture made your choice between all these different other avenues that were open to you to dedicate your time to.

[00:14:47] [SPEAKER_03]: So what does mother would mean to you and how have they changed the Lisa Ray that you used to be before you became a mom.

[00:14:53] [SPEAKER_00]: I think that right now this you know literally the Lisa Ray of 30 years ago there's no resemblance to Lisa Ray of today and I think that that's wonderful.

[00:15:02] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah it's a beautiful.

[00:15:04] [SPEAKER_00]: It's like been a beautiful revelation for myself.

[00:15:08] [SPEAKER_00]: But I also I want to step back for a moment because I want to say I always said to myself though I want no water should occur in my life like I don't want to leave anything on the table that I might regret later.

[00:15:20] [SPEAKER_00]: So I did the opposite of most people.

[00:15:24] [SPEAKER_00]: So you know I mean some people choose to get married and have children.

[00:15:28] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah marry just is negotiable anyways today it's fine but to choose to have children young and that's great.

[00:15:36] [SPEAKER_00]: I chose the other one.

[00:15:38] [SPEAKER_00]: I thought like I want to get everything out of my system and I really feel that I did you know do I still have ambition yes particularly in writing and in other things as well.

[00:15:52] [SPEAKER_00]: But I do feel like something has just taken a hold of me this entire motherhood thing is also very scary.

[00:15:59] [SPEAKER_00]: It's just crept up on me.

[00:16:01] [SPEAKER_00]: It's like somebody has has like drugged my drink or something like that.

[00:16:06] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm like who am I and wake up some days.

[00:16:08] [SPEAKER_00]: What are these words coming out of my mouth?

[00:16:11] [SPEAKER_00]: What am I saying you know.

[00:16:13] [SPEAKER_00]: But seriously I'm relishing it but I also feel like I earned it in my own way because I as I said I switched up the formula and decided to do it the way that felt right for me to wait until literally as almost 50.

[00:16:30] [SPEAKER_00]: I mean we had our we had our girls at like 46 40 46 47.

[00:16:37] [SPEAKER_00]: And so I'm loving every moment because obviously I'm much more mellow.

[00:16:42] [SPEAKER_00]: I do have I hope a slightly larger perspective about a lot of different things and and I guess you know career wise in terms of that part of my career.

[00:16:56] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't even think of it sometimes as career but you know being in front of the camera is just not something that I feel like pursuing if something drops into my lap.

[00:17:05] [SPEAKER_00]: Like for more shots and literally dropped into my lap.

[00:17:08] [SPEAKER_00]: It was quite a funny story because I was very resistant and run Gita and I were like on chats every week I kept changing my mind and then switching it up and then I finally decided because girls were very very young.

[00:17:21] [SPEAKER_00]: But in a way a lot of my friends said this is the time when you can do things they will have no memory just leave them with a really good nanny.

[00:17:31] [SPEAKER_00]: Which I mean that was a choice that I took you know.

[00:17:36] [SPEAKER_00]: So I enjoyed that experience but I don't feel that I want to like sacrifice a time because even towards the end of shooting for my shots there were times when I was having this existential crisis sitting on the set and thinking because a set is that it's a lot of hurry up and wait.

[00:17:53] [SPEAKER_00]: It's just sitting with like empty time in front of you and don't know when you're going to get called.

[00:17:59] [SPEAKER_00]: And I was just sitting there thinking like actually making lists of all the other things I could be doing with my time and times become a lot more precious now.

[00:18:07] [SPEAKER_00]: And you know and I've become a lot more protective and assertive about my time and what I want to do with it when I was younger it was more like easy to please and then plus when you're younger you want to hang out with the crew when you want to absorb everything and not I'm like please.

[00:18:21] [SPEAKER_00]: I just like let's get this over with I need to go home.

[00:18:25] [SPEAKER_00]: I need to take my pills.

[00:18:27] [SPEAKER_00]: I need to be comfortable.

[00:18:29] [SPEAKER_00]: You know what I mean it's a very very different stage of life.

[00:18:33] [SPEAKER_00]: Not to say as I said that I didn't enjoy the process but I was literally thinking I could be writing my book now I could be with my kids.

[00:18:41] [SPEAKER_00]: I could be in a museum.

[00:18:43] [SPEAKER_00]: I could be you know sitting at home putting my feet up and reading a book.

[00:18:49] [SPEAKER_00]: And I just don't I don't know why maybe it's kind of a trigger for me.

[00:18:55] [SPEAKER_00]: Having spent as much time cumulatively as I have on set since I was really young.

[00:19:01] [SPEAKER_00]: I can't make that time productive outside of the shooting like I know obviously it is it's like you know a lot of empty space I could be working on a book.

[00:19:11] [SPEAKER_00]: I could be doing things but all I end up doing is like you know calling people and saying I miss them.

[00:19:17] [SPEAKER_00]: You know oh my god it's so late I hope that they have me and my hair is not looking good.

[00:19:23] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't like my hair.

[00:19:24] [SPEAKER_03]: She is such a devoted mother and then really you are and I realized this I gave her working for the longest time when I had Zara or one but you know a younger mother is not a very wise mother.

[00:19:38] [SPEAKER_03]: And I see I've seen you the way you deal with them from the time they were babies.

[00:19:42] [SPEAKER_03]: You know that maturity and treating them as individuals and respecting their feelings and yet trying to discipline them and I see you doing that.

[00:19:52] [SPEAKER_03]: And I realize it very often that yes the state at which you have your children in your life is going to define who they are going to be when they grow up.

[00:20:02] [SPEAKER_03]: So it's really there's a beauty to becoming a geriatric mother.

[00:20:08] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm happy to bring with it a world of wisdom along with that.

[00:20:12] [SPEAKER_00]: I've just been enjoying this phase so much.

[00:20:15] [SPEAKER_00]: I mean you know today when I work out we're talking about working at the gym.

[00:20:18] [SPEAKER_00]: I've again had a lifetime of working out forcing myself to work out in order to remain dead and you know appear a certain way.

[00:20:29] [SPEAKER_00]: Now I do it to keep up with them and I'm actually having so much fun with it.

[00:20:33] [SPEAKER_00]: So I feel super strong and ironically I'm probably the actual the fittest that I've ever been in my life before.

[00:20:40] [SPEAKER_00]: Before I was skinny but I was not healthy.

[00:20:43] [SPEAKER_00]: I was not fit.

[00:20:44] [SPEAKER_00]: I was a smoker.

[00:20:45] [SPEAKER_00]: I was eating.

[00:20:46] [SPEAKER_00]: I was anorexic, bulimic everything I've been through that entire journey.

[00:20:51] [SPEAKER_00]: And today you know I genuinely go to the gym to feel good.

[00:20:56] [SPEAKER_00]: I still find it kind of boring sometimes but I just like I submit I surrender and I see the difference in terms of like my energy levels get higher.

[00:21:03] [SPEAKER_00]: Keeping up with the kids.

[00:21:05] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not conflicted for them now.

[00:21:07] [SPEAKER_00]: That's what I do but like this coming from imagine I literally never wanted to have children.

[00:21:13] [SPEAKER_00]: And you know I have to be super how what made that switch happen with you?

[00:21:18] [SPEAKER_00]: I think two things cancer and my husband and Jason both kind of worked on me.

[00:21:27] [SPEAKER_00]: That and it wasn't immediate.

[00:21:29] [SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't like I woke up after my stem cell transplant.

[00:21:32] [SPEAKER_00]: I need to be a mother.

[00:21:34] [SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't at all like that because I was I had swung so far to the opposite side, you know, but I realized that all of those coping mechanisms like I was independent to a fault.

[00:21:46] [SPEAKER_00]: I was in charge of my destiny to a fault.

[00:21:48] [SPEAKER_00]: You know these were my belief systems.

[00:21:51] [SPEAKER_00]: And therefore I believe that having children would slow me down, you know, would impinge on my independence would impinge on my freedom.

[00:21:59] [SPEAKER_00]: And then something happens and there's this download that you receive for whatever reason that true freedom is being comfortable with wherever you are in whatever scenario like true freedom is not actually jumping on a plane at every whim and running away from your problems and relocating.

[00:22:20] [SPEAKER_00]: Which is what I did for a long period of time.

[00:22:22] [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, did I have a ball?

[00:22:23] [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I did.

[00:22:24] [SPEAKER_00]: But at some point there's a reckoning and I realized also getting married because I also never want to get married, which is why I got married at 40 yet.

[00:22:35] [SPEAKER_00]: And I realized that in a weird way getting married was the first step.

[00:22:39] [SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't easy.

[00:22:40] [SPEAKER_00]: We fought a lot because we kept coming together at 40 is also not a joke because you come in with your baggage.

[00:22:46] [SPEAKER_00]: You come in with your opinions.

[00:22:48] [SPEAKER_00]: You come in with, you know, almost like actually ready for a fair.

[00:22:52] [SPEAKER_00]: And when I realized again in a weird way that, you know, if I had been a kite for so much of my life, like literally no one was hanging onto that string.

[00:23:04] [SPEAKER_00]: So I had absolutely no particular I had no place to return to.

[00:23:09] [SPEAKER_00]: That's a lot to metaphor.

[00:23:10] [SPEAKER_00]: And I felt that now Jason was hanging onto that string.

[00:23:13] [SPEAKER_00]: He still let me do my, you know, he indulged.

[00:23:18] [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I'm not saying let me because that also sounds like permission from someone, but he did.

[00:23:24] [SPEAKER_00]: He kind of gave me that grounding and then having kids.

[00:23:28] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if something just started right?

[00:23:30] [SPEAKER_00]: Like it was that, you know, maybe also I was running so hard and for so long that I didn't listen to that inner voice.

[00:23:39] [SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[00:23:40] [SPEAKER_00]: Asking me to actually like now it's time.

[00:23:45] [SPEAKER_00]: And I also like it's incredibly selfless.

[00:23:48] [SPEAKER_00]: Like I look at them and I think, oh my God, I want to give them everything.

[00:23:53] [SPEAKER_00]: And I literally want to start like fitting into the background now, which is not easy.

[00:23:58] [SPEAKER_00]: Like if you think about it as much as I say I'm an introvert and I never courted the attention at the same time I have gotten a lot of attention for a lot of my life.

[00:24:07] [SPEAKER_00]: But there's a part of me that wants to push my girls front and center, not as actresses necessarily or anything like that.

[00:24:14] [SPEAKER_00]: But I want them to claim their space and in the light.

[00:24:19] [SPEAKER_00]: And I kind of want to, you know, take a few steps back in order to do the things that I feel like I've always wanted to do in my life.

[00:24:27] [SPEAKER_00]: Such as the writing, the reflection, like my spiritual journey is super important to me.

[00:24:34] [SPEAKER_00]: And you know what? Just be lazy because you're walking from the end of the tunnel.

[00:24:39] [SPEAKER_03]: You know, she got a monk right for some time or not.

[00:24:42] [SPEAKER_03]: She did.

[00:24:42] [SPEAKER_00]: I seriously, it was just literally the fork in the road.

[00:24:47] [SPEAKER_00]: I was so close.

[00:24:49] [SPEAKER_00]: I was so close next life.

[00:24:51] [SPEAKER_00]: Next life maybe previous life happened.

[00:24:53] [SPEAKER_00]: So someone once told to me, I had like a spiritual mentor who said because, you know, I was, I was up in the room, Shala.

[00:25:02] [SPEAKER_00]: And I spent six months on retreat there.

[00:25:04] [SPEAKER_00]: I was getting all these realizations and I was feeling like, oh, I'm so cool.

[00:25:09] [SPEAKER_00]: And how are you the most spiritual of everyone's face of your life was this?

[00:25:13] [SPEAKER_00]: This was 30s.

[00:25:15] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, late 30s.

[00:25:17] [SPEAKER_00]: So I still remember coming down from the mountain literally coming down from the mountain and meeting this woman and saying,

[00:25:24] [SPEAKER_00]: you won't believe it. You won't believe the things I saw.

[00:25:26] [SPEAKER_00]: I saw in my past life, I have a mission.

[00:25:30] [SPEAKER_00]: I am, you know, a monk.

[00:25:32] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm a great spiritual leader and she's looking at me.

[00:25:36] [SPEAKER_00]: She's like, okay, so you did that in your last life, right?

[00:25:40] [SPEAKER_00]: So you don't need to do that again.

[00:25:42] [SPEAKER_00]: This life is for exactly who you are, who you're embodying right now.

[00:25:49] [SPEAKER_00]: And that's your comfort zone.

[00:25:51] [SPEAKER_00]: Now you get out of your comfort zone.

[00:25:52] [SPEAKER_00]: Now you live in the world.

[00:25:54] [SPEAKER_00]: And that was like such a, you know, such a cool message that cut through all of these kind of fantasies and sort of conceptions.

[00:26:03] [SPEAKER_03]: But what drove you, I know you talk about it in your book, but what drove you to, you know, seeking that degree of asceticism in the first place?

[00:26:12] [SPEAKER_03]: This is before you're the first diagnosis, right?

[00:26:14] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it was before.

[00:26:15] [SPEAKER_00]: It was before I was always, that was my main mission.

[00:26:21] [SPEAKER_00]: Like I led again a parallel life.

[00:26:23] [SPEAKER_00]: And that's a, you know, for a lot of my life it was these two parallel tracks.

[00:26:27] [SPEAKER_00]: One was of course the work that I was known for, but the other one was always seeking.

[00:26:32] [SPEAKER_00]: And I would use the opportunities that my work gave me to like say, nip off to Tirupati, nip off to, you know, a Buddhist retreat.

[00:26:40] [SPEAKER_00]: That was what kept me going.

[00:26:42] [SPEAKER_00]: Did you shave your hair off at Tirupati? Don't tell me.

[00:26:44] [SPEAKER_00]: No, but I did shave my head off for cancer.

[00:26:47] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:26:47] [SPEAKER_00]: And before that I shaved my head off.

[00:26:51] [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I had this one moment.

[00:26:53] [SPEAKER_00]: Water three times, actually now three times for water.

[00:26:56] [SPEAKER_00]: I want to talk about water.

[00:26:58] [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.

[00:26:59] [SPEAKER_00]: But before that, you know, when I was in the middle of sort of my modeling career and I felt really invisible and not seen just sort of, you know, obviously typecast.

[00:27:09] [SPEAKER_00]: I remember going to a friend's studio, Chin Win Lee.

[00:27:14] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if you've ever Chin Win Lee.

[00:27:15] [SPEAKER_01]: Of course, yes.

[00:27:16] [SPEAKER_00]: Very dear friend.

[00:27:18] [SPEAKER_00]: Incredible.

[00:27:19] [SPEAKER_00]: Where's Chin Win Lee now?

[00:27:20] [SPEAKER_00]: He passed.

[00:27:21] Oh.

[00:27:21] [SPEAKER_00]: He passed away, yeah, a couple of years ago.

[00:27:23] [SPEAKER_00]: Quite a few years ago.

[00:27:25] [SPEAKER_00]: So he was a very dear friend and he was my refuge.

[00:27:27] [SPEAKER_00]: We worked together professionally and then I would go and cry on his shoulder.

[00:27:31] [SPEAKER_00]: But I remember sitting in his office and saying, you know, I'm tired of how people perceive me and things like that.

[00:27:37] [SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, maybe if I cut my hair, they'll take me seriously or something like that.

[00:27:42] [SPEAKER_00]: So I literally took a pair of scissors and chopped away, like hacked away at my hair because I was always playing with this duality of like the external self with the inner.

[00:27:54] [SPEAKER_00]: Like what would you hold in your inner self and wondering how do I get people to see the inner me more?

[00:28:00] [SPEAKER_00]: You know, well, obviously I have to kind of alter the external me.

[00:28:04] [SPEAKER_01]: So I just do all my crazy stuff.

[00:28:06] [SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

[00:28:06] [SPEAKER_00]: That's why you see there's nothing on the table for me now.

[00:28:10] [SPEAKER_00]: I've been there, done that.

[00:28:11] [SPEAKER_00]: I've been there, done that and gotten a load out of it.

[00:28:15] [SPEAKER_00]: You know what brought me here to becoming this mellow auntie today.

[00:28:20] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm a very mellow auntie.

[00:28:22] [SPEAKER_00]: Is that interesting when now the younger generations look at you and they won't see everything that you've been through necessarily, right?

[00:28:30] [SPEAKER_00]: Like they might just sort of pass judgment, but just like how we did.

[00:28:34] [SPEAKER_00]: We did.

[00:28:35] [SPEAKER_00]: Same here, right?

[00:28:36] [SPEAKER_03]: But the generations also are not doing that because you're not looking at you.

[00:28:40] [SPEAKER_03]: They're looking at themselves.

[00:28:42] [SPEAKER_03]: They're looking at themselves.

[00:28:44] [SPEAKER_00]: And they're looking at themselves.

[00:28:46] [SPEAKER_00]: It's really, it's a lot of things.

[00:28:48] [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's scary.

[00:28:49] [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's scary and it's leading to so many issues.

[00:28:52] [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like scared especially for women, girls.

[00:28:56] [SPEAKER_00]: Unfortunately, it's affecting, statistically it's affecting girls much more than men.

[00:29:00] [SPEAKER_02]: Body image, of course. Epidemic of loneliness, all those things, but those things are part-leaser.

[00:29:05] [SPEAKER_02]: I want to come back to formal shots and water.

[00:29:08] [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, we'll be back.

[00:29:12] [SPEAKER_02]: What I found very interesting in your trajectory was the fact that you were a very established model at the top of your game

[00:29:19] [SPEAKER_02]: and you gave it all up to go and train at that point.

[00:29:23] [SPEAKER_02]: That was a huge risk you took.

[00:29:25] [SPEAKER_02]: And of course, A, why did you choose to go and train?

[00:29:29] [SPEAKER_02]: And B, when you came back, you took a film like Water.

[00:29:32] [SPEAKER_02]: Of course it's Deepa Mehta.

[00:29:34] [SPEAKER_02]: But that role totally de-glamourized something that you're completely not known for.

[00:29:40] [SPEAKER_02]: What made you take that up?

[00:29:41] [SPEAKER_02]: And then again, formal shots.

[00:29:43] [SPEAKER_02]: Again, a very bold role.

[00:29:45] [SPEAKER_02]: So do you seek these roles out or do you resist them until you can't resist them anymore?

[00:29:49] [SPEAKER_02]: How does it work for you?

[00:29:50] [SPEAKER_00]: No, no, I only seek them out.

[00:29:51] [SPEAKER_00]: That's all I wanted to do.

[00:29:55] [SPEAKER_00]: Because I never, obviously I didn't want to pursue mainstream body work.

[00:29:59] [SPEAKER_00]: At one point it was an option and it was people were very clearly knocking at the door.

[00:30:05] [SPEAKER_00]: And I had a lot of like, I just didn't want to do it.

[00:30:08] [SPEAKER_00]: It was something in me that I felt like I would be extinguished.

[00:30:13] [SPEAKER_00]: I knew that it would destroy me at so many different levels.

[00:30:17] [SPEAKER_00]: You know, and I know that sounds very, very dramatic, but I know that it would have.

[00:30:22] [SPEAKER_00]: The kind of person that I was and what I was going through.

[00:30:25] [SPEAKER_00]: I was also very, very vulnerable emotionally.

[00:30:28] [SPEAKER_00]: So anyways, but I did like this notion because I finally said yes to a film called Kasur.

[00:30:34] [SPEAKER_00]: And I worked with Vikram Bhatt and he was a very interesting director who really mind me psychologically.

[00:30:40] [SPEAKER_00]: And that was really interesting to me.

[00:30:41] [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't know that acting could be like that because I thought acting was all good and not.

[00:30:47] [SPEAKER_00]: Jankas and things like that.

[00:30:48] [SPEAKER_00]: Because you didn't see much else in the 90s.

[00:30:50] [SPEAKER_00]: Remember the 90s? Please recall the 90s.

[00:30:52] [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, please.

[00:30:53] [SPEAKER_00]: The fashion police of the 90s.

[00:30:56] [SPEAKER_00]: Actually, I'm enjoying the 90s.

[00:30:58] [SPEAKER_00]: I missed the 90s.

[00:30:59] [SPEAKER_00]: I know there was like a lot of fun, but I was like, do I want that to be my legacy?

[00:31:05] [SPEAKER_00]: No.

[00:31:07] [SPEAKER_00]: So I really wanted to do like there wasn't a lot of alternatives, but there was like

[00:31:12] [SPEAKER_00]: a nascent alternative kind of cinematic industry that was growing up in the 90s.

[00:31:19] [SPEAKER_00]: But none of those filmmakers would look at me.

[00:31:22] [SPEAKER_00]: I was just getting calls from the big filmmakers that everyone else was aspiring to work for.

[00:31:27] [SPEAKER_00]: Those filmmakers were just kind of rushing me aside.

[00:31:31] [SPEAKER_02]: And why did you think that was happening?

[00:31:34] [SPEAKER_00]: Because of my image.

[00:31:36] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, again, we do forget that perhaps one of the good things,

[00:31:42] [SPEAKER_00]: one of the positive things about the digital age is that we all individually have a platform

[00:31:47] [SPEAKER_00]: where we can express ourselves, where people can connect with who you are.

[00:31:50] [SPEAKER_00]: You can choose to express yourself and say, this is who I am.

[00:31:53] [SPEAKER_00]: In the 90s, there was no, there was nothing.

[00:31:55] [SPEAKER_00]: The mediator was like stardust, right?

[00:32:01] [SPEAKER_00]: And film fare and all these things because people could not access who you actually were.

[00:32:06] [SPEAKER_00]: And your image, my image at that time was so overwhelming

[00:32:10] [SPEAKER_00]: that everybody including filmmakers thought that that was who I was.

[00:32:14] [SPEAKER_00]: They didn't, you know, they just assumed that I was a stand-up.

[00:32:16] [SPEAKER_03]: I don't think she had a very approachable image back then.

[00:32:20] [SPEAKER_03]: It was very sort of ice maiden.

[00:32:22] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I didn't socialize and I didn't do any of that.

[00:32:28] [SPEAKER_00]: So anyway, so I really wanted to do alternative films.

[00:32:31] [SPEAKER_00]: So I had this great experience with Kassur.

[00:32:35] [SPEAKER_00]: Straightly enough, I today get a lot of feedback about Kassur.

[00:32:38] [SPEAKER_00]: Like people love the music and they still come up to me and talk about that,

[00:32:41] [SPEAKER_00]: which is bizarre to me, you know.

[00:32:44] [SPEAKER_00]: But it was also a little bit ahead of its time because it was like a female-centric role

[00:32:48] [SPEAKER_00]: and it was dark when everyone said, no, no, no, don't do dark films.

[00:32:52] [SPEAKER_00]: Anyways, but that wedded my appetite to learn more about this acting thing.

[00:32:57] [SPEAKER_00]: So that's why I took myself away.

[00:33:00] [SPEAKER_00]: Plus, I was in a very toxic relationship.

[00:33:03] [SPEAKER_00]: Let's not discount that.

[00:33:04] [SPEAKER_00]: I was in a horrible relationship and I felt like I had to distance myself

[00:33:09] [SPEAKER_00]: and leave Bombay. There was no other way out of this.

[00:33:13] [SPEAKER_00]: And so I just took a flight to London and settled into being the life of a student

[00:33:21] [SPEAKER_00]: because I also felt that I missed that.

[00:33:24] [SPEAKER_00]: Like I missed that because 16.

[00:33:25] [SPEAKER_00]: 16 you started working, yes.

[00:33:27] [SPEAKER_00]: And there's the Bengali and there's a little guilt complex.

[00:33:31] [SPEAKER_00]: Like you didn't go to university.

[00:33:33] [SPEAKER_00]: You didn't do what is expected of you and things like that.

[00:33:37] [SPEAKER_00]: And my father has his PhD and all of that stuff.

[00:33:40] [SPEAKER_00]: So I felt like I wanted to experience the life of a student.

[00:33:43] [SPEAKER_00]: Where would I do that in Bombay in 1997?

[00:33:45] [SPEAKER_00]: There was no avenue for me then.

[00:33:47] [SPEAKER_00]: Or this is like the late 90s.

[00:33:50] [SPEAKER_00]: So, yes, it was a combination.

[00:33:52] [SPEAKER_00]: There was no grand plan.

[00:33:53] [SPEAKER_00]: There's never been a grand plan.

[00:33:55] [SPEAKER_00]: But I really enjoyed drama school.

[00:34:02] [SPEAKER_00]: It was very elevated in London because again, a lot of it is mining yourself.

[00:34:06] [SPEAKER_00]: It's almost like therapy.

[00:34:08] [SPEAKER_00]: You're lying in order to access your voice, you have to access your trauma.

[00:34:12] [SPEAKER_00]: You have to lie on the floor and scream and cry.

[00:34:14] [SPEAKER_03]: Just peel the layers basically and bring them to the surface.

[00:34:17] [SPEAKER_00]: And to understand human nature to peel away the layers.

[00:34:21] [SPEAKER_00]: Like what does this line mean?

[00:34:23] [SPEAKER_00]: You can read it five different ways.

[00:34:25] [SPEAKER_00]: What's the actual intention behind the line?

[00:34:27] [SPEAKER_00]: So I really enjoyed that process.

[00:34:29] [SPEAKER_00]: I went into it very, very deep and I actually thought then I wanted to be a theater actor.

[00:34:35] [SPEAKER_00]: I just read the board.

[00:34:36] [SPEAKER_00]: You went to Radha?

[00:34:37] [SPEAKER_00]: No.

[00:34:37] [SPEAKER_00]: I went to a place called Alra, Academy of Live and Recorded Arts,

[00:34:41] [SPEAKER_00]: which is part of the accredited London drama schools like Radha's one, Lambda's one.

[00:34:47] [SPEAKER_00]: For instance, I got into Lambda and Weber Douglas.

[00:34:51] [SPEAKER_00]: Really?

[00:34:52] [SPEAKER_00]: But I chose not to go because it was for a three-year course.

[00:34:55] [SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

[00:34:55] [SPEAKER_00]: And I was 30.

[00:34:58] [SPEAKER_00]: And Alra gave me a one-year course.

[00:35:00] [SPEAKER_00]: Plus, it was live in Recorded Arts.

[00:35:04] [SPEAKER_00]: There was some integration of like camera work and I felt like that's good.

[00:35:08] [SPEAKER_00]: Plus, it was held in this incredibly gothic building that used to be an insane asylum.

[00:35:16] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh my God.

[00:35:17] [SPEAKER_00]: Like in 1857.

[00:35:19] [SPEAKER_00]: So what did you do?

[00:35:20] [SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, I was sold.

[00:35:21] [SPEAKER_00]: I was like, I want to go to an insane asylum.

[00:35:26] [SPEAKER_00]: I love this building.

[00:35:27] [SPEAKER_00]: And the building was genuinely haunted.

[00:35:30] [SPEAKER_00]: Tell us stories.

[00:35:30] [SPEAKER_00]: There were turrets.

[00:35:32] [SPEAKER_00]: And I remember once we were being called to some class who's being held in one of the

[00:35:40] [SPEAKER_00]: turrets in the left wing or something like that.

[00:35:43] [SPEAKER_00]: And we all went up there and we met the teacher coming down the stairs rather rapidly.

[00:35:48] [SPEAKER_00]: And he said, we're going to use another room today.

[00:35:51] [SPEAKER_00]: And we said, why?

[00:35:53] [SPEAKER_00]: What means?

[00:35:54] [SPEAKER_00]: Don't worry about it.

[00:35:55] [SPEAKER_00]: The rumor was that he saw a ghost.

[00:35:57] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh lovely.

[00:35:58] [SPEAKER_00]: Wow.

[00:35:58] [SPEAKER_02]: But did you ever see one in that?

[00:36:00] [SPEAKER_02]: What side?

[00:36:01] [SPEAKER_02]: Did you ever see one at the time that you were there?

[00:36:03] [SPEAKER_02]: I felt it.

[00:36:04] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:36:04] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm an empath.

[00:36:06] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.

[00:36:06] [SPEAKER_00]: It really was.

[00:36:08] [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm very open to these things.

[00:36:11] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm very sensitive to the energy.

[00:36:13] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm very sensitive to energies, but I also get a kick out of, you know, I, I don't know.

[00:36:18] [SPEAKER_00]: Look, I grew up on Monty Python.

[00:36:20] [SPEAKER_00]: That should see it.

[00:36:21] [SPEAKER_00]: I really like absurd things.

[00:36:24] [SPEAKER_00]: Like that's my taste.

[00:36:25] [SPEAKER_00]: And you know, my friends also in Bombay in the nineties, we're all like a little bit weird

[00:36:30] [SPEAKER_00]: and absurd.

[00:36:31] [SPEAKER_00]: And that's our taste.

[00:36:32] [SPEAKER_00]: So I loved first of all the irony or the juxtaposition of these young drama students who are leaping

[00:36:38] [SPEAKER_00]: through the air and learning how to fence, you know, juxtaposed with this, you know,

[00:36:45] [SPEAKER_00]: cries of these beleaguered people in the Assyne asylum, you know, echoing in the

[00:36:51] [SPEAKER_00]: walls kind of a thing like that really appealed to me.

[00:36:54] [SPEAKER_00]: So that's how I chose my drama school.

[00:36:57] [SPEAKER_03]: I should tell you the right criteria to go on choosing.

[00:37:02] [SPEAKER_02]: Is your institute an ex-insane asylum?

[00:37:05] [SPEAKER_02]: Yes.

[00:37:05] [SPEAKER_02]: No.

[00:37:06] [SPEAKER_02]: Cross.

[00:37:07] [SPEAKER_02]: No, cross.

[00:37:08] [SPEAKER_00]: No, we're not a fire.

[00:37:10] [SPEAKER_00]: Too respectable.

[00:37:11] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:37:12] [SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, that really appealed to me, but I've learned and grew so much.

[00:37:15] [SPEAKER_00]: And then I want to become a theater actor.

[00:37:17] [SPEAKER_00]: Like then I became an idealist.

[00:37:20] [SPEAKER_00]: And then I literally got the offer for water while I was studying.

[00:37:25] [SPEAKER_02]: While you were there?

[00:37:26] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, while I was there, Deepa sent me an email at Christmas and it was a very intriguing

[00:37:30] [SPEAKER_00]: email.

[00:37:31] [SPEAKER_00]: And because there had been so much controversy around the initial filming of

[00:37:35] [SPEAKER_00]: water, they had to do a rebranding.

[00:37:39] [SPEAKER_00]: So they called it River Moon and they claimed that it was a romantic story

[00:37:42] [SPEAKER_00]: and things like that.

[00:37:44] [SPEAKER_00]: But I read the script and it was the most lyrical script I've ever read

[00:37:48] [SPEAKER_00]: in my life.

[00:37:49] [SPEAKER_00]: And I was weeping and I said, yes, yes, yes to this opportunity.

[00:37:53] [SPEAKER_00]: And I actually had to petition my drama school to allow me time off because

[00:37:59] [SPEAKER_00]: they never give you time off to do professional work.

[00:38:02] [SPEAKER_00]: They expect, they would actually normally kick you out of the course.

[00:38:05] [SPEAKER_00]: So they made an exception for me and allowed me to go off and miss one of

[00:38:09] [SPEAKER_00]: the semesters to shoot this beautiful film and live in Sri Lanka and

[00:38:14] [SPEAKER_00]: all of that stuff.

[00:38:15] [SPEAKER_00]: That was the kind of cinema that I wanted to be a part of.

[00:38:18] [SPEAKER_00]: I had zero aspirations to be in mainstream cinema as it were.

[00:38:24] [SPEAKER_00]: And dare I say honestly, zero aspirations to be famous.

[00:38:28] [SPEAKER_00]: I just saw it as a burden.

[00:38:30] [SPEAKER_00]: I saw it more as a burden.

[00:38:31] [SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to be good at what I did and maybe recognized for being proficient

[00:38:36] [SPEAKER_00]: and really good.

[00:38:38] [SPEAKER_00]: That was my idea of success.

[00:38:40] [SPEAKER_00]: But not not famous like fame had like eaten at my soul in the 90s.

[00:38:46] [SPEAKER_00]: It really did.

[00:38:47] [SPEAKER_02]: That's the reverse of what's happening today, people chasing as we discussed earlier.

[00:38:51] [SPEAKER_02]: Just the fame.

[00:38:52] [SPEAKER_00]: And I think unfortunately, so just basically to bring it back to that

[00:38:55] [SPEAKER_00]: unfortunately, I think first of all, you don't realize what you sign up for.

[00:38:58] [SPEAKER_00]: Fame isn't incredibly, not just fickle, it's incredibly hollow.

[00:39:02] [SPEAKER_01]: The cruel master.

[00:39:03] [SPEAKER_00]: It's a cruel master but it's hollow.

[00:39:05] [SPEAKER_00]: What is it that you are actually wanting beyond the fame?

[00:39:09] [SPEAKER_00]: Like what is it that you think fame is going to give you?

[00:39:11] [SPEAKER_00]: Is it going to give you a sense of self, you know, a sense of validation?

[00:39:15] [SPEAKER_00]: Obviously it's that.

[00:39:17] [SPEAKER_00]: It has to be that.

[00:39:18] [SPEAKER_03]: I think fame is another thing that will open doors for them.

[00:39:22] [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I never wanted to be famous except when I was at the airport.

[00:39:27] [SPEAKER_03]: Money will do that also.

[00:39:28] [SPEAKER_03]: I don't want to go through the private channels and not have to like take my laptop out

[00:39:32] [SPEAKER_03]: and sit in the lounge.

[00:39:33] [SPEAKER_00]: I have to admit, I used to enjoy that.

[00:39:36] [SPEAKER_00]: I used to just used to place through places.

[00:39:37] [SPEAKER_00]: In the 90s nobody asked me.

[00:39:39] [SPEAKER_00]: And you get some egg, cool.

[00:39:41] [SPEAKER_00]: Come come please.

[00:39:42] [SPEAKER_00]: And you get restaurant.

[00:39:43] [SPEAKER_00]: Doesn't happen.

[00:39:44] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I used to get the right.

[00:39:45] [SPEAKER_00]: But then after a while that wears in.

[00:39:47] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm telling you it wears in.

[00:39:49] [SPEAKER_00]: And let me tell you the interesting thing is that like I feel that I was given a great blessing.

[00:39:58] [SPEAKER_00]: Having been just famous overnight at 16.

[00:40:02] [SPEAKER_00]: That is not common.

[00:40:04] [SPEAKER_00]: That doesn't happen.

[00:40:04] [SPEAKER_00]: And I really didn't have to work for it.

[00:40:06] [SPEAKER_00]: Right?

[00:40:07] [SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't something I was, you know, kind of working for us.

[00:40:11] [SPEAKER_00]: I was even a child artist or anything like that.

[00:40:13] [SPEAKER_00]: It just happened.

[00:40:14] [SPEAKER_00]: So the cool thing is that again, what is the narrative in society today?

[00:40:19] [SPEAKER_00]: You have to be rich.

[00:40:21] [SPEAKER_00]: You have to be famous.

[00:40:22] [SPEAKER_00]: Your life will be solved and you have to flaunt it.

[00:40:24] [SPEAKER_00]: You have to be rich.

[00:40:25] [SPEAKER_00]: You have to flaunt it.

[00:40:26] [SPEAKER_00]: And everyone has to know it on social media.

[00:40:28] [SPEAKER_00]: And you have to have your own like a special hashtag.

[00:40:30] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:40:31] [SPEAKER_00]: You know, yeah.

[00:40:32] [SPEAKER_00]: So that's the narrative.

[00:40:34] [SPEAKER_00]: But all of this defines like the peak of what you can accomplish.

[00:40:38] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:40:38] [SPEAKER_00]: And the assumption then is that your life is golden, right?

[00:40:42] [SPEAKER_00]: It's set.

[00:40:43] [SPEAKER_00]: You basically, you don't have any more problems.

[00:40:47] [SPEAKER_00]: But not just me.

[00:40:49] [SPEAKER_00]: Forget me saying this.

[00:40:51] [SPEAKER_00]: People who are far more famous and successful than me have actually written or shared their

[00:40:57] [SPEAKER_00]: message that listen, this is nothing.

[00:41:00] [SPEAKER_00]: This has not sustained me.

[00:41:02] [SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, I've been climbing this mountain and I get to the top and I find

[00:41:05] [SPEAKER_00]: that there's no view and I'm like, I'm frozen from the outside in.

[00:41:12] [SPEAKER_00]: And I have to realize that I have to descend from the mountain in order to find something

[00:41:17] [SPEAKER_00]: to sustain myself, right?

[00:41:19] [SPEAKER_00]: But like basically experiencing at a young age, I realize that first of all, fame

[00:41:23] [SPEAKER_00]: is not always cracked up to be at all.

[00:41:27] [SPEAKER_00]: You know, the recognition.

[00:41:29] [SPEAKER_00]: Sure, it was nice but on a very superficial level, but I'll give you context.

[00:41:33] [SPEAKER_00]: Right?

[00:41:34] [SPEAKER_00]: Like I was suffering deeply and psychologically and emotionally.

[00:41:38] [SPEAKER_00]: So the fame did not plug those holes in my soul.

[00:41:42] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:41:42] [SPEAKER_00]: At all.

[00:41:43] [SPEAKER_00]: And I always do this.

[00:41:45] [SPEAKER_00]: Like I do this in talks, right?

[00:41:46] [SPEAKER_00]: Like I give some context.

[00:41:49] [SPEAKER_00]: I say, again, if we believe that this is the height, fame, recognition, money,

[00:41:54] [SPEAKER_00]: all of that.

[00:41:56] [SPEAKER_00]: But if emotionally, psychologically, you know, spiritually, I'm here.

[00:42:01] [SPEAKER_00]: Can we define that as success?

[00:42:04] [SPEAKER_00]: Like is that actually success?

[00:42:06] [SPEAKER_00]: What's the point of it all?

[00:42:08] [SPEAKER_00]: And you know, it might sound like a little bit of a lecture.

[00:42:10] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know how I want to be sitting here preaching, but when you actually

[00:42:14] [SPEAKER_00]: experience it, when you experience it, you'll see through it and that

[00:42:19] [SPEAKER_00]: actually releases you or at least in my experience, it released me from chasing

[00:42:23] [SPEAKER_00]: after those ephemeral things.

[00:42:25] [SPEAKER_00]: And actually I was able to, I think live like a really richer, deeper life.

[00:42:31] [SPEAKER_00]: Even through all the ups and downs that I experienced, like I was released

[00:42:35] [SPEAKER_00]: from actually caring or giving a shit about what people thought.

[00:42:40] [SPEAKER_00]: I never did that much.

[00:42:42] [SPEAKER_00]: A little bit.

[00:42:43] [SPEAKER_00]: Yes.

[00:42:43] [SPEAKER_00]: It's there.

[00:42:43] [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's human nature.

[00:42:45] [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't.

[00:42:46] [SPEAKER_00]: So I was able to release myself from expectations, go off and have this

[00:42:50] [SPEAKER_00]: experience in London.

[00:42:52] [SPEAKER_00]: Go off and have.

[00:42:53] It's okay.

[00:42:54] [SPEAKER_00]: Whoa.

[00:42:54] [SPEAKER_00]: Is your phone okay?

[00:42:56] [SPEAKER_00]: Is your phone okay?

[00:42:57] [SPEAKER_00]: I thought something else fell over.

[00:43:00] [SPEAKER_02]: We've had all the solving and stuff.

[00:43:02] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, okay.

[00:43:02] [SPEAKER_00]: So that's all good.

[00:43:03] [SPEAKER_00]: But like go off and go on these retreats.

[00:43:06] [SPEAKER_00]: I was able to like tune into what did I want inside of what the world

[00:43:09] [SPEAKER_00]: was telling me that I wanted.

[00:43:11] [SPEAKER_00]: So I never pursued that.

[00:43:13] [SPEAKER_00]: I've always been a rebel.

[00:43:14] [SPEAKER_00]: And when I was younger, I wanted people to know that I was a rebel.

[00:43:17] [SPEAKER_00]: And today I don't flaunt it.

[00:43:20] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't care what, you know, how you perceive me, but I know how unconventional

[00:43:25] [SPEAKER_00]: and rebellious I've been.

[00:43:26] [SPEAKER_00]: And that's really sort of marked my journey.

[00:43:29] [SPEAKER_00]: And it's been super incredibly.

[00:43:32] [SPEAKER_00]: It's like my life has been this buffet.

[00:43:35] [SPEAKER_00]: My life has been a feast.

[00:43:38] [SPEAKER_00]: It has been a movable feast.

[00:43:39] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:43:40] [SPEAKER_00]: That, you know, that I've been able to take with me wherever it is.

[00:43:43] [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm including the difficult times as well.

[00:43:46] [SPEAKER_02]: So you've always been a spiritual person from the early times.

[00:43:51] [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, in your book, you write about it very eloquently.

[00:43:54] [SPEAKER_02]: And then of course cancer happened to you.

[00:43:57] [SPEAKER_02]: Did that make you, how did that affect your spiritual journey?

[00:44:00] [SPEAKER_02]: In a sense, did you become more of a seeker?

[00:44:03] [SPEAKER_02]: Did you feel compelled to search for more answers?

[00:44:07] [SPEAKER_02]: How did that?

[00:44:08] [SPEAKER_00]: I'll tell you, I went the opposite way.

[00:44:09] [SPEAKER_02]: Okay.

[00:44:10] [SPEAKER_00]: I went the opposite way.

[00:44:11] [SPEAKER_00]: Because, well, because I think I had actually laid the groundwork.

[00:44:16] [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I was like, there was a point where I was meditating

[00:44:19] [SPEAKER_00]: for like a substantial amount of time every single day.

[00:44:23] [SPEAKER_00]: It was hard for me to be in normal society

[00:44:25] [SPEAKER_00]: because I was too sensitive, you know?

[00:44:27] [SPEAKER_00]: And I also didn't, I don't know, it was hard to explain.

[00:44:29] [SPEAKER_00]: I saw through people.

[00:44:32] [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't feel that it was appealing to be in conventional society.

[00:44:36] [SPEAKER_00]: So anyways, but I laid the seeds in so many ways.

[00:44:39] [SPEAKER_00]: It did my groundwork and dealt with all my delusions,

[00:44:44] [SPEAKER_00]: self delusions and otherwise.

[00:44:47] [SPEAKER_00]: And I think when I was diagnosed, it all kind of came together.

[00:44:51] [SPEAKER_00]: It actually grounded me in a weird way.

[00:44:53] [SPEAKER_00]: I was like, I was like, I always, you know, this is before Jason even, right?

[00:44:57] [SPEAKER_00]: This is even before Jason.

[00:44:59] [SPEAKER_00]: It kind of grounded me into the practicalities of life.

[00:45:02] [SPEAKER_00]: I kind of reaffirmed with myself.

[00:45:03] [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I want to live number one.

[00:45:05] [SPEAKER_00]: I want to live.

[00:45:05] [SPEAKER_00]: I want to get through this.

[00:45:06] [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that I will, I'm quite sure I will.

[00:45:08] [SPEAKER_00]: But all that spiritual seeking was just there.

[00:45:12] [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't have to perform it anymore.

[00:45:15] [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't have to run after anything anymore.

[00:45:17] [SPEAKER_00]: And I had that first taste of that fact, you know, we hear this like so many times.

[00:45:22] [SPEAKER_00]: Everything you need is inside you.

[00:45:23] [SPEAKER_00]: Have you heard that?

[00:45:25] [SPEAKER_00]: Everything you need is inside you.

[00:45:26] [SPEAKER_00]: It's true.

[00:45:28] [SPEAKER_00]: But you don't know it sometimes until you're in a crisis and it's too loud

[00:45:31] [SPEAKER_00]: and we don't have enough faith in ourselves.

[00:45:34] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, no.

[00:45:35] [SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes when your back is against the wall and you have no choice but to trust and have faith

[00:45:41] [SPEAKER_00]: that's when suddenly something blossoms out of it from inside you.

[00:45:47] [SPEAKER_00]: And at the same time, like I had these techniques and stuff like that,

[00:45:50] [SPEAKER_00]: but I started taking life a lot less seriously after cancer.

[00:45:55] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:45:55] [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[00:45:55] [SPEAKER_00]: I was very serious.

[00:45:57] [SPEAKER_00]: I was this very pretentious, serious young person for a lot of my life.

[00:46:02] [SPEAKER_00]: And I let it all go.

[00:46:04] [SPEAKER_03]: I was 37.

[00:46:06] [SPEAKER_00]: All that dropped.

[00:46:07] [SPEAKER_00]: And I decided to actually have a lot more fun in life.

[00:46:10] [SPEAKER_00]: And I decided not to be so serious even about the spiritual seeking.

[00:46:15] [SPEAKER_00]: Like it started becoming a lot more organic and it would come whenever it would come.

[00:46:19] [SPEAKER_00]: And I still enjoy it very, I mean, it's still a very big part of me.

[00:46:23] [SPEAKER_00]: It's not about the enjoyment, but like a level of self-awareness is there

[00:46:26] [SPEAKER_00]: on the level of faith that like I don't have to drop everything

[00:46:29] [SPEAKER_00]: and fly to California to do this incredible fast in the middle of the desert.

[00:46:34] [SPEAKER_00]: Like I would have before, you know.

[00:46:36] [SPEAKER_03]: Lisa, when your cancer came back, there's a whole anecdote of the doctor needing,

[00:46:42] [SPEAKER_03]: you asking the doctor, please sit down.

[00:46:45] [SPEAKER_03]: He was so unnerved by the diagnosis and you were quite calm about it.

[00:46:52] [SPEAKER_03]: Where did that strength come from?

[00:46:54] [SPEAKER_03]: And this is the second time around.

[00:46:56] [SPEAKER_03]: You're already a spiritual person.

[00:46:58] [SPEAKER_03]: Surely there's some hope inside of you that, you know, this is the type of beat in it.

[00:47:03] [SPEAKER_03]: Did that make you question anything?

[00:47:07] [SPEAKER_03]: No.

[00:47:09] [SPEAKER_00]: I just, you know, all I felt was I remember sitting and thinking,

[00:47:13] [SPEAKER_00]: what did I miss the first time around?

[00:47:15] [SPEAKER_00]: Like there's something that I missed.

[00:47:17] [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, so I put that together and I was quite patient.

[00:47:20] [SPEAKER_00]: I missed, you know, I felt like I had not shifted my lifestyle enough.

[00:47:26] [SPEAKER_00]: I was not in enough alignment with who I was.

[00:47:30] [SPEAKER_00]: And so this was that other knock.

[00:47:32] [SPEAKER_00]: Just remember that this is what you're meant to do.

[00:47:35] [SPEAKER_00]: This is what this is about.

[00:47:36] [SPEAKER_02]: After how long did this come?

[00:47:38] [SPEAKER_00]: It happened, well it's a lovely story.

[00:47:41] [SPEAKER_00]: I relapsed about a month after my marriage.

[00:47:45] [SPEAKER_00]: We just moved into a new place.

[00:47:47] [SPEAKER_03]: My goodness, the timing.

[00:47:48] [SPEAKER_03]: And Jason used to hide in the bathroom.

[00:47:50] [SPEAKER_00]: He's hiding in the bathroom crying so that like he didn't know how to handle this.

[00:47:55] [SPEAKER_00]: But I had this, I was still a little bit self-centered.

[00:47:58] [SPEAKER_00]: I have to admit because I was like, yeah, but I know I'm getting the man.

[00:48:01] [SPEAKER_00]: Can't you hear?

[00:48:02] [SPEAKER_00]: I was actually hearing this little voice inside me saying it's cool.

[00:48:06] [SPEAKER_00]: It's all good.

[00:48:07] [SPEAKER_03]: Amazing.

[00:48:08] [SPEAKER_00]: But like, you know, going back to motherhood though, here's the interesting thing.

[00:48:11] [SPEAKER_00]: I do think that motherhood makes you way more vulnerable.

[00:48:16] [SPEAKER_00]: About like, I was super fearless, I think.

[00:48:19] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:48:20] [SPEAKER_00]: Before kids, you know, you can only have yourself to lose.

[00:48:23] [SPEAKER_00]: You only have to think about yourself.

[00:48:24] [SPEAKER_00]: That's the biggest loss, you know?

[00:48:26] [SPEAKER_00]: And hubby, yeah, okay.

[00:48:28] [SPEAKER_00]: That's okay.

[00:48:29] [SPEAKER_00]: But with children, oh my God.

[00:48:32] [SPEAKER_00]: It has made me like a lot more, I guess I question about how we would handle things today with children.

[00:48:40] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:48:41] [SPEAKER_00]: I like to say that I still have that.

[00:48:43] [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, that's a mother's thing and which is why I get...

[00:48:45] [SPEAKER_00]: It's mother's cross to bear.

[00:48:46] [SPEAKER_03]: Honestly, after...

[00:48:47] [SPEAKER_03]: Yesterday when I baked a cake for Zara and then I posted about it saying

[00:48:52] [SPEAKER_03]: I baked after eons.

[00:48:54] [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, I saw that.

[00:48:55] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that was really...

[00:48:56] [SPEAKER_03]: And then I wrote this whole story about how my kids forced me into baking because their

[00:49:00] [SPEAKER_03]: best friends kids used to bake, mums used to bake and they had this...

[00:49:04] [SPEAKER_03]: My mom made this muffin in their lunchbox and my kid like had nothing to show for.

[00:49:09] [SPEAKER_03]: And so she said you'd never bake for me and I started baking and it got me a lot

[00:49:12] [SPEAKER_03]: of joy and comfort.

[00:49:14] [SPEAKER_03]: And then over a period of time the girl said that, you know, now you're baking

[00:49:18] [SPEAKER_03]: is gotten too healthy because I was substituting all the unhealthy things.

[00:49:20] [SPEAKER_03]: And also now we are sick of eating all cakes and cookies and cheesecakes all the time.

[00:49:25] [SPEAKER_02]: So now just happy.

[00:49:26] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, they did this.

[00:49:26] [SPEAKER_03]: No, so no mom, it's done.

[00:49:28] [SPEAKER_03]: You're enough.

[00:49:29] [SPEAKER_03]: It's done.

[00:49:29] [SPEAKER_03]: And now when our older one is visiting us from college the other day I felt like baking

[00:49:35] [SPEAKER_03]: for her again.

[00:49:35] [SPEAKER_03]: So I baked for her and then I posted about my journey through this and how much comfort

[00:49:41] [SPEAKER_03]: it gave me to do it because that's what motherhood does to you.

[00:49:45] [SPEAKER_03]: And so Zara writes, oh wow.

[00:49:47] [SPEAKER_03]: For me it was just some breakfast you made for me.

[00:49:52] [SPEAKER_03]: Little ingrates.

[00:49:53] [SPEAKER_03]: And my older one said love you mama because she could see the emotion because in the

[00:49:57] [SPEAKER_03]: end I wrote about how I'm about to become an empty naster again soon.

[00:50:01] [SPEAKER_03]: And first my life was entirely about all my days and hours of filled with

[00:50:06] [SPEAKER_03]: children and after they leave I'll just have days and hours left.

[00:50:09] [SPEAKER_03]: So she said love you mama but next time can you make something with white

[00:50:14] [SPEAKER_03]: sugar?

[00:50:16] [SPEAKER_03]: And then one of the followers one gentleman writes saying that why is it only about

[00:50:23] [SPEAKER_03]: moms?

[00:50:24] [SPEAKER_03]: Dads feel the pang of separation too but no, it's more than that.

[00:50:28] [SPEAKER_03]: I mean which is the question fathers love when there's extreme turbulence.

[00:50:32] [SPEAKER_03]: I love turbulence by the way.

[00:50:33] [SPEAKER_03]: I love air turbulence.

[00:50:35] [SPEAKER_03]: What?

[00:50:36] [SPEAKER_03]: Yes.

[00:50:37] [SPEAKER_03]: And when there's air turbulence I'm so excited but I bring you closer to

[00:50:41] [SPEAKER_03]: your mortality.

[00:50:43] [SPEAKER_03]: She likes to skip things.

[00:50:45] [SPEAKER_03]: I get that.

[00:50:47] [SPEAKER_03]: Then I suddenly say oh my God put my children.

[00:50:50] [SPEAKER_03]: Like I say, oh you know if the plane goes down right now and come on we all

[00:50:53] [SPEAKER_03]: thought about it at some point of life.

[00:50:55] [SPEAKER_03]: If a plane goes down now it would be so bad because it's so quick and

[00:51:00] [SPEAKER_03]: they say oh my God my children.

[00:51:02] [SPEAKER_00]: But the children.

[00:51:03] [SPEAKER_00]: I think it should be like I mean but the children.

[00:51:06] [SPEAKER_00]: You know it could be like.

[00:51:09] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going on safari or I'm gonna bungee jump for the first time in like

[00:51:16] [SPEAKER_00]: the Sahara.

[00:51:17] [SPEAKER_00]: It's just like but the children.

[00:51:20] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going on my first like I'm going on my first I know like I don't

[00:51:27] [SPEAKER_00]: think it's something I'm going to try surfing for the first time

[00:51:31] [SPEAKER_00]: even though my joints are very fragile.

[00:51:33] [SPEAKER_00]: But the children.

[00:51:34] [SPEAKER_02]: I did for that.

[00:51:37] [SPEAKER_02]: I don't think but the children but the child right now.

[00:51:42] [SPEAKER_02]: I'm like okay I'm done he can survive.

[00:51:44] [SPEAKER_02]: No because he lives with you.

[00:51:47] [SPEAKER_02]: He lives with you and I think boys are a little bit different

[00:51:51] [SPEAKER_02]: honestly he's done with me and I'm done.

[00:51:54] [SPEAKER_02]: I mean.

[00:51:54] [SPEAKER_03]: Easier said than done.

[00:51:56] [SPEAKER_03]: Wait till he moves out lives in a house by himself has a fever

[00:52:00] [SPEAKER_03]: and I'm like I'm going to go and tell you mom it's a win three

[00:52:02] [SPEAKER_03]: and my girlfriend is not here right now.

[00:52:04] [SPEAKER_03]: Then we talk on this very podcast.

[00:52:07] [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I'll wait for that.

[00:52:08] [SPEAKER_00]: This is a conversation you have to pick up as time goes by.

[00:52:12] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but I like it's incredible also motherhood as I said it's

[00:52:16] [SPEAKER_00]: just like sometimes it really takes me by surprise.

[00:52:19] [SPEAKER_00]: I feel like my brain has been co-opted by like some

[00:52:30] [SPEAKER_00]: I mean mind you the only good thing is I do use them as an excuse sometimes.

[00:52:36] [SPEAKER_02]: All the time.

[00:52:37] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:52:38] [SPEAKER_00]: Like you know like because I have social phobia.

[00:52:41] [SPEAKER_03]: So like do you hop on up with the other mothers that's cool.

[00:52:44] [SPEAKER_03]: I continue doing that.

[00:52:46] [SPEAKER_00]: No, I call it like the mother mafia.

[00:52:49] [SPEAKER_00]: No, the cult of the mother.

[00:52:52] [SPEAKER_00]: There's a couple.

[00:52:53] [SPEAKER_00]: Fortunately, I have a very dear friend now that I made into by who's another writer of

[00:52:57] [SPEAKER_00]: need oh yeah is incredible and she has I mean she's younger than me but she has

[00:53:02] [SPEAKER_00]: kids my age and we're very like minded.

[00:53:05] [SPEAKER_00]: So she's my mom friend but her kids don't even go to the same school.

[00:53:09] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but it is and you can see what's interesting and I would I would want

[00:53:14] [SPEAKER_00]: someone to tell me this if they saw this quality and you can see how a

[00:53:18] [SPEAKER_00]: lot of mothers that I see Dubai but it could be anywhere because I've lived

[00:53:22] [SPEAKER_00]: everywhere and I've seen it everywhere have stepped out of powerful positions.

[00:53:28] [SPEAKER_00]: They're a lawyer there in the corporate world they were an entrepreneur

[00:53:33] [SPEAKER_00]: they were a designer but they stepped out of it because they have young kids

[00:53:37] [SPEAKER_00]: and they took the same decision that I did in the sense of prioritizing

[00:53:40] [SPEAKER_00]: the kids doesn't mean that your whole life revolves around me because

[00:53:43] [SPEAKER_00]: thank God we have help but that energy and that identity they are now

[00:53:50] [SPEAKER_00]: channeling into the whole school system and the mother system.

[00:53:55] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh my god and you know organizing play dates and birthday parties and

[00:54:00] [SPEAKER_00]: various and being on the WhatsApp group in the class and really it's really

[00:54:04] [SPEAKER_03]: pretty little lies or was it really little lies what were they show pretty

[00:54:08] [SPEAKER_03]: little lies yeah pretty no no the one with the cool kid man big little

[00:54:11] [SPEAKER_03]: big little lies big little lies and little fires everywhere.

[00:54:15] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh beautiful right I've read both the books by the way or you have little

[00:54:18] [SPEAKER_00]: fires everywhere is a mastery.

[00:54:21] [SPEAKER_03]: I have for one of the online JLF things I've been conversation with the right

[00:54:25] [SPEAKER_03]: so when I watch all these shows that in America and you know in elite

[00:54:28] [SPEAKER_03]: neighborhoods in the US and New York and you see all these mums who've

[00:54:32] [SPEAKER_03]: given up their careers and I've seen that in Bombay too then they start

[00:54:35] [SPEAKER_03]: meddling around the school they're from parent bodies and they are always

[00:54:39] [SPEAKER_03]: charging right in the front to find for the children and I always say to

[00:54:43] [SPEAKER_03]: myself you give up your career and this is your career now yeah you're a career

[00:54:47] [SPEAKER_00]: mother career mom like a politician career mother we have a few in our

[00:54:52] [SPEAKER_00]: inner circles even I can't bless them I really feel for those children but

[00:54:57] [SPEAKER_02]: I feel yeah I feel for the children you're going to grow up with the mom

[00:55:00] [SPEAKER_02]: who focuses just you and your education no no fortunately this is

[00:55:05] [SPEAKER_00]: a great thing about being a geriatric mom you don't have the energy okay like I

[00:55:09] [SPEAKER_00]: and again I'm very happy because we have wonderful nannies and I'm very

[00:55:13] [SPEAKER_00]: grateful for them so I mean obviously I send them off for play dates I never

[00:55:17] [SPEAKER_00]: go to a play date or anything like that you know I send them off for the

[00:55:20] [SPEAKER_00]: birthday parties I want to try to find the quality time with them which

[00:55:23] [SPEAKER_00]: actually brings us to why I'm here as well you know I need my children

[00:55:29] [SPEAKER_00]: to grow up with a grounding in a sense of this country as well

[00:55:33] [SPEAKER_00]: of India and it's a challenge today to keep our children grounded when you do

[00:55:38] [SPEAKER_00]: come from a particular background or strata society or a kind of a sense

[00:55:44] [SPEAKER_00]: of privilege because I think again everything is so quick these children

[00:55:49] [SPEAKER_00]: just expect instant gratification constantly and I'm talking about outside

[00:55:53] [SPEAKER_00]: of social media I'm talking about my six year olds so I'm really happy

[00:55:57] [SPEAKER_00]: that I'm here and you know in Bombay I want them to have a connection with the city

[00:56:00] [SPEAKER_00]: even though they lived here they were three they were too young I don't want

[00:56:05] [SPEAKER_00]: them to say dirty mama I become like one of those kids so took them to this

[00:56:11] [SPEAKER_00]: lovely orphanage Balasha where they donated half of their birthday presents

[00:56:18] [SPEAKER_00]: initially reluctantly I must admit now there's a yeah but now you know

[00:56:24] [SPEAKER_00]: they went and they also met the other kids and I think it was you know it wasn't

[00:56:28] [SPEAKER_00]: like an instant boom happened but I think like cumulatively that will happen

[00:56:31] [SPEAKER_00]: but you know I like much to my horror I've become that NRI that wants

[00:56:37] [SPEAKER_00]: the child to be connected with India because I in my head have never thought

[00:56:41] [SPEAKER_00]: of myself as an NRI even when I lived in Hong Kong I was not an NRI

[00:56:45] [SPEAKER_00]: I was always in Indiana but Bombay girl but you see like it's

[00:56:49] [SPEAKER_00]: an issue with kids now like how do you yeah how do you maintain that connection

[00:56:55] [SPEAKER_00]: also why speak and not get privileged as well but please when you say

[00:57:01] [SPEAKER_03]: that's a very fine line between maintaining that connection and seeing the

[00:57:06] [SPEAKER_03]: India that you are in today because yeah everyone is flashing their wealth

[00:57:10] [SPEAKER_03]: so much in India is all about having more not being more shopping and brands

[00:57:15] [SPEAKER_03]: and influence our culture and it's not just also should be there you step

[00:57:18] [SPEAKER_03]: outside in your circles you will see it yeah so you know you'll have to really pick

[00:57:23] [SPEAKER_03]: and choose the kind of India you want to show your children and put blinkers on

[00:57:27] [SPEAKER_00]: for that yeah and put blinkers on yeah yeah for instance we are actually have

[00:57:31] [SPEAKER_00]: over working on getting a place in the Nilgiri's for instance

[00:57:34] [SPEAKER_03]: I've always wanted a friend to have a house in the Nilgiri's

[00:57:37] [SPEAKER_00]: okay well there you go I'll use your house somewhere else

[00:57:41] [SPEAKER_00]: I won't do an housing change but you know I mean I don't know I haven't figured

[00:57:46] [SPEAKER_00]: it out but I just know that they need to maintain their connection

[00:57:51] [SPEAKER_00]: their third culture kids they don't appear very obviously Indian because

[00:57:55] [SPEAKER_00]: actually the blood has been diluted technically they are like one quarter Indian

[00:58:01] [SPEAKER_00]: but it's so important to me my mom was foolish

[00:58:05] [SPEAKER_00]: my mom was foolish so I'm Jason is just as Lebanese he's full Lebanese

[00:58:11] [SPEAKER_00]: so you know but at the same time I send them for Kathak

[00:58:14] [SPEAKER_00]: I send them to Hindi lessons I send them for all these things

[00:58:18] [SPEAKER_00]: so we talk about Indian all the time and they see that passion in me

[00:58:23] [SPEAKER_00]: in fact what the funniest thing happened with Sole today

[00:58:26] [SPEAKER_00]: we were sitting around and having lunch just before this

[00:58:29] [SPEAKER_00]: and she said mama why is it always about your country

[00:58:34] [SPEAKER_00]: why are we always coming to your country poor daddy we never go to his country

[00:58:37] [SPEAKER_00]: oh my goodness

[00:58:40] [SPEAKER_00]: I was like where has this come from

[00:58:44] [SPEAKER_00]: equal rights for fun

[00:58:45] [SPEAKER_03]: equal rights for fun

[00:58:46] [SPEAKER_00]: equal rights for daddy

[00:58:47] [SPEAKER_00]: love babies and daughters is a hell of a level

[00:58:50] [SPEAKER_00]: that is undeniable

[00:58:51] [SPEAKER_00]: but we were in Beirut last year just so happens that there's still a war

[00:58:56] [SPEAKER_00]: ongoing and I was like I don't feel comfortable going to Beirut this year

[00:59:00] [SPEAKER_00]: so you know we tried to explain to her but she actually started bawling

[00:59:04] [SPEAKER_00]: it's very strange what comes out of their their minds

[00:59:08] [SPEAKER_00]: because there is a little Lebanon somewhere you can take a look

[00:59:13] [SPEAKER_00]: go for Lebanese food

[00:59:14] [SPEAKER_03]: go to Lebanese food and then go to Beirut with the Beirut

[00:59:18] [SPEAKER_03]: you know I tell you

[00:59:19] [SPEAKER_00]: B-A-Y-R-O-U-T

[00:59:21] [SPEAKER_00]: Beirut

[00:59:22] [SPEAKER_00]: and daddy by the way being Lebanese loves Bombay

[00:59:25] [SPEAKER_00]: like he loves India and he loves Bombay

[00:59:28] [SPEAKER_00]: but they were suddenly feeling that there's this great

[00:59:31] [SPEAKER_00]: you know the arms of justice

[00:59:35] [SPEAKER_00]: were like completely mismatched

[00:59:37] [SPEAKER_00]: but like somehow we're always going to mummy's country

[00:59:41] [SPEAKER_00]: what festivals do you celebrate at home

[00:59:43] [SPEAKER_00]: Diwali, Durga Puja is more important for us

[00:59:47] [SPEAKER_00]: okay

[00:59:47] [SPEAKER_00]: I do heavens and things like that

[00:59:50] [SPEAKER_00]: I see they are completely going their mothers way

[00:59:52] [SPEAKER_00]: the kids are right

[00:59:53] [SPEAKER_00]: they haven't mentioned anything

[00:59:55] [SPEAKER_00]: oh no Christmas

[00:59:56] [SPEAKER_00]: Christmas all kids love Christmas

[00:59:58] [SPEAKER_00]: all kids love Christmas

[01:00:00] [SPEAKER_00]: any Lebanese festivals

[01:00:01] [SPEAKER_00]: Christmas because Jason's like Christian Lebanon

[01:00:04] [SPEAKER_00]: then they're boxing there and they're all those things don't they

[01:00:07] [SPEAKER_00]: we celebrate you know what a funny thing has happened

[01:00:10] [SPEAKER_00]: because I made some Polish friends

[01:00:12] [SPEAKER_00]: Dubai being as multicultural as it is

[01:00:15] [SPEAKER_00]: which is honestly is actually very nice and refreshing

[01:00:19] [SPEAKER_00]: I've met a lot of Polish women

[01:00:21] [SPEAKER_00]: who have reignited that connection with my Polish side

[01:00:25] [SPEAKER_00]: so suddenly we find we're being invited for Polish Easter

[01:00:29] [SPEAKER_00]: and there's a particular ritual where we go

[01:00:31] [SPEAKER_00]: and we buy the Polish sausages and the bread

[01:00:33] [SPEAKER_00]: and the salt and you put it in a little basket

[01:00:36] [SPEAKER_00]: and you take it to the church and have it blessed by the

[01:00:38] [SPEAKER_00]: ooh yeah I think ooh

[01:00:40] [SPEAKER_00]: and I found that I have a taste of Polish sausages

[01:00:43] [SPEAKER_00]: all over again

[01:00:44] [SPEAKER_03]: isn't it Christmas much later?

[01:00:47] [SPEAKER_00]: no that's Russia

[01:00:48] [SPEAKER_00]: that's the Orthodox

[01:00:51] [SPEAKER_00]: Polish or Catholic

[01:00:52] [SPEAKER_00]: but you didn't have any of the Polish rituals

[01:00:56] [SPEAKER_00]: while you were growing huh?

[01:00:57] [SPEAKER_00]: it was a combination

[01:00:58] [SPEAKER_00]: it was definitely a mixture

[01:01:00] [SPEAKER_00]: but then something happened

[01:01:02] [SPEAKER_00]: this damn Indian influence is so heavy

[01:01:06] [SPEAKER_00]: just you came here

[01:01:07] [SPEAKER_00]: just overshadows everything

[01:01:09] [SPEAKER_00]: just you came here at 16 and you were your fifth along

[01:01:12] [SPEAKER_00]: yeah yeah and I like to speak Polish

[01:01:15] [SPEAKER_00]: I still because it was one of the languages that I learned

[01:01:17] [SPEAKER_00]: my Polish probably better than my English

[01:01:18] [SPEAKER_00]: did you?

[01:01:20] [SPEAKER_00]: no not really my grandmother

[01:01:21] [SPEAKER_00]: my maternal grandmother

[01:01:23] [SPEAKER_00]: and she sent me to church

[01:01:25] [SPEAKER_00]: I did all of that

[01:01:26] [SPEAKER_00]: but equally I was celebrating Durga Pooja

[01:01:29] [SPEAKER_00]: and having Jigamach, curry

[01:01:31] [SPEAKER_00]: and then having pierogi

[01:01:32] [SPEAKER_00]: and going to church

[01:01:33] [SPEAKER_00]: so I was you know and that's beautiful

[01:01:36] [SPEAKER_00]: and that's kind of this inclusive

[01:01:37] [SPEAKER_00]: holistic fun for kids to be

[01:01:39] [SPEAKER_03]: it was supposed to so many different things

[01:01:41] [SPEAKER_00]: yeah but it wasn't as cool at that time

[01:01:43] [SPEAKER_00]: when it was happening to me because I didn't have any reference points

[01:01:46] [SPEAKER_00]: there were very few kids like me

[01:01:47] [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't have any references

[01:01:49] [SPEAKER_00]: they just thought it was really weird

[01:01:53] [SPEAKER_02]: tell me Lisa to go completely off track

[01:01:55] [SPEAKER_02]: as I keep doing all the time

[01:01:56] [SPEAKER_02]: yeah do it I love it

[01:01:57] [SPEAKER_02]: what will you get into NFT

[01:01:59] [SPEAKER_02]: it's completely completely removed from what you did earlier

[01:02:03] [SPEAKER_00]: well it's art based

[01:02:05] [SPEAKER_00]: it's basically digital art

[01:02:07] [SPEAKER_00]: so art is another one of those parallel tracks

[01:02:10] [SPEAKER_01]: okay okay

[01:02:11] [SPEAKER_00]: I swear to God this is a true story

[01:02:14] [SPEAKER_00]: I as soon as I started earning money as a model

[01:02:18] [SPEAKER_00]: I started blowing every single paycheck on art

[01:02:21] [SPEAKER_00]: really

[01:02:21] [SPEAKER_00]: I picked up my first piece of art at Harsh Gowinka's art camp

[01:02:25] [SPEAKER_00]: do you remember those in the 90s

[01:02:27] [SPEAKER_00]: he used to have his art camps

[01:02:30] [SPEAKER_00]: and again Bengoli

[01:02:32] [SPEAKER_00]: what can I say

[01:02:33] [SPEAKER_00]: so I always thought look

[01:02:35] [SPEAKER_00]: collecting art was not you know

[01:02:37] [SPEAKER_00]: is not considered a pursuit of the middle class

[01:02:40] [SPEAKER_00]: so when I was thrown into this world

[01:02:42] [SPEAKER_00]: I did make the best of the situation for myself personally

[01:02:45] [SPEAKER_00]: art was always something I aspire to

[01:02:47] [SPEAKER_00]: not just enjoy but to collect

[01:02:49] [SPEAKER_00]: you know I had that greed about art

[01:02:52] [SPEAKER_00]: so I've collected a lot of art

[01:02:54] [SPEAKER_00]: as a young woman

[01:02:55] [SPEAKER_00]: you know I bought my first Jogin Choudhury

[01:02:58] [SPEAKER_00]: my Suhas Roy

[01:02:59] [SPEAKER_00]: my Parish Maidhi

[01:03:01] [SPEAKER_00]: my blah blah blah blah

[01:03:02] [SPEAKER_00]: I started collecting all of that

[01:03:04] [SPEAKER_00]: when I was barely out of my teens

[01:03:06] [SPEAKER_00]: yeah please

[01:03:06] [SPEAKER_00]: so

[01:03:07] [SPEAKER_00]: and I've always been art adjacent

[01:03:10] [SPEAKER_00]: to the art world in India

[01:03:12] [SPEAKER_00]: and then very recently

[01:03:14] [SPEAKER_00]: I mean over the last decade

[01:03:16] [SPEAKER_00]: I started connecting with a lot of newer art galleries

[01:03:19] [SPEAKER_00]: like Dark in Bombay

[01:03:21] [SPEAKER_00]: and she introduced me

[01:03:23] [SPEAKER_00]: Hena who runs it's introduced me to like the next generation

[01:03:26] [SPEAKER_00]: of young artists

[01:03:27] [SPEAKER_00]: I just love it

[01:03:28] [SPEAKER_00]: I love buying the art, supporting artists

[01:03:31] [SPEAKER_00]: everything that it stands for

[01:03:32] [SPEAKER_00]: but

[01:03:33] [SPEAKER_00]: I have a fair amount of knowledge about

[01:03:36] [SPEAKER_00]: the gatekeeping

[01:03:38] [SPEAKER_00]: of the art industry as it is today

[01:03:40] [SPEAKER_00]: the art world

[01:03:41] [SPEAKER_00]: and so there are innate issues

[01:03:45] [SPEAKER_00]: and NFTs actually can cut through all of that

[01:03:48] [SPEAKER_00]: so it's just

[01:03:49] [SPEAKER_00]: it's more about finding a new technology

[01:03:52] [SPEAKER_00]: to update the art market

[01:03:54] [SPEAKER_00]: that's how I see it

[01:03:55] [SPEAKER_00]: so I co-founded this digital art platform

[01:03:59] [SPEAKER_00]: the Upside Space

[01:04:00] [SPEAKER_00]: I had a blast doing it

[01:04:02] [SPEAKER_00]: I was working with another friend of my Natasha Jyaisu

[01:04:05] [SPEAKER_00]: who's an art consult

[01:04:07] [SPEAKER_00]: who's an art consultant

[01:04:09] [SPEAKER_00]: used to advise me actually about artists to buy

[01:04:13] [SPEAKER_00]: and my co-founder is based in Singapore

[01:04:15] [SPEAKER_00]: I got roped into it by my co-founder Aisha Khan

[01:04:18] [SPEAKER_00]: and I just love the idea of

[01:04:21] [SPEAKER_00]: finally being able to do something that was

[01:04:25] [SPEAKER_00]: actually not art adjacent but actually directly connected with art

[01:04:28] [SPEAKER_00]: I love the art world

[01:04:29] [SPEAKER_00]: and for us

[01:04:30] [SPEAKER_00]: we're highlighting the art from the regions that we love

[01:04:33] [SPEAKER_00]: that we're from

[01:04:33] [SPEAKER_00]: Southeast Asia

[01:04:37] [SPEAKER_00]: Southeast Asia, South Asia and then the East

[01:04:39] [SPEAKER_03]: Are you still doing it?

[01:04:40] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah

[01:04:40] [SPEAKER_00]: What you are

[01:04:41] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, it's still

[01:04:42] [SPEAKER_00]: as in I'm not involved in the day to day

[01:04:45] [SPEAKER_00]: I help to

[01:04:47] [SPEAKER_00]: ideate and conceptualize

[01:04:49] [SPEAKER_00]: and promote

[01:04:50] [SPEAKER_03]: NFTs are doing well again now

[01:04:52] [SPEAKER_03]: but in between there were the slabs

[01:04:54] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so now

[01:04:55] [SPEAKER_00]: they necessarily have to be a maturing of the market

[01:04:58] [SPEAKER_00]: of NFTs

[01:04:58] [SPEAKER_00]: It's such a new cutting edge technology

[01:05:01] [SPEAKER_00]: that the initial kind of

[01:05:05] [SPEAKER_00]: the initial perception of it in the market

[01:05:08] [SPEAKER_00]: was that it's wrapped up with all these memes

[01:05:12] [SPEAKER_00]: and kind of collectibles

[01:05:15] [SPEAKER_00]: not really art but it was being called art

[01:05:17] [SPEAKER_00]: So it had to necessarily correct

[01:05:19] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm glad it went through a correction

[01:05:21] [SPEAKER_00]: it works for us as a platform

[01:05:22] [SPEAKER_00]: because we're actually dealing with quality art

[01:05:24] [SPEAKER_02]: So for in Lehman's Stones

[01:05:26] [SPEAKER_02]: what is it that the platform does?

[01:05:28] [SPEAKER_02]: It brings the art to anyone who wants it

[01:05:31] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so we curate

[01:05:33] [SPEAKER_00]: We work with curators from all these different regions

[01:05:35] [SPEAKER_00]: who work with artists

[01:05:37] [SPEAKER_00]: who are not necessarily digital natives

[01:05:39] [SPEAKER_00]: a lot of them are traditional artists

[01:05:41] [SPEAKER_00]: and it basically we bring their art

[01:05:44] [SPEAKER_00]: we digitize it

[01:05:46] [SPEAKER_00]: So it becomes an art piece

[01:05:49] [SPEAKER_00]: which is often based on a physical piece of art

[01:05:52] [SPEAKER_00]: Some of our artists are offering the physical piece for free

[01:05:55] [SPEAKER_00]: when you buy the digital piece of art

[01:05:56] [SPEAKER_00]: but this ideally creates a greater global audience

[01:06:00] [SPEAKER_00]: it reaches out to a wider audience

[01:06:02] [SPEAKER_00]: for these artists that are generally not very well known as well

[01:06:05] [SPEAKER_00]: We did this beautiful exhibition on the Devi

[01:06:09] [SPEAKER_00]: during the Rukapuja

[01:06:11] [SPEAKER_00]: So these were traditional Patachitra artists

[01:06:14] [SPEAKER_00]: or artists from Calcutta

[01:06:16] [SPEAKER_00]: who work in very humble kind of circumstances

[01:06:20] [SPEAKER_00]: but this could potentially offer them an extra income

[01:06:24] [SPEAKER_00]: and a way to reach a global audience

[01:06:25] [SPEAKER_00]: That's the dream

[01:06:27] [SPEAKER_00]: Now we're still honestly a couple of years away from that

[01:06:30] [SPEAKER_00]: but we're sort of creating an ecosystem now

[01:06:33] [SPEAKER_00]: where people are more open to these conversations

[01:06:36] [SPEAKER_00]: more open to these ways of collecting

[01:06:38] [SPEAKER_00]: more open to collaborating as well

[01:06:42] [SPEAKER_00]: We're actually in conversation with a company

[01:06:47] [SPEAKER_00]: in Dubai right now

[01:06:48] [SPEAKER_00]: about doing a live in the digital event

[01:06:50] [SPEAKER_00]: and bringing together for instance

[01:06:52] [SPEAKER_00]: this is really exciting

[01:06:53] [SPEAKER_00]: an artist from Bangladesh

[01:06:56] [SPEAKER_00]: in Diyan Pakistan

[01:06:57] [SPEAKER_00]: that in real world terms

[01:06:59] [SPEAKER_00]: where do they meet?

[01:07:01] [SPEAKER_00]: Where can they actually meet

[01:07:02] [SPEAKER_00]: in order to for instance

[01:07:04] [SPEAKER_00]: interact and paint together

[01:07:06] [SPEAKER_00]: create art together

[01:07:06] [SPEAKER_00]: They can't really easily in their home countries

[01:07:09] [SPEAKER_00]: especially between India and Pakistan

[01:07:11] [SPEAKER_00]: So the UAE, the Bible

[01:07:13] [SPEAKER_00]: become then the neutral ground

[01:07:15] [SPEAKER_00]: we bring them all in

[01:07:16] [SPEAKER_00]: and they will do sort of a residency

[01:07:18] [SPEAKER_00]: where they'll create art

[01:07:20] [SPEAKER_00]: inspired by each other

[01:07:21] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh wonderful

[01:07:22] [SPEAKER_00]: and that for me, honestly

[01:07:25] [SPEAKER_00]: not just idealistically

[01:07:26] [SPEAKER_00]: but in real world terms

[01:07:28] [SPEAKER_00]: that's actually the

[01:07:32] [SPEAKER_00]: what's the word I'm looking for

[01:07:34] [SPEAKER_00]: That's the promise that NFTs unlock

[01:07:37] [SPEAKER_00]: You know it really is a promise

[01:07:40] [SPEAKER_00]: of a much more seamless

[01:07:43] [SPEAKER_00]: borderless world

[01:07:44] [SPEAKER_00]: So first of all

[01:07:45] [SPEAKER_00]: I want to say that I'm such a fan

[01:07:47] [SPEAKER_00]: of this show

[01:07:49] [SPEAKER_00]: I think I was one of your first fans

[01:07:51] [SPEAKER_00]: so remember that

[01:07:52] [SPEAKER_00]: You are yes

[01:07:54] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm such a fan

[01:07:55] [SPEAKER_00]: because I also know who you are

[01:07:57] [SPEAKER_00]: but none of us are

[01:08:01] [SPEAKER_00]: It's all good

[01:08:01] [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm so happy to be here on the show

[01:08:04] [SPEAKER_00]: and let me also say

[01:08:06] [SPEAKER_00]: that you had me talking more than I normally ever talk

[01:08:09] [SPEAKER_00]: my throat is dry

[01:08:12] [SPEAKER_00]: I consider myself

[01:08:13] [SPEAKER_00]: an introvert

[01:08:15] [SPEAKER_00]: You are

[01:08:16] [SPEAKER_00]: I really don't talk so bloody much

[01:08:19] [SPEAKER_00]: and you know we all still have these delusions about myself

[01:08:22] [SPEAKER_00]: I am now in my Zen phase

[01:08:25] [SPEAKER_00]: and I would listen more than I talk

[01:08:27] [SPEAKER_00]: But I didn't really do that did I?