Open Book : Not Quite a Memoir 9789354894473, 935489447X

Citation preview

To every human who may have been lost at least once in their quest to finding answers. The big ‘Why is this happening to me now?’; the curious ‘How did I get here?’; the anxious ‘Where will I go next?’; the calm ‘What did I learn?’. Hi! Little perfectly imperfect human … presenting to you my Open Book. This is my truth.

Contents

Prologue: Teething Troubles 1.

The Ground beneath My Feet

2.

Kubbra 2.0 Release Date

3.

Metamorphosis

4.

I Don’t Have Daddy Issues

5.

I Called Him Uncle

6.

Living Many Lives in a Lifetime

7.

#PaidtoTalk

8.

It’s Cool to Not Look the Same

9.

Love Actually

10. I’ve Dated Many, Many Nice Men 11. City of My Dreams 12. In with the In-Crowd 13. ‘This Is a Hard Business’ 14. ‘You Gave Us Gold’ 15. When Exactly Have You Truly Arrived? 16. ‘Dear Mem, Are Youself Male, Female or Both?’ 17. Sibling Revelry 18. Cat Person 19. I Wasn’t Ready to Be a Mother 20. Heaven and Hell 21. I Was Born to Play Phara 22. Faith Takes You That Extra Mile 23. Searching for a Rainbow Inside My Heart 24. Ask Me Again … Why Write a Book? Acknowledgements About the Book About the Author Copyright

Prologue Teething Troubles

I

learnt about pain—both physical and emotional—much before I learnt about other things in life. My story begins with an issue of a serial extraction. The extraction of my teeth, that is. The first pain I experienced as a child was purely physical. I had been abandoned both by the architecture of my teeth and by the tooth fairy about whom I learnt only when I had grown up substantially, after years of doctor visits, and after I had a set of colourful braces attached to my teeth. And I realized that although the tooth fairy had been busy, collecting loose teeth from under the pillows of slumbering children in return for some money, she, or he, had completely skipped my address. That was why, when I was thirteen years old, I would find myself at a dentist’s clinic on Commercial Street, Bangalore, twice a month, my tiny legs swinging from his swanky new imported chair while he tried to chisel the rogue geography of my teeth into submission. The doctor was pretty sure that I would have the braces on for just one year, post which I’d have an enviable smile. He had lied. Perhaps he didn’t know what he was doing, because I wore braces pretty much throughout my entire adolescence, and my teeth, well, they just got weirder with every consultation. However, I was unique. When a young person needs to wear braces, they need to get four teeth extracted to create space for the wisdom teeth that will one day make an appearance. So, I was packed off to get an X-ray of my mouth for this. The results were truly surprising. It appeared that I didn’t even have the root for wisdom teeth in my mouth. Like nada, none, zilch … no indication of wisdom ever in this creature to live and walk this earth for an indenite time. It was a joke, and also, perhaps, a sign for all those unwise situations in which I would find myself, and about which you’ll read in this book.

1 The Ground beneath My Feet

‘C

obra!’ they called out and giggled. ‘Green eyes like a snake. If she bites you, you will die!’ I walked past the voices—my gaze pinned on my feet—as I made my way to class. I read on a trusted wellness website that, as per the World Atlas, only 2 per cent of the world’s population has green eyes. One would think green eyes were coveted. But here, in my new school, green eyes were snake eyes; they couldn’t be trusted. The teasing had become a daily affair, and I was learning to build a wall around myself. But even then, the irony did not escape me. My name, Kubra (spelt with a single ‘b’ back then), meant ‘big one’ in Arabic. My identity, my name, was chosen by Mumma. God alone knows how many names she went through with a fine-tooth comb to pick one that would represent my personality, one which I would continue to inhabit for as long as I walked this planet. She didn’t want my name to be ordinary or usual; it had to be special and powerful. A name that would reflect the person I was to become. It had to be impactful. She was the only one who understood the depth of this name. I didn’t get it then because, at that moment, in school, I felt invisible. However, this was not always the case. At home, as a toddler, before I went to school, I was special. I had the best clothes; Mumma would scour through fashion catalogues—not the fancy ones you see on Pinterest, but the OG books that looked and felt hefty. She would pick a collar from this design and a button piping from another and choose a separate bow—sometimes a sailor blue—from a random picture and request Balaji tailor in Vannarpet to stitch it for me. Proper couture in a part of the city where no one remembers me or my name, but I was the child who strutted and walked the walk. I was a very happy, spritely child. When I smiled, the world smiled back at me. From pre-nursery to third grade, I was the kid who didn’t care about the world, a child who didn’t give a damn. I loved to scribble with chalk on a blackboard, a habit I have to this day … just that now I use a black marker on a whiteboard. For pre-nursery, I attended the Army school, nestled in the heart of Bangalore. I remember the good old GM Motors car servicing workshop on the corner and all those fancy cars we crossed as we rode past them on Mumma’s TVS moped. We had to pedal-start it back then; it was only much later, when I was in college, that we upgraded to the self-start model. Funnily, I wasn’t embarrassed about the TVS in school, but I did park it far—very, very far—away when I was in college. I loved this school, with its humongous playground, manual carousels and my teacher Prema Miss. She saw me with the most loving eyes. I was her pet. When I was five years old, my mother dressed me up as Indira Gandhi for the yearly fancy dress competition at the Army school we went to in Victoria Layout. On stage, I walked up to the microphone, yanked it towards me, and said selfassuredly, ‘Saare desh ke bachchon bolo: Jai Hind.’ I still remember that moment as if it were only yesterday. It was the first time I had been on stage, and I loved every moment of it. Once, Mumma told me that Prema Miss had said to her, ‘You must change Kubra’s school. Your daughter is very smart, and this isn’t the place to hone her personality.’ Mumma took Prema Miss’s advice, and I soon left the Army school. In retrospect, I have come to believe big and grand may not be the best prescription for everyone. For some, the gradual and familiar can prove to be more nurturing, helping people discover their personalities. I found a voice in Army school and lost it in the big institution.

The brain is a funny thing. With time, it learns the art of self-depreciation. It evolves, changes and absorbs every second of its life. And so did I. But not in the way you think. I evolved into a timid person, into someone my family didn’t recognize. I absorbed the fear that was laid out in front of me, and I shed my brimming, unselfconscious confidence. When we started looking for admission into a big school, Mumma and Papa were turned down by many institutions because there were no seats. At the dinner table, I’d often hear my parents talk to each other. ‘What to do … seat nahin mil rahi hai…’ I heard this phrase so many times that, one day, I dragged my little chair up to my parents at the table and said, ‘Main meri seat leke jaaoon? [Can I take my chair?]’ This confidence didn’t last for quite a few years after that, though. When I was four years old, I joined a public school. In the first few weeks, I was excited about school. I was an easygoing child with an outgoing personality. I wasn’t shy to do things other children stayed away from. My report cards from those early years are glowing with praise. But two phrases stick out even then. She’s ‘distracted’ and ‘lacks concentration’. These phrases came from the fact that I had a gregarious personality. Yes, by the time I was in Grade 3, I was still ‘distracted’. I didn’t sit still; sometimes I scribbled on the blackboard. But as the days wore on, my outgoing nature came to be frowned upon by the formal educational system. God help us if a child should possibly be happy and uninhibited. In rigid systems, it is common practice to stunt the growth of an individual who

comes from a different mould. But are we really born to fit every shoe we try to wear? At school, I found myself being schooled in ‘correct’ behaviour, trained in docility instead of self-discovery, in preparation for the proverbial successful life. I mean, who can possibly be happy, spontaneous, and eventually make something worthy of their life someday? Right? Gah! I am not a princess to draw references from fairy tales, but this story does have a happy end after all. It helped me realize that I was born to be a warrior. So, anyway … I had to be ‘fixed’, and treatment came in the form of Mrs Naidu. ‘She will set you right. She will twist your curls back into place,’ I was told by a few teachers. This warning, this message of doom, rankled within me, and even before I had met her, I felt the first stirrings of fear, rising from the pit of my stomach, burning up my throat to heat up my cheeks, leaving an acrid taste on my tongue and making my eyes swim. The gloomy image I had formed of Mrs Naidu in my mind did injustice to the flesh-and-bone person when I finally met her. She was worse, much scarier. The day Mrs Naidu strode into the classroom, I knew she would destroy whatever little of the child I had in me. Mrs Naidu would stalk into class, agile like a panther, scanning the room with her sharp eyes. She had the distinct ability to spot that one thing (or person) that was out of place. She’d stare down children until we were reduced to a puddle of sweat. I think she secretly enjoyed watching us choke on our fears. She knew she possessed the perfect amount of terror to manoeuvre those who strayed, back onto the path of obedience. God! I never liked a single interaction with this fortress of a woman. When she settled down, she would release her severe gaze across the room, and when it would find me, it would stop. She would then walk to where I was sitting, and bend so that her face levelled with mine. Suddenly, she would slam her hand on my table, making my blood freeze. She’d leave me there, either paralysed or punished. So common was this occurrence that I, too, would be ready with my own strategy. Before classes began, I’d sit down and keep my eyes trained on the door like a sniper, so that when Mrs Naidu walked in and decided to make her way towards me, I was ready to duck under my desk to avoid confrontation. I think all this intimidation made me forget what it was to be a child. I was convinced I was terrible. I was made to believe that if I fell, I would never rise. At this school, discipline was valued above all else, and although I tried, maybe, I didn’t try hard enough. I turned into a child who was petrified to do or say anything out of turn. I would never ask or answer if I wasn’t directly addressed in our busy class of forty-two children. Thereafter, the punishments came in thick and fast. Not a day went by when I would not have to kneel in a corner of the classroom, or eat lunch alone, or be teased by my classmates. And as time passed, I began to stick out like a sore thumb. Anything that went wrong in class was attributed to me. The daily humiliations and punishment began to change me. It would be an understatement to say that school became hell. Every day spent there fattened the ball of fear I was carrying inside me, growing like a virus, gnawing away at the happy, carefree child until there was nothing left of her but a memory. All that was left was a dark, hollow shell in which fear echoed and amplified itself. These changes began to seep outwards into tangible aspects too. ‘She is distracted.’ ‘Low concentration.’ ‘Slow.’ My official school diary was the first item of its evidence, the colour of ink on those pages changing from pleasant blues to reds. Every remark on those pages cut through me like a knife. Not only were they humiliating, but they were also vindicating this new lack that I had begun to feel those days: a lack of self-worth. I was wound up as tight as a spring. I was raw, like an open wound. These remarks would’ve stayed in my heart for a very long time if Mumma hadn’t noticed something had shifted inside me. The shift in my essence, the difference. She saw that I was no longer the child who stood up from a fall. I was no longer her ‘big one’. One day, when I was in Class 4, I returned from school, dropped my bag on the floor and whimpered, ‘I won’t go to school again.’ I cried, rolling myself into a ball of lifeless flesh. Mumma didn’t react to my pain. She stood there, calmly, willing to listen. She held me in her arms and allowed me to sob for what felt like hours. I had not seen this version of my mother; from what I knew, she was a disciplinarian too. I was terrified of telling her what was happening up until now because I was certain she just wouldn’t get it. Now I found a new kind of strength in Mumma. She saw I was a different child, one who was neither big nor great. This child was meek, she was timid. Mumma started looking for another school. She knew what was best for me. I didn’t know then, and I still don’t know now if she knows what’s best for her. But decisions for her children she’s always known to make. She was, after all, the stand-in monitor of our family. You know, the one who replaces the actual monitor (aka the proxy parent) but doesn’t get the badge? And when she enrolled me into a new school, after a long time, for just one moment, I felt like I could breathe again.

At this point, my mind travels back to an incident when I was at the public school and living in fear of Mrs Naidu. There was a little boy, let’s call him Karan, in my class. He was round, large, and not quite as clever as the other boys. Yet, he had the most sparkling laughter. Maybe that’s why he, too, was bullied like me. At the parent–teacher meeting, for which my proxy parent was present, Papa was told, ‘Kubra has potential but is awfully distracted, Mr Sait. She is always punished and made to stand in the corner. She used to mingle, but now she just sits at the back of the class and sulks. I am sure there is room for improvement.’

Without looking at me, Papa agreed with a smile. ‘Oh, distracted is something we’ve heard about Kubra since she first went to school. Academics? How is she doing?’ I stood silently, my head hung in shame, while the teacher told Papa I was capable of doing better. Next up was Karan and his father, who vaguely resembled the actor Kader Khan. Karan’s father had walked in holding his son’s hand. ‘Yes, ma’am, what rank has my son got?’ he chirped. Karan stood thirty-eighth in a class of forty-two students. ‘Oh, great then!’ Karan’s father said. ‘Last time, he was second from last, now he is fourth. Very proud of you, son.’ The backing he received from his father left little room for failure in Karan’s life. He may have been a target for bullies in school, but he was least afraid of his father, of report cards or of the system.

Some people grow through their trauma and never heal. Unresolved emotions can raise their ugly heads when least expected and become the subtext of one’s life. More often than not, one becomes the canvas for their release. It is human nature to hoard things that don’t serve us any longer. Why should it be any different with emotions? Bullying has many forms, but it almost always stems from personal inadequacy. So do meanness and insensitivity towards others. Those who are suffering the most will project themselves onto others who can’t stand up for themselves. I’ve been bullied inside the classroom when I didn’t know better. Outside the classroom, I’ve learnt how to defend myself. Years later, during my stint as a master of ceremonies, I received a call. ‘I want you to host my son’s sangeet. The wedding is in the Maldives,’ said the client. I met the client—a lady in her late fifties—at a coffee shop in Mumbai. Mumma sat next to me in the capacity of ‘Momager’. We sipped black coffees, and I had this big smile on my face because here was an opportunity to travel to the Maldives. Those were the days when I didn’t know how to swim, but, come on … who bails on a trip to Male? We discussed the details, which were basically money and a flight ticket. The single occupancy room, etc., didn’t come up, but it’s usually a given. A day before the wedding, I was all boarded, my head filled with images of plunge pools and the azure ocean. Forty-five minutes to descent, my client walked up the aisle from Business Class to my seat in Economy to pour her heart out. She began, ‘You know it’s my son’s second wedding?’ A little unsure and aiming for empathy, I replied, ‘Hmm … yeah! It’s amazing how we find love most unexpectedly.’ She touched my shoulder gently and said, ‘We are on a tight budget, so we have arranged a special boat for all you entertainers to stay aboard. I hope that is okay?’ I was no longer unsure, ‘Boat … what boat?’ ‘Oh! A fancy boat, it has everything on it,’ she replied. ‘You’ll be well taken care of.’ ‘The only vessel you’ll find me on is this one. Please get me a hotel room, or I’m happy to tail right back to where I came from,’ I said sternly. She was a bit startled, because no one, like no one, ever talks back to an Indian mother in that ‘tone’. The client tried talking to the guy who was ‘managing’ the artists and he, in turn, tried to convince me to take up the offer. But I stood my ground. When we deboarded, I could see I had caused some ripples. ‘Uff! Why do you need to be so difficult?’ my manager asked. ‘It’s a given, man. The least they can do is give me a room to stay in … How am I being difficult?’ I shot back. Anyway, after all the back and forth, they arranged a room for me at the resort, and a mighty beautiful one it was, if I may add. But they didn’t do it gracefully. I was the talk of the resort; I was cooped up by myself indoors and accompanied by taunts outdoors. I had wedding attendees literally look me in the eye and ask condescendingly, ‘How is your US$800 suite?’ ‘It is rather comfortable,’ I replied with a smile. ‘A bit too huge for one person to sleep in.’ I mean, yeah! There was a bathtub in the centre of the room, and outside, a private infinity pool. But I was there to work, and I had every intention of doing my job well. Once the party kicked off, things got funnier, kinkier and stranger by the minute. The dancing girls with their thirsty tongues licked their lips as they allowed their blouses to be stuffed with money. The festivities had descended into an adult striptease show. As I stood there, wishing I was back in that cursed US$800 room, packing to leave for home the following day, I suddenly felt a cool splash of bubbly on my back. An elderly gentleman thought it was a sexy move to throw a glass of champagne on me to gain my attention. Thank God I chose patience over brute strength in that moment! I plucked the glass out of his hand and said, ‘The next time you try a trick like this, I’ll break this glass and shove it up your ass.’ The night was officially over. Today, when I am confronted by a bully, I can stand my ground. Politely (or not-so-politely as was the case here), I show them the exit door. I stay. They leave.

PS. I may have altered the spelling of my name just a few years ago, to change my destiny for the better, but I believe the seeds of transformation were sown much earlier. So, from here onwards, meet Kubbra with a double ‘b’.

2 Kubbra 2.0 Release Date

I

began Class 5 at Sacred Heart Girls’ High School, an all-girls’ school, in Richmond Road. I was looking forward to starting afresh. A blank slate promises new stories, new friends. But a part of me was still wary. However, any worries I had were soon dispelled when I met my class teacher. A tall, lanky, and smiling man, Mr Chacko taught us Geography and English. He was everything my previous teachers were not. He was kind, patient and never lost his temper. Pacing the room through his lessons, Mr Chacko would smile and make funny faces at us. I became an instant fan of his. So much so that my grades, which were in the bottom reds when I began the year, rose to the highs of greens and blues by midterm. If there is one thing I’ve learnt from the education system, it is this: to make something of a child, to ensure that they want to learn, want to get better, positive reinforcement is the only way. Instilling fear and penalizing them will only achieve the opposite effect. In less than six months, not only had my grades improved drastically, but I could also feel the wall I had built around me begin to thaw a little. Mr Chacko was the best teacher I ever had. He was the one who gave me a glimmer of hope when the whole world had snuffed out the little light inside me. Years later, I rolled out a search campaign on social media, got his number and met him in Bengaluru in July 2021. I often think back to Mr Chacko fondly. But all good things must end. And so did Class 5 and, with it, my luck with good teachers. Class 6 brought in fresh horror in the form of my Geography teacher, a strict traditionalist. Her words rang out steely to the entire class, but she kept a keen eye on me in particular—an eye that reminded me of Mrs Naidu. Mr Chacko had made me fall in love with Geography and yet, here I was again, failing at it miserably. Following the misery of the public school, I had just found my spark again, my purpose of being in school. But once again, I became the child who slipped back into a fog of fear, and once again, it reflected in my grades. When I failed my Geography midterm paper, my teacher took it as a personal attack. ‘How can you be so stupid?’ she said. What I didn’t realize then (but do now) is that people scorn those who they deem different from themselves. As a punishment, I was asked to rewrite the entire Geography paper with the correct answers. When I couldn’t submit the revised paper on time, I was made to write it five more times to begin with, after which it doubled and tripled. Once again, the punishments had found their way back to me. Once again, all petty crimes were heaped on my shoulders. One day, I was accused of stealing a pen—you know the one that looked like a pen and had lead refills? The teacher sent me out to sit under the corridor staircase—a dank and dark place where supplies and a wheelbarrow were stashed. Minus the nail-studded door, the place reminded me of the isolation cell in Roald Dahl’s Matilda. Soon, it was a place I became very familiar with because I must have spent around three whole months of school time under that staircase. It was there that I also started to wheeze. Those long days of isolation drove me inwards. Little by little, I felt every bit of self-respect leave my body. I lost my will to achieve but wouldn’t stop rewriting the Geography paper I had failed.

The days at Sacred Heart dragged by; so did my self-esteem and confidence. I made no friends because, frankly, no one wanted to be friends with the class errant. Mumma was also away the whole of the second term in sixth grade. She was going through treatment for a femoral artery blockage at AIIMS in Delhi. She wasn’t around to spot the change in me, as she had been the last time I was troubled. So, while she was gone, my brother and I were sent to live with my father’s oldest sister, Phuphu. Phuphu was a no-nonsense, matronly figure who believed in tough love and rewatching Mughal-e-Azam infinitely. She had already raised three daughters and a son, and thus believed that she was the encyclopaedia of parenting. With no friends for support and my mother gone, I began to crawl further into my shell. One day, I found a silver medal in the field. It had a soiled red ribbon around it. It was old and had been trampled over by children. I picked it up, brought it home and told my Phuphu that I had won it in a race. She looked at it and said, ‘No you didn’t. It says, “Anthony’s Boys School” on it.’ To which I replied that we had been sent there and I won it in their school. When I look back at many of those white lies I told, I realize that they were the outpourings of a child who was desperately looking for a sliver of acceptance, a shard of love. Perhaps, a simple acknowledgement of her existence was all it would have taken to pull that girl out from the shadows she had begun to live in. They say time heals wounds. But sometimes, time can also make you sink. The longer you are under water, the harder the fight is to the surface. You eventually give in to the darkness, and numbness starts to become the truth. Till date, I break into hives when I am emotionally stressed or excited, and it all dates back to this time in my life. My white lies triggered fever, and skipping school with this excuse became the new normal.

This went on for around four months. When Mumma returned home, Phuphu told her that I wasn’t going to school, that I was out of control. Mumma listened, and then sought me out. Instead of words, she gave me a tight slap. It stung my face, but I said nothing. I was far too deep in the abyss by then to put up a fight. I sat down and stared at her. You can’t fight with someone who doesn’t fight back, so Mumma gave up and left the room. To be fair to her, my mother was only human. She felt that she had done her bit by moving me from the public school to another school. Her state of mind, at the time, was more volatile than ever. She had a child who was incapable of taking care of herself despite everything being ‘laid out on a platter’ for her. She was being instigated by an aunt who told her what a terrible child I was to take care of in her absence. Kindness and understanding can only be meted out when you have more than sufficient to give. Mumma was running on reserves, and I was nothing but an additional burden to bear. Or at least it seemed that way. One day, when she was cleaning out my room, Mumma found a few magazines lying on the floor. She casually flipped through one and was surprised to see what was inside. On each page, she saw red lines slashed across them. Accompanying these lines were remarks: ‘Untidy work’, ‘Incomplete’, ‘0/10’. She recognized my handiwork. I had often resorted to these magazines to release my pent-up frustration. Something gripped her heart. At that moment, she realized that her daughter was going through something she shouldn’t be. That evening, she hugged me tight, telling me that everything would be okay. I will eternally be grateful to her for that moment. The gesture changed many things for me. It made me feel that I didn’t have to explain why I was feeling the way I was. The pain I was feeling also evaporated. It also felt like pressure was slowly leaving my body. I feel like this even now. Every time I hug someone, I do it earnestly. I know words are overrated. Nothing fixes a cracked heart like a fuzzy, fullbodied, everlasting hug. At a time when depression wasn’t a thing and seeking psychological help was considered a taboo, Mumma went out to find someone who could guide me towards understanding my mind and shed light on what was happening within me. When the psychiatrist saw me and my masterpieces of shame, she told Mumma that if she sent me back to the school again, she would be left with a psychologically disabled child. My mother took her advice. That summer, I stayed at home. I didn’t appear for my sixth-grade exams either. Mumma complained to the school authorities about the teacher’s conduct and negligence, and they gave me a pass certificate. Although it seemed like a win for me, in my head, I was still a loser.

I needed to get back to school and education. The new school year was approaching, and there was talk of me switching schools yet again. This time around, the proxy parent threw a fit. ‘We went to a government school, why can’t she? You want to spoil her,’ he told Mumma. While the adults argued and debated the options, I had my own tasks. One of them was to scour the newspapers for the bubble ads for an activity I would be interested in. They included climbing mountains and learning how to cross-stitch during the summer vacation. Nothing clicked, till one day, while flipping through the newspaper, Mumma chanced upon an advertisement for a personality development school called Buoyancee. Little did we know then that this little advertisement would change me forever. Little did I know that the reconstruction of Kubbra 2.0 had begun by just reading the words. That I was about to have my walls melt away, my hard layers peeled, so that the happy and confident girl who had become a memory would emerge once again. My heart throbbing in my ears, Mumma and I reread the advertisement: Excellence. Self Esteem. Personality Development. Better your best. It featured their logo with thought bubbles around it. Something about the simplicity, the hope and the positive element in the words struck a chord in my heart. It was a tailor-made call from the universe. Mumma went to a PCO (public call office) at once and called the listed number. A perky voice answered, ‘Good morning, how can I help you?’ A greeting so bright and kind it brought Mumma to tears. She didn’t hold back. She unburdened herself, telling the voice in detail about her mentally distraught daughter. The reassuring voice said, ‘Bring her here, Yasmin. Don’t worry. Just bring her here. We’ll take care of her.’

3 Metamorphosis

M

y gaze was jumpy and unsettled, my hands shaking. Like a soda bottle about to be cracked open, I was fizzing with nervous energy. The man with a genial smile and poised manner standing in front of me noticed this. He took my hand and, in a calm and unruffled tone, told me that it was a pleasure to meet me. Mumma and I were at Buoyancee, a four-bedroom house with a sprawling terrace in Jayanagar, and we were sitting down with Ajit Kaikini and his wife, Sadhana, the founders of the programme we were interested in. A few years earlier, the Kaikinis had moved from Bahrain back to Bangalore, where Ajit began work as a pharmacist. ‘I used to cure people with medicines; now I cure them with words,’ he said, concluding his introduction. A few minutes into our meeting, Ajit Kaikini said to Mumma, his voice dripping with confidence, ‘Six weeks of the PDP [personality development programme], and she’ll be good.’ ‘Really?’ Mumma asked almost unbelievingly. ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘Don’t worry. She’s our baby now.’ That day, on our way back home, I had no idea the sweet, rotund man I had met so briefly would help me get back into the driving seat, allowing me to steer the course of my destiny. Little did I also know that finding Ajit uncle and his wife, Sadhana aunty, would not only give me a brand new set of parents but that they would also gift me a brand new ‘me’.

Every morning, I would make my way to Jayanagar for my classes. There were thirteen of us kids at the ‘school’, if you can call it that, and six of us to a class. I was in Batch 13. I realized that Buoyancee was primarily a summer-vacation place for the neighbourhood children; but to me, it became a home of sorts. School was a four-hour affair with a snack break in between. Classes were everything but traditional. We could learn whatever we wanted to in Buoyancee. So, I even took up calligraphy and cloud writing for a bit. The idea behind the programme was solely based on teamwork. There were no individual tests or rote learning. At each session, we were divided into teams. Almost all the classes were focused on boosting confidence. Thus, elocution, singing and extempore were the norm. Thinking on our feet was key. ‘Tell us fifty different ways to use a pen except for writing.’ Or ‘Look at this picture on the calendar and tell us the story behind it.’ They pushed our little brains and our little hearts. I met some wonderful people here. There was Alok, tall and aloof, whose mother was a teacher at the programme. There was Anirudh, who had a rare skin disease called Anhidrosis, in which one can’t sweat normally, and so, Anirudh’s skin was scraping off in flakes. There was Arjun bhaiyya, a student much older than the rest of us. He was prim, soft-spoken, extremely shy. There was another boy, whose name I can’t remember, who had light green eyes, and who was as scared as I was when we had joined Buoyancee. And then there was Shoma, Ajit uncle’s daughter, with whom I got on fabulously. She was a beautiful girl with a big heart, who never laughed or poked fun at people. Plus, just like me, she was the elder sibling, so we shared a common sense of responsibility. I became so close to the Kaikini family that theirs was the only house I would visit and stay over at during vacations. I made a family close to my heart. They loved me unconditionally. Shoma and her younger sister, Ashwini, became my sisters. They still are. We had lost touch for a while, when I had moved out of Bangalore, but now, we live in the same city and are still good friends. Looking back now, I realize that all of us who came to Buoyancee were misfits, and we made up a strange motley crew together. We were different from regular kids; we weren’t equipped with the social skills that came to our peers naturally. And so, we were treated differently by society. We were shamed and humiliated for our personalities that did not adhere to the norm. But most of all, we had nowhere else to go. Almost all of us had hit rock bottom in some form or the other. Buoyancee gave us a place to shine, because there is only one way up from the bottom, and that is up. Today, each one of us kids who were a part of Batch 13 are successful. But I’d like to clarify that what I mean by ‘success’ is different from what it means traditionally. My idea of success does not revolve around money or status. We, Batch 13, can bloom wherever we are planted, and that is actual, tangible, versatile success. Everything Ajit uncle said was metaphorical. Yet, they were never complicated. ‘Bloom where you are planted,’ he would always say and laugh. That was easy enough for a ten-year-old to grasp, yet it was profound. He is a selfless man. Today, when I tell him that I am still grateful for the early change in my heart and mind at such a young age, he still maintains: ‘I did nothing. It was all you.’ He taught us to be silly. He taught us to celebrate each other. We had an unusual way of clapping. For every child who came up to the front of the class to present something or speak, we all would clap, saying, ‘Wah, wah, wah, wah!’ As for Sadhana aunty, she had a healing touch. She made sure that the school was a place where nothing could ever be

‘wrong’. And she made us have immense fun. One time, she taught us a song that was meaningless; it was just gibberish. The exercise was to sing and clap along with confidence. ‘It doesn’t matter what the meaning is,’ she said, ‘as long as you are able to laugh at the silliness and yet do so with honesty.’ Every week, we would be introduced to a new topic, like iguanas or the climate, on which we had to present in front of the class. It soon grew to become my most favourite time of the week. I soon stopped stammering. I didn’t really stammer but in pressure situations, especially back in the traditional schools, I would develop one when pushed into a corner. It would appear from a sense of extreme self-doubt. It had everything to do with positive reinforcement. In our classes, if you spoke well, you were applauded, but if you stumbled or froze or didn’t speak up correctly, you were applauded twice! Every time I hesitated or stammered, my classmates would cheer: ‘Kubbra! Kubbra! Kubbra!’ with claps and smiles. There was never a day that anyone ever criticized failure; instead, they showed you how one could improve. They provided solutions instead of focusing on the problems. And so, I was constantly learning and evolving myself. Another activity that I thoroughly enjoyed while at Buoyancee was setting up a free library called the Library Hut. Once a week, all the kids would walk down the streets of Jayanagar, knocking on doors to ask people if they’d like to donate books that they had already read or were never going to be read. We did this diligently and, in the end, we had collected over a thousand books at our school. The library was accessible to all the children who attended classes at Buoyancee. At the end of the course, we were to have a valedictory ceremony where each of us would present something we were good at on stage. The event was scheduled to take place at a performance theatre stage in Jayanagar. Practice for the event had already begun at school. Two weeks into my course, my mother saw me performing on a stage. It was the first time I had spoken on stage since my stint as Indira Gandhi. She saw me smiling as I made the introductions to the acts and the speakers. I had no clue back then that one day, this would become my life’s primary calling. Minute by minute, day by day, I was taking baby steps towards progress. I could feel the transformation happening within me. I didn’t feel so wound up anymore. I felt like I could laugh at myself; I would join in with the other kids. The wall I had built around me was beginning to crumble away, and I began to feel liberated, free, like I could breathe. It felt easy and simple. The light was shining through. Buoyancee made me feel like I belonged, like I had an identity that was unique and special in its own particular way. It also made me feel like there was nothing that I couldn’t do. Most importantly, it made me realize that no mistake was permanent because here, we were taught to laugh at our mistakes, to learn and grow from them. My fundamental self was built here, and, even today, I feel like nothing can phase me because of the building blocks that had been laid out in those six weeks. Mumma’s iron hand and Ajit uncle’s velvet glove guided me to a space where I could truly bloom. Together, they transformed me from a gawky, shy, anxious, depressed teenager to an adult who was unafraid to say sorry, who was unafraid to do good. They moulded me into a person who didn’t need other people to validate her being. And the most important thing that I learnt in those paltry six months was: I was enough. And it was this lesson that would help me face the real world—the one I had run away from—once again.

My schoolgirl self’s visit to the shrink was a one-off thing. Now, I talk to my therapist every week. Life will constantly present you with challenges. The idea is to not be crushed under their pressure but to build a stronger foundation to endure them. The time people have for one another today is limited. Then again, we are all so quick to react when another person is talking. Before therapy, I found that, in conversations, I couldn’t really listen. Instead, I would slip into the other person’s thought process and hope that I was helping them come out of a certain mode of thinking, trying to make their story or situation better. Now I know that people need to speak their truth to feel safe and experience a sense of belonging, not to anyone on the outside, but for themselves. Visiting my therapist now, week on week, helps me verbalize what it means to be alive. It tells me I have someone who will not give me solutions or answers. Instead, she is there to listen, without interruption, and to give me a framework of what the way forward might look like. Through a series of tests and evaluations, my therapist made me see I was a narcissist who also loved living in a world of roses, posies and unicorns. I was bewildered, and without any real idea of who I was until I realized that the only thing standing between me, my growth and a firm foundation was … me. Being in therapy allows me to be authentic, to vent, complain and, more importantly, identify patterns of thinking. There always comes a time when you realize that you are letting out too much about the same thing, and therapy gives you that knowledge. It has also made me aware of the subtle differences in the way we use language. For example, consider the phrase ‘I am worried’. When we talk about worrying, we are describing things that are outside our control. It is almost always pointless to worry. However, if you say, ‘I am concerned’, it implies that you have accountability for your actions. Simply swapping one word with another can help you change your thought pattern, and I’ve discovered that tweaking my vocabulary has made me more patient with myself. I now take as long as it takes to do a task. I do not hurry to either wear my pants or fix my hair. I wake up early and try to do things according to a set schedule every day. The thing with a fast-paced life is that we want to do more than our minds and bodies can actually deliver. We set unrealistic standards to live up to. In the end, we blame it on stress. If you slowly, but surely, take control of what is realistically possible, you can arrest the fall into the abyss. This is a reminder I receive from my counsellor now. I see myself grow in my intention and reciprocate with action.

4 I Don’t Have Daddy Issues

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his is a difficult chapter. I keep my eyes trained on the computer screen for hours until I shut it and walk away. The words, the emotions don’t come easily. Perhaps because there’s too much water under the bridge, and it’s hard to pin down water. Too often, I find myself running with the wolves, into the deep end of the jungle…

In the late 90s, Mumma had opened her first supermarket called Home Needs in Domlur. Later, she opened her second supermarket, Value Mart, which was located in the basement of a building in Diamond District on Old Airport Road in Bangalore. Value Mart was a makeshift supermarket. The highest part of its ceiling was only six feet, so our taller customers, who needed to get to the floor cleaner section, usually stocked in the rear end of the store, had to bend and walk. Everyone looked like a dinosaur at the rear end of the store. When I was around ten, I would sneakily pick up a Cosmopolitan magazine from Mumma’s supermarket and sit behind the largest shelf in the store, undo its cellophane cover gently and answer those multiple-choice personality questions. Are you Good Girl hot or Bad Girl hot? When do you know a guy is into you? Are you a closet commitment phobic? After completing the quiz, I would place the magazine back into its wrapper, return it to the shelf in pristine condition and wait for an unsuspecting customer to buy it. But let me tell you something: Those questionnaires didn’t tell me much about myself. And as I grew older, I had other pressing questions, ones which were bolder and more complicated. More precisely, I wanted to know the impact of my father’s presence in my life. As I grew up, I realized that I didn’t know much about him as a person, and that I hadn’t paid enough attention to try and understand him. I knew that he was labelled a gambler, and an irresponsible and unreliable person. I witnessed my parents fighting. I knew all these things. But who was he really? I wanted to know the person behind the label ‘Papa’, what he meant to me; I was not happy with a cheap, trial, purchased version of all the memories that had been shared with me. The questions came in many forms, but the most fundamental one was: Who, really, is my father? If I were to answer that really simplistically, he is Zakaria Sait. His was the name on our highly coveted LPG gas connection, a big deal back in the day. I continued to forge his signatures on the connection transfer papers and on my comment-stained school diary for long after he moved out. The other thing I remember about my father is that in the many documents he has held as identity proof, not one had his name spelt correctly. In some places he is Zackriah, in others he is Imtiaz. (Today, it really annoys me when people misspell my name in emails, the press, or messages.) And like these misspelt names, when I was growing up, I, too, was confused about who my father really was. I knew the facts, though. Papa was born in Ooty. He was raised in a matriarchal and orthodox household. His elder sister Razia reached out to Mumma’s family. Back then, Papa worked as a salesman in Nestlé. He’s spent most of his life selling something—either a product or his reputation. I have the photograph he sent as part of his proposal. In it, he is young, wearing bell-bottoms and his facial hair in a French beard. He has subliminal, iridescent green eyes, like those of a cat, so it makes sense that he was fondly called Billu at home. It turns out that he and I do have something in common—cats. (As you will find out soon, I love cats.) The day after meeting with my father’s family, my grandfather Azeez Sait, with whom Mumma was then living, summoned her into his room. ‘Achcha ladka hai, namaazi aur mehnat karta hai. Shaadi kar lo, beta [He’s a good boy. He prays and works hard. Marry him, child.],’ he told her. So, they were married. It is hard to know someone who, at the age of sixty-seven, is still finding himself, or perhaps his mojo. My father, a Piscean, never took himself seriously. He read literal meanings into his weekly horoscope, which invariably told him to take it easy, chill, play ball, soak in the sun. He also had a hard time grappling with his roles of a father, a husband, a brother, or a shopkeeper. Yet, it looks to me as though he wanted us to think about him, because he always sent us cryptic messages (like ‘one more year gone by’) to remind us of his birthday. But he was a fun guy. He’d crack lame dad jokes. He once told my sixteen-year-old self, ‘Eat less. One banana and milk. It’s all you need to lose weight. What is this gym thing you want to do?’ When I was a kid, I also remember him making me giggle as he kissed me and scratched my face with his two-day-old stubble. Papa never wore a beard, but his clean-shaven face barely lasted a few hours. It would be hinting the green stubble as the day inched towards dusk.

The four of us—Mumma, Papa, Danish (who stood in front between the handlebars) and me—would be stuck to each other as we zoomed about the city on our light blue Vespa. God knows how many years we owned that two-wheeler. We still fondly remember Ansar, our mechanic. He was a valuable man because he always found the spares and saved us the heartache of buying a new scooter. We squeezed every bit of the energy that the Vespa could give us, and, years later, we sold it to Ansar himself, who then forwarded our great fortune to an unsuspecting buyer. It was enjoyable while it lasted. When our mischief caught his eye, Papa would punish us by asking us to write ‘I will not do ____’ one hundred times. Danish and I laughed then. We laugh now. But we laughed secretly then because we were also scared of him. Papa changed jobs ever so frequently, so much so that he too has lost track of the number of jobs he’d had and quit. At one point, he even took a loan, or some kind of assistance, from my grandfather to start a business. But even that failed. I think he did genuinely try, but none of the attempts worked out. So, at one point, my mother took up the responsibility of running the show. She pledged her gold jewellery to a bank and took out a loan as an initial investment to start her first supermarket. I don’t think he ever felt respected, which is probably why, with no other way to vent it out, he took out his frustration on us. At seventeen, I was earning enough pocket money to pay some bills of the house, which was now being run jointly by Mumma and me. When I was nineteen, Mumma sent Papa away to take up a job in Dubai, but that didn’t work out. A few years later, when I moved to Dubai and would come across the many Malayali grocery stores there, the shopkeepers would remind me of my father. Thousands of these small grocery stores serve the people of Dubai; numerous people cramped into small spaces and made to live in inhuman conditions. They worked long hours, sometimes up to eighteen hours a day. It would’ve been impossible for anyone to make it under those circumstances, let alone my father. The older my relationship has marinated with my father, I’ve come to realize that he was a layered and complicated person. The thing is, even though he was there with us physically, my father wasn’t really present. He was a proxy dad. He never really sat down with me, asked about my day at school or helped me with my homework. My conversations with him were superfluous; nothing real was ever discussed, and over the years he was never asked for his opinion either. I provided him with information about our whereabouts or decisions. For example, I never asked him if I could go to Dubai. It was Mumma’s and my decision. I simply informed him. The same man who’d make me giggle also made me cry. The beatings were mostly reactionary; they weren’t meant to teach me anything because they usually arose from small things, like me not drinking my milk or not having a bath. It seemed to me that this was the only way he could exercise his ‘manliness’.

Two decades later, I wanted to rewrite my description of him. I spoke to my therapist and she made me do a series of tests, the results of which seemed more reliable and effective than the ones in Cosmo. I realized that the image of the father I’d built in my mind was of the one he could be, not of the one I had. I also realized that I possibly had it in me to forgive my father. Forgive him for the beatings when I was a little girl, or to let go of the times when I longed to speak to him about what I was going through in school but couldn’t. I even let go of my wish list of the activities that I wanted to share with him. It would’ve been cool to cry about a broken heart or laugh about how I bombed on stage to him. It would’ve been brilliant to share with him the contract of my first proper job. But I let it all go. In October 2018, I met him in Mysore. He was working as a manager at a restaurant there. It was also right on the back of the success of Sacred Games. I couldn’t draw the courage to ask him if he had seen the show. Maybe I wasn’t ready to hear a no. I was also not brave enough to discuss a scene with frontal nudity with my father. I still was the shy girl who chose to hide her emotions. At lunch, I found a can of Coke that had the word ‘DAD’ written across it. I gave it to him and saw his green eyes light up. I called him Papa for the first time in years. These days, we talk. The conversations are polite. It isn’t stressful. I don’t resent seeing his name on my phone screen. I think my lack of expectation has made me love him a little again. I have grown to accept him for who he is and what he chooses to be. He once called and asked me, ‘How is duty?’ ‘Duty’ referred to the acting job I was doing. I laughed. Well, I was an adult then and long distanced from the obligation a child felt towards a parent of being polite. ‘What duty?’ I quipped. ‘Kaam, whatever it is that you’re doing,’ he said. ‘Pa, I am working.’ I didn’t bother explaining. I don’t think he has nailed what I really do. He is neither my champion nor my critic, but I am his daughter, and I will always be, no matter the years, challenges or distance between us.

5 I Called Him Uncle

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was just seventeen when I was embroiled in the greatest tragedy known to me. It started on the weekend a year earlier when my parents, my brother and I went to a popular restaurant in Bangalore. During our meal, we met a man. It turned out that he owned the restaurant. He treated us politely, with much kindness. Smiling invitingly, he laid out the options on the menu. Along with the kebabs and ghee rice we had ordered, he even gave us free bowls of gravy and dal, which wasn't usually the case. Of course, we had a great day. As time passed, he grew closer and closer to the family. It soon became customary for us to visit the restaurant once a week. This visit was a breather from the usual havoc caused by the Sait family drama. One day, the man casually mentioned to me that he didn’t want me to call him uncle. ‘Call me X,’ he said with a smile. I was sixteen, and every adult I was interacting with back then was either an uncle or aunty. Here, I was being asked to consider someone an equal, and it gave me a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach. But nothing really changed. Every so often, after dinner, all of us would hop into X’s Mercedes and drive out for sweet paan and chit-chat. A new friendship was being built; Dan and I would crack jokes with him or test him with riddles we’d learnt at school. A common one went something like this: On a sheet of paper, we’d draw a coconut tree and a dot representing a little monkey. We’d tell him that there was no water or boat or any possibility of the monkey escaping the island. The question was, what would the little monkey do to escape the island? Mr X would think about it and try to answer it. But he never got it right because the answer was silly. If a big monkey like you doesn’t know, then how do you expect a little monkey to know the answer? Then, we’d all burst into giggles and laughter. Mumma also felt comfortable enough around him to tell him about our private family matters. Once, while talking to him about her financial woes, she broke down in tears. He held Mumma’s hand and said politely, ‘Mamadi main hain na? Fikar mat karo [Mamadi, I’m here, am I not? Don’t worry.].’ And just like that, he handed her a bundle wrapped in a newspaper that contained enough money for us to find our way out of trouble. I was sitting in the car with Mumma, and she sighed with relief at the sight of that package, the burden instantly lifted off her chest. I saw a reassuring smile on her face. This man was helping Mumma with no vested interest, loaning her money at zero interest. This sounds too good to be true, right? You’re right if you didn’t think so, because life isn’t a fairy tale. When Mumma sighed at the reprieve that cash provided, I sighed too. Then, just then, a hand slid to the back seat of the car where I was sitting and slid up my dress. X, who was no longer my uncle, smiled as he rubbed my thigh. I was numb in that moment. I was sixteen and a half, and the newly crowned Prince Charming of our family had just lifted a financial burden off our shoulders. I didn’t know what to feel. X continued with his ‘acts of kindness’ towards our family. He started frequenting our home, and Mumma would laugh with and cook for him. In front of her, he would kiss my cheek and say, ‘Oh my Kubrati, you’re my favourite little one’— with fondness. Although uncomfortable, I kept quiet, because I found some relief that things were calm at home. I was confused, but peace prevailed for that year in our household, as X became a family friend and confidant. Then, one day, my world shattered. One night, Mumma sat at the dining table—a table presented by her family when she married Papa. She often boasted about it, it being of pure rosewood and how precious it was—as shit began to hit the fan. Chequebooks, pens and papers were flung. The screaming and yelling gradually increased. Mumma was crying, and Papa, having tossed the supermarket keys at her, was threatening to leave the house. I stayed awake all night. In the morning, when it was time to leave for college, I went to a PCO and called X. I bawled on the phone, telling him what was happening at home. ‘Okay, okay…’ he said, ‘tell me what you want me to do.’ ‘Call Mumma and tell her that you will handle the money crisis,’ I said. ‘Okay, I will,’ he said. ‘But I am worried for you, Kubrati. Don’t go to college today. See me at Richmond Hotel. I’ll figure everything out. I am there na … we’ll sort everything out.’ I wouldn’t stop crying, so he said, ‘Stay where you are. I’ll come and fetch you.’ He drove down and took me with him to the hotel. I remember him putting his hand under my chin and lifting it up, looking at my swollen eyes. He stroked my face and murmured about how tired I looked. I felt dead with exhaustion. Then, he kissed my lips. I was shocked and confused, but I couldn’t utter a word. This was not supposed to happen, but it was happening. I

should have screamed, but I could not. I should have run for help, but I was shell-shocked. The kiss grew. He held me until I couldn’t move anymore. He convinced me that it was what I wanted, that it would make me feel better. He kept repeating it until I felt deafened, and then he unbuckled his trousers and penetrated me. I was unsure of what exactly was happening, but I remember thinking, I am losing my virginity. It was a big deal, but it was also my shameful secret. Not the kind you could giggle and tell your girlfriends about. It was a dark, deceitful moment, and would now forever be impressed upon my soul. X continued to be a family friend. Just that morning, he had bailed Mumma out, rescuing her from a business that was falling apart due to her partner’s gambling problem. So, I promised myself that I would take this secret with me to my grave. Even if I were to speak about it, no one would believe me anyway. From that moment on, X grew like a virus in my home. If I resisted him, he would stop taking Mumma’s calls. When she asked him why he wasn’t, he would say, ‘Ask your daughter, Mamadi.’ And Mumma would come and berate me, ‘Phir se lad liye do jane? Nahin karna beta. See how much he does for our family. He is more than family. [Fought again, you both have? You should not, child...]’ I was being sexually abused, and no one in my close perimeter could even tell. I convinced myself it wasn’t all bad. I felt released from the need to be responsible for my parents, from the fights and the abusive slurs that would fly around the house. I no longer cared that I wasn’t being heard or even seen by my parents. I loathed myself, but I took pleasure in that, but I never let anyone see how I actually felt. This man who was helping my family had stolen my identity and, time after time, convinced me that I was in a relationship with him. He was married and had a child. In the two and a half years that he sexually abused me, he went on to father another child. All the while telling me how much he loved me and that if I told my family or Mumma about us, it would destroy us. I believed every word he said, as if it were the gospel truth. Looking back today, if I am to be completely honest, I don’t know if I would’ve done anything differently had I been dealt the same cards. The truth is that you can’t be sure. What I do know is that, in that moment, my mind, my soul, my truth, everything, absolutely everything, felt dead. My values, I believed, were eroding. When I graduated, I wanted to move to Mumbai, but Mumma suggested Dubai instead. To tell the truth, the location didn’t matter. All I wanted was to be free from the maze that I was stuck in. I agreed to Dubai, not for the potential opportunities, but because it would keep both my family and X away from me. I knew that if they wanted to visit, it would take them a minimum of a week to organize the trip since travel wasn’t easy back then. I had no idea what ambition meant when I started the engine to drive far, far, far away from anything and anybody I knew. I had no job, nothing in hand, but I knew it was a foolproof plan of escape. When I got my first proper job at a cookie shop in Sharjah, I thought about how far I’d come. I didn’t want more for myself; I felt I was living in repentance, and that was good enough for the moment. It was, in the truest sense, a metamorphosis. I was shedding the old layers, and it was painful. The anguish, the relentless nagging voice which told me I’m worthless, that I need to be submissive, that I need to compromise because I’m a girl, went away only after years and years of working on myself. One day, I spotted a familiar face outside the cookie shop. I broke into a sweat. I stood there, wearing my apron and chef’s hat, and watched as X begged, cried and asked for my forgiveness. ‘I won’t ask anything of you. I won’t touch you again. Please come back. This job and this place are not where you belong,’ he said. I had worked too hard and stayed silent for too long to throw in the towel and head back to the same hellhole. I refused. He didn’t put up a fight. As he turned and walked into the crowd, I took his last words seriously. This place is not where you belong. I didn’t belong in the dark abyss in my heart. I belonged somewhere better. I deserved it. I did not belong where I was standing. It was time to start forgiving myself. To take back the power he had over me. Forgiving oneself is much more rewarding than waiting for an apology from the person who destroys us. The person who breaks us cannot be the one to fix us. We need to heal. Move on. Love ourselves. It was roughly ten years after that day outside the cookie shop when I told Mumma what had happened between X and me. In our home, under her nose. We were driving from Mumbai to Pune, and I think I seized the opportunity only because I felt she couldn’t run away from the conversation. She was stuck with me on a two-hour drive at 80 km per hour. It was one of those rare moments when Mumma didn’t have a comeback or a snarl. I saw the tears stream down her face. An apology came from her recently. But again, I wasn’t waiting for it.

6 Living Many Lives in a Lifetime

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umma always had immediate goals. She never said, I want my daughter to finish her MBA. She always said, ‘Kubbra finishing tenth grade would be like me completing the Hajj.’ Both long, arduous journeys. I passed tenth grade after changing four schools. (You already know all about those despondent years of my life.) I now wanted to study in a ‘good’ college. The education system we are all pushed into is a never-ending tunnel, governed by how many marks you average, how attentive you are and if you are good at being a wallflower. Eventually, you reach a sign—a smokescreen at best—that greets you with the message—‘Welcome to the real world.’ With no preparation on how to survive it. Be good. Be sincere. Be protected, and then … one day, you will be free. I lived many moments trying to figure out what I really wanted to be when I reached the smokescreen. It began with the push for a good college, picking a subject I didn’t necessarily want to pursue because I knew it was ‘safe’. A nice little illusion for myself and Mumma. So, Commerce it was. I’d be willing to give you half my body if I remember a single thing I studied during the two years of pre-university. (An undergrad education is just like a prenup. You’re likely to lose everything when you part ways with the subject.) My education taught me consistency—be bad at what you do, but constantly try being less bad. Excellence was for people who were ready to win the race with blinders on. I may sound like I hated my college life, but that was not the case. Commerce and an all-girls’ college, Jyoti Nivas College (JNC), were what I was stuck with. I believe I have a bit of what some may perceive as masculine energy in me. I like being in control. But I complement that with a good balance of femininity. However, being in a girls’ college, I felt like I was trapped in my own body and mind. Anything I said was considered too loud, too brash, too opinionated. Clearly, I was in a minority. So, I was looking for an environment where I would be received at face value, for who I am rather than who I should be to reach the end of the tunnel. I grew tired of SECA (Statistics, Economics, Commerce and Accounts)—the course that guarantees you a stable job, but only after you’ve also completed your Master’s degree. My heart wasn’t in it. I knew I wanted to do something around what I am doing today. I thought, perhaps I should study Mass Communication. And so, after spending two years in JNC, I enrolled into Christ College, Bangalore. I was admitted into the co-ed college on one condition: I’d have to start with Journalism, and would be given a seat in Mass Communication at some probable point in the future. Here’s the thing. I’ve loved to take risks based on promises made to me. But promises are meant to be broken; that’s something I can tell you from first-hand experience. One year of Journalism, which was far from what I wanted to be doing, turned me into a complete rebel. It also led me to take less and less care of myself. During this period, I also met with many accidents while riding my TVS, and afterwards, when I graduated to my red scooty. I ended up with broken wrists, elbows and ankles, and ligament tears on the knee. I battled a crippling loneliness during this time too. My interest in college had withered, and I became increasingly indifferent to the whole scene. I felt I didn’t belong, and so I didn’t make any effort to get to know anyone or learn anything. And just like that … I lost a year. Due to my many accidents, I fell short of the requisite attendance, which is another pedestal of our education system. Looking back now, it seems funny when I wonder if I’d have actually learnt anything even if I’d attended those packed classes, given how I didn’t care about the course. So, there I was, all of eighteen, still clueless and lost. I either had to start all over again or drop all ambitions of ever having a degree. A seat in Business Management at the National Institute of Management & Information Sciences (NIMIS) in Bangalore came as a bubble-wrapped opportunity. Mumma had reached out to the founder of New Horizon School (also the founder of NIMIS), who helped me get admission into the college. Head hung low, I shuffled back to Management Studies and Accounts. But then, something happened. I met a few students who made me realize that I was a better fit among the misfits because I, too, was lost. I no longer felt like I was the only troubled soul. There was Rajiv, who had also lost a year like me. Abhik C., who had met with a few accidents in Mumbai and so his mother thought he’d be safe in a city like Bangalore. Badri, who came from a super-orthodox Tam-Brahm family, but who also had a wild streak which would only come alive in the canteen or when we went to inter-college competitions. We were all the same because we were under pressure, from the system, our parents, etc. We were all trying to do what we were told and, mostly, we were simply acting, disguising our

true selves. Towards the end of the third year, I was heading the cultural team at college. I topped my class in accounts and business management. And I hate numbers, but that is another subject altogether. Finally, I was a graduate.

There are always options in life. When I was younger, I didn’t trust myself enough to listen to my gut instinct. After standing at the end of many tunnels, I now know better. The education system and society teach us the importance and power of the brain, but at the same time, we’re also taught the art of fooling our hearts and suppressing our desires. What I’m saying is this—if you don’t feel it, don’t do it. Take a chance to learn and be proficient at what your heart wants you to do. If you feel stuck while making life-altering decisions, ask your heart and listen to your gut. They will always tell you what you need to know, without judging you. But remember this: There will be many hurdles and potholes to achieving your dream, but no learning will ever shortchange you. IMO, learn everything in life. In our times of specialization, there is a terrible, terrible stigma attached to being a ‘jack of all trades’. Today, it’s a tag denoting that you are basically rubbish at the many things you’ve tried or attempted. But that is far from the truth. Gandhi was a lawyer, freedom fighter, writer, among other things. The author Nabokov was also a butterfly expert. And they are far from rubbish. Today, we are all specialists; this narrows our learning, making us myopic. It’s as if we have blinkers on to restrict ourselves from taking on any other field of study or learning a new skill. I’ve worked in many places before doing what I do, but it took me many pitstops to recognize the direction in which I was going and growing. This may not be a prescription for everyone, but it also shouldn’t be a strikethrough for those who may be experiencing it right now. I learnt how to fake a smile and be pleasant when I sold cookies outside a tiny shop in a Sharjah mall, which was my first full-time job. I lasted around two weeks there. I learnt how to be diligent and appreciate having a desk with my own stationery when I worked at the then twelfth-largest IT distribution firm at Jebel Ali, Dubai. To take pride in being number twelve, instead of the proverbial number one, was itself a learning. I played the role of a pretty, dumb marketing executive working at a multinational company. One of the prerequisites of the job was to dress nicely and look presentable. I did that for a year; again, this job had nothing to do with my qualifications or my personality. The question I still ask myself is, why did I do it? The simple answer is that I did it because I had bills to pay. The cash was the much-needed dose of immunity that helped me last a bit longer in a broken system. In 2007, I joined Microsoft in Dubai. The proverbial shift in gears. The place where I had never imagined myself to be. For the longest time, it seemed unreal. I white-lied my way into the organization. I remember being asked, what was your last drawn salary, and I said AED 10,000. What I didn’t mention was that number also covered a part of my annual bonus. They found out my little lie before I had even joined the organization, and I was terrified that I wouldn’t be hired. I had resigned from the multinational company, and now there was the possibility that Microsoft may revoke their offer letter. But they were kind enough to give me a chance, a three-year-long chance. The first two years, I must confess, were a rollercoaster ride. Boredom by choice is different from boredom that is cultivated as a matter of course or habit. In this big organization, I lost my identity once again. I felt I was a typing machine with nothing new to learn or gain. There was no point to PowerPoint, and I never excelled at Excel. But despite my misgivings, there was pressure to continue for the sake of my family. My folks were proud because ‘Meri beti Microsoft mein kaam karti hain. [My daughter works at Microsoft.]’ I was being burdened by what ‘they’ would think. I also needed to be financially sound and free for my own sake. I owed no one anything, materialistically. I wanted to build my own empire but not at the cost of dashing other people’s hopes and dreams. I mulled over this while sweeping my personal goals and desires under the carpet until, finally, I could hear my thoughts loud and clear in my dreams. I had dreams in which I had turned into a robot. I would wake up in a sweat to go to work and find that it was still night-time. Evidently, I hated where I was and what I was doing to myself. The life my job bought me was comfortable. But I asked myself: Was comfortable good? Did I feel like I had achieved something? Unfortunately, the answers were in the negative. I took up a part-time job as a radio jockey on weekends (besides hosting events), and that little spark allowed me to carry on in my not-so-exciting desk job. It didn’t matter that I was running low on sleep, or that I didn’t have the weekends to party with my friends. I felt happier and fuller as a human, as if I had found a purpose. The beauty of trying new things in life is that it allows you to tap into your passion, which comes from a very deep-rooted place within you. These diversions may not always result in a billboard, an award, or a plaque with your name etched on them, but they always teach you something new. I knew I wanted to be so good at what I did that I’d be remembered long after I was gone. I knew people had expectations of me, but you can’t live out other people’s expectations if you aren’t accountable to your own. If you are a creative person, don’t do yourself the disservice of allowing people to tell you how you should feel or what is the best path for your growth. Creativity doesn’t thrive with limited exposure or restrictions; it flourishes when you are living and being. It is about growing to a certain place, learning, and then shifting course. I’ve done that enough times, which gives me the confidence to say I’ve lived many tiny lives in one big life. A few years of saving money and living with a spark is what allowed me to repatriate home.

7 #PaidtoTalk

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n seventh grade, I got my first ever proper chance to be on stage when I was asked to give a speech at the school assembly. But I blew it even before I got on to the podium. The topic I was to speak on was volcanoes. I was prepared but madly nervous. I’d dressed on time; had even ironed my uniform. But as luck would have it, I was stuck in the worst-ever traffic jam while going from home to school, making me late for my first-ever speech. However, things worked out all right. I read out my speech to the vice-principal even as she stared me down with absolute disappointment for being late, and I was given permission to read out my speech the next day in front of the school assembly. I can still recall the applause today. It was, and will always be, as sharp as a tuning fork in an empty room. Despite my failure to show up on time, life gave me another chance. All I had to do was prove that I was ready for it. That was the beginning of my tryst with the stage.

You will laugh at this. I was fifteen when I did my first ‘professional’ show. It was as an item girl in a magician’s cage. Yes! K.S. Ramesh was a famous magician from Bangalore. He was also a friend of the family. Ramesh uncle was the one of the first few talents from the south to make it in Bollywood. Remember the Shah Rukh Khan and Jackie Shroff film King Uncle? Ramesh uncle plays a magician chef in the film, and through one of his tricks, a child appears out of a basket. It stuns everyone, even him. He was a renowned magician who could make things disappear into thin air. He had an infectious old-school, old-Bangalore charm, and was warm, loving and kind. One of his gigs involved him bringing a cage on stage and swerving it around to show the audience that it was empty. Then, he’d light a match and set the cage on fire. As he’d cover the cage with a black cloth, my job was to drop the secret compartment in the cage in which I was hiding, putting out the fire in the process. And on his cue, I would emerge from the cage, unscathed, in front of a spellbound audience! It was a stunt that never failed to get people excited, and it impressed me too. I was also dazzled by my costume, an imitation of a dress that Raveena Tandon wore in the famous song ‘Tu cheez badi hai mast mast…’ In that moment, I got to be a diva-licious version of myself. After the first show, Ramesh uncle pulled out an envelope from his pocket and handed it to me. ‘Here, take this,’ he said, ‘your first sal…’ Suddenly, his eyes met Mumma’s, and after a brief pause, he continued, ‘… your pocket money.’ I loved everything about this gig, a one-off show which marked the beginning of my career as a host. Apart from the lights and grandeur, it was also the one place where I could be uninhibitedly me. But I started hosting events on a lark. It didn’t seem like a valid profession to me. Of course, I was judging the people doing it. I thought of them as the ‘rebellious’ sort, the ones who didn’t prioritize creating a secure future and were comfortable embracing uncertainty. I, on the other hand, had been propelled towards a safe career path. It started with a few gigs when I was in college. I hosted the launch of a bowling alley not just in Bangalore but also its franchise in Kerala, and hosted ticket sales and information for Temptation 2004 (the first-ever chapter of the theatrical concert which features the biggest Bollywood names) on a moving open truck to which were attached loudspeakers for the whole world to hear what was being said. I’ve hosted movie promotions for the Vivek Oberoi and Rani Mukerjee-starrer Saathiya, in which I made couples play games where each member had to eat an apple simultaneously without dropping it! I knew that I had the talent to go professional. Modesty aside, I had the gift of the gab. Known as ‘Miss Personality’ across college fests in Bangalore, I became an object of envy when it came to public speaking. I felt at home when I was on stage; here, I felt removed from any kind of judgement. On stage, I had fun, so the audience’s thoughts about me didn’t matter. I made eye contact with everyone. Maybe that’s how the PDP had transformed me. It had made me comfortable with my speech. By this time, I had also been a debater and elocutionist. But still, talking as a career choice? The chances seemed bleak. One day, in early 2000, I was called by one of India’s biggest event management companies to meet with the brand manager of an IT start-up. The gig was for an annual IT festival, and I was expected to chat up the visitors. The idea of engaging with strangers every day made me an excited little bunny. Pointing at me, the head of the events company said, ‘We can make her wear orange overalls, and she will look like the brand.’ The best part about it was that it was going to be a ten-day affair and I would be paid for it. I made ₹ 750 for twelve hours of talking on the first day. I already had plans to buy those funky new shoes from Caterpillar. On the eighth day, while buying coffee, I spilled the piping hot liquid on my foot! I managed to get my shoe off only to find blisters already forming on my foot. I could’ve called it quits, but I didn’t. I enjoyed being there so much that I carried on for the rest of the exhibition. Though I was talking up a brand, I could sense that people enjoyed our chats, and that I

was brightening up their day just as they were making me smile. It made me realize that I had a true flair for this. Thereafter, when aunties and uncles would ask, ‘Beta, what are you doing during the holidays?’, I would say, ‘I’m getting paid to talk.’ But these good times came to a grinding halt when I moved to Dubai to find myself a job and a career. Much later, in 2008, when I was in Dubai and working at Microsoft, the desire to be on stage flamed again. I was hosting events covertly, under an alias—Sarah—and making money on the side. Being on stage again was an exhilarating experience, and it contributed significantly to my personal growth, making me feel more secure and confident. I’d sleep peacefully and wake up with a smile. When I repatriated to India, I realized that I stood out among those who had been doing the same thing for a decade or more. I seemed to have a unique voice. I was fun, quirky; I had a different attitude and approach. That is when I decided to register and trademark the hashtag #PaidToTalk. I saw it as a step towards building an identity in this space. It was branding that needed no further clarification, a catchy phrase that conveyed to people exactly what I did professionally. It was an interesting ice-breaker, and another step towards who I was becoming and where I was going. I looked up an intellectual property lawyer and did the paperwork. In the meantime, I finalized a logo and website design, laying the foundation for a full-fledged career in being #PaidToTalk. After waiting patiently for seven years, my copyright petition was finally approved in 2018. #PaidToTalk was now mine and mine only to use. Looking back, I would say this was when my personal brand took a serious turn. My speaking engagements were no longer just a means of making money. I began to place greater value on what I was doing, and even built a vision board for where I wanted to be eventually. Since the phrase #PaidToTalk is just as catchy as ‘Finger Lickin’ Good’ or ‘Just Do It’, many peers in the same business used it. It was an arduous effort to make (or even request) them stop, and I even sent out legal notices to people. Many colleagues remarked, who is she and why should we listen to her? The thing is, Intellectual Property (IP) has never been given much credit in this business. Everyone’s so focused on the competition that creativity takes a back seat. Most hosts aren’t mindful of the fact that what they’re creating is valuable. We may fundamentally be saying the same things, but my voice can never be yours, just like yours cannot be mine. To establish that distinction, I had to take ownership of what I’d created. Even if it meant I had to fight for it. Many people who had once laughed at me, later came back and asked me how I went about creating the logo and hashtag registration of #PaidToTalk. #PaidtoTalk really worked for me when I was being paid to talk. When my career took a different direction, I stopped using it. But even today, I am happy to host. I still enjoy it. I love the fact that I’m good at something, and the money (yeah!) is great too. As an actor, you’re always playing someone else. To be yourself on stage is refreshing. What is even better is that my newfound celebrity status has allowed me the freedom to say what I want on stage. Earlier, I’d be dismissed as the girl who just entertained. Today, my voice has value. The reality is that women have it tough in this business of talking. No one sees the merit in hiring someone who speaks their mind. I was always someone who would fight to be treated as a performer, not someone who was dispensable and easily pushed around. To anyone who wanted to work with me, I would make it clear that I was being hired for what I would say and not for the clothes I was going to wear. Even today, a mistress of ceremony has to submit the clothes she is wearing for approval. Male hosts, on the other hand, have never had to do this. ‘Suit pehen lena [Put on a suit.],’ they’re told. Suit, as in a salwar-kameez. Women, it seems, can’t be trusted to get the dress code right. I’ve tried to argue this several times, but now I don’t bother. I just say, ‘Sorry, I’m not sending it to you.’ Or, now that I have the means, I direct them to my stylist for whom they are paying.

I have idolized many greats in the field of anchoring. Ellen DeGeneres tops the list; she is funny, easy, effortless, and does and says things with purpose. Regardless of their profession, it’s the kind of spirit everyone should aspire to bring to work. Oprah Winfrey, a game-changer in this business, is the one who taught me that a good speaker must also be a great listener. I am still mastering that craft. There was a time in my life when I was drawn to stage performers because there’s so much inspiration to be drawn from them in this field. I particularly enjoyed listening to the American comedian Tig Notaro. Calm and composed, she talks about her struggles with mastectomy, her journey. She bares it all, literally. She is a unique, quiet performer, and you feel what she is feeling through her comedic set. Hannah Gadsby, Dave Chapelle and Vir Das are some of the other artists I admire. Each one of these stage superheroes brings something particularly remarkable to the craft; they light up the audience with their distinct energies. Closer to home, I grew up admiring Siddharth Kak and Renuka Shahane, television hosts of the programme Surabhi. How effortlessly they would spin stories and chat casually! Later, there came TV and radio show host Roshan Abbas. I fondly call him Rosh Ba because he’s an ‘abba’ to wannabe creators. He was one of the first people I met from Mumbai. When I decided to explore options beyond MC-ing, I went to him for advice. ‘Become a storyteller,’ he told me, explaining that divergence is the way to grow. An angel investor, content creator, TV host, film director, mentor, an author—he doesn’t and has never relied on one source of income. He keeps himself busy and builds wealth. His biggest investment is in people. He has the largest people’s balance and is a safekeeper of stories. I always turn to Rosh Ba when I want feedback on my next idea. In fact, this book became a reality after I consulted him!

Mini Mathur and Mandira Bedi are women I look up to. Mini’s been a kind and patient presence on Indian Idol. Her words stitch that show together, and of course, her glorious saris and smile are a big draw too. Warm and compassionate, Mandira broke the glass ceiling in cricket commentary. What stood out for me was that she wasn’t afraid to try something new and punch above her weight. The funniest thing is that most of these wonderful souls have been my teachers from far, far, away. What I’ve learnt from their processes, however, remains close to my soul.

Over the years, I’ve realized that I don’t do one thing. I believe in being a jack of all trades. By the end of 2018, I was being recognized as an actor; by 2022, I’ll be recognized as an author. People always ask me: How did you do this? What did it cost? How much time did it take? The answer remains the same: I do this because I am serious about my passions. If you don’t take your passions seriously, no one else will. Also, I’m not afraid to take a chance. #PaidtoTalk taught me that only those who are consistent doers, who don’t allow circumstances to control their narrative, win. When people ask me for advice, I may take my honest hour to tell them what I think, but there’s something I’ve noticed. When things get hard, many fall back into their old routines, because familiarity is comfortable and less threatening than change. If you believe, really believe, in your dream, pursue it relentlessly. Make your passion your profession. Set goals, and plot ideas, growth, collaborations, but most importantly, learn constantly. Keep revisiting the drawing board and reliving your hardest moments. Chase it, child.

8 It’s Cool to Not Look the Same

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n early 2000, I received a call on the landline in Mumma’s supermarket. ‘Hey, Kooooobs! Would you like to be a contestant in the Miss Bangalore competition?’ It was Nisar bhaiya on the phone, the contest organizer. I had met him outside JNC, the girls’ college I studied at. I didn’t know what the hell it took to be a part of a beauty pageant, but I was excited. I wanted to participate. Back then, all my clients had to call on the landline in Mumma’s supermarket, to ask Mumma for permission and my availability to host events. So I handed her the phone. Mumma wasn’t very keen on it, but I begged her to be allowed to take part in the contest, and finally, she agreed. It was a big breakthrough in my overprotected world and for a family afflicted with that quintessential ‘Log kya kahengey?’ syndrome, the fear of what people might say. I applied for the competition. Mumma came with me to all the meetings. She obviously felt it was important for her to monitor and act as bouncer for all the girls. She would man the changing rooms and yell at the stylist to remain outside. ‘Ruk baahar ruk,’ she’d shout. To me, she’d say, ‘You are different, beta.’ Her golden words. She often told me this when she saw me imitating other girls, talking in a softer tone or simply being ‘girly’. ‘But why?’ I’d argue. Maybe I wanted to be like them too. Nisar bhaiya told me that I needed a portfolio. All the other girls carried a briefcase-type folder, which contained photographs, beautifully laminated and filed. They carried them everywhere. I skimmed through their photos. I remember laughing enviously on the inside as I looked through them. I didn’t know what exactly I was laughing at. Perhaps the fact that I would never be able to look like them in photographs? Or that they seemed so different from their real selves in the photos? They appeared perfect, like ice maidens. In person, they appeared as human as me, as flawed, and, just like me, perhaps hoping to escape the chains of reality. ‘How much did you pay for this portfolio?’ I asked a girl. ‘Twenty-five thousand rupees,’ she stated with pride. I was shocked. I certainly was not laughing anymore. Twenty-five thousand was my college fees, which Mumma had borrowed from a lender on interest. If I had to ask her for that kind of money, I’d be a dead duck for sure. Later, I asked Mumma craftily, ‘Mumma, how much do you think we can spend on a portfolio?’ She said, ‘I know exactly what to do … Let’s go to GK Vale [a local photo studio in Bangalore] and shoot.’ A few days later, dressed in a purple T-shirt and a pair of full-length black trousers, Mumma and I arrived at GK Vale. We told the person in charge that we wanted to shoot a portfolio, to which the shopkeeper replied, ‘Okay, madam. Twelve photos plus negatives, ₹ 650.’ I can still see the glint of triumph in Mumma’s eyes. But all I could think at the time was that I would stick out like a sore thumb among the contestants because of my plain photographs.

It took me many, many years to be okay with the idea that you don’t have to look the same as everyone else. Yet, growing up, I had to work on my mind and sanity to not look like a clone. I am a modern Medusa. I am most comfortable when my hair is all over the place. That’s the thing with curly hair, really. Each strand has a mind of its own. No one dares dictate terms to the curls. The foreheads of people with curly hair are commonly out of shape. While the hair is mostly super thick, the baby hair that sprouts from the front is like millions of antennae seeking a mysterious signal. I’ve subjected myself to torturous hours in a salon chair, re-bonding my hair. When it grew out, it looked like crimpedout dried ramen in a packet. The top part would have these kinks in them, while the bottom remained poker straight. For five years, I placed myself at the mercy of hot irons and blow driers. It was the only way I could make myself look halfpresentable. Then, there are my bushy brows. For years I braved a unibrow, and braces which gave me a metallic smile. I also had a moustache—the pride of a south Indian heritage and lineage. Even after years of laser, it is still firmly there. Full-on whiskers, even. My arms have gone through gruelling wax strips. Aloe and honey and avocado … I’ve tried a fuckin’ salad bar, but the hair sprouts right back. I have hair on my nipples too … But maybe that’s TMI. I was introduced to the Brazilian wax years ago, and it just makes me feel awesome and free. Else, I feel like braiding the hair on my private parts, which may not be the best idea. I love my legs, but I have massive savanna grassland growing on my knees. And there’s the nose. Ah! You can see a bump that works its way like a charm right down the middle of my face. But it

wasn’t always that way. How can I forget those two incidents? The first one involved a game of basketball in Diamond District in Bangalore when I was working for Mumma in her supermarket. During a break, I joined the other kids in the complex for a game. If you can’t calculate speed, distance and time, please don’t play sport. Screaming kids asking me to cattttttchhhhh ittttttttt … Before I could hear the end of the phrase, I was on the floor, blacked out. I have never heard that kind of resounding silence as I did in that moment. I woke up in a few seconds and felt something warm and salty running down my lips. No, they weren’t tears. It was blood! In that moment, I thought I was going to die. The second event occurred at Enigma, a top-notch club at the JW Marriott in Mumbai. It was early 2005. I was visiting Mumbai for the first time. I was there to host the city’s first-ever drag racing meet on the still-to-be-completed Sea Link—that beautiful bridge that connects Bandra and south Mumbai. It was a hectic day, and my ears were numbed by the revving engines. The nights are long in Mumbai—the city never sleeps was what I had been told. So I went out with a few people to party. We were ushered into Enigma. It was all new to me, and I was oh-so-excited. All the celebs! When I saw Jackie Shroff holding court in a corner, I couldn’t stop smiling from ear to ear. In the middle of all this awesomeness, I had to rush to the restroom to pee. Clearly, I had held it in for way too long, so I put my head down and charged towards the loo. SLAM! I could feel warm liquid oozing out, and no, it’s not what you think. Once again, it was blood trickling down my nose to my lips. I had walked into one of the Marriott’s grand glass doors. I sat on the floor, hoping this mishap would set my previously damaged crooked nose straight. Unfortunately, things don’t work like that. That bump on my nose went from being a part of my face to getting in everyone’s face. It was so big that people would touch their noses to point out the bump on my nose. Like when you touch your teeth to show someone that they’ve got spinach in theirs? But let’s get back to photo shoots.

My first ever professional photo shoot was circa 2008. The portfolio was going to be shot by Munna S, one of the most sought after photographers in Mumbai. Everyone reached out to him, and he was still the only photographer Salman Khan and Sonu Sood would work with. I had just shot the cameo in Ali F. Mostafa’s multilingual Emirati film City of Life with Sonu Sood, and I had asked him if he could put in a word for a discount. I am telling you, connections work everywhere. From a steep ₹ 1 lakh for sixteen photos, Munna said he would be happy to shoot ten photos for ₹ 45,000. I was back at my work desk when the pictures, retouched and fixed, arrived in my mailbox at the end of the week. I looked through them, astounded. My waist was more tapered, my cleavage was also a bit enhanced, and my skin was clear. (I mean, come on! With all the fast-food burgers I was eating, that was bit unrealistic.) Yet, those pictures looked glam. I had no idea what they were going to do for me except mark a change in classification, from ‘comfort’ to ‘sexy’. I was proud, happy … and confused about them. I saw the glam, but I also noticed the discomfort in my eyes. I’d laugh and tell people self-deprecatingly, ‘Some of these make me look constipated.’ Of course, it wasn’t the photographer’s fault. Pictures seldom lie. The eyes are the gateway to a person’s soul. And in those pictures, I was someone else. It was a side of me that I didn’t know existed. But here’s the thing. We grow when we are uncomfortable. We shape and formulate our thoughts when we see a side of ourselves that is new, even to us. Today, I am photographed daily as a part of my job. I am sexy, I am a thinker, I am me and more than me. I am an advocate for not editing my pictures to look beyond believable. But I wouldn’t have known better if I had not seen those airbrushed pictures of me. After that first time, I’ve never circulated pictures that I didn’t believe in. Many years later, ace photographer Amit Ashar gave me valuable advice when I had another portfolio shoot done. ‘My nose … it’s too huge,’ I complained to him. He replied, ‘Your eyes, they are so beautiful and deep, no one will notice the nose.’ Many critics will come forward to share their feedback, opinions and ideas on how you can be best captured, and what you can do differently. Pick and choose the advice you want to follow. Use your instinct. The gut feeling. The spark. Pay attention to that uneasiness you feel in your tummy. Remember. Your eyes will tell the story even if your photos don’t. We are like anybody else. And nobody out there is perfect. Yet, this obsession with being accepted because we look a certain way is super commonplace. Physically, everyone aspires to be better than the person beside them. But we can never look like clones of a ‘perfect’ body; we can never expect people to love us because we look a certain way. We are only mounting pressure on ourselves. We are not moulded in factories, yet we all have the same faculties. Even if we aren’t the same physically, we have minds that will allow us to pursue greatness. That certainly doesn’t come from the way we look. It goes without saying that we should eat right, take care of our heart rate and burn the calories. I once came across a post by stand-up comedian Rohan Joshi. He said he joined a gym so that he could eat anything and still look good in a Tshirt. I thought, bloody hell, this is my goal. So, in 2018, I called fitness and energy coach Urmi Kothari. ‘What can you do with this body?’ I asked her. ‘Whatever you want … But maybe we want to start with your posture,’ she replied. As I grew in my fitness journey, I realized that being fat and being fit are two different things. Over the years, Urmi has helped me fix my posture, taught me coordination and showed me that my mind can juggle more than one command at a time. I began to look taller, my skin was firmer, and I became interested in salads, not on my arms and legs, but as foods

that went into my body. I began to care about when and what I ate. Today, I can say my spine is in a better condition than it was three years ago. I’ve also discovered the joys of yoga and am more in tune with my body. Here’s a mantra you could try out. Say it to yourself every morning: ‘I hug myself and reassure myself that I am enough. My sense of worth comes from my insatiable mind. I have mountains to climb and missions to complete. I am not in competition with myself or with anyone else. I hold myself in high esteem, and I am not what others tell me or sell me. I am who I am becoming each day.’

9 Love Actually

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was in a coffee shop with my friends. I was being myself, shrieking across the counter, waving and hugging people, laughing with my usual devil-may-care attitude. For one moment, I was truly revelling in life, unconscious of myself. I wasn’t watching myself, but it turned out that someone else was watching me. Isn’t life funny? He was observing me be my own awesome self and, admittedly, ‘fell in love’ with my madness and my confidence then, as he’d tell me later. When he told me these words, my heart soared, because who doesn’t want to be loved for who they naturally are? No changes, no edits. Just as you are. It’s the stuff of fairy tales, sparkling fountains and unicorns. So when I heard these magical words, I couldn’t help but automatically believe them. I didn’t question this feeling; I just went with the flow. We dated for a short period. Back then, dating involved hanging out, going for coffee and maybe bunking classes to go for a drive. I was over the moon and believed everything he said and did. I was young and naïve. He gave me his Adidas black ribbed sweater with a white piping, and I thought that was a promise to savour and keep close. I would wear it almost everywhere. I romanticized this person and his relationship with me. One day, he told me that he loved me and that happy, affectionate girl that he fell for took a back seat. I thought I had my fairy tale, and I wanted to be rescued. I altered the length of my skirts, smiled coyly, and didn’t laugh as loud. Instinctively, I knew it wasn’t the real me in this relationship, but I continued being in it nevertheless. You see, I was going with his flow, not my own. When Valentine’s Day came around and he didn’t wish me, I went over to his house with flowers, chocolates and tears, and waited for him to return from college. And hours later, when he didn’t show up, I was distraught. I decided to leave. Lost in my own thoughts and feeling sorry for myself, I rode my black Kinetic Honda down Bangalore’s Inner Ring Road when suddenly, I saw his car parked on the right. I parked a short distance away and walked up to his car. There he was, sitting with another ‘love of his life’. My timing couldn’t have been better because just as I approached the car, they kissed. In that one moment, all the butterflies died. The waterfalls clogged. The unicorns faded. I left without saying a word, crying all the way back to my house. It’s been a little over twenty years since that incident. Today, the boy who broke my heart and I are bloody terrific friends. He is married now, has babies. Life has moved on for him, as it has for me. We laugh and dine. We giggle about what a mutt head he has been. I never miss an opportunity to publicly announce him as the person who broke my heart. And maybe that is how love really works. It will be what it is meant to be in that moment. My heart was certainly broken, but the heartbreak won’t shatter you if you don’t allow it to. The four-letter word that usually gets your panties in a twist is probably one of the greatest emotional states to experience. The weightless feeling in your organs is a truth and an experience one must feel and, more importantly, be. Love is the single most important emotion that everyone should equip themselves with. Like the Allegra that I carry for my unknown allergy. Love works like an antihistamine. In the worst possible situation, sometimes, it is the best cure. Love is the big fireworks show. Everyone gathers to see it. You know it’s for occasions, but love is also for the daily humdrum routines, those spaces in between. Before love come the little things that maybe are even trickier to notice. Those little gestures shared between you and the other person constitutes and supports the BIG LOVE we all seek, one that I sought from my relationships. But the jokes your love makes, for instance, may become irritating in the long run. I believe that love sustains itself when we are attracted to that person every day. Or when we like them every day, no matter what. When you start getting bothered by the very things that attracted you to the other in the first place, that’s when love explodes and goes out of the window. I still love many men I dated; it’s just that now there is a shared respect between us. But the reason we broke up is that I stopped liking the little things and behaviours displayed in the relationships. So when you stop liking someone, tell them … Don’t end up blaming the failure of the relationship on the absence of love. Heartbreak can feel like your soul is leaving your body; the pain can seem almost physical. Over a period of time, though, you learn how to rebuild yourself with more love. Eventually, it is love that will give you the courage to forgive and the strength to soothe your wounds. Being broken, though, can be seen as a great opportunity to reconstruct yourself. The question is, if you were given that opportunity, would you rebuild yourself with love? Or would you swap love with scorn and hurt?

I once heard a man say: ‘If you are sad in your own company, you are in bad company.’ Over the years, my idea of love has changed. As a child and young adult, I used to feel unloved if I didn’t have anyone to tell me how much they loved me. In the years preluding my journey to success, on most days, I would see myself

through the lens of abjection. Oh! My nose is too big … I am too scared … I am unworthy of love… One day, I made a pledge to choose self-love. It wasn’t an exact moment. I was just tired of banging my head against the wall with my many failed attempts at relationships and with my old ways. I began to change myself slowly and started to listen to my intuition. When I started doing this, I realized that the people close to me began to acknowledge the love I manifested. How did I get here? A simple trick. I have a porcelain jar at home into which I drop little things I am grateful for. The weirdest things you’ll find in my gratitude jar are break-up notes. I say thank you when I break up with boyfriends. These boyfriends were meant to be present in my life. But that doesn’t mean that all the time we spent together was something I wanted to reminisce about forever. Gratitude allows me to nurture the love directed towards me, as it will, I believe, for you. It is a practice and one you must do daily. You’ll see that the roughest days get smoother. The wrinkles disappear like those from a steam pressed shirt. It all begins with this one thought: I am my favourite person. ‘No wonder I idolize Geet from Jab We Met. ‘Mein apni favourite hoon,’ she says.’ This type of thinking helps you to reflect on the person you are and teaches you to value yourself. Remember, the most important relationship that you’re likely to have is with yourself. Start there, and then share that love with the world. Love is about giving. When you give, you are empty to receive.

Love works in myriad ways. Auden’s Col is a high-altitude mountain pass in Uttarakhand, situated at an altitude of 18,010 feet. The peaks may look like cute bunny ears, but undertaking a trek to those peaks is by no means one meant for beginners. Yet, in 2015, I decided that I would trek through the pass, and so I went ahead and bought my first-ever trekking gear. At the time, I used to barely walk 10,000 steps a day, but I just wanted to do something I had never done before. So, I set myself this difficult challenge. The tour operator, a man who knew me from a previous rafting trip, advised me to train for it, but I did very little of that too. Somehow I had convinced myself that I’d manage. Why was I so nonchalant about this? Because I had picked up a gem of a lesson in other adventures I’d been on. You don’t climb mountains with your legs. You climb them with your mind and the permission of the mountain itself. And with this mantra clutched close to my heart, I set off. Of course, ended up reading the wrong list of things to carry. I had packed a bikini in my rucksack for the hot days. But as you’d already know, there are no hot days in the snow! When I shared this silly bit of information with the group, they laughed, so I wore the bikini over my seven layers of clothing and posed for a picture. The trek went off wonderfully. I walked through the wilderness for twelve days with the trekking troupe. There were moments of joy and others of intense exhaustion. At one point, we had reached a ridge from which we had an uncensored, uninterrupted and inspiring view of the Gangotri group of peaks—the Jogin group, the Bhagirathi group, the Rudragaira peak and Kedar Dome—all at once. I took a deep breath and realized how blessed and immensely fulfilled I felt in that moment. This trip to the mountains instantly made me a slave of the many experiences to follow. Since then, I’ve peaked Stok Kangri at 20,187 feet. There were thirteen of us climbing Stok Kangri, and as we were trying to peak it, one by one, they all dropped out. Some just didn’t want to attempt the peak because the climb itself had been a good enough experience, while others fell prey to AMS (altitude sickness). We began our climb at 10 p.m. with the idea of reaching the top at sunrise. But it was 4 a.m., and we were still climbing. All around me, there was nothing but white powder. My sinking feet tested both my body and my mind. The ego wanted to keep climbing, but the voice inside me urged I give up. Just then, my Sherpa yelled out, ‘Ab yoh tujhe uthake le jaayenge … magar tu pahunchegi zaroor [We will carry you if necessary, but you will certainly reach your destination.].’ I stopped many times, ready to throw in the towel, my head in the snow, yelling ‘Allah Allah’. To which my calm Sherpa would reply, ‘Jo karna hai tu kar … Subah subah unko disturb mat kar. [You do whatever needs to be done but don’t disturb the divine this early in the morning.]’ That day, I climbed for thirteen hours. When I came back to our base camp, I was greeted with sooji cake; that is how I celebrated one of my birthdays. Since then, I’ve also peaked Mount Fuji. Every single mountain has made me humbler and ignited my respect for nature. Every time I climb a mountain, I am overcome by tears. Especially when the tips of my fingers grip the summit, I am filled with gratitude and joy. On top of the world, I say thank you to the mountain for letting me climb it. I stand there, before taking the mandatory selfie, and I smile while absorbing the enormity of where I came from and where I will soon return. It is a difficult job to go back where you began, but it must be done. No one can remain on the summit, no matter how glorious it is. It has shown me, time and again, how tiny I am in the scope of the universe itself. Time spent in the mountains, I learnt, teaches us how dependent we are on nature. One also recognizes the responsibility one has towards the universe as a whole. Generally, we tend to overlook the fact that humanity is part of the natural world. For example, did you know that human poop takes about a year to biodegrade into the soil? Each human produces up to a pound of poop each day, and that takes a year to decompose. Any wonder why our parks stink so much? It’s us. What you put in and on yourself is what will come back to you. Isn’t that how love works too? All through school and college, I was always labelled the ‘distracted child’. Even my cat’s animal whisperer recently pointed out that I seemed frenzied. But sitting amid nature and breathing with it in harmony brings me inner peace. Funnily, I am not as distracted. There is a sense of ease and clarity within me. This is love too. It is evolution, growth, transformation.

Love is everywhere, but the way I look at it is that we humans reduce it to nothingness. When love dies, a part of you dies too. What follows can be a magical, profound experience if you continue to love. Just like the hero’s journey. It isn’t really the end; it is the end to a new beginning. Always.

And speaking about love, never ever underestimate the power of hugs! Be the giver and the receiver, please. Do it for your own selfish reasons. There is something about a real-time human squeeze; I am not talking about those detached air kisses and awkward hover hand type of shameful excuse of a hug. I mean a real one. I am a hugger. I became one despite warnings from Mumma. She somehow anticipated the virus situation long before the world met COVID. With a dismayed look, she’d say, ‘Nahin beta, thooo galley nahin lagna.’ (That’s colloquial for ‘Don’t hug.’) She was even against me shaking hands. Despite the warnings, I still became the first legit hugger of the family. Life has never ever been the same again. Hugs are a physical expression of love and care. Hugs are like potatoes. They are tailor-made for moments of grief, success, kindness, compassion and even just nothingness. To me, a hug is the perfect ingredient in the most imperfect situation. It detonates tension. It increases oxytocin and makes a memory imprint. A hug should be the greatest warfare weapon in the world. I have friends; you’ll find me on all fours when I see them. There is a forewarning issued in case they want to work on their lower back strength prior to meeting me. I jump, hug and stay. It is usually followed by laughs and love. The most memorable hugs I have are with this friend of mine named Shorty. He is six feet three inches tall. I’ve advised him to sell his hugs. They have a way of making you feel comfortable, warm and safe. You feel abundant after a squish. Try it. Because you’ll remember them when I’m gone.

10 I’ve Dated Many, Many Nice Men

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omeone once told me, ‘Don’t date him if he is nice. Date him if he’s good.’ Nice is holding a door open and hoping for a ‘thank you’. Good is holding a door open simply because it is closed. The thing is, I’ve dated many, many nice men. Nice men who would try to control me by telling me what to do, what to wear, how to carry myself. Who would tell me how kind they were because they were picking me up from work. I’ve also dated men who showed up just to have sex. Sometimes, I had sex with them because I was nice too. And for some, I even got a ‘thank you’ afterwards. I’ve dated men who had wonderful fathers. I said to myself, ‘Yeh unnees-bees niklega toh chalega. Iske daddy ko full points milte hain. [If he turns out to be even a little all right, then full points to his father for raising a good guy.]’ Of the relationships I’ve had, and there are many that I have forgotten, I do remember falling in love with every man I kissed. I went back home, quickly pulled out a piece of paper and wrote down F-L-A-M-E-S—a childhood game. Fingers crossed, I counted, hoping against hope to land on ‘M’. Marriage. Let me tell you the truth. Marriage was all I ever wanted. I have wanted to marry since I turned eighteen. To me, it was my ticket to freedom. Though I didn’t know what freedom meant to me until I actually had it. I may have been raised by a matriarch, but, growing up, all I ever heard was how hard it was not to have a man’s support. So, I tried to find a man who would support me financially, take me on those big darn expensive holidays, have me birth his future generations. I had everything planned. The rooms, the clothes, the holidays. Who needs you when you have him, right? I brought home my first ‘rishta’ when I was just eighteen. He was the son of a businessman in Bangalore. Back then, I was an active participant in the Cutchi Memon community’s many activities, like debates and elocutions. Yes, technically, I am of a Gujarati bloodline. My ancestors had settled in the south of India—the maternal side in Karnataka and the paternal side in Tamil Nadu. Our community, or jamat (congregation), held competitions for the children of the community. I’d won the rolling trophy a few years in a row. So, when this businessman and his wife saw me, they invited Mumma and me to their home. The guy was a good lad, but his father was a doll. He adored me and loved me so much that—and from my acute myopic perspective—I could’ve feasted on his attention alone for the rest of my life. The family had a big home, with a swimming pool. The man I had brought home had been married once before and had a six-year-old daughter. I was a catch for them, and, in my head, he was a catch for me. We were invited to his palatial home, and there was a massive spread for us. Mumma and I were fed like queens, given the grand tour, and introduced to what full-length mirrors looked like in a bathroom. The ceiling had a mirror too. Gasp! Of course, once we got home, Mumma wanted to break my hands and legs. She didn’t want me to marry a guy who had already been married. Plus, I was eighteen. She told me to stop being so desperate and turned down the proposal. Since then, it’s been a search for the ‘right man’ to marry.

‘Why are you single?’ I used to be asked often. It would leave me confused until, one day, I let the question boomerang. ‘You tell me, why am I single?’ I shot back. They hesitated, looked away, rubbed their noses, laughed awkwardly and said, ‘You … you intimidate men.’ Do I? I’m yet to understand why. However, here’s a standard template for most of my dates; it’s a recurring dating conundrum I find myself in. Perhaps, you could help me with the answer to that infuriating question. I get asked out on a date. He is lovely. For a brief moment, I think, yes, this could be it. On the night of the date, he picks me up, and the way he looks at me tells me he finds me attractive. I had made an effort to dress up that night, as I would on any other night for any other date. We go out for a handsome dinner, share a few well-rehearsed anecdotes, we laugh. I crack my favourite jokes and slip in my best one-liners. As we eat, I feel his foot brush my leg. The wine has made us giddy, so we head home. His or mine. Mine would be better. Mumma always told me never to stay over anywhere for the night. We kiss, we play. He tells me how wonderful and charming I am. Later, he puts himself back together and looks at me with dewy eyes. Holding my face in both his hands, he says, ‘I am not ready for anything serious. I am just not in that headspace.’ Trust me, this is a real story. It is pretty intriguing for me to see this happen time and again. These men who aren’t ready to look into the crystal ball, or even consider a long-term thought with me in their heads, are a puzzle I can’t seem to crack. So I circle back to the question I’m asked.

Why am I single? I don’t know what the right answer is, but I’ve come to believe that maybe I am a bit too much. A bit too funny. A bit too honest. A bit too charming, caring, invested, opinionated, loving. And, of course, a bit too intimidating. It annoys me that I am so easily attracted to the uninvested bad boy, the quintessential Hansel lost in the woods. That guy who will make pudding from the breadcrumbs but not follow his heart home. It probably has less to do with the type of man I’m drawn to and more a result of the unresolved conflict in my heart. I can see how I’d be unwilling to let him be his own person. That I’d desperately want to become them or change them to become me. There is someone who has had the same impact on my life, but more on her later. My romantic relationships have left me unfulfilled. I’ve had my heart broken many times; I always fell for the wrong guy, the one who treated me like shit, because that was familiar territory to me. I am yet to have an actual relationship. My brother Dan has had more relationships, and is now married. Inherently, I guess I had internalized that people are bad and relationships don’t work out. So I gravitated towards the wrong people and relationships. But on the other hand, even if I wanted to thrive in a relationship, what would I have to go by? I didn’t have an example. My parents never showed me the balance between yin and yang. My mother tried to fix her husband and her marriage, and it didn’t work. I have been walked over, cheated on, but I know how to forgive and move on because that’s what I saw Mumma do time and again. ‘It is tiring,’ she would say. I grew up to identify the feeling of being tired in relationships. I grew up to be tired of the person I was becoming.

In 2013, I flew to New York to meet a man-child I hoped to wed. On paper, the man-child was perfect marriage material. Originally from Bangalore, he earned well, and he was a Muslim. No doubt, the greatest incentive was that this guy was a Muslim. Man, come on! My dead grandfather would be smiling in his grave knowing that the girl who didn’t blink before baring herself on an OTT platform was going to marry a Muslim boy. I must give myself credit. I have always wanted to marry a Muslim boy, not because I wanted it that way, but because it was the only way I was conditioned to think about marriage. This, however, was a match made in heaven … as long as I adjusted and was flexible. He picked me up in a fancy private taxi and went on to brag about it. We drove to his plush New York Midtown apartment, which—oh, please stop me, I’m weak in the knees—had a washer and a dryer. More boasting followed. You could see the Hudson River from the apartment; he told me how I was going to love coffee by the Hudson the next morning. I was starry-eyed and excited. I had flown across oceans and beyond to meet the Prince Charming of my life! He wore only greys and dark blues and blacks, but I believed that he had a more colourful personality. I am a unicorn in my head. Like, I’d fart rainbows if you’d ask me (in private, of course). We cuddled at night. Obviously, you don’t have sex with the guy you’re intending to marry. It is not the Indian thing to do. You are both circumspect, and then, when the time is right, and parents are on board, you procreate. The next morning, I was super-excited because it was a coffee-at-the-Hudson kind of day. I wore my matching Juicy Couture velvet pyjama and hoodie. (Yeah! I am guilty of doing that. In fact, I made Mumma wear those nasty pants too.) After a friendly hello to the doorman, we walked down the street. I spotted a Starbucks, and said, ‘This is the Mecca of coffee … Let’s grab one here.’ The man-child I was about to marry chided me. ‘Shush! I work at the stock exchange. Do you know how much of your money they make on each cup of coffee?’ I rolled my eyes, and as I wrote this, I rolled them again. ‘We buy you my favourite coffee from the man who has a mobile kiosk down the street. He also happens to be an Indian, and we should support each other.’ ‘Ermm … okay!’ I said. At the kiosk, he said, ‘Two large, double creme and one sugar.’ I shrugged when he wasn’t looking and grabbed the coffee with half a smile. He assumed I was jet-lagged, and we walked on to the Hudson. All along, he spoke about his ex, how he allowed her to do things and how he built his life all by himself, on his own terms. He spoke until it was time for him to look at his watch, and when he did, he said, ‘All right then, I’ll head to work. See you later.’ ‘Wow,’ I thought, as I stared into the river. My gut told me that this guy wasn’t right, but my desperate need to be married overruled that instinct. I spent the day walking and exploring the city. That night, when he came home, we sat on the bed. Neither one of us spoke. To break the silence, I said, ‘Hey, let’s go watch a Broadway show. I want to buy the best tickets in the world because it’s my first-ever experience.’ ‘Ah! I’ve watched them all. Such a waste of money! You can also have the experience from the gallery, and you don’t need to spend all that money on front-row seats,’ he said. Calmly, yet firmly, I said, ‘It’s my first musical. Buy me the ticket, and I’ll leave the money on the desk.’ The next morning, before leaving for work in his dark blue clothes, man-child took his visiting guest and potential wife’s money to buy a ticket for a play she was going to watch alone. I called Dan and Mumma and told them that I was suffocated in this man-child’s apartment. I was ready to change my ticket and return to Mumbai. But just then, a switch

flipped in my head. I took out my phone and called Joe.

I had met Joe Mullin on a work trip to the Maldives two weeks earlier. This was the same event in which I had champagne thrown on me by a bully. In need of a break from that high-octane drama at the sangeet, I had walked to the dinner buffet and found him sitting there at a large table, eating his meal all by himself. I walked up to him and broke the silence with a polite, rhetorical cackle, ‘Eh! Crazy there, huh?’ He replied with a nod. I indicated that I would like to sit beside him, and, once again, he nodded a yes. ‘My name is Kubbra,’ I said. ‘You are?’ ‘Joe Mullin.’ ‘Where are you from?’ ‘New York,’ he replied. ‘New York!’ I exclaimed. ‘Wow, I’m visiting in two weeks to see an old friend who is potentially someone I want to marry. He looks really good on paper.’ Joe laughed. ‘Do you think we can say hello in New York?’ I asked. He handed me a visiting card and nodded politely. I said good night and went to bed. I was on my way back home the next day. I had carried Joe’s card safely with me to New York. On the phone, I told Joe that I was looking for company for coffee, then lunch, and that I was about to go watch a play. I was free for dinner too. At dinner, he plied me with questions, and I spilled everything that was stewing inside me. ‘Hey, I don’t have a big home, but it’s enough,’ he said. ‘I have a spare couch. Would you like to stay at my place for the next few days?’ ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ I replied without hesitation. And just like that, I said bye to the man-child who I was obviously not interested in marrying anymore and embarked on a new adventure. Joe Mullin and I have known each other for eight years now. I asked Mumma to call him when she was passing through New York, and he was gracious enough to let her stay at his house for the weekend too. In 2019, when I was in New York for the Emmys, Joe came to see me. He lives in Vancouver now. He still doesn’t speak much, nods occasionally, and continues to be amused by my energy and enthusiasm. We’ve had many hearty meals, and laughed and reminisced about the years gone by. To think of it, if that disastrous trip to find my Prince Charming hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have found myself a friend for life. That’s why I continue to take chances, honey. There is a surprise at every corner.

11 City of My Dreams

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always knew I wanted to live in Mumbai. So, I had chalked out a brilliant plan to make it happen. In November 2008, when I was still working at Microsoft in Dubai, I told my office that I was going to visit my family in Mumbai. The truth was that I had no family in Mumbai. I was going there for a photo shoot with Munna S. I had no place to stay in the city either, but I told myself that I would figure it out once I was there. Then, just as I was done packing, I received a call from my manager. ‘Kubbra, did you hear? There’s been a terrorist attack in Mumbai. The city is burning, and people have died. Is your family okay?’ I was shocked and felt wretched that I had to continue to lie. ‘I’ll find out,’ I stammered. ‘Maybe I’ll postpone this trip.’ I went online and saw the news. Mumbai was being attacked on several fronts. Terrorists had attacked the Oberoi Trident, Leopold Cafe, Cama Hospital, Nariman House, Metro Cinema. The iconic Taj Palace was on fire. There was chaos in the streets of the city. Mumbai was going up in flames. Without another thought, I cancelled my ticket. The city wasn’t safe, Mumma’s words echoed back at me. I watched as my dream receded further and further away. I called Munna to tell him I was going to cancel the shoot. I expected to hear a frantic voice saying, ‘Yes! Yes! Stay there, don’t travel. Be safe. Take care of yourself.’ But his response left me speechless. ‘Oh! You don’t want to come, is it? Okay, par baat sun. What is happening is terrible. Magar airports aur trains chaalu hai, people are moving. This is Mumbai, meri jaan. Nothing stops here. Tu ruki, to peechey chhoot jayegi [Oh! You don’t want to come, is it? Okay, but listen. What is happening is terrible. But airports and trains are running; people are moving. This is Mumbai, my dear. Nothing stops here. If you stop, you’ll be left behind.],’ he said nonchalantly. If my life were a game show, that was my expert advice call. I rebooked my ticket immediately—at double the price—and repacked my bags. Munna came to pick me up from the airport. ‘I have never even picked up my mother from the airport,’ he told me. ‘Tu special hai. Kuch special karegi [You are special. You will do something special.].’ I confessed I had no place to stay. ‘Tu fikar mat kar. Stay here at the studio. Main bhi kabhi kabhi yahin rehta hoon. Mere bachche logon ko bhej deta hoon. Tu aaram se reh [Don’t worry. Stay here at the studio. Even I stay here from time to time. I send my assistants away. You be comfortable.],’ he said. It’s fair to say that my first glimpse of a city that was burning on the outside was of its heart of gold. That night, I slept in a makeshift bedroom in the loft of a dingy little studio in Oshiwara, a puffed-up neighbourhood in Andheri West. I woke up the next day and went to the gym before my shoot. I brushed shoulders with Baba Sehgal there, and obviously, I was starstruck. Munna and I shot from 3 p.m. to half past midnight and later, ate biryani, squatting on the floor. Exchanging laughs and giggles, the crew said, ‘Tod degi kuch [You will do something great.].’ Never have I seen people demonstrate such resilience in the face of adversity as I did on that trip. I returned to Dubai, both tired and exhilarated, but Mumbai stayed on my mind. When I decided to move to Mumbai in 2010, I did not have a home or a roof to live under. I called a friend, Arna, whom I had met during a beauty pageant I had entered in South Africa. ‘Why don’t you live with Priyanka?’ Arna suggested. I didn’t know who Priyanka was, but I landed in Mumbai and called her. She didn’t answer her phone. In a tizzy, I called Arna again. ‘Oh shit! Priyanka’s in Lonavala,’ she said. ‘I really have nowhere to go,’ I said. After a short pause, she asked, ‘Would you be comfortable sharing a home with two boys who are like my brothers?’ ‘Yes!’ said I, the person with zero options. And that is exactly what I did. The two boys who shared a home in Andheri came to collect me. The flat had no curtains on the windows; the rooms had curtains instead of doors. There was no hot water in the house either. But there were unlimited cups of chai, dodgy internet and a computer to make those filmi connections. In that moment, kaafi tha. I lived with them for three days, and they were just the nicest guys. On the third night, they took me out to a party. I was standing in a corner, gawking, when a familiar face walked up to me. Actor Eijaz Khan was an acquaintance who had become a dear friend while I lived in Dubai. He seemed surprised to see me. ‘What are you doing here? When did you arrive?’ he asked me. I told him my story. ‘Why didn’t you call me?’ he asked. ‘Because I didn’t know you were a “friend”,’ I said. ‘Now you know I am,’ he said. ‘I have a home, and I’m shooting in Nashik. Stay there, take care of my puppies and

leave only when you find a place of your own.’ I revelled in his hospitality for five weeks until I found a home. A door with my name in tiny letters written on it. My new journey, one that I had chosen for myself, had begun.

In 2009, the first-ever film that I worked in, City of Life, was released. I played a Bollywood diva in it. But you’d probably miss me in the film because I had a five-second role in it. I was the subplot of a subplot of a subplot. Yet to me, this opportunity was paramount. And, of course, I felt like a diva when I reached the set. I had always wanted this, but I didn’t know what to expect. I was brimming with excitement, electrified. Just then, a spot boy offered me chai and biscuits. Up until that point, I had to make my own tea to boost my morale. That feeling of being treated like a superstar, even when you aren’t one, can be exhilarating. I don’t remember much from that set, but I do recall that being offered a ‘set ki chai’ has always been a simple yet effective motivator. Everybody craves that cup of chai and its underlying intent. I think it is symbolic, the chaap of accomplishment and recognition that we seek. This small act of kindness from a spot boy was something I could slowly but surely get used to.

My first audition in my city of dreams was for a Salman Khan film called Ready. This was in 2010. I was stunned when I was offered the chance. How did a nobody like me come to a city and get a shot to become a somebody? I was unfettered with joy when I went to that audition, eagerly hoping to be ‘discovered’. A few hours later, Shahid Hasan, the casting director, walked in and looked at me with concern. ‘Yeh pehenogey? [Would you wear this?]’ he asked, pointing to my salwar-kameez. ‘Yes. Maid ka role hai na? [It’s the role of a maid, isn’t it?]’ I quipped. ‘Hot maid,’ he replied. What! I was going to play a hot maid in a Salman Khan film? This was too good to be true. I replied perkily, ‘Of course, I have a short, short dress.’ He seemed impressed with my confidence. ‘Jao change karlo. Director abhi aate honge [Go on, change. The director is about to arrive.],’ he said. I rushed into the dingy little toilet of the production house and changed my clothes quickly. Then, I sat with my legs crossed, waiting for Anees Bazmee, the director. In my head, this is how it would play out—he’d walk in, glance across the room, and his eyes would rest on me. After a moment of contemplation, he’d call me into his office and proceed to read me my part and convince me to play this maid’s character that would change the course of my career—and life. But life doesn’t work like that. Three hours later, I was still crossing and uncrossing my legs, peeping through a gap in the door to see if the entourage had arrived. I didn’t even know what Mr Bazmee looked like. Or, for that matter, what any director looked like. But this level of restraint was uncharacteristic of me, and I worried that my patience would wear out. After what felt like an eternity, the door opened and Bazmee finally walked in. Amid the chaos, with people running to fetch him freshly brewed chai, he glanced across the room. I still remember his words. ‘Yeh maid? Okay.’ [Her, the maid? Okay.] After this, he disappeared into his office. The casting director walked up to me and said, ‘Chalo, done.’ ‘What?!’ I was truly shocked. A thousand questions swirled through my mind. Was it really that easy to land yourself a role in a Salman Khan film directed by the Anees Bazmee? Was I even ready for it? My inner voice was telling me not to question anything. Just GO HOME, it yelled. That evening, I received a call from Bazmee’s office, asking for my passport. I was going to Sri Lanka and Thailand to shoot for my first Bollywood film. Two weeks later, I packed my bags and was on my way to Colombo for the first time in my life. I can still feel the butterflies in my stomach as I write this. In Colombo, our call time was 6 a.m. (In Bollywood, ‘call time’ is basically the approximate time at which the actors arrive on set for a shoot that will begin at yet another approximate time.) Since I am the enthu cutlet, I woke up at 5 a.m., brushed my teeth, showered and made myself some coffee in the fancy room that I was sharing with a co-actor. I thought about the long, happy breakfast that lay waiting for me as I sashayed into the lobby. But before I could make it to the buffet, I was given two green apples and then bundled into a little van and ferried to the set. The atmosphere at the set was abuzz with energy. There was a short Ganesh puja, actors arriving, the huge ensemble cast going about their ways, the crew setting up the lighting and the shots. I found myself a spot in an obscure corner and settled down. Soon the action began. Someone wanted my face for make-up, another wanted to do my hair, a third person wanted to tie my sari, a fourth rushed to take off my nail polish. I was no longer a person; I became a prop. I was the assignment for the day. Once I was prepped for performance—it must’ve taken an hour, tops—I was ready for Ready at 8 a.m. All I had to do was wait for my cue. So I waited and waited, and waited some more. As the day went by, I made myself a makeshift bed of two chairs and slept. My make-up became dull because I had slept with it, and my sari needed retying. The perky little day had come to a grinding halt. Then, finally, at 1 p.m., I heard a familiar bustle. It was the sound of an entourage, a convoy of cars coming to a

screeching halt. The man had arrived. Oh damn, I thought. I was now facing the back of Salman Khan. He stretched and yawned. He smiled, chuckled and cracked a joke, and the set erupted in a familiar state of joy. He is a superstar. There is no one like him. It is sheer folly to think anyone can compare to his effortless stardom. He is his own brand. The set came alive. Everyone began to scurry. The light man checked for sunlight; the sound dada worked on all the wires for Salman Khan’s mic; the costume designer brought out the options he could wear for the scene, and his make-up artist shadowed him to find the right moment to set his hair. The superstar at the centre of attention had also become attentive. Just as the cameras were set to roll, he stretched and said, ‘Lunch break.’ Huh. I didn’t know what to think, so I followed everyone to a big dining table and secured our places to eat with Bhai. It was a memorable day for me. I was the head maid. I had an apron. My sari was retied a few times. I even said my lines! I stood there in awe, in the presence of Salman Khan, and said, ‘Bhaiyaji, why heart is beating so fastly?’ That night, I sank into bed thinking about how a well-run crew gets the job done. It’s because of the people who enable other people to succeed at what they do. Similarly, in life, surrounding yourself with the right people can change everything. I’ve come some way since that shoot, but I continue to value the little things. That cup of chai may be inconsequential to most people, but it will always make a world of difference to me.

12 In with the In-Crowd

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ut me in a room, any room, and I can honestly make myself comfortable. Because in my head, I am a very confident person. I have this grin that resembles a frizzy poodle who has found herself a bone. I’m the person who was voted ‘most likely to turn bartender at a stranger’s party’. Never a DJ, as I am tone deaf and well aware that no one wants to hear me croon, ‘Teri pyaari pyaari surat ko kissi ki nazar na lage…’ on a Marshall speaker in a glittering room. As a newbie in the entertainment business, however, I quickly realized that the bold types aren’t viewed favourably at fancy industry-dos. First rule of this club? Never ever walk up to anyone and say ‘I-would-like-to-be-an-actor’ even if you’re only at the party to pitch yourself for a project. I learnt early on that these parties never entertained ‘those people’. You will instantly be compartmentalized and put into a box. If you want to be ‘in’, you’ll have to earn a spot in the room. Yes, some of the requisites are the clothes you wear, how you speak, how much you drink or how little, and who interacts with you. In this world, you build a social network by relying on other people’s curiosity. But more on this later. One sure-shot way to get noticed is to turn up uninvited. But then, expect to be shown the door soon after. It was a photographer who took me for my first official Mumbai ‘bash’. He was covering a jewellery event at Escobar, a one-time hot spot in Bandra, and asked if I wanted to tag along as his plus-one. I wore a little black dress, which was part of my Dubai wardrobe that I had carted with me when I moved back to India. It was my first exposure to the whole paparazzi thing, and I was flabbergasted. ‘Sir, sir, ma’am, ma’am, one photo, one photo, left please, right please…’ I’d never experienced anything like that before. I had to just walk past the flashing lights because nobody stopped me to ask for a photo. To think, today it’s impossible for me to go to yoga without having my picture taken. Also, that I used to be a plus-one. Today, I find it hard to find a plus-one and usually end up going to parties all alone. While my photographer friend went to work, I stood around idly. The thing is, when someone sees a pretty girl standing alone, they do usually come up and say ‘Hi’. Soon enough, I found myself to be a part of a group at a table. Being a novice, I hadn’t eaten before heading out for the night. There was a plate of food on the table, so I picked it up and started to eat. Baked mushrooms, I thought. One of the guys at the table saw me with the dish and gave me a vexed look. ‘Everything okay?’ I asked. ‘Those were my mushrooms,’ he said. ‘Who are you?’ I asked. ‘I own this restaurant,’ he said. ‘Then get another plate,’ I suggested. Turns out, the owner of the restaurant was the only vegetarian at the table, and I had taken his food from under his nose. It was a move that helped kick off my first proper conversation of the evening. The owner took me into the club’s VIP area, and one of the first celebrities I ran into was comedian and actor Cyrus Sahukar. ‘Haaaiiii Kubbraaaaa, how are you…,’ he said cheerily. OMG, someone in Mumbai knows me, I thought at that point. Even though I was a teetotaller at the time, I was brimming with energy. And everyone wanted to tell their stories to me, super eager as I seemed to hear them all. Talk of business deals, private jets, buying houses in different parts of the world, professional projects... ‘Tell me about your dress. You’re looking so pretty! Where do you get your hair done?’ The boys shit-talked each other as well. ‘Dude, you’ve become so bald.’ ‘Bro, I was always bald!’ Even as they swapped stories, they were looking over their shoulders, scoping the room in an I’m-very-interested-intelling-you-my-story-but-one-second-mayyyybeeee-that-was-Amitabh-Bachchan-there kind of way. Here, everyone was only as important until someone more important showed up in the room. The key is to find that ‘in’—a familiarity that promotes conversations. Without that, you will always be the outsider.

It took me a few years to be invited to such coveted parties. I’m not counting, but seven would be a rough estimate. I waited for my turn. And when I did wrangle an invitation, my natural exuberance was a draw. That’s when I made my second rule: Listen, don’t speak.

In a world where everyone wants to talk, I chose to be someone who listens. People love it when you listen to them. Most of us find this difficult to do because when someone is talking, we feel the need to point things out, correct them, add to what they’re saying, come up with a smart answer or think of questions you could ask them. But it’s more nourishing to be present in the moment and actually listen to them because that’s when you truly get a glimpse into who people really are. It also makes people feel noticed and respected. So, be patient with the people you meet. Allow them to share their stories, of frustration or triumph. The best advice I’ve received is when you meet people, leave your agenda aside. Drop the to-do list on your way up to the party or gathering. Allow the conversations, the night, and the people to evolve. The people who are heard without being interrupted feel special. Listening is a great teacher. You can learn about politics, learn about bags that were made after skinning three crocodiles, and a vaccine that can save humanity—all in one evening. I believe I have become interesting because I learn by listening. If you want to learn how to hold court, watch businessman, author, and speaker Suhel Seth. Everybody knows him, and once he starts talking, everyone listens. I try to absorb a little of everything he says, so I can use it in another conversation to sound as intelligent as he is. I’m enamoured by his conversational prowess. As a child, I wasn’t much of a reader. So, all my knowledge came from being attentive. I’ve always been friends with people who are much older than me. From hanging with trainee doctors during the 1992 Babri Masjid riots in Bangalore when I was in Class 7 to chatting with a financial advisor or a business tycoon on a plane when I was much older, being a genuine listener has always set off fireworks in my brain. Eventually, I figured out that learning through listening to others can make you smart. Let me clarify—smart is a bastardized word, like ‘fine’. Like the word ‘ego’, it also has negative connotations. It means nothing by itself; it’s a trait that hangs by a thread. However, I believe it has huge potential. Smart makes me emotionally present. Smart allows me to know the difference between the known and the unknown. Smartness persuades me to ask questions. I am not judging in the presence of smartness because I’m listening with curiosity. Smart is the need of the hour. Intelligence can be a bore if you don’t have the smarts to manoeuvre a conversation. I am not saying one needn’t be informed, but it’s very important to know how to use that information. I have never considered myself to be the most intelligent person in a room. But smart? That, I am. It is a tool everyone needs to have in their little bag (along with your lip balm) for a night on the town.

In my early years out on the town, I felt like I knew everybody at every party, when, in fact, I knew them from TV or the movies. Having connected with their on-screen characters at an emotional level, to see them standing in front of me came as a huge shock. ‘I know you, but you don’t know me,’ I’d say to them. Then, over a period of time, they knew me too. That was a big shift. Some time ago, I met someone who said, ‘I’ve met you … Wait, maybe I’ve seen a poster of yours.’ I brushed it off because people are human after all. That party at Escobar was over a decade ago, but it might as well have been yesterday. Another time, I was at a party, and I actually met every single person that I had met on that night at Escobar. It felt as if I was in a time capsule and had gone back to 2010. So many changes had happened in my life over the last eleven years, but funnily enough, the people I met were in the exact same place. Same people. Same conversations. Year after year. Naved Jaffrey had been the most sought-after dance TV host at the time, and I was fresh off the boat that night at Escobar. He was chatting with Rohit Roy, whom I adored in the show Swabhimaan. ‘Hi-hi-ya-ya-ya, so you in Bombay huh, cool-cool,’ Naved had said when we had been introduced. Years later, when I met him again, Naved was talking to Rohit yet again. ‘Dude, I remember you from that night,’ he said to me. ‘What a long way you’ve come.’ I blushed with pleasure. What I know now is that the marathon is essential to success. Somehow, everyone’s on a chase, as I was too. Eleven years ago, I hadn’t stepped on that track because I wasn’t a contender. I was just in the audience, watching and wondering if I would ever get one chance to be a part of the race. Today, when I meet these celebrities, I’m the one who is running and, maybe, they have slowed down. Getting somewhere has allowed me to watch my pace too. It feels like a big circle of playing lock and key because everyone comes to Mumbai identifying new opportunities and making every meeting count, thinking, ‘Can I say this to somebody? Pata nahin, shaayad kal koi raasta khul jaaye. [Don’t know, maybe a path opens up tomorrow.]’ Another thing that remains unchanged is the first question that people ask you at a party: ‘So, what’s next?’ As if what’s now is not important. That got me thinking about why people seem stuck in the moment. When I was hosting events and got asked the so-what’s-next question, my answer would be, ‘Going to Delhi on Friday. Hyderabad on Tuesday.’ In my line of work today, however, the speed at which things convert is much slower. The gestation period between Project A and B is much longer, so I don’t have much to report. Of course, people are happy to talk about what you did four years ago. It’s the conversation they know; it’s their ice-breaker. I’d much rather say I’m doing nothing tomorrow or this week, but it’s never a good enough answer for people. Somehow, they want you to keep doing something. Another time, when asked what I was working towards next, I instinctively responded, ‘Finding my inner peace.’ I’ve no idea where it came from, but it felt like magic.

There’s a famous line that goes—if you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room. I cannot emphasize this enough, especially now. If I continue to rely on the knowledge I have, I will never grow. There will always be a room where there are those that know more than me or at least pretend to.

I’m always honing my skills to be a better listener, but I’ll never forget when I graduated to become the talker in a room. I had been silent long enough to be promoted to storyteller. Now, I had to prove my worth. This happened soon after Sacred Games. Every conversation would be around Cuckoo: A word or two of praise about how bold and courageous I was, or how I had the balls to play the character, and then there were questions, such as ‘How did Cuckoo die?’ I’ve realized that smart storytellers don’t have many stories; they have a few well-rehearsed ones. These tales become so polished over time that they shine in every room. So I smile and take that famous love story out for a spin, and then another, and yet another, and so on...

13 ‘This Is a Hard Business’

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n 2010, I moved to the city of my dreams. I came to Mumbai to make it happen. And I knew I would. What I didn’t know was how to go about it. So, first, I began this new chapter with a SWOT analysis. Since I had studied business management, I was adept at doing things like this before starting on a new venture. Besides, if I were to move to a new city, then I’d better understand for myself my Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. I wrote out my strengths and weaknesses on the back of a flyer for Moonlight Tailoring & Embroidery while in Dubai. I wrote down my dreams, and listed the potential people who could guide me towards the future that you are reading about right now. Yeah! Life is the inception of many realities. My outspokenness was both a weakness and a strength, I wrote. Why did I consider being forthright to be a flaw? I reckon it had something to do with a common Mumbai lore—Don’t say what’s on your mind. Hold that thought. You won’t get work if you say what you think. Smile, and be nice. Trust me. I’ve ignored my instincts and rejected intuitions, giving in at times when I should’ve walked away with my head held high. The truth is that when you are starting out, you desperately want to fit in. You wear that outfit, make-up, blink and smile. Be affable, likeable, be someone with a thick skin. Hmmm. My unasked-for advice? Don’t do it. You can lose yourself in that maze and find it terribly difficult to find your way back home, to your heart and soul. Learn to listen to that inner voice and say no. The power lies within you. It is a mantra that will allow you to thrive, not just survive. I wish someone had given me this advice when I was younger. Instead, at a coffee shop in 2010, I was asked by a person who was somebody in the movie biz: ‘You want to be an actor?’ ‘Yes. You told me I had a face,’ I said. ‘This is a hard business, I’ll tell you that,’ he said. ‘If you want, ask your boyfriend to make a film for you. It’ll be much easier. You must be tough here; it’s not a noble profession. Do whatever you want, but remember, you will lose a bit of you. Oh, and … more tea?’ he said, casually ending the chat. Of course, I had no intention of asking my then-boyfriend to make a film for me. Gah! That is not how I was raised. In retrospect, had he offered me a film, I wouldn’t have said no either. But imagine if that had happened, would I still have a story to tell? No, I did not find an easy way in. I hosted many events and got rejected by many event planners as well. Too thick, too casual, too difficult, too expensive, and definitely not famous enough. I was many things, but being good and efficient at what I did always came last for selectors. Dan explained it beautifully to me one day: ‘Didi, you are being hired based on the price on the cheque, not because of how talented you are.’ As always, he left the room after dropping one of his truth bombs. No scope for further discussion! It takes a lot of hard work when you don’t belong to the system. Everyone will claim to be ‘The Maker’, providing you with an ‘Opportunity’ or ‘Exposure’. No one will ever say the offer on the table is ridiculous. Identifying where you belong in that clutter is not up to the world. It is up to you. You will probably receive love and support too. Of course, you will. But in the end, only you are accountable to yourself. Meanwhile, you need to watch out for the opportunities that come your way. There will be work that shifts something inside you. If you are tuned into your body and mind, and are listening carefully, you will know when something is right for you. You may not like every opportunity that comes your way. I was once offered a background dancer’s job in a paan masala ad. I had to wear leaves around my waist and dance with two heroes. I chose not to do it. It didn’t sound or feel right to me. When something didn’t work for me, I wrote it down in a journal, so that I could refer to it later to see how it had made me feel. Accept that you may not always get what you want, but what you do get and like, approach it with absolute honesty and gratitude. It will take you one step closer to home—to satisfying your soul.

I became an actor because I was tired of hosting shows. My boredom propelled me towards more and more auditions. It took many, many rejections before I heard the encouraging ‘yes’. In every house I’ve ever lived in, I have had a little blackboard that I hang up behind my bedroom door. I think it has to do with how I’ve always loved writing on blackboards since school. Back in school, I would be assigned the task of writing the thought for the day on the blackboard. Today, it is a place where I have a conversation with myself. On it, I’d write down all my audition calls. I’d give the rejections a positive spin. If someone said I wasn’t the right fit, I’d ask myself what I could do differently. Rejection was hard, but once I wiped that off the blackboard, it gave me the courage to persevere.

It was my desire to embrace my uniqueness that pushed me forward, step by step. Celebrating myself helped me stay afloat in this chaotic city and in an industry with a dented reputation. In that phase, I was so busy hustling that I never stopped to consider that acting requires practice and a certain kind of rigour. This continued till 2017 when I auditioned for the part of a clear-headed finance officer named Natasha for the web series Going Viral Pvt Ltd (Amazon Prime). The writer and comedian, Anuvab Pal, who was writing and directing the series, called me one evening. ‘Free for tea or coffee?’ he asked. ‘Let’s look at your character graph.’ He came home, asked me to get a paper and pencil, and showed me how to plot Natasha’s character. ‘She is here and will need to go here,’ he explained. Everyone on the Going Viral set was a genius, a friend; they were willing to teach and help you grow. In the first two days of the shoot, I would say my lines, and then let out a deep sigh while turning my head towards the camera. That was my definition of acting. One day, as I sighed, I heard someone yell, ‘Cut.’ The associate director beckoned me. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked, confused. ‘Acting, no?’ I said. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You’re heaving. That isn’t acting as far as I’m concerned.’ I went back on set and stopped heaving. ‘Bravo!’ came a call from Pal. ‘Cut!’ he finally said with a smile. I was being in the moment, and that was acting. I credit that show, and Anuvab Pal, for showing me respect as an actor. Ever since, I’ve been grateful for every teacher I’ve had, even if I was just learning through observation. One important takeaway from this time was: If acting is ‘being’, then how can it ever be considered a profession that is ungentle, mean spirited or vulgar? Right after Going Viral, my second film with Salman Khan released. In Sultan (2016), I got to play me! Like, really. My name is announced on the microphone of the mixed martial arts (MMA) fights about six or seven times. It was great mileage for my career as a host because now I was this famous anchor who got to play herself in a film! Basking in my newfound recognition, one morning I went to the Bagel Shop on Carter Road, Bandra, to celebrate. When I walked in, I saw Ankur Tewari and Swanand Kirkire chatting away. I love both these men. Ankur is a musician par excellence with lovely, deep-set eyes. He is one I can wrap my arms around for a big hug. While embracing him, I told him how much I love him, which I say as a matter of course to the people I care about. Kirkire is a celebrated musician and poet, and a National Film Award-winning lyricist and actor. I met him ages ago in Andheri when I was backing my car up and I drove straight into his bum. When I realized what I had done, I jumped out of the car to apologize. I followed that up with an ‘I love you’. Anyway, both these men were deliberating over the breakfast menu when they saw me. Swa immediately said, ‘Hey! Why don’t you act? Hain tujhme, kuch toh hai. Kar tu. Tu kar na.’ […You’ve got it in you. You’ve got something. Do it. You should do it.] To which I responded, slightly defensively, ‘Mein kar rahi hoon. I am. Going Viral dekhi aapne?’ [I’m on it … Have you watched Going Viral?] He shook his head and said, ‘Dekhunga. Par tu kar.’ [I’ll watch it, but do something.] I didn’t know what he meant, so I just nodded and ate some bagels. That evening, Tewari sent me a message. ‘I may have something for you. Something I want you to give your best to.’ I was excited. Three years of brushing shoulders with him and never once had he sent me a message like that. ‘Let’s meet,’ I wrote back. This meeting didn’t happen for weeks, though. Then one day, I got another message from him. ‘You’ll get a call from Anurag Kashyap. He is looking for someone to play this character and he has a clear picture of what he wants in his head. He asked for names, and I think you’ll be perfect.’ In that moment, I thought, if Tewari thinks I can do it, then, of course, I can. Three weeks after my meeting with Ankur, I was shopping for toilet paper at Pali market in Bandra when my phone rang. My phone was on silent, and I was darned lucky to have it in my hand just then. It was from Mukesh Chhabra’s casting office. Game on, I thought. I was given a quick debrief on the film, how it was being directed by Anurag Kashyap and Vikramaditya Motwane and the role for me. The character they were calling me about dies in the film, but her role was very interesting. ‘The role is for a transgender character, and she is a dancer.’ That’s all I got. They were holding the cards very close. I held my breath. I pretended to be all cool … but inside, I was bursting with excitement. I am excited about work in general. I love knowing I am being considered for a job. I love it when people see potential in me. I look at every job as a possible opportunity to be better. And this seemed like a big opportunity. ‘Will you come over and test with us?’ the person on the line asked. ‘Oh! Yeah, sure. I will be there,’ I managed. I silently thanked Tewari, who I referred to as my godfather from hereon. (Don’t you dare, he says. But I do!) The casting office was in Andheri. I went for the audition dressed in a bright yellow skirt and shimmery top, mimicking the dancers I’d seen in films of the past. I had done some thinking about this character, Cuckoo, while preparing for the audition. Working in a dance bar, she would have to be unapologetic, bold. Hot, too; someone who can make others dance to her tune. At the outset, I told the casting director, ‘I am a shit dancer, but if you teach me, I’ll learn.’ I was given lines to read almost immediately, and when I was done, I knew I had blown it. How did I know? I can’t explain. It’s a primal feeling in your gut. Then, you end up asking for validation from everyone around you to quieten the chatter in your mind. In fact, it was probably the worst audition I had ever done. Glum, I went home, worried I had let Tewari and myself down. When, three days later, I had still not received a call from the casting office, I was ready to put it

all behind me. Wipe it off my blackboard. But then I received a message. ‘Hi, this is Anurag.’ ‘Hi Anurag,’ I texted back. At the time, I did not know I was texting the Anurag Kashyap. Just as an aside, at one point, Anurag was my neighbour. Panch Natraj CHS, in Versova, isn’t a well-known building, but it does have a super-famous landmark. Ask anyone in Mumbai about Tahir Mutton Shop, and they’ll lead you straight there. It was where I lived too—my first home—and where I had also spoken to his Man Friday multiple times but had never seen the man (Anurag). I even slid into his DMs on Facebook and told him that I was a diver! I could never bring myself to tell the maestro that I was an actor … How could I? I didn’t even consider myself one. But back to the call. He told me that there was ‘something’ in my audition, but that I needed to work on my line delivery and character creation. He asked if I wanted a do-over. A second chance to do what you love? Hell, yeah! I grabbed it with both hands. This time around, I was asked to perform the scene where Gaitonde (an Indian gangster and the main character in Sacred Games who was played by Nawazuddin Siddiqui) and Cuckoo are lying in bed, casually chatting after some hot sex. I slipped into character, uninhibitedly. I knew in my bones that I had nailed it. I returned home at half-past three and received a call back. ‘Can you come back for a dance audition? Vikram [Vikramaditya Motwane] and Anurag would like to see it.’ I went back to the casting office in Andheri. This time, I met Mukesh Sir too. He played it cool, so there were no hopes or expectations. I was excited but also wrecked with nervousness because I cannot dance. This third time around, I did a disaster of a dance sequence and once again returned home with sinking spirits. Back at home, my phone rang. Anurag didn’t mince his words. ‘You are a terrible dancer, but you said you can learn?’ ‘Yes, of course, I can learn,’ I said without missing a beat. The next day, I was hauled off to another dance test. Two steps in, I could feel my body relax and move to the rhythm. I could hear people say under their breath, ‘That is our Cuckoo.’

Suddenly, things started moving at supersonic speed, and I silently uttered a prayer that I wouldn’t crash. At the look test, I posed and danced and was my best spontaneous self. The whispers became louder, but I still had nothing in writing. There was no confirmation that I had got the part. But here’s the thing that I learnt about this job called acting. There are so many stakeholders involved that if one person doesn’t align with the totality of the project, you and your handiwork go down the toilet. Just like that. So, I kept breathing, and told myself, if it’s meant to be, it will be.

It was 26 November 2017, and I was hosting a memorial to honour the martyrs of the 26/11 terrorist attacks in Mumbai. The national anthem had just been sung, and I was waiting in the wings for a picture with Amitabh Bachchan when my phone pinged. ‘Hey! Good time to talk?’ The text was from Anurag Kashyap. I muttered an apology in my head to Mr Bachchan and rushed to my car to call Anurag. ‘Yeahhhhhh…’ he started, ‘you’re a terrible dancer.’ Tell me something I don’t know, I thought. ‘We’ll probably have to train you a lot more.’ Have I got the part? It was all I could think. ‘It’s a complicated part, you know…’ Have I got the part? ‘I need to fight for you to get this part.’ Have I got the part? ‘It is going to be something never seen before in India.’ Have I got the part? ‘Many people in my team think you’re an interesting choice for it.’ Have I got the part? ‘It is going to be tough, and you cannot be shy.’ Have I got the part? ‘It will be a closed set and if you feel uncomfortable, you can always talk to me or anyone on the team. I work with a wonderful bunch of people, all women, and they are amazing.’ HAVE I GOT THE PART? I sighed. This one-sided conversation had gone on for around twelve minutes. I wondered if Anurag caught the sigh because he stopped speaking for a split second. The silence was deafening. Then, he said, ‘I think we are going ahead with you.’ A pause. Then I erupted, ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you…’ In retrospect, it’s strange to think that exactly eight years ago, on the same day in 2008, when Mumbai was burning, I had almost cancelled my travel plans to Mumbai. If it hadn’t been for Munna S, who pushed me to come to this city, I would probably have never become an actor and my life would’ve gone in a totally different direction. Some things are fated, and I’m glad I took that cue from the universe.

14 ‘You Gave Us Gold’

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n the first day on the set of Sacred Games, I was scared shitless, asking myself: I am going to be acting in an Anurag Kashyap project? Everything seemed unreal. I considered plunging my face into a bowl of ice, pinching my skin tightly, pushing down on that pebble in my shoe—anything to feel a sensation that proved that what was happening was, in fact, real, and that it was happening to me. En route to the shoot, near the Fisheries University Road in Andheri West, I passed by Panch Natraj CHS. It felt serendipitous that the first day of my enormously big break happened to be in the vicinity of my first home, where this dream of being an actor had begun. It was a sign. Something in the air felt right. I smiled and told myself I was going to carpe diem the fuck out of this day. I passed by a bustling film set with people yelling at no one in particular. I was on the edge of the seat in my Hyundai i20, holding myself back from jumping out of the car, running on to the set and declaring that this was the biggest day of my life. The assistant director (AD in short) recognized me and waved my car ahead. I was now on a big open maidan where three vanity vans were parked. I saw that my name was on one of them, right above ‘Phantom Films’. Delighted, I indulged my vanity a little and took a picture of the door. I couldn’t muster up the courage to post it on Instagram, though the temptation was fierce. Instead, I smiled and savoured this moment in private. I walked in to find Anil Sable, aka Anil Dada, a make-up artist who excels at prosthetic make-up and who has worked on films like Bhoot and Sanju. It truly baffles me how so many people in our entertainment industry are self-taught. They have assisted many seniors and HODs before they found their own ground to create opportunities for themselves. Of course, it’s not very different for actors too. In the entertainment industry, the pace is slow and steady. It’s a marathon, not a 100-metre sprint. After exchanging a few pleasantries, he said a short prayer and then, with his ring finger, placed three dots of foundation on the mirror as an offering to the make-up gods. Then, he looked at me, while still murmuring the prayer, and flexed his skilful hands on my face. In keeping with the times—the show was set between 1980 and 1993—the make-up was garish. Cuckoo wore foundation, a shade lighter than the colour of my skin. It didn’t sit evenly, but that was the effect we wanted. Anil Dada used black liner to contour my lips. Then he pulled out a magic box called pancake, and proceeded to apply it, choonastyle. The loose powder was scraped out of a box, mixed with water and used to whitewash my face. My eyebrows were thickened, false eyelashes glued onto my eyelids, and my eyes lined with a kohl pencil. For the stubble, Anil Dada mixed a dark green and dark brown with alcohol, and gently dabbed it on my lips and chin. ‘Sahi hai [This is good.],’ he mutters to himself. Next was hair. There was a variety of wigs laid out for me. I had long hair at the time, so the hairdresser tai put it up in a bun and pulled a net over it. I tried the first wig on, and without warning, something inside me shifted. The AD, whose job it is to ensure you are ready even before the rooster crows, arrived for his thousandth check. I remained calm; I was not about to lose my cool on such an important day. Next, a crew member came carrying a mad sequinned outfit. It was a party dress. With feathers. They also handed me a deep-neck silk nighty and silk robe. Finally, Cuckoo’s crowning glory arrived. The hero of this ensemble, one that I was eager to get a first look at. In a transparent box, wrapped in a green plastic bag, was my penis. You heard that right. My penis! I was thrilled and I was laughing and joking. This was really a dream. If not, what the hell was it? I was given skin colour underwear that had holes in the crotch area which was marked with green crosses. (I was told the crosses were a technical necessity to help ‘edit’ the prosthetic penis in the post-production phase.) Slightly unsure, the AD asked, ‘Will you wear it … now?’ Excitedly, I replied, ‘Yes! Let’s do it.’ The next moment, I was in costume from head to toe. The audience in the vanity van nodded their approval. I looked into the mirror. And there was Cuckoo, staring back at me, ready to begin.

I was offered a ride to the set in a production car, but I chose to walk instead. With my robe wrapped tightly around me, I took mincing steps, careful not to jostle my penis. I was only slightly conscious of the wig and stubble that were attracting soft laughs from the crew because I was wholly consumed by one crazy thought—nothing’s been plotted on a graph. All I knew about my role was that I was playing a character opposite Nawazuddin Siddiqui, one of India’s most versatile actors. Anurag Kashyap’s words rang in my ears. ‘Don’t be awkward.’ On the set, I met him for the first time. Anurag, or AK, as I would eventually call him, has this smile, notorious and childlike. He is trouble and he knows it. He

looked at me like I was a fine find. He was sure that I would sail through. But I was on my guard because I had things to prove. He rose to his feet, unsure whether he should hug me or shake my hand. Yes, that was allowed once upon a time. I said hi, and perched myself on a plastic chair. There were nuts on the table and pointing at my crotch. ‘Mixed nuts, anyone?’ I quipped. Everyone on the set burst into laughter. Then, a coconut was broken, and prayers offered to Shree Ganesh. I hugged and kissed the unassuming Nawazuddin Siddiqui, as if he were a long-lost friend. There was a palpable change in the air as we huddled around our director and listened to what was expected of us. I received one instruction from AK: ‘Do what you want. I’ll manage.’ I realized that we were shooting the scene I had auditioned for. Nawaz and I were quickly rolled into bed, my arms around him, he lay on my shoulder, as I took the lead. As personalities, we are at opposite ends of the spectrum. Nawaz is shy and reserved, while I am mad and unconventional. We both laughed, him coyly. I could see him thinking, ‘Is she really this eccentric?’ We rehearsed the scene, and when the director was happy, he called out the magic words—‘Action’—and my body leapt in response. ‘Jaadugar se uske jaadu ke bare mein nahin poochte; duniya se pooch [One ought not to ask a magician about his magic; ask the world.],’ said a sultry voice that I recognized. It was Cuckoo’s, no more a stranger in the mirror. I heard a plane flying, so I paused for a moment. Once the whirring sound faded, I repeated the line again. That’s when I heard AK giggle. ‘Smart hai tu [You’re smart.],’ he said. I knew then that I had made an impression. We shot through that room, we did many things … but I found myself following AK, like his hutch puppy, saying, ‘How will I cry?’ For those of you who haven’t watched Sacred Games, this was the build-up to the massive revelation scene that shocked, stumped, stunned, and sent the world into a tizzy. We had shot for eight hours straight and still had the biggest scene of the day left to film. And there I was walking around the set with a frown, wondering how I will cry. Finally, AK leaned in and whispered, ‘Achcha scene karate hain [Let’s get a good scene done.].’

‘What’s your poison?’ AK wanted to know. We were in AK’s vanity van. We still had to shoot the last scene of the day, the greatest scene of my life thus far, and I was also scheduled for a costume change. But AK had said that ‘all that could wait’. ‘Wine?’ I said, politely. He looked at me with disbelief. ‘Nah! The real deal. What’s your poison?’ I had only started drinking when I was thirty because I had never enjoyed the taste of alcohol. Also, it was just conditioning, I suppose, because no one in my family drank. At most parties, I’d either choose caffeine or Red Bull, and was always the designated driver. My first drink was in 2014, in Bodrum, overlooking the fort. I chose a glass of red wine and drank it all in one go, pretending I was a pro, as I watched Mumma sip her strawberry milkshake. So, I obviously didn’t know my poison of choice. ‘Whisky!’ AK barked, turning to his spot boy. ‘Go home, bring me “that” whisky, three crystal glasses and ice rounds.’ ‘Bolo saab, kitne saal ki dosti hai humaari? [Tell me, sir, how many years have we been friends?]’ he asked Nawaz. ‘Dus [Ten.],’ Nawaz replied. ‘Yeh bottle toh aapke liye abhi nahin kholi hai. Aaj bada din hai, isliye it deserves the best [I’ve not opened this bottle for you now. It is a big day today, and that is why it deserves the best.].’ A fresh bottle of Wolfburn whisky appeared, along with three glasses and ice. ‘Water?’ I asked. AK gave me a long, hard stare. I took a sip as he handed me a handwritten sheet of paper. It was the scene. He started reading, and I followed the written lines. My mind was clearly on the paper. So, he snatched it from my hand. ‘Sunn [Listen.],’ he said. So, I listened. He spoke ever so eloquently about Cuckoo’s misery, the imperfection which is hers and only hers to bear. She shares a love that is enormous, but also harbours a deep, dark secret. The inability to birth her man’s children. The ache that surges from not being able to do so. What would a powerful man do? Leave her, obviously. She doesn’t want him to. But can Cuckoo choose to keep this love alive knowing she can’t give him an heir? Shaken by the story, I listened to AK read the dialogues. When tears rolled down my cheeks, he quietly closed the sheet he was reading from and instructed the crew: ‘No one talks to her. Get her into hair and make-up, and I’ll see her on set.’ I dragged myself to the vanity van. There seemed to be a weight upon my heart, very heavy. The chirpiness I had brought to the set that morning had fizzled out. I felt burdened by the secret Cuckoo carried. I was no longer Kubbra. I could feel what Cuckoo felt and was numb with pain. AK’s words, the lines he had read out aloud from the sheet, lingered in my heart. I walked to the closed set and saw Nawaz, the cameraman Sylvester and AK. ‘Come, let’s do this,’ AK said. I sat down in front of a mirror and took a long look at myself. A secret was about to be revealed. My character was ready to erupt and destroy her own love story. She would abandon the man for whom she existed. I stared and stared … until I could hear nothing but ‘Khol, Cuckoo, darwaaza khol. [Open it, Cuckoo! Open the door.]’ And just like that, we were rolling the scene. Every time I was done with the lines, I would fall to the floor, in tears. The words were so powerful that they weighed me down. The first time it happened, AK walked in, brushed my shoulder, and said, ‘We’ll do it again.’ We did it again. And again. And again.

This one time, he came up to me, and said, ‘Sorry, sorry, I am terrible. I am a terrible person, but we’ll do it again.’ By the seventh take, I had lost count of the many hours we had been filming. Finally, I fell to the floor and could not get back up. I was exhausted; the wind had been knocked out of me. I was crying uncontrollably. Nawaz and AK picked me up and held me tightly as I sobbed. Dimly, I heard. ‘Cut!’ As I left the room, I heard a quiet burst of applause. It was 11 p.m. I didn’t watch the take on the monitor because I didn’t have the courage to do so. A production car was called for me. This time, I didn’t insist on walking. I was still sobbing when I got to the vanity van. It was the end of the first day of the shoot, the first of many more to come, and I already felt weightless, fragmented and tired. I had no time to think of how good or bad the scene had been. There was an absence of the self because it had felt so real to be Cuckoo. That night, I texted AK. ‘Am I still working on the show?’ I asked. ‘Of course, you are,’ he replied. ‘You gave us gold.’ And that was how I landed one of the most iconic roles in the history of Indian web series.

15 When Exactly Have You Truly Arrived?

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here’s been a lot of conversation around nepotism recently. So I’ll tell you a story about my first few experiences in this mad city, where I now am apparently a name. When I started off, I was told that I wouldn’t make it on TV because I am not a ‘known’ face. I remember being hired by a leading event management agency to host a cricket event. To make myself more valuable, I even wrote my own script. On the day of the event, I sat by the phone, in complete hair and make-up, dressed to the nines. I was expecting the call for pick-up to come through at 4.30 p.m.; by half-past five, there was still no news from them. I rang my contact at the agency. ‘Is everything on time or are we behind schedule?’ I asked, casually. ‘Yes, but we went with a known face,’ he said. ‘The client requested it at the last minute.’ There is nothing that I could’ve done to change the fact that I was just another unknown face in a city brimming with enormous talent waiting to be discovered. My question, then, was, ‘How does an unfamiliar face become familiar without the trust of agencies willing to experiment?’ It’s a catch-22 situation. You need an opportunity to prove yourself. But people won’t give you an opportunity because you have nothing on your CV to prove that you’re good. So, until the two meet—opportunity and talent—you must have the courage and the strength to keep trying. You must believe in yourself and keep going. This is the only way out.

When it came down to it, the decision to do Sacred Games was an easy one. Work or no work, that was the only real choice I had to make. I couldn’t foresee how it was going to put me on the map or help me make an impression on local audiences, let alone garner a global viewership. I was craving something new and different from my career as an emcee, something that went beyond addressing a roomful of ladies and gentlemen with a jaunty ‘Good evening’. It was the big breakthrough that made way for many parts that have come along afterwards and many more that will come in the future. But it took conviction from my end to make that happen. I was willing to do it for free. It was, after all, exposure. I was amazed that the producers even paid me for it. I remember them telling me that they only had a budget of ₹ 30,000 per day for this character. But I said yes to the project. When AK heard of that he said, ‘Paagal hai kya? [Are you crazy?]’ He reworked the contracts and I got ₹ 50,000 a day. I waited with bated breath when the show released. Sooner than you think, I was being spoken about and spoken to. The agencies, be it the public relations engines, makers of projects, event managers or basically anyone who promised to make me the Next Big Thing (and were unsuccessful thus far), were waking up to me as a phenomenon now. These agencies were kind to me—not that they had been unkind earlier—they just probably didn’t feel the need to invest in me. Now, they were putting me up on a pedestal, assuming I knew and had all the answers. These days, I joke about it. They offered me a little with exposure, and they were true to it because it’s the ‘exposure’—the frontal nudity scene—that is much spoken of, long after the job was over. The show found a friend in the LGBTQIA community; people were excited that the transgender community was being portrayed in an authentic manner. That there was an actor brave enough to wear a prosthetic penis, and that there was a love story where a strong man eventually rises for their kind of love. The real deal actually sunk in on 6 September 2018, when I was shooting a travelogue in Pune. Amid a gaggle of happy homemakers, I was trying my hand at steaming modaks for Ganesh Chaturthi, squishing the dough in the palm of my hand and hoping the outer layer wouldn’t be too leathery to consume. It was a month of celebration in Maharashtra, people shopping and eating and cheering and praying for evil to be vanquished and happiness to be restored. We had wrapped up the shoot and as I stepped into the car, I heard firebrand journalist Faye D’Souza make an announcement that went on to rock our world. Section 377 is no longer a part of our Constitution. It is legal to love whoever you choose to love, because #LoveIsLove. There was jubilation. There was exhilaration. There were tears streaming down my eyes and the eyes of my director … I looked at my make-up artist to congratulate him, and he casually said, ‘Yeah! It’s okay. It’s taken us so long to get here but not that it stopped us from loving each other anyway.’ He, like many others, didn’t really care about what the law preached to them about love. They did what their hearts commanded them to.

I was still wrapping my head around my magical moment of fame when I made the most incredulous decision of my life. Sacred Games was released. My phone was flooded. I knew it was going to happen. So I had pre-booked tickets for a short

trip away from the chaos (I knew was coming up). Thus, in July 2018, I chose to leave all the love and adulation behind and dive into the blue oceans of the Maldives. Befuddled by how and why my social media numbers were soaring, and intimidated by hoardings plastered with my face, I needed an escape from the reality I had built and worked for. It was a twelve-day trip—with a group of people I had never met before—of which eight days were dedicated to deepsea diving. Waking up at 6 a.m. and returning after two dives by 3 p.m.; no alcohol or indulgences except for food and sleep. Despite Wi-Fi to finish all those press interviews, the ‘real’ world remained a mirage for me during that interlude. On our last day, the crew, who at first imagined me to be a tantrum-throwing celebrity queen, hugged me and kissed me goodbye at the airport. My flight from the Maldives to India was much later that evening, so I decided to grab a drink at another resort close by. I went into a fancy pool bar, changed into my bikini in the pool restroom and ordered myself a drink. A few Espresso Martinis down, I was feeling like a drunken celeb who wanted to talk to people. Because I didn’t know anyone at the bar, I made calls to India, wailing incessant ‘Thank yous’ to those on my contact list. A man sitting next to me at the pool asked casually, ‘Are you someone famous? Should I know you?’ I perked up immediately. ‘Yes, I am famous,’ I said, probably for the first time ever. He looked at me, kindly, and said, ‘I am famous too … Do you know me?’ Confused, I said, ‘No.’ He sighed, and said, ‘That’s the thing about fame. One day you are signing autographs and the next, you are at a pool bar introducing yourself to people who can’t place you. Remember, nothing lasts except the work you’ve done.’ I didn’t know why, but I found myself leaning into the sweaty chest of this man I have no memory of and wailing some more. Was it the fear of losing what I had earned in a matter of twelve days that brought on the waterworks? Or perhaps it was knowing that I had to work so much harder to ensure I remained within that bubble where I never had to introduce myself again. Wiping my snot off his chest, I bought us both our last drinks. The funny thing is that even though the details of that night are blurry, and I can’t remember the man, I still remember this conversation as if it happened yesterday.

I recently met someone who told me, ‘I’m jealous of you.’ I was a bit taken aback. ‘Why are you jealous of me?’ I asked. They replied, ‘Oh, if someone isn’t, then they are lying.’ When I marvel at what others have accomplished, it’s always from the perspective of what I can learn from them, because I know that if I indulged in envy, I’d be filled with a sense of longing instead of determination to reach similar heights for myself. Today, when I look at someone frowning at my success, I give them love. I give them a hug. I move on, with no intention of changing them. I am aware that even if we met for a single moment, I did nothing to flame any feelings of inadequacy in them. Because I know that, at any point in time, you will only be ‘that’ relevant. So encash while you can. A lot of people will be rooting and vouching for you, but the minute the conversation shifts, so does your value. I know an agency that will only go all chips in if you bring in ‘X’ amount of revenue, otherwise, they have bigger fish to fry. You and your career are not anyone else’s responsibility; it is yours and yours alone. Your existence is inversely proportionate to the kind of jobs you do and the stories you tell. If you don’t make an impression, you run the risk of being forgotten or easily replaced. Just like that, at a snap of the fingers. We pat and laud ourselves for people to hear and see and feel the magic. It is our projection of this fiction that makes the experience so real. From what I have understood, work comes and goes, but at every step, you need to continue to believe in your own talent. You need to deep dive and make your own tunes and celebrate and dance like no one is watching … because honestly, someone is, even if they don’t mention it. The arrival and departure of you as a vehicle are present continuous. What you leave behind is the indelible mark during the course of your stay. So, stay with authority and with kindness; let people not remember you as a body but through your body of work. Leave them with the moments you believed in, while you say cheers with an Espresso Martini and soak in the sun.

16 ‘Dear Mem, Are Youself Male, Female or Both?’

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ho is a troll? The Oxford dictionary describes a troll as an ugly creature depicted as either a giant or a dwarf in folklore. I think ambiguity is the basic trait of these self-indulgent, myopic creatures who are plentiful in cyberspace. They are linear in their point of view. Jahaan pe unka sikka chalta hai, wahan pe chalate hain. Which is to say, wherever they can swing their influence or sweet-talk things to work their way, they will make it work. It’s exactly when you most need a breather that they screw with you. Your mind is finally a calm pond, and then they throw words, or stones, shall we say, and shatter that calm. Trolls target anyone that matters to them. Ironically, you are someone they care about, and yet, they become careless and irresponsible with their words. There are many kinds of trolls. You’ll find them with single-digit followers, some with more than a few hundred; some are faceless, and some are missing location and email addresses. The common thing between all these giants, or dwarfs, is that they all have things to say. These are not well-rounded thoughts; mostly, they are opinions about who you are, who you should be, and suggestions for how you can rework your cause and even your existence. Obviously, no effort is made to say anything meaningful. Comments are rarely backed by research. Slang and abuse are more their style. And their spite won’t stop at just you. They will degrade your family and the ones you love and unload their contempt on the cyber walls of anyone that commiserates with you. How can you find the actual people who are behind these trolls to single them out? Some are lifeless codes that exist without identities, computer algorithms that perform whatever tasks they are assigned. Some can be funny, but mostly, they are super greasy. Fattened and slimy. They slide into your DMs and go red-faced to blue in a few interactions. Icy cool cucumbers. I’ve been called bitch-to-didi in a matter of seconds. But, as I said, some make you LOL. Just after Sacred Games, when I had crossed over to the famous part of life, I was asked very sweetly, ‘Dear Mem, are youself Male, Female or both?’ I stood there, the phone in one hand and my heart in the other, and smiled. ‘Son, I’m the three-in-one your mother uses in her kitchen,’ I typed. Oooh! And that’s not it. I also gifted him a gold medal. It was by far the cutest question I was asked. Then, I found my second-spot winner. ‘Mem, can you show me your pennies?’ I was like, hell yeah, of course! And I did. I took a Google photograph of a stack of pennies and sent it back to him promptly saying, ‘Here, see it.’ Never have I been happier sending out dick pics. (As much as it annoys me to call pictures ‘pics’, that seems to be the most acceptable language across the board.) There are trolls who will tell me they want to fuck me, and immediately go on to propose marriage. When I politely decline, they confess that I am not the only one they asked out. But I happen to be the nicest one because I replied. I mean, isn’t niceness the most important trait to have?

17 Sibling Revelry

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t’s surprisingly hard to write about the one man who has been a constant in my life. That is perhaps because he has always been around in a quiet, graceful way which is why I’ve never really made a flow chart of why I like having a sibling and what he means to me. My younger brother, Danish, and I are five years apart. I am the older one, but I don’t look it, not one bit. He is the funniest guy in the room. He’s not scared to say what everybody’s thinking; the jokes write themselves. Looking back, I don’t remember him being born. It is a funny thing, the human mind. It has its own sorcery. I have no recollection of a newborn in the house. I never had the luxury to reminisce about those early days of his birth. Dan’s birth wasn’t accompanied by the fanfare seen occasionally in the movies and, especially these days, on the internet, where parents make videos about the journey of a new entrant to the family. As a family, we were going through a hard time as my father had met with an accident, so it wasn’t as celebrated as mine had been. Many years later, I remember us making a joke about his birth certificate: ‘This is to certify Yasmin Sait delivered a healthy “mule” child on the 1 July 1988.’ The cursive handwriting was taken a notch too far and the nurse forgot to connect the ‘u’ on the top to make it look like ‘male’. The joke went on to feature in Dan’s TED Talk—Dan is the first TED speaker in our family. It made me feel as if I were a part of an illustrious tribe. I cannot even begin to tell you how much I love him. As a child, a part of me felt a sense of ownership of this human body with which I had an almost maternal relationship. As babies, we only had each other. Thank god for that, because that meant we didn’t grow up with imaginary friends. Dan played with my Barbies, and I played with his G.I. Joes. We raised a cat together. I’d feed him (the brother, not the cat) and put him to sleep in the afternoon. He was easy to fool as a baby. I would tell him stories about monsters before his naps, and he would get very scared and cling to me while he slept. I’ve always looked at this child and thought that he has the plasticity of clay. He never had a fixed shape. His journey has been so fluid. His mind, though, is hardened and tough. Whatever he decides is what will be. Mumma says—and we have the pictures to prove it—that as a baby, Dan would be placed like a vase or an artefact against the wall. He didn’t know how to walk, but he would balance himself against the corners of the wall and knock the back of his head against the hard surface. Tap-tap-tap, he would go for an audience. Some frowned, while others laughed in disbelief. It might have been a paid ticket show for people to watch. Needless to say, it was unusual for a baby to thump his partially formed head into a solid surface. If you yanked him away from his corner, Dan would wail inconsolably and bring the roof down. Mumma would put him back in the corner only to shut him up, and he would once again become a happy kid. It was curious. Both Dan and I were given the same opportunities. That, I would say, is a fine way to raise children. We were treated differently, though. I was subject to the usual restrictions imposed on the daughters of the house—curfews from 6 p.m. sharp, learning how to cook and clean, no sleeveless tops or shorts. And when it came to the ‘manly’ chores, like storing stuff in the attic, it was I who did all the heavy lifting. Somehow, Dan wasn’t the first choice for these kinds of chores. ‘He doesn’t understand. He can’t do it,’ Mumma would say. ‘Chalo, you do it.’ When I look back at all the Herculean tasks I performed, it amazes me that I emerged unscathed because our family is especially prone to accidents. In the Sait family, I’m the only one who has all ten toenails. Mumma sacrificed a nail when a cow ran over her foot; Papa lost one when he broke his foot in a bad accident. And Dan? Off it went when his foot was caught in the wheel of his cycle! For years I was the referee between my brother and my mother during their fights, and that was often. One time, Dan wanted an FCUK T-shirt, and my mother called me in distress, ‘How can he want to wear an FCUK T-shirt? It’s wrong, and he won’t listen,’ she cried on the phone. Disagreements would always end in a truce. ‘He is a boy. Boys are different,’ I would say. ‘Let him be. He’ll figure it out.’ But life has taught me that the human spirit is beyond gender. We react based on what we have been taught, and the treatment meted out to us. When we were kids making mischief, Dan may have been the main culprit, but I was the first one to take the beatings. When it was time for him to be punished, he would find a clever way to sidestep it. He once strapped the cat’s leash around one of the buttonholes in his night suit and tied the other end around the bedstand. When Mumma stormed in to give him a good thrashing, her anger vanished at the sight of her cute, harmless child lying on the bed, fast asleep. He looked the picture of innocence, sleeping. He still makes my heart melt. He didn’t always let me take the fall, though. Once, I stole a Velcro wallet. Mumma, who found it, knew it didn’t belong to us. I never owned up to my crime, but when Dan saw me being beaten, he took both—the blame and the beating.

I am the self-accepted executioner. You give me an idea, and I’ll become it.

Dan, on the other hand, can transform into numerous and varied characters. He has a desire to create, and it doesn’t stop there. He will build and deliver the idea, display it on shelves and then literally stand there selling it. I’m just glad he does it on his own terms now. His ability to assess the milieu, assimilate what is necessary and decide on a path that will get him to where he wants to go amazes me. I know that sounds a little vague, but let me explain. I don’t think either of us ever thought we would be pursuing the careers we have today. They happened to us. It happened because the love we received was real. We had the motivation, the push, the self-belief, and a mother who was our driving force. Mumma always said we could do it, and we believed her. Our careers were shaped by Yasmin Sait, our Momager, for nine years—a significant amount of time. Since I started before Dan, Mumma experimented on me a lot and copy-pasted the model on his career. I would probably take 0.1 per cent credit for Dan being where he is in his career. I was just the older sibling who jumped off a cliff and took a leap of faith at about the same time that this disarming young boy was looking for a safe passage, aka, a job. It is what is expected of a son raised in a middle-income Indian home. In our society, there isn’t much value given to dreams until they come true. I’m happy to see things changing and moving in a different direction today. There is more to life than a desk job, or being an engineer or a doctor. Please don’t get me wrong when I say this. Of course, we need people who pursue such conventional vocations. We need such specialists for society to grow as a whole. But that whole also comprises the much eluded artistic community, made up of people of all shapes and forms, voices and opinions, and their own unabashed ways of expressing the truth. We artists act as a mirror, reflecting who we are and what we are becoming as a society. And it has been impossible to put either Dan or me in structures or systems. We tried our very best to fit ourselves into them, and we failed pretty well at that too. Dan had a job as an account executive in an events company and also almost joined Infosys. But then, one day, he got a call from a friend saying someone in Bahrain was looking for a radio jockey for the country’s only Indian station. Dan leapt at the opportunity and thus began his career in the field of entertainment. Every decision since has been his and his alone. Of course, I have been consulted, and there’s been no end to all the advice that I’ve offered to him, but this boy always did what he felt was right. His mind is the perfect combination of the commercial and the creative. Dan isn’t afraid to fall, and I love that a lot about him. He also doesn’t have a single diplomatic bone in his body. He has always had a twisted way of viewing the universe, and it has worked for him. You think you can see the absurdity of life? Well, he tells it to your face. He doesn’t screen the joke for the probable damage it will cause. He says the things others are thinking. He blurts it out. There is silence, perhaps shock, in the room, and then, cautious laughter. So, in my eyes, my brother’s never really grown up. He’s the child who points out the obvious in a room full of adults. Danish is a Persian name. In Urdu, it means ‘akalmand’, or the wise one. I cannot deny that it describes Dan to a T. Soon after Sacred Games, I was frantically busy with interviews when, midway through a session, I shared with him, ‘Someone asked me if my life had changed after the show…’ Before I could answer, he said, ‘Your career has changed, Didi. Not your life.’ My life is much larger than my career. I am just blessed to have a generous chunk of things to do, that allow me to earn a living, with which I can lead the life I desire. Recently, I returned from Ireland, where I was shooting for Apple TV’s Foundation series. These days, I’m a firm believer in cleaning my house before going away so that I come back to a relaxing experience. But this time, I didn’t factor in that Dan had been staying at my place while I was away. Back home, when I went to use the bathroom, I lifted the toilet seat and screamed in horror. I had to pull on my gloves and clean my bathroom all over again. I called Dan and told him how much I hated his behaviour. He laughed, offered a brief apology and then said, ‘It doesn’t matter, Didi. Even if you are a Hollywood star, you’ll still be cleaning toilets in your home.’ Dan keeps me grounded with his honesty.

During his third run at the Mr Nags gig that he was doing for Royal Challengers Bangalore, we were eating breakfast one morning, and he asked me what I thought of the series. ‘Oh, I think it needs to be better,’ I replied. ‘I mean, I don’t know exactly how to put this in words, baba, but I feel you’re playing the same character, and it is kind of boring.’ I had barely sipped my chai when he went into a tailspin, yelling at me: ‘What do you know? Who the hell do you think you are! I know how useless you are at what you do and god only knows how you’ve survived this long. I saved your ass on stage so many times!’ It felt as if my whole body, not just my eyes, were awash with tears. His words had sucked the fight right out of me. I stood up and said I would reschedule my flight and head back to Mumbai immediately. And I did. I have said to myself many times since that I will not offer Dan advice in the domain of his work. He functions best when he learns on his own. We have fought. Period. I have also beaten him up. Once, when he was just five, I shook him real hard when he refused to take his bath and was being difficult. I whacked him in the bathroom and, out of frustration, thrust him against the body of the brass boiler. Owwww! he screamed. I had burnt his buttocks. The cheeks were inflamed red, and soon covered in boils. I dared him to say anything to Mumma when she returned from work, and he didn’t. He cried, though. He was in a lot of pain. Mumma sensed something was wrong and found the boils on his butt. I got a much-deserved slap, and Dan was rushed to the family doctor.

Even though Instagram tells a different story, we still do fight like cats and dogs. We’ve had face-numbing fights, both physical and verbal. I’ve left our home on him, and he has left the hotel we were holidaying at in Paris. But one heartfelt sorry, and it’s all water under the bridge for us. We are ready for a do-over. We’ve had so many highs too. The first time I smoked up was with Dan. We were in Amsterdam, and he went into a coffee shop and bought us the stuff. We took a boat soon after and sailed through the tranquil canals like a pair of excitable bunnies. The laughter is always intense when you put us together. The day after our escapade, we were eating lunch with Mumma. Politely, she set her knife and fork down before asking, ‘So, how many times exactly have you done “this” before?’ It was a shot in the dark, and she was right. By reflex, I stammered, ‘Ummm, Ma, maybe six or seven times?’ Then, pointing at Dan, I added, ‘The first time was with him.’ Mumma swivelled towards Dan, and he burst into laughter. Dodging question with question, he said, ‘What do you think I did all through my college years?’ We laughed and were rightfully advised to be careful. The matter was drawn to an honourable end and never referred to again.

No matter how close you are to someone you love, you often don’t realize how important they are to you until that moment when they are prepared to walk away. And I say this with absolute certainty that I have seen value in Dan being my brother when I was on the brink of losing him. In the recent past, I was busy with my present, and somehow, Dan and I lost that real connection we shared. Our relationship had dwindled to that formal tag of ‘brother and sister’. The love remained, but we had certainly taken each other’s presence in our lives for granted. I wouldn’t call or check on him to ask if he was okay. I just assumed he was. Isn’t that what social media is for? And then one day, out of nowhere, he called me and said, ‘I’m done with you, Didi. If you can’t work towards our relationship, I’m done with you.’ When it comes to dealing with life and the people we engage with, Dan and I are oceans apart. He flows like water and knows when to shut the supply. He will pull the brakes and say—that’s it, you don’t matter to me anymore. He finds it easier to detach. I, on the other hand, take pride in being an emotional fool. Sometimes, when life feels completely broken, I try and put things back together, like pieces of a puzzle. It doesn’t matter that they no longer resemble the picture on the box. Dan is hot-headed. Impulsive. Even his idea of love is practical. He is a water baby who cannot lie in the sun and ‘chill’ on a beach. He needs things to happen. A true Cancerian in that sense. He needs to keep moving. He doesn’t understand stillness or the need for it. He was disappointed by my unavailability. I didn’t want to fight back in the moment because I knew what he was saying was partially right. It went both ways; only he was the first one to bell the cat. The truth was that we had both become unavailable for each other. It made me realize that even if you share blood, relationships need work to grow, they need to be tended to flourish. It’s crucial to the people you love that you love them. It is important to show them that they are getting an equally good deal in the relationship. I have changed since then and have become regular with non-agenda-based calls and messages. And I’d like to think that has helped Dan and I become closer than I ever imagined us to be. One day in 2014, we were on our way to host the Pro Kabaddi League. We were stoked because it was our first stint together on national television. En route, we made a quick stop to buy a strip of painkillers for Dan, who often complained about a recurring pain radiating along his spine. Come on, how bad can the pain be, I thought dismissively. He’s only twenty-eight years old! We finished a productive six hours at work and were looking forward to celebrating Dan’s birthday that evening at home. Amid the mad rush to get home and get ready (while sharing one bathroom), I saw an empty strip of painkillers lying on the dining table. ‘Don’t you know where the bin is? We just bought a new strip of painkillers. Throw this old one away!’ I yelled. ‘Stop fucking overreacting, man!’ Dan shouted back. ‘That’s the strip we bought this morning. I just finished the last one in it.’ It is an understatement to say my heart almost stopped in that moment. For the first time, I paused to consider the kind of pain Dan was in, what it took him to get through each day and the toll ten to twenty painkillers a day were taking on his liver. Party be damned. I sat Dan down, and we spoke. Why hadn’t he told me about the agony he was in? For me, the journey back to each other kickstarted that evening on his birthday. We were on our way to mending our backs. Our hearts too. Or so I hoped. In the process of getting to know each other better, there came a hard-hitting realization. My brother was not only physically but also mentally fragile. His battle with mental health made me understand that depression is real and can happen to anyone. Someone I loved, to whom I was so close, was depressed and I hadn’t known? At first, it terrified me. Since then, I have come to accept it can be hard to recognize the signs at times. Our bond has only become stronger since that day. I have seen him grumpy, frumpy, sad, sleepy, angry, happy, ecstatic, delirious and also, just being himself. I have learnt many things being with and around Dan. Above all, I am grateful to him for teaching me a thing or two

about the mind and how it can cause upheavals in one’s life.

Many, many times, I’ve been asked about how I feel about Dan and me doing the same thing professionally. On most days, my answer is: I wish our Mumma had birthed two more children and we’d be all over east and north of India because the two of us are already ‘killin’ it’ in the south and the west. I am amazed when I think of how far we’ve come in our respective careers, guided by our own learnings and experiences. For those who want to know whether there is any rivalry between my younger brother and me, to be honest, I probably grapple with it at times. He, on the other hand, dismisses it with a flat ‘No’. We have a revelry, he says. We are family. There is no room for feuds. Truth be told, he did call me and say, ‘Didi, I’ve crossed your number of followers on Instagram.’ ‘Wait till my next show is out. I’ll beat you right back,’ I replied. There is rivalry, but the healthy kind. We celebrate together. We do our best to be with each other and for each other. We have identified our boundaries, but to do so, we needed to find ourselves and accept ourselves. No longer are we trying to be like each other. Instead, we are authentically trying to be the best versions of ourselves with each other and otherwise. Isn’t that what the best relationships are made of? And it still breaks my heart, in the nicest way, that Dan still calls me ‘Didi’.

18 Cat Person

‘T

he urgency to get to the next level is why we die in the first place,’ I said. It was a weekend, and my brother Danish and I were playing Super Mario—a Nintendo game. Every time Mario lost a life, we’d yell, ‘DAMN! I died again!’ Mumma would grumble from the kitchen. ‘Naiii bol na. Say, “I lost a life in the game”,’ she’d correct us in a lazy yet authoritative tone. Like in most Indian households, talking about death was inauspicious and so it was the case in ours too. But kids being kids, we’d cheekily repeat her words, following it up with a little smile and then a big giggle. We never took her rebuke seriously. This brings me to the hero of my story: Beta Sait, the most important member of our family, with whom I’ve spent a third of my life. It was decided—by the matriarch, of course—that we were never going to have a pet at home. The reasons were many —Mumma would get too attached; we, the kids, wouldn’t contribute or be responsible for its care; and god forbid if the pet fell sick or suffered a mishap, Mumma would have to bear the grief entirely on her own. So, in short, no pets. But, one day, as I was browsing the classifieds section of the newspapers, I saw a face that made my heart skip a beat. A Persian mother who had had a litter. So I went to see them. Amongst the litter, one baby stood out. She was a beautiful white furry doll of a being. ‘Being’ is a legit title for a cat who was almost human. Her eyes emoted everything that her mind could conjure. Amid all those cute, expressive faces, I knew instantly that I was hers and she was mine. However, I had to pay for her. I was eighteen and didn’t have enough money for a Persian cat. So I roped in that family friend (he’s a whole other chapter) to buy her for me. I picked her up—she was the size of my palm—and then cupped her face in my hands. ‘Pay for this cat or I won’t leave,’ I told this man authoritatively. In retrospect, it was an expensive deal. Back then, ten thousand rupees felt like a lakh. But my heart was set. Nothing could shake me from my decision. After that, we went straight to Mumma’s supermarket and once there, I placed the cat down on the cash counter. A few seconds later, I heard a dangerously angry ‘beta’ hurled at me. Then, a mellow, heart-meltingly slow, ‘Beeetaaaa…’ It was Mumma, and she’d been smitten by the kitten. And just like that, Beta Sait made her way into our lives. Beta witnessed every milestone of the Sait clan. She went from riding on our Kinetic Honda to our first family car. She bid farewell to Dan when he went off to boarding school and even signed his inland letters every month. When I left for Dubai, she wrote me letters via email. She was there when Mumma moved from Bengaluru to Coimbatore with Papa. With Mumma, she travelled to Mysore and, later, back to Bengaluru where Mumma restarted her life as a single woman. Beta welcomed me back to India for Eid, holidays and birthdays. We have celebrated her birthdays from across the world, with enough and more photos posted all over social media. Yes! Beta Sait also saw social media come to life. Beta would sit like an infant, held perfectly on our hip. One paw in front and the other around the back. You had to ask her consent before you took her away. If she was with Mumma, she stayed there. No one but me could lift her off Mumma’s hip. If I spoke too much or sang, Mumma would tell Beta, ‘Tell Kubbri to shut up.’ Beta would then put her paw on my mouth and ask me to close it. Even if I was singing her favourite song, ‘Baby, I Love You’ by Atif Aslam, she’d flatten her ears and indicate that enough was enough. This charming child had the most emotive eyes in the history of the world. It’s funny that she is still a child and present for me as I write this chapter. The truth was that Beta was getting old, and we weren’t ready to accept that. Life is bizarre. We don’t discuss death as freely as we should. Beta moved cities to live with me. She wanted Mumma and me to be together, and you could see her command it. She was clear about her intentions. My home in Mumbai was chosen with a view for Beta’s entertainment; a place where she could keep an eye on the pigeons and crows. She loved little moths, and we’d chase them all over the house with her till we’d feel our hearts stop. When we celebrated Beta’s twelfth birthday, we had twenty guests in attendance. There was a sax player, guitarist and singers, and besan ke laddoos that she loved. Everyone sang, drank and made merry … until we were rudely interrupted by the doorbell. It was half-past twelve, and no one else was expected. When we opened the door, we came face to face with two cops. ‘We have a complaint. You are making too much noise,’ they said. I wanted to say it was Mumma’s birthday, but she stuck her head out of the bedroom door in an inebriated state and offered the policemen some cake. ‘Aaj humaare Beta ka birthday hai [Come, it’s our Beta’s birthday today.],’ she crooned.

They smiled with glee. ‘How old is he?’ they asked. We replied, ‘He nahin sir, she.’ The room erupted into laughter. The cops knew we were unstoppable that night, so they shared our cake and then asked us to keep it down, leaving with a smile. That was Beta’s last birthday. Before she passed, she was sick. Really sick. I cannot help but realize, in this moment, that her sickness started because of me. Years ago, I had tried giving her a bath, but hadn’t washed off the shampoo completely, traces of which were left on her neck. Soon after, she developed an annoying sore. The vet (who we later learnt was totally unqualified for the job) had prescribed a medicine that caused her liver to gradually deteriorate. Beta was sick for a long, long time. Mumma took on all the stress and died a few times over when she knew it was over for Beta. One evening, in Pune, Mumma began to feel queasy. She kept saying, ‘Beta isn’t fine. I need to see her.’ Someone we knew was travelling back to Mumbai, so we hitched a ride for her. On 16 August 2015—it was Mumma’s birthday—Beta Sait was put to sleep. Her final sleep. I remember crying through my shoot in Pune. I never got to say goodbye to Beta. It was an unfinished chapter, because who prepares us for dignified goodbyes? But here is the silver lining. Before Beta passed away, I brought home Shifu Sait. He was two months old and lovely, excited about life, and happy to be around the big, old granny Beta. Beta would snap and show him she was the man of the house. Shifu, a kind soul, would just scurry around her, trying to be friendly. We were so scared of Beta’s wrath that we never showed Shifu the same amount of affection. But the kid took it in his stride and grew into a fine young man, waiting for his time to bask in the sun. I became his proper mum. From time to time, I was also assisted by Mumma. On one of Shifu’s trips to the vet, he became friends with Shah Rukh Khan’s parrot. Beat that. It took me a whole decade to meet SRK, and my kid was already forging his own connections in the celebrity animal kingdom! I was never made to feel that Shifu needed me. He was so self-sufficient. We did things together when I was around, but he was perfectly happy in my absence. When I’d come back from a trip, I’d know he missed me because he would jump into my suitcase and refuse to get out as I’d unpack and repack. In 2020, the ‘monster year’ as we call it, I was at the vet’s clinic almost every week during the first lockdown. Everyone was hunkering down, but I was out for essential services, seeking treatment for my cat. Shifu had an ulcer in the left eye. ‘Should I put him up for adoption? I cannot do responsibilities,’ I’d joke. Months later, Shifu fell ill again. He had started to throw up. The doctor suspected it was something he had eaten that was obstructing his digestive passage. The only real way to find out was to cut him open. So, another bomb was dropped on my head. Shifu needed surgery. The docs were going to make a minimum eight-centimetre incision in his abdomen to check what was going on in there. We did blood tests, X-Rays and ultrasounds. I didn’t even recognize the anxiety all of this was causing me. I’d never adulted or parented before. But I knew I had to be brave. And I had to grow up … fast. Shifu endured three hours of surgery. They searched his entire belly and didn’t find any foreign object inside him. Nothing, absolutely nothing. But they did find out that he was at risk of having megacolon—massive enlargement of the colon caused by severe constipation—which would require another operation in a few years if we didn’t ‘manage’ the situation at once. Because I had not been fully responsible for another being before, seeing Shifu so fragile made me feel utterly helpless during this time. The feeling of helplessness was so acute that I had a panic attack right after the surgery. For the first time, I saw life and death do their dance, and I must say it is a fuck-all dance to watch. Not entertaining, not one bit. It also made me realize that growing up is about dealing with the small things in life. Even though the doctors had told me that Shifu’s surgery was a minor procedure, I found it extremely hard to deal with it. It could be a small and routine job to them, but to me, it was a huge deal. It was then that I understood that it was the little things in life that posed the biggest obstacles in one’s path. In my opinion, growing up is both an obstacle and a spectacle. The simplified part of my complex mind compares it to fitting into that trendy pair of slim denims that you oh-so-desperately want to wear, an easy five-minute task otherwise turns out to be a mighty ordeal. On a humid day you will struggle to slide into them, inch-by-inch. First the ankles, and then you secretly hope it will get easier; it does and it kind of doesn’t … riding it up your sweaty legs. You gasp, breathe heavily and heave. Finally, the denims have reached your butt, but that is the only hardest part. You take a moment, breathe. You look around and frantically search for a surface to lie down on; then you wiggle and wiggle some more. You kick your feet up in the air and scream for help, and somehow, through all the toil, tears and sweat, they slide right up. You breathe or sigh, whichever comes first. I usually let out a cry of relief. Snap the button and pull the zipper up. I looked at myself in the mirror. Then I looked at Shifu next to me. He looked good, and so did I. I thought I almost died playing this game of adulting. But I just lost a life.

19 I Wasn’t Ready to Be a Mother

‘S

hould I talk about this?’ I asked Mumma. ‘No! We don’t need to talk about everything. Some things are best left unsaid,’ she replied. I felt differently, though. I had been fearless enough to share this story with my mother. Then why not write about it here?

I turned thirty in 2013. Soon after, I decided to learn how to scuba-dive, for which I decided to head to the Andamans. Now, I didn’t even know how to swim at this point, so this was one of those facing-your-fears kind of stories. But something else went down that year. Most people do the basic open-water dive, but, of course, I wanted to do more. So, I decided to stay in the Andamans for an advanced diver certification course. What does that imply? Nothing much! You can dive deeper and witness many more marine marvels. Kind of similar to the experience of exploring your conscience—the deeper you go, the more you discover. There are rules. Diving is a sport best done with a buddy. You can’t stay at the bottom, whatever the depth may be, forever. You look around, but importantly you watch your regulator, and it tells you how much oxygen your air cylinder has. At about bar 50, you must come up for the sun. I was so excited about the whole diving experience that, when asked to choose between taking a written exam or doing a night dive to get my certification, I immediately signed up for the latter. Come on! You already know how my mind works by now. The higher the risk involved, the greater the gains. Scuba-diving is usually a calming and peaceful experience for me. I like the fact that you don’t need to speak, and yet there is a language, involving signals, that allows you to communicate with your divemaster, instructor and fellow divers. It’s the one place on earth where you can hear yourself breathe with crystal clarity. I find it thrilling to be able to go into the depths of a vast ocean and remind myself how tiny I am in this universe. It is a moment when I am one with myself and literally going with the flow. One of the first teachings in scuba-diving is never to swim against the current. It requires more energy, air, and also leads to muscle exhaustion. Always go with nature; go where the waters take you. The boat will fetch you. Another fabulous thing about scuba-diving is that you don’t have to be a great swimmer to be able to do it. It’s all about how you control your breath and your buoyancy. In fact, I knew nothing about scuba-diving until I decided to dive. You have an air cylinder, a mask, booties, fins and almost everything else to help you adapt underwater. I am equally fascinated and scared every time I touch the bottom of the ocean. I cannot stop looking around. Each time feels like a brand-new experience. But let’s shift gears, back to my story. We went into the Indian Ocean at twilight. The sun was setting, and we knew the bottom of the ocean would be pitch dark. So we were all given torchlights. As the lights started to go out, I felt my heart racing. It was scary. The darkness stripped away the fun I had hoped to share with my dive buddies. I wasn’t enjoying the bioluminescence that surrounded me. I started to cry, soon, uncontrollably. My mask was filled with mucus. I spent around forty minutes attempting to be brave and looking for a way to get back on the boat. I found the anchor line—the rope that allows divers to ascend and descend, one that acts as an aid for the divers to find the boat and during currents—and gestured towards the divemaster. My hands were shaking in the water, and a voice inside my head was screaming, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t do this. All the excitement I thought I would feel during a night dive seemed to have dwindled into a limitless ocean of fear inside me. The divemaster signalled to me to use the rope to ascend. As I was heading to my safety stop, I saw a ginormous turtle swim past me. Under any other circumstances, this would have been wild. An ‘Oh my god!’ sort of experience for me. I was, however, focused on making it to the surface. As soon as I was on the boat, I peeled off my mask and wept in earnest. To sail back, I had to wait for the rest of the team to surface. By then, all I wanted to do was jump out of the boat. We reached the shore, and that’s exactly what I did. I jumped off the deck even before the boat was docked properly and injured my foot while doing so. I felt both physically and emotionally exhausted, and now I also had a big bleeding riot of a gash near my ankle. Drained of energy, I decided to fill up on alcohol. I drank, threw up, and got physically close with a friend. I can’t say whether my decisions were right or wrong. When we woke up the next morning, embarrassment trumped my need for an escape. A few days later, I packed my bags and returned to Mumbai. I went straight back to the routine hustle, and there was no time to think about the night dive, the gash, or the sex in the cottage. Then, all of a sudden, I realized that I had missed my period. I texted the friend about my hunch, and he wrote back, ‘Come on, man … this is not the way I expect you to get my

attention.’ The lights in my room were on, but my mind was dark. I sat on my bed, alone, and felt a frisson of fear, like I had that night under the water. As I walked to the pharmacy, I prayed … to whoever. I didn’t want my fears to come true. I bought three pregnancy test kits and went home. I drank two litres of water and hoped the suspected pregnancy would pee itself away. I sat on the toilet seat and checked the stick result. It was positive. Nothing in the world had prepared me for this moment. Anyway, there I was, sitting with my cat on the bed, hoping to find an answer as to what to do next. There were no easy answers. There was only a never-ending list of questions. I spoke with my gynaecologist and hoped she could give me answers. Only, she had questions of her own. She wanted to know if the sex had been consensual. She asked if I had been raped, reiterating that this was a safe space to share. Once she learnt it had been a consensual encounter, she asked if it was with a steady partner. I sobbed while trying my best to address her queries, but after a while, the doctor asked me to clear my head and get ready for a scan. ‘You don’t have to decide anything just yet. We will figure it out,’ she said kindly. I didn’t know what I had to figure out. It was raining hailstones in my head. I had not slept a wink the night before; it just felt dirty—really filthy—to book the scan because my secret would be out. I went for it alone. As I was waiting for the results, the friend showed up. The tears wouldn’t stop flowing; I had never felt this hollow before. He said, ‘We will do what you want.’ In that moment, I knew nothing. I was panicking and crying. It felt like hell. I wanted to scream and shout. I wished I was back in the deep ocean and searching desperately for the rope to ascend from the darkness. I said I needed a week to think. The doctor said we had five weeks before we had to decide to proceed either way. The pressure of choosing your fate and the life of an unknown entity over two or five weeks is hardcore. A week later, I decided to terminate the pregnancy. I wasn’t ready for it. It just wasn’t the way I had imagined my life or my journey. My friend came along with me to the nursing home. I was taken away, and when I woke up, it was all over. I don’t know how long I was in there or out of it. When I awoke and saw him sitting next to me on the bed, I burst into tears. It went exactly the way I expected. I knew this was right. It was also easy. Now it was done. I couldn’t bring myself to tell my family immediately after, so I did what I knew best. I threw myself back into work. It takes about six weeks before the body can heal from the trauma of an abortion. You bleed excessively. I sometimes needed two sanitary pads to contain the flow. The cramps were severe. The antibiotics made my head swirl. I was on stage and in between shoots, making people laugh and dance. Everyone around me was so happy … and I was there, playing to the gallery. But anyone who looked closer might have found me in the long hallways, crying behind pillars, or squatting on the floor in a corner of my hotel room that had a bloody bathtub in the middle of it. Everything around me made me anxious. I had hot flushes. I felt surrounded by prying eyes, nervous that everyone knew my secret. I felt like I had been unfaithful to my upbringing; I was conscience-stricken about whether I had done the right thing. I grieved deeply, but the only choice I had was to work towards becoming whole and feeling worthy again. It is amazing, how many questions one asks oneself. Am I too selfish? Will I be haunted by this for the rest of my life? Would I never want to have children? Why didn’t he just make it easier for me and ask me to marry him instead? Was he to blame? Am I to blame? Was it just the way the stars were aligned for me? Is it my destiny to carry this weight forever? It’s an endless conversation with yourself. So, for those who believe that they are in a better position to make this decision for a woman, oh please, keep your laws and your conscience in your pockets. You wouldn’t know what the hell to do if you were in her situation, in my situation. In the months that followed, I was grumpy and resentful. But bit by bit, the pain and grief subsided; eventually, it all went away. Now, sometimes, I think about it; I have a more objective perspective about it. I know that, irrespective of what my friend had asked me to do, I wasn’t ready to be a mother. I am acutely aware of how much I am learning, and unlearning, from my relationship with my own mother. I still have some way to go before I’m emotionally prepared for parenthood. I made a mistake. We all do, don’t we? I was irresponsible, but I took care of it. I am not haunted by an unborn child. I learnt to let go, to decide for myself. The friend is now an acquaintance. Maybe he was just that from the very beginning. Today, when I look back at that point in my life, I also think about the night dive. It’s the hardest thing—to face your fears. But I’m ready for it now. I will give it another shot someday. I’ve made myself this promise. This little journey within a journey has taught me to be stronger, unapologetic, and to take ownership for the times one thinks they are being most brutal towards themselves. It has contributed towards making me the person that I am today. Time heals; yes, it does. But the question really is, will you give time the time it needs?

20 Heaven and Hell

‘H

e [God] doesn’t have the time to sort you out when you go up there. Everything will be settled here, in this life. This is all the time you have, so do good and be good here,’ Mumma would say. We live in a world where we are constantly taught to accumulate good karma because when we die, we will earn that coveted spot in heaven. For the most part, my relationship with Mumma has been heaven. The rest is a thin, deep, dark, never-ending crevice. Everything is good while you’re toeing the line, but if you slip, god save you. She always wanted me to be a ‘good’ child. Good conduct may not always be rewarded, but rest assured, if you were indiscriminate in your behaviour, you’d have your settlement sooner than you thought possible. I was her firstborn. She had all the time in the universe to raise me. She put all of herself into me. She heard me, even listened. She could hear every one of my murmurs. Mumma was overprotective of me. I wasn’t allowed to spend more time than I should at my grandparents’ or with my cousins. I forged friendships not the way children or I wanted to, but the way Mumma deemed appropriate. ‘We can’t afford to entertain your friends,’ she’d say. ‘So it’s only fair that you don’t get entertained.’ I was in the seventh grade when my best friend Sonia gave me a teddy bear backpack. It was the first present I had ever received from an outsider. Overjoyed, I brought it home to show Mumma. She saw it, but didn’t smile. I knew I was in trouble. Later that night, she drove me back to Sonia’s house and asked me to return the bag and apologize for taking it. There is a Native American prayer that goes, ‘And the wind said, “May you be as strong as the oak, yet flexible as the birch; may you stand tall as the redwood, live gracefully as the willow; and may you always bear fruit all your days on the earth.”’ Mumma focused on the proper, perfect and strong, just like the oak. But what is perfection if it doesn’t feel wholesome? Which led me to repeatedly ask myself: If I am not the abundant forest, am I even good enough? When I was an eleven-year-old writing my debate speeches, I was instructed by Mumma to erase the simple words and replace them with bigger ones from the dictionary. At the time, and even just before I wrote this piece, I didn’t see the problem with that. I thought I was being nudged in the right direction, towards growth and accolades. Today, I ask myself whether what Mumma did was for me, or was I her ‘project Kubbra Sait’?

To a large extent, my mother fought her inner battles by making an army out of me. I was armoured to be the ‘she’ she couldn’t be. Yasmin was born into a well-known and respected family. My grandfather Azeez Sait, or Nana, was a successful politician and the patriarch of their large family. Mumma was his sixth child. She lay in her cradle, a beautiful baby with locks of thick, tight and tiny ringlets when my grandfather’s younger brother, Yusuf Sait, whom I’d call Abba, and his wife, Ammi, came home visiting. ‘Khoobsoorat bacchi hai bhai [A beautiful child she is, bhai.],’ he said, entranced. Nana replied without thought, ‘Leke jao, bhai. [Take her along, bhai.]’ And just like that, Mumma was handed over to her uncle. She was raised at Abba’s as his own till she was fourteen. Once Abba and Ammi had their own son, though, things began to change. It became increasingly difficult for Mumma to handle the shift in attention, and also for Ammi to share the love with the two children of the house. From what I heard, Mumma was asked to return to the house of her biological father. It must have been hard for her to find her place among her real siblings and the parents who hadn’t brought her up. At seventeen, one day she was standing by the crystal glass cabinet, cleaning the glasses, when she glanced upon a handsome man who stood on the other side. Soon, she was engaged to this man. At eighteen, she was married, and without any delay, I was born. She was all of nineteen then. Perhaps her own tumultuous childhood was why she was determined to raise me to be bold, powerful and fearless, a nocloudy-day kind of girl. She wanted me to fly. She believed in me when I didn’t. I was her new lease on life. I was something she had created for herself, and there was no going back from that. Over the years, when Papa found it hard to keep a job, or manage the household expenses, going to her affluent father for help was out of the question. After much thought and the many loans she took (she pledged her wedding jewellery to the banks for a loan), Mumma became the family’s breadwinner. She ran our home and paid for her children’s education for over two decades. She was an accomplished entrepreneur with an education of a mere sixth grader. And yet, when she was handed an opportunity to build a real career for herself, which could’ve also been a foolproof plan to escape her circumstances, she chose to put her children first.

Mumma’s supermarkets had caught the interest of a company in Dubai who were keen to introduce hypermarkets in Bengaluru. They invited her to Dubai to visit their stores. When the time came, she suggested I go to Dubai instead. She was certain I would make better use of the visa and find myself a job. It’s funny how a mother’s sense of certainty works. She just knows. Rightfully, she kicked me out of the nest when she felt it was time. She saw my potential and wanted to mould me into the person she knew I could be; she actually did. From Dubai, I would write long emails to her. She was three thousand miles away and advising me to use talcum powder for my heat rashes, eat fruits and drink water to avoid exhaustion. I always wished Mumma had severed the umbilical cord between us when she did kick me out of the nest. I may have had a real chance of discovering my inner strength then and letting it shine. Though, to be honest, I wound that umbilical cord around my neck so tight that it has indeed been hard to unfasten it without causing real damage.

Mumma’s relationship with me evolved with time. She has been my greatest cheerleader, my Noah’s Ark, the best cook of biryani even. My loyal friend. That annoying, forever disgruntled partner. The unhappy, disappointed parent. The smack on your face when you’re least expecting it. When I lived in Dubai, I was in love. I was so sure about marrying this man. When introduced to this man, Mumma could not have made her disapproval any clearer, and it became a cause of tension between us. Eventually, things didn’t work out between him and me, and to move on from the relationship, I paid a visit home to Bengaluru. ‘It’s over,’ I told her. ‘I couldn’t do it anymore. I think I’m scared to go back to Dubai.’ That’s when she called him. ‘Don’t mess with her; she is my daughter,’ she told him. ‘I have her back.’ And her words were so commanding that he never dared to approach me again. I had Mumma’s back, too, and have tried to help her evolve. I even became her best friend. We’ve travelled the world, at times together, at times through my shared stories. In 2007, when Mumma first came to visit me in Dubai, I was wearing hot shorts when I went to pick her up from the airport. She was perturbed by the sight of me wearing almost nothing but legs. To calm her, I took her to the mall, and she saw that women in shorts were not an unusual sight. She smiled, shook her head and said, ‘Jaisa des vaisa bhes.’ Which is to say something like, when in Rome, do as the Romans do. Whether you are six or sixty, living your own life and recalibrating yourself at every step is very important. Mumma is a quick learner, so it was easy for me to forge a new mom out of her when she visited me. She was ready to be reborn. This was just the beginning. We’ve done many things together. She wore her first bikini with me. Had her first glass of wine. We smoked sheesha and even did a jig with a random belly dancer. We had our first girls’ holiday together, which has since become a tradition. Most recently, in Bali, she encouraged me to braid my hair blue while she braided hers red. In Venice, she was hugged tight by a groom wearing a massive penis outfit, out on the town for his bachelor party. Nothing fazes this woman of many merits. I have thoroughly enjoyed this game of shifting gears with Mumma. She is such a widely loved human being now; back in school, she would terrify kids. Today, she has turned all my friends and acquaintances into her close friends and connections. It was always important to her that we be good to others. ‘Mare too chaar logan hona janaaze ku khaanda dene ke liye [We need four people to shoulder the bier while on its way to the graveyard.],’ she would say. Today, I know half the city would show up if something happened to her. That is what Mumma has accomplished over the last decade by working on herself. She has groomed herself into a new human being. From Mumma, she became the ‘Momager’. She took a lot of pride in the title and the management of the careers of her children. She treated us like brands and put us out, face front, on the shelves. She was back again being her entrepreneurial best. She was always, always, my biggest cheerleader. When things went wrong for me, professionally, I never felt like I had nowhere to go. I had the unshakeable belief that Mumma would fix things. But all of this came accompanied by a pitfall. As she got better at being a Momager, she seemed to forget how to have a non-transactional relationship with me. She lost sight of how to be my mother. Maybe that’s on me. Or maybe not. This became the root of problems to come. Soon, she was Mumma to everyone I knew and did not. One day, I asked her, ‘Do you even remember what your name, the identity that you were born with, sounds like?’ ‘No, I don’t,’ she said. No one had called her by her name in years. She was now ‘Mumma’ to half the world, and that made me feel frightened—of not only the fact that I was losing her, but that she was losing herself. So, I started calling her Yasu.

You cannot choose your parents. But I believe they have a choice in how they raise and treat you. I talk in English to my cat, and I believe he understands me. Most parents think they know better than their children, which, of course, is true in many aspects. You cannot hand over the running of a family or your finances to a child, but a child is an individual after all. They have their own thoughts, dreams, passions. Things become complicated when a parent believes they have complete power over a child. At some point, my mother thought so too. She commanded respect, but when asked for the same, she would be offended. This, I believe, comes from the ego. When parents speak to their children as equals, treat the latter as smart individuals, a strong parent-child relationship is possible; otherwise, the two end up being alienated from each other.

Mumma has always been a keen observer. She can tell just by looking at me that something is wrong. I can do that too, with her, but, god forbid, I point out her problems. She’ll refuse to hear what I say, focusing on my tone instead and then taking offence to it. Mumma belongs to a generation of parents who were once children who had unquestioning obedience. They never talked back to their elders. But times have changed. Today, children are curious. They enquire, they question. Parents also need an upgrade from their existing versions. I feel very invested in not hurting my mother since I chose to be by her side and because, two decades ago, she made a similar decision to stick by her children. But here is my question: ‘Is choosing to raise your children a choice or a burden?’ If it is a choice, then pillaging them with guilt isn’t justified either. The pressure of giving back almost feels like the disclaimer you didn’t read before signing the offer document. Today, I am not as mortally afraid of Mumma as I once was when I was younger. When I did Sacred Games, I didn’t ask her for permission, I only informed her. I called her and said, ‘Thank you for wearing a bullet-proof jacket your entire life for us. This one is a bit different. It’s a bazooka, so build yourself a bunker.’ Today, when my mother and I are often at a crossroads, with contradictory opinions, I wonder if she has really moved past her bleeding scars and fears. Twenty years ago, it was paramount for her to be right because she was the provider. Twenty years on, she still has to be right because she had provided. Two decades is time enough to form an entirely new kaleidoscope of life. Children grow up. I grew up. I’ve been both blessed and cursed to have a mother who doesn’t understand boundaries. I have graciously allowed her to find her wings through my journey, but when I see that she can’t take a sliver of feedback or criticism, it’s like a knife through my heart. I had to clean, cut, and be proper to have access to what I wanted since the time I was a child. I did not complain then, but I also did not understand how it would impact my personality until I found an identity for myself. The last few years for me have been about self-discovery; meditation has helped a great deal. I am learning how to draw boundaries, learning to say no. It is tedious, sometimes even exasperating, to have to do that. But sticking to it is infinitely preferable to losing my mind over my mother’s habitual micromanaging. It’s taken years of slicing away at the umbilical cord for me to stand small in my own right, kind and helpful.

Idols aren’t permanent. They shift, change and evolve. We don’t expect them to go wrong or bleed. But our parents, whom we idolize, are human too, and they must be allowed to be who they are. Sometimes, we need to crack them open to find the jewels and gifts that are hidden inside for them to see those for themselves. I love my mother. I know I do. But ours is a love-hate relationship, one that is both strong and weak at the same time. We will either fight the greatest storms together or go down resisting one another for the same cause. Once, we were in Venice, when I asked her, curious, ‘What is it that you wanted to be? What did it mean to you to be you?’ ‘I wanted to be a princess, that’s all,’ she replied innocently. ‘But Ma, you are the queen,’ I replied with a smile. Yes, she is my queen, and I her subject, which is both a badge of honour and my cross to bear.

21 I Was Born to Play Phara

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t was 2019, and I was in the middle of a packed day of shooting for Jawaani Jaaneman in London. In the scene, my character Rhea, the hairdresser friend of the lead character Jazz (played by Saif Ali Khan), had to apply hair colour to Jazz’s hair while chattering. As dusk neared, the ‘light jaa rahi hai’ fear was real, and the salon we were filming in was a real location. The dialogue wasn’t long or difficult, but for some reason, my lips and brain were having a hard time processing it. I failed many, many times. Impatient with myself, I began to wilt under the pressure. Saif patiently sat through it all, his head dripping with the cold goo I applied and reapplied. I was neither able to nail the dialogues nor get the choreography of the scene right. At take twenty, he gently asked me, ‘Do you want a break?’ I nodded and walked away with tears in my eyes. I returned shortly, to finish the scene in the twenty-eighth take. Once it was done, I felt a stab of sadness. No one said anything to me, but I could sense the tension on the set. I felt it was all my fault. I was troubled with self-doubt. Teary-eyed, I walked over to every member of the crew and apologized, thanking them for their time and the faith they had shown in me. The last person I met on that fateful day was the film’s producer Jay Shewakramani. I walked up to him and said, ‘I’m sorry.’ ‘Why?’ he replied nonchalantly. Hesitantly, I said, ‘For all the inconvenience?’ He replied with a smile, ‘Virat bhi kabhi kabhi duck pe out hota hai. [Even Virat Kohli gets out on a duck wicket.]’ The compassion he showed in that moment restored my confidence in my performance. Months later, when the film’s trailer released, it was that very twenty-eighth take that made it to the final cut. Although Jayu and I laughed about it then (and even now), it will always be a reminder for me that, in the toughest situations, a little bit of kindness can go a long way. We all need a voice to tell us it is okay to fail in what we love to do. We all have bad days.

I am either super lucky or madly unlucky with the kind of projects I end up doing. Lucky because these are huge projects. Game changers, even. Some would even say, life changers. Unlucky because almost all of my projects thus far have killed me off in the first season. Now, I had a new challenge. Making people remember that I am doing an Apple TV original, and it’s called Foundation. The title of the show resonated with two types of people really quickly. First, nerds who were twelve when their parents handed them the Isaac Asimov Foundation series to read. They’ve been waiting for this show to be made ever since. Second, the make-up influencer community. Both groups squealed with excitement when they heard the news. Others, not so much. All I got was a pretty dispassionate, ‘Huh. Okay.’ I wondered about the underwhelming response. Couldn’t they see what a big deal this was? To be honest, I, too, had skimmed past the title when I received the audition email. After a second read, I jumped on the internet and typed F-O-UN-D-A-T-I-O-N in the search bar. Suddenly, skin tones of every hue and shade popped up on the screen. Next, I googled ‘Apple TV foundation’, and David S. Goyer’s name sprang up. Again, I didn’t know who he was and was pretty certain he didn’t know who I was. The Blade trilogy, Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, Man of Steel and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice … these were the names that Google threw up. Hmm. I hadn’t even watched a single Superman movie up until that very moment. But who cares, right? There is always a first time. The audition by Tess Joseph Casting was in Mumbai. I jaunted to Aram Nagar 2, thinking I’d do my best. When I walked into the audition, Tess said, ‘So Kat, this is huge. I can’t reveal more … but if you read the email fully and thoroughly, you’ll know this is something.’ (Yes! She called me Kat. She’s the only person who calls me that.) Up until this point, my greatest dream had been to win a Filmfare award (it probably still is), but little did I know that there were larger forces at play. I auditioned in September 2019. By October, I got a call back for a second audition. I saw the script and broke into a sweat. Whoa, what English was this? The language was poetic, and it made my eyes pop. The names were unusual and the context completely different because it’s science fiction. The series was an adaptation of the classic and cult series by American writer Isaac Asimov. It was unnerving, and hard to understand. How would I memorize any of these lines? I needed help, so I called my friend Ali Fazal. He’s had both an incredible life and journey as an actor. ‘Kahaan hain? Kiska project? [Where are you? Whose project?]’ he asked me. ‘David Goyer,’ I said.

‘Arrrrreyyyyy teri toh! [Whoa!]’ We got down to talking about how to crack the tape (another word for an audition). I told Ali that I struggled with memorizing the lines. He suggested I write them down. ‘Write them down as many times as you need, till you can remember what you’re saying,’ he said. Ali said do it, so I did. It really did help—thanks, Ali! I went into my second audition. Here is the thing. At an audition, the job of an actor is not to recreate what is in the text. That’s a given. Those two pages hint at the rest of the script, so you’re expected to deliver a full performance that will eventually appear on screen. And you know the exact moment when you’ve botched it. And it’s not when the camera person offers words of encouragement. You feel your heart drop instantly. You know you’re faking it. Unfortunately, I was so lost in the lines that I messed up this audition. With my head hung low, I thanked Team Tess Joseph for their time and went home. Three days later, I was surprised to receive an email from Cameron Welsh, producer on Foundation, who told me they saw something in the first audition that was missing in the second. They could tell I was in too deep with the lines. Cam’s advice was, ‘Be the Phara we saw. Just give us an honest glimpse of her again.’ Second chances are probably rare, but in my case, not so much. The best outcomes for me have been during second chances. With renewed energy, I went back in again. This time I knew I had aced it. It was good. So good, I could taste that moment. With my head in the clouds and a grin big enough to light up all of Aram Nagar 2, I went back home. Then began the waiting game. I heard back from them in early December 2019. Agents calling agents, manager calling Tess, emails flying around … lots of back and forth. I wasn’t dreaming. It was an actual conversation about flying to a small town called Limerick in Ireland to audition for David S. Goyer himself. I was the happiest cutlet to be on that British Airways flight! I was so excited that I had screenshots of famous limericks on my phone for when I would be in Limerick. My favourite one is as follows: God’s plan made a hopeful beginning but man spoiled his chances by sinning. We trust that the story will end in God’s glory. But at present the other side’s winning. Besides, I got to travel with the band U2, though they were in first class, and I was hanging in the walkways with their technical crew. One of the crew members asked me why I was so chipper about visiting Limerick. I didn’t want to reveal too much. ‘I am going to lay the foundation of my international career,’ I said, adding, ‘He-he.’ After landing, I checked into the hotel, had a quick shower, and was ready to explore the town. I walked around. Limerick is a small town, so I looked at my phone to check the number of steps I had taken. I had covered all the town’s attractions in 14,000 steps. In one big, giant circle. Cute and adorable. I also walked into the oldest church there and said a prayer and a ‘thank you’ for bringing this opportunity to me. I promised I’d be back to say ‘thank you’ if I got the project. And I did go back and say, ‘Thank you.’ After my screen test with David, he patted me gently on my shoulder and said that I was good but that I hadn’t got the part yet. They said they would come back to me, and I returned to India. They didn’t, not for a very long, arduous, aggravating and impatient time. I waited through Christmas and New Year’s Eve. The new year rolled in, and still nothing. Then, on 11 January 2020, I received a text from the American agent Barry Buren. ‘Good time to chat?’ ‘Any and every time is,’ I replied. I was brewing my morning coffee and glaring at my phone, hoping that would make it ring faster. Barry and Dhruv Jagasia, my Indian manager and friend, were on the call. Barry said, ‘Congratulations! They found Phara in you.’ My heart leapt at the words, but I remained calm. I felt a big drop of sweat run from the centre of my head down my back. With a level voice, I said, ‘Oh wow! Congratulations team, we did it.’ I hung up the phone and called Dhruv. ‘Dhruuuuuuuvvvvv…’ I said, as I let out a big cry. ‘We did it, Dhruvieeeee. We did it!’ That was the beginning of a journey that would keep me away from home for over a year. Of course, we didn’t sense it at the time. No one knew that a virus was coming our way.

The preparation for Phara was unlike any I’d ever done before. I’ve never had time to prepare for a role. This was unique. There were stuntmen and women, an acting coach, diction coach, movement coach, intimacy coach, even a physiotherapist to help correct my posture. I was learning a new language, different types of kicks, punches and defences. It was crazy, and exciting, and oh-so-freezing-cold. I was also madly homesick. My hotel room was small and dull. Grey carpets and curtains, and when you peeped outside the vacuum-sealed windows, the weather was grey too. I am often asked about the difference between working in the West and here. There isn’t any real difference except for the fact that the relationships that are formed, professionally or personally, while working with a foreign crew can, at times, feel limiting. That’s probably because, in India, we encourage blurring the lines, and we’re heavily co-dependent. We’re always looking for approval and support. It’s not that the international crew were cold or anything. In fact, the people I worked with on Foundation gave one hundred per cent to every single moment on set. It’s just that once the job is done, they go back to their own lives. It was an incredible learning curve for me. However, I missed the three f’s: familiarity, family and food. The latter got to

me more than anything else. There’s only that much steak I can eat. After my stay in Ireland, I’d probably die happy being vegetarian. One day, after I had finished bench pressing sixty kilos in the bone-chilling cold, my trainer asked me to get into the Child’s Pose (a kneeling asana). I just lay on the mat and sobbed. I missed home, Shifu, the food, the air, the smog, the warmth. And not having to schedule an appointment to build a relationship. Leah Harvey, who plays Salvor on the show, hugged me tightly. She lay there with her arms wrapped around me till I stopped sobbing and then made an appointment to eat dinner with me later that evening. That did the trick, of bringing me back to life. But this was just the beginning. There were more testing times ahead. Finally, after training for months to get my first-ever fight sequence in order, we were ready to shoot. Oh boy, did it go well. I was so excited; I even had a stunt double! I mouthed my lines, jumped, and kicked around. After the first day of shoot, I came back to my hotel elated. The month and a half spent in Limerick and doing everything but shooting seemed like a blip; now I was a satisfied human. This was 10 March 2020. On 12 March, at 10 a.m., I received a call from the production. ‘Hello, Kubbra. We have decided to suspend production for a while. Everybody is going home. Would you like to stay or leave?’ I was asked. ‘Of course, I want to leave,’ I said. I hung up and stared at my phone for a bit. Then, I wore my four layers and went down for breakfast. The news channels were abuzz with talk about borders and schools being closed and the number of cases rising. The pandemic was gaining strength. Also, the limited supply of toilet paper rolls in America. Things were tense, and I was more than happy to go back home. I was really homesick at this point. An hour later, I received the options to fly back. Thursday the twelfth or Friday the thirteenth. Immediately, I called the production in-charge and said, ‘Thursday the twelfth, please. I repeat, Thursday the twelfth.’ I can’t describe how relieved I was to be back home, with Shifu and ghar ka khaana, but I was also anxious about the show’s future. By the end of April, I was downright worried. What if Foundation didn’t get back on its feet? What if it did, but they recast my part? India was breaking worldwide COVID records at this point. Quite a few months went by with no communication with the Foundation team. In the meantime, I shot for a microseries called Wakaalat from Home. It was unique; we actors shot it entirely from our homes. We also doubled up as makeup artists, script supervisors, costume and light personnel, and even set designers! It was a good distraction from what was happening outside. Then, one morning, there was a barrage of emails in my inbox. It’s September already, we need a visa, we need to book tickets... This time, I would travel to Ireland for the shoot and return home only once the Season 1 schedule wrapped. My last experience had made me wiser. I requested production to give me a house instead of a hotel room. I carried with me a bunch of Indian spices and also a pressure cooker. It was a restart. I reached Limerick in September 2020—a year that would undoubtedly go down in history as the worst ever. On set, we were being tested three times a week. I learnt how not to sneeze after the swab wiped my frontal lobe through my right nostril. I learnt a new language—Anacreon—one that was created and doesn’t actually exist. I discovered the emotions behind the struggle of Phara Keaen and her badassery. I sat through two hours of make-up, including donning scars perfected to match the shape of my face. Each day began at 5.30 a.m., while it was still dark, and ended at 7.30 p.m. when the sun had already set. Weeks went by without seeing or feeling the heat of the sun. Gosh! Ireland is cold. I took our vacation days to explore the far-flung western side of Ireland. I drove to the cliffs, hiked and drank lots of hot chocolate. There were also days when nothing moved, not even the frigid air. On one such day, I received a message from a friend that read, ‘What does happiness mean to you?’ I didn’t have an immediate answer, but I was sure it would come to me. I put down my phone, made my coffee, and walked to the balcony. There it was—happiness, right in front of my eyes. Two rainbows painted the width of the city. I love rainbows but seeing two of them at the same time made me delirious with joy! I looked at them, smiled gleefully, and texted my reply. ‘Happiness is like the two rainbows I see behind my head. I see them right now. I know I cannot possess them. They are here for now. They may reappear, but again for a brief period. Cherishing the moments in between these rainbows is happiness to me.’

I travelled three countries filming for Foundation. There was action—lots and lots of action. There were parties; I even cooked a full-blown meal with kheema, daal and butter chicken for my colleagues and showed a few how to eat with their hands. It was this energy exchange that brought this journey to life. It was on 24 March 2021 that I walked onto the set for a quick shot, and soon after, I heard David Goyer come out to say, ‘That’s a wrap for Phara for Season 1 of Foundation.’ The tears flowed, the smiles were wide, hugs were exchanged, and just when I expected more … they went right back to work. I got an email about my flight tickets as I was taking my costume off for perhaps the last time. I was happy-sad to be returning home after months. The work had been done. The effort appreciated. It was no ordinary deal. I had shot for the greatest science fiction series of all time, worked with a global cast and crew comprising newbies and stalwarts, and now I was headed home. Happy-sad is a godly emotion to have.

When we’d gone back to work on Foundation in September 2020, we had had a little hangout with all the actors. My Australian co-star and friend Daniel MacPherson walked up to me. ‘Baby,’ he said in that distinct Australian accent, ‘tell me something. Would you like to believe that you were born to play Phara?’ I was nonplussed. ‘I don’t know. I auditioned. She could have been from anywhere,’ I mumbled, adding, ‘I think it’s a privilege to play her.’ Daniel looked hard at me. ‘No, stop looking at it as a privilege. You are here because you were meant to be here. And now that you are here, you need to believe you were born to play Phara,’ he said. ‘At some point, that thought is going to click in your head, and you’re going to walk up to me and say, “I was born to play this character.” Then we’re going to shake hands on it and get a drink.’ That moment did come. It was during the scene in which Phara speaks to Salvor of the time they were only children, when the Empire bombed the planet to which she belonged. I had to imagine a throwback to the moment in time in which an eight-year-old Phara and her little brother were playing in the woods, and all of a sudden, the sky lit up. Massive fire from the sky spit all over the Anacreons, and, before little Phara could react, her brother was engulfed into the fire, alive, leaving her with a scar on her left cheek and burning her eye. A scar that she would wear for the rest of her life. Phara thinks of this moment and tells Salvor that after this, there were no children left on Anacreon, only warriors. I felt the anguish of loss in my belly. After the scene, I walked up to Daniel MacPherson and said, ‘I was born to play Phara.’ We smiled, shook hands, and got ourselves that drink.

22 Faith Takes You That Extra Mile

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he one thing I truly believe in is that there are no coincidences in life. Every person I have met or any situation that I have lived through has brought new meaning to my existence. A hope, a dream, a learning, a love. A deep connection or just a plain association for furthering growth. Remember this and tie it closely to your heart. To be able to understand the whole experience—or even just yourself— you need to look at it from the outside. I know it sounds a bit cuckoo, but it isn’t really. It is less about what the eyes see and more about the experience itself. I was introduced to the world of magic within and the realm of deeper search when I was much younger and more agile. I read a book called I Am Another You: A Journey to Powerful Breakthroughs by Priya Kumar, an author who had spent weeks with shamans understanding the truer meaning of our existence on earth. It was her path of curiosity that attracted me the most. Mind you, today, we have come to the conclusion that intelligence is everything; intelligence gives meaning to our lives. But intelligence can only come from curiosity. Curiosity is what you seek from within you. The other thing that I’ve come to understand over the years is that there are no right answers, and that there are no dumb or obsolete questions. There is simply a longing for self-discovery in the limited time that we have on this planet. This world is ours to hold and cherish; we can improve each passing moment by evolving as beings and souls. Instead of constantly failing to find answers in other people, we can arrive at a greater acceptance of ourselves. I have been away from home for a very long time, and it’s reached a point where I do not feel my roots. I don’t belong anywhere in particular. I am not bound to a destination. But I am a child of the earth. Now, I am rooted to those with whom I share my heart; I allow them to open and unravel themselves in my presence. And vice versa.

At the beginning of my career, I had become consumed with the next and the next and the next, and the chase had pretty much drained me. All I was left with was exasperation, exhaustion, and a constriction within my heart. Then came a weekend in my life that changed everything. In 2021, I was in Malta as a tourist. It was an experience that I had been longing for, for a very long time. I was freed from my chains and the pain I had inflicted on myself, from the struggle over what was right and what was wrong, what was good and what was bad. From the social conditioning that encourages an attitude of anticipation over acceptance. I was in Malta as a tourist. I did what tourists do anywhere in the world. I opened the infinite world of the web and searched for answers. The replies ranged from Ten Best Places to Visit to Hot Spots for Drinks and Dinner to Ways of Escapism. There were no photographs of the weekend I spent there, but the experience itself left an everlasting impression on my heart. It all started with my conquests as a tourist—eating and drinking and indulging myself with more alcohol than my body could take. When I was finally ready to walk back to my hotel, I bumped into a man with brown locks and a welcoming smile. Sometimes a welcoming smile is all you need in a city to which you don’t belong. I was standing at the exit of the marina when I saw him hug my colleague. He looked very pretty, or perhaps it was the four gin and tonics I had had that made him appear so. I walked up to him steadily and asked, ‘Hey! Who are you, and what are your plans?’ ‘Nothing,’ he replied. ‘Grand!’ I said. ‘Come with us; we are headed back to my room for a bit more wine.’ He came along. It turned out that this stranger was a businessman from Lithuania living in Malta. As we drank wine and I loosened up a bit more, I casually said, ‘The one thing I really want to experience is Ayahuasca.’ ‘Oh! That can be arranged,’ the man said calmly, without missing a beat. ‘Do you really mean Ayahuasca?’ I enquired to be sure. ‘Like the South American, Peruvian Ayahuasca?’ he asked. ‘Is there any other kind?’ ‘I don’t know … Is there?’ He smiled. ‘It can be arranged…’ he said. ‘I know of a few retreats that do this sort of thing. I’ll keep you informed.’ A week later, he reached out to me with details of a weekend retreat that was to take place with a close circle of around twenty attendees. ‘If you want to go, speak to Ada,’ he told me. ‘She is a shaman from Venezuela.’ And that is how I embarked on the most awaited spiritual experience of my life.

Now, this is the reason intuition is more important than the manuals we choose to follow. Little did I know then that ten days following the pursuit of a complete stranger, I would be seeing myself from a dimension that could not be explained by the books we read or the people who shape our existence on earth. How do I describe it? It was an immersive experience of seeing oneself beyond the physical, a broader association of one’s own self in the scheme of the universe and the vibrations that have access to one. But I am getting ahead of myself. I called Ada, who told me about the rules of the retreat. No spicy or salty food a few weeks before attending the retreat. No alcohol or any other mild or strong hallucinogenics. And no sex until the retreat was over. I asked Ada, ‘Why no salt in the food?’ ‘It’s a cleansing process,’ she replied. ‘Before the retreat, you condition the mind that you are only feeding your body. The body doesn’t need taste to survive, and salt only serves the ego.’ The food bit would be a challenge but the rest I could deal with easily. Usually, this sort of fasting is done for twenty-one days, but I did it for only fifteen. Once I was ready, I flew to Gozo, a tiny island off the coast of Malta, for the retreat. Gozo is a sleepy little island strewn with ancient churches. From the town centre, I took a cab to the villa, a three-storey affair with infinite views of the ocean. There were around twenty guests from all over the world. On the first day, just before sunset, we were invited to the living room, a large space decorated with colourful deities from different religions. Fragrant incense filled the atmosphere, and everyone spoke in hushed tones. Soon, we sat within a circle of trust. The shaman, a woman from Venezuela, arrived and narrated the history of the shamanic tradition. Up until that moment, I did not even know that the first shamans on earth were women. Hymns and music played in the background as the sun was setting on the horizon. Drums, gongs, bamboo tubes, guitars, the Chinese flute and the djembe or rattles were used to create music; there was no synthetic element, no electronica. As the candles were lighted, a community of servers came in to lay the beds and provided warm blankets that we would need for the ceremony. The flames from the candles danced to their own rhythm. Chanting filled the room and beyond. It seemed like I was under a spell. The first ceremony began with us setting an intention for the retreat. It was important to know why I had brought myself there and understand why I wanted to surrender myself to the moment. I was excited about this day long before I was there, and yet, I was afraid of the unknown. I needed to identify the fear and put it into words, though. This wasn’t about losing myself in the trance, but rather about finding my truest self. The shaman came and sat herself in the chair at the centre. She wore feathers in her ears, and held beads and shells in her hands. They clicked and clacked, playing their own music. Slowly, the group came together in celebration of the three days to follow. You received instant love from the shaman no matter where you sat in the room. I know I did. She knew very little English, and yet I managed to absorb the essence of her speech. She spoke slowly and calmly, with a childlike smile. She conversed—she didn’t speak to be understood; she spoke to be felt. It was easy to submerge myself in the mystique she exuded. Don’t fear, surrender. Allow the fear to transform into a journey of self-reflection—is what she conveyed in her language. The first evening was about finding the centre with the holy rapé (pronounced ‘raapeh’, a psychotropic substance used as a shamanic medicine). The ash of the grandfather tobacco plant is given to us by the ones initiated to do so. One doesn’t inhale while this process is happening. Instead, we wait patiently till the medicine begins its work. It felt like my ears, the back of my head and the nape of my neck were on a slow burn. All thoughts of pleasure and pain, fear and judgement left my brain, allowing and welcoming me to be present in the here and now. I proceeded to my meditation chair, feeling the slow sinking of the rapé through my nostrils and into my throat. My mouth was moist, releasing toxins in the form of my saliva. The medicine made me cough up my blockages in the form of phlegm. The discomfort soon began to fade; as the medicine began to work, there was an intense sense of something expanding in the middle of my forehead. I saw myself in a light that shone from the centre of my brow bone. In meditation, we call it the opening of the Third Eye. It sees what the physical eyes don’t. It felt like a long tunnel of light that began from the centre of the eyebrows. It allowed me to shed the need for self-protection and experience the freedom of nonjudgement. My mind stopped wavering, my body became still. The moment took over. The moment became infinite. After the chanting, the music came to a halt. The shaman passed a gift from the Amazon Rainforest in the form of a feather of the macaw. We were requested to hold the feather in our hand, say our name and speak of our intention. I spoke about how I had, for ever so long, secretly asked to be in this moment, and it felt like the universe had brought me here. It had been a very long and hard year for all of us on this planet. As I spoke, the rest of the retreat listened, and then, slowly, everyone shared their stories one after the other. I knew I needed to mend things with Mumma, heal my broken expectations. I loved her so much that I had tied all my joys and sorrows to who she was. I did not want to end up blaming every element around me for my failures. In fact, I am not a failure, I thought; I am the one who tried and tried again. After two circles of the rapé, my palms stopped shaking, and the djembe now mirrored my heartbeat. The journey in the circle of a new family began. It’s amazing how acceptance can bring about calmness and clarity. That I could create a family in a group of strangers was my first step towards learning about myself. We had started the evening at 7.30 p.m., and before we knew it, the shaman said, ‘Now, we will close the ceremony.’ Thereafter, the dancers came in to celebrate. The smiles were wide, the skin felt fresh, there was no sweat of fear. I checked my watch. It was 2.30 a.m. Where had the time gone? The second day of the retreat began with yoga. Never forget that your body is a vehicle, a very powerful one, to take you through your time on earth. Keeping this vehicle in check, and giving it the attention and love it needs, is fundamental

to how we function. The difficult movements or postures on a mat act as a reminder of how much your body can do, the effort you are willing to make as you inch closer to the ground, to the earth, where you came from. The body is also the greatest example of impermanence. It’s the soul that outlives you. After yoga, the family rested peacefully. Conversations centred around the lives we led outside the circle and what was in store for us in the foreseeable future. Unconsciously, we hold on to so many things that others did to us; words that were spoken can be found buried deep within. We dedicate a weekend of our lives each year just before Diwali to cleanse our homes of the clutter accumulated in that space but shy away from taking a broom to our inner demons. For the evening retreat, I needed to prepare my mind. It required courage to do something I’d never done before. It was also a battle of letting go. I began with the basics—bathing and cleansing my body—in preparation for the ceremony. I wore clean clothes and brushed my hair neatly into a bun. We arrived at the circle, taking our allocated places again. Since I cherish order, predictability and planning in my life, the thought of taking even one small step into the unknown was nervewracking. No one can ever prepare you for that kind of thrill, which inevitably descends into a terrorizing stress. It was also the very same incessant stress that had brought me to the retreat. The stress that made me feel my back was tethered to wires with the torque of a suspension bridge. My chest felt strained. Yet somehow, on that evening, I remembered to breathe, just like I had practised watching endless YouTube videos from various meditation masters. The medicine of the Amazon is supposed to be magical. It could make you reach into your deepest consciousness. Apparently, it could also make you see the proverbial unknown, taking you on a ride into a different dimension. All this was indeed daunting. As I sat in the corner of the circle of trust and unwavering faith, I could feel my breath getting warm and cold, taking in the silky, calming aroma from the innumerable incense sticks that filled the room. We started with a round of rapé, and I soon began to feel a familiar sensation. There were affirmation cards being passed around. I reached out to the box and found mine. It read ‘align’. I didn’t know what it meant in that moment, so I just went with the flow, sitting down to meditate. A short while later, the shaman came to her seating area, and the music and the prayers to the holy Ayahuasca began. I took a deep breath hoping for some magical shift that would take me to outer space, an unchartered territory or just someplace new. When it was my turn, I took a sip of the Ayahuasca and went back to my little corner in the circle. I sat there, head bowed, waiting for something to happen. I had read all about it: how the mind starts to feel lighter, that you see colours or shapes or forms or faces of people. So I waited, telling my brain that this was what I wanted. I thought hard about how these experiences would magically become vivid in front of my eyes, and I’d sit there watching them. I was so sure it would happen, or perhaps it was my ego, that I became more and more closed. My hands were wrapped around my body ever so tightly, my face hardened, my breath became shallow and after what felt like hours … I felt nothing except closed and trapped. That’s when Ada gently touched my forehead and asked me, ‘How are you feeling?’ ‘This medicine or magic or whatever isn’t working,’ I snapped. She smiled and said in broken English, ‘If you speak with such assurance, it surely is working. Let’s loosen you up a little.’ Then, she pointed me towards the balcony. Reluctantly, I followed her outside. I walked out with my eyes shut, clenching my teeth and clutching on to her hand. Once in the open, Ada said, ‘Now open your eyes slowly…’ I did, and there it was. There were a million stars at the tip of my nose. As I took a deep breath, my body knew, I knew … Then, I looked around for a dustbin, and immediately purged, hard and long. As I retched and cried, I felt all that control and pain leave my body. I felt shivers both of heat and cold run down my body, and then, I sat there in a calm state, repeatedly saying ‘Thank you’. I recognized what a fortunate life I had had. Ada went back to the circle, leaving me on my own for a bit. I sat there for a while and then returned to my place. It did not feel like a corner anymore. I was trembling mildly. My eyes were closed, but the visuals were crystal clear. I could see my soul dancing around me at a much larger spectrum than my physical body, but I realized that it was a struggle to keep my soul, body and emotions together. Their paths were crossing, and I was just amazed to see the three entities grapple with each other. I smiled as I tried to screenshot them all together. I tried to make sure I bound them together. And then, after several attempts of blinking with my eyes closed, it finally happened. I let out a big sigh and cried as I saw my energies come together. As that happened, my heart opened. Now I felt the darkness inside being slowly flooded with light—a bright yellow light. It was a sign and a direction that I was someone willing to give and receive love. Ah! That smile on my face then. That is the smile that is on my face now as I write this. A big, content, joyous smile. Once again, we had started the evening around 7.30 p.m., but when I was ready to open my eyes and close the ceremony, it was six in the morning. Dawn was breaking, and a beautiful day was spreading across the sky. For me, it was a new life, with newer, more conscious choices to make.

Faith is what takes you that extra mile. We, in the modern world, carry our pain and sorrows through the medium of inconsistent and innumerable thoughts, judgements and perceptions about how the world perceives us. We have been made to believe that we need to carry this emotional weight around. We are so focused on ourselves and what the world says to us or the way in which the world reacts to us that we close our hearts to giving love to the very people with whom we co-exist. Day by day, we are relinquishing our faith in humanity, and, in the process, losing faith in ourselves. So, if love is what you seek, then personify love yourself. If forgiveness is what you seek, then forgive yourself first. Allow yourself to fail, only then will

you discover how to rise. This mega-event of spirituality brought me closer to myself, and it’s only the beginning of what my takeaway from life on this planet will be. To borrow the words of a great cartoon on Instagram: The man said, ‘We only live once.’ ‘Wrong!’ said the listener. ‘We only die once; we live every day.’ Amen to that.

23 Searching for a Rainbow Inside My Heart

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hat myth was I living? I asked myself this question when I woke up every morning during the lockdown. My mornings were still the same, just less rushed. I’d enjoy the privilege of being able to sit in my tenth-floor apartment in Santacruz West and go through an unhurried morning, watching buses, cars and impatient two-wheelers scraping their way through traffic in the bustling city of Mumbai. I looked out of my living room window and marvelled at the lush green cover below; this reminded me of the old days in leafy M.G. Road in Bengaluru. I’d sip my coffee and watch Swami Vivekanand Road. Right ahead, there was a huge hoarding that read, ‘Cleanliness is next to Godliness’. I’d enjoy this me-time. It occurred to me that I always had this me-time, but I never chose to acknowledge, appreciate or embrace it as I now did. I used to make a big fuss about little things. A hue and cry about getting into my workout clothes and pulling myself together before I hit the gym. It all felt like a chore. But I soon began to understand that the concept of time is simply an illusion. The sun rose and set, and sometimes I’d catch both on the same day. It felt as though I was employed by my own enterprise. It was a pleasure to consider that I did a little, if not a lot, each day. On those quiet mornings, I’d wake up and get myself some tea while Rati, my help, cleaned the apartment. After which, we’d light tropical waves incense sticks (two or more). I’d set my mat down to stretch and do my workout. I alternated between yoga and strength training. Then, I’d meditate and practise mindfulness. I’d watch my thoughts pass me by in 3D, sometimes 4D. Sometimes, my skin would break out in goosebumps when I had disconcerting thoughts. But then, thoughts are simply thoughts, so I’d let them pass. Then, I’d sit down at my desk and try to write. Well, I must’ve done a decent job at that because look at you, cutie— holding my book and reading my words. What a riot you are. Let me just say, ‘Thank You,’ while I can still get that in. I’d shower twice, sometimes thrice a day. Then there were days when I’d shower once in two days. I’d try brushing my teeth a lot more than I did before the virus took over our lives. It was clear that I hadn’t learnt any lessons from those past visits to the dentist. I’d wait for lunch to be cooked; sometimes, I’d get into experiment mode, watch a video and cook a meal, and then log on into Instagram, take a picture of the meal and tag the chef who showed me how to prepare it. It helped me stay relevant. I’d have a ton of little things to do. Read a bit of another unfinished book. Try calligraphy again. Why was S the hardest letter to write? All these happenings were interspersed with several conversations between Shifu Sait and me. Of course, I’d be the only one talking. Yet, he’d always have some valuable insights to offer. When the frown on his face deepened, it meant that my pitch was too loud for him. Shut up and let me sleep, he’d wince. It’s maybe daytime for you, but for me, it’s still night. No words. His expression told me all I needed to know. So, I shut up, on his cue. We’d thrive on each other’s energy and sometimes we’d even bite each other. Don’t roll your eyes. I sometimes bite my cat. Why should he have all the savage fun? I’d eat lunch, which would usually be rice with something else, dal, a veggie. I’ve had people tell me, ‘Oh, how do you eat rice? It goes straight to my hips!’ But they forget that I’m a south Indian; we live to eat rice. Rice only adds to our vitality and good looks, or so I think. Pickles are necessary to make a meal the real deal. I’d sit and relish that meal with the dal running down my fingers that I’d clean up with joy. Sometimes, I’d watch TV while eating, reruns mostly, and at other times, I’d try something new. During the pandemic, I found myself watching crime-and-serial-killer stuff, after which I needed to watch something light, to help digest the food I was eating. Then, it would be time for chai. Chai is sacred to me, and I’m a purist when it comes to it. I like a good, piping hot cup of tea, made with seventy per cent water, thirty per cent milk and jaggery (it’s healthier than sugar). Adding all these masalas to the brew makes it silly biryani, and I don’t want to have biryani. In the evenings, I’d watch the sun go down from the living-room window. One time, the sun had resembled the Eye of Sauron and I posted the picture without knowing who the hell Sauron was. Then, I looked it up and watched The Lord of the Rings. I’d gaze at the sun going down between the concrete hills. I had never noticed that I could see patches of the grey Arabian Sea from where I stood, until we went into lockdown. On one such day, it rained, and the sun shone simultaneously. I was writing my book, searching for a rainbow inside my heart, but lo and behold, I looked out of the window, and there was a rainbow sweeping across the sky. It was a sign of hope, and it pushed me to continue writing. It was fun to stay indoors, but I missed the days when I was on the road, overbooking my days when I had so much to do and so little time to do it in. Now there was so much time and nothing to do. The change was sweet and refreshing. I thought about the days before the pandemic. Coffee less relished, the hustle of what to wear, me putting on my face, screaming and shouting in the background. Unscheduled plans popping up under the guise of ‘work’ and hours spent on the road. I’d return home with the weight of the world on my shoulders, the day having gone by like a magic trick. I’d feel

spent, like a penny shuffled through the knuckles. I know I have been given many opportunities that I am eternally grateful for, and that I shouldn’t complain, but this enforced time out taught me a few things. You don’t necessarily have to read all the books in the universe to write one. (Never mind that it’s also maybe a humanly impossible ask.) Similarly, you don’t need to do anything in a particular field to belong there. The only requirement is an open mind and interest. It will all work out as long as you don’t put pressure on yourself to become a runaway hit or success story. The reason why many of our plans fail is that we burden them with the weight of expectations. Of course, we all want to do well. I’d assume as much, at least. But a wiser way to look at life would be to say, ‘Whatever the outcome, I’m okay with it. A lot depends on the time and the situation. On my part, I am doing things to the best of my ability.’ The other thing I realized is things don’t happen even if you scream and lose your lid. If things are meant to go wrong, they will. If you had control over them, then you would be the artist of your destiny. So instead of fretting about the things that are going wrong, why not focus on fixing them before they go from bad to worse? It’s a much more forgiving route to take because not only do you become a better person for yourself, but you also become an inspiration for others. I could write a thesis on how worried I am about everything directly, and indirectly, connected to me, but then again, I can’t fix everything. So, I turn it around into wonder. During the pandemic, I wondered what the world would be like when we were back on our feet again, once again caught up in the web of actions versus thoughts. The number of times we would cancel on plans or make plans that would nearly never come to fruition. Perhaps I’d travel more. And so, I looked up places on my travel wishlist and settled on Palau, ah! It’s an island in Micronesia, an archipelago of over 500 little islands. They have the most incredible diving there. The waters are fiercely clear—I’d like to say like my mind was just then. Once, when I was in Japan, I met a man who had travelled from Palau. He showed me a photo on his phone of a few zillion sharks under his kayak. The vision was imprinted upon my mind, and I’ve wanted to travel there ever since. The best part about Palau for me is the pledge they make you sign before you enter their country. Children of Palau. I take this pledge, as your guest, to preserve and protect your beautiful and unique island home. I vow to tread lightly, act kindly and explore mindfully. I shall not take what is not given. I shall not harm what does not harm me. The only footprints I shall leave are those that will wash away. I have places to pack into my suitcase and my heart, which is what I did on most days during the lockdown. I saw, I learned, and I felt, and that was enough. At night, I’d turn off the yellow lamp that stands in my living room and head to my bedroom. I’d sit on my bed and sigh with relief. Another day gone by. I’d open a book or listen to one on my phone. I’d stretch my feet, and I’d want to shut my eyes … but I’d be distracted. It was Shifu Sait with a lovely, bright yellow stress ball stuffed in his mouth. ‘Won’t you play with me?’ he’d cry. That there is my universe, but I couldn’t spoil him. So, I’d politely ask him to bugger off and turn out the lights.

24 Ask Me Again … Why Write a Book?

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loom where you are planted, I was taught as a child. I’ve uprooted myself from everything that is familiar and risen from the soil to be standing here today. I don’t think that gives me any special kind of ‘suraksha kavach’, a protective shield. If anything, it makes me more susceptible to comments about who I should be and why I didn’t do things differently. We live in a world where we must learn to make peace with our stories. The ones we have lived, the ones we are living and the ones we shall create. My story, my journey, is my pet project. It is about me living, experiencing and experimenting until I knew I was breathing without an umbilical cord. We are products of the choices we make. We chatter within the confines of the mind; we judge ourselves before we allow anyone else to judge us; we scrutinize ourselves till we face despair and stare at fear in the eye. It is in those final moments, when our body kicks up a storm with the fight-or-flight syndrome, that we pick a direction. It’s called survival instinct. When I look back over the short time that I have lived and loved, I know that most of the choices I made were based on convenience. I made those choices consciously. They were never prompted by a need to contradict my upbringing or an urge to make a statement. I don’t call myself a rebel. These choices were mine to make. They made me brave, resilient and the tigress I am today. This tigress who is known not to mince her words, who asks for help when she needs it, apologizes when she is wrong, appreciates small gestures, because life isn’t Dubai—it isn’t biggest, tallest, greatest, grandest; it’s about the little things that make you stop and stare and absorb. One who takes breaks in between the chaos, is aware that frowning makes her forehead look silly and also has a big, luminous smile which shines through her eyes. I am not a fancy pants, privileged human who came with a cushion under her bum and a silver spoon stuck between her lips, but hey, like everyone else in the economy section of the plane, I had my life jacket underneath my seat, and I am privileged enough to have the perception of being safe. I look at my hands and acknowledge my ten long fingers, and food tastes so much better when eaten with them. It’s lovely to sit and chat with my inner self and jog my memory to the incidents that made me who I am because I know I am not done, I have only just begun. I don’t have big words and large ambitions; I have only strived for what I didn’t have. Over time, I’ve realized that although I will continue to strive, I will never again ignore who I am, for it is my inner self that will determine who I will be in the future. We will all die. Of course, we will. We try to battle flu and infection, walk after breaking and mending our bones, heal our hearts and minds because they’ve become even more fragile than our bones. We are finally acknowledging that mental health—ours and that of others—needs to be paid attention to. We continue our small motions, repeatedly in a loop, until it is time for us to leave. Death will get you irrespective of who you are or where you come from, your background or your morals. You will die, and die either young on the Gregorian calendar or young at heart. While you live, all I need to say is, it isn’t enough that you tried to be kind in bits and parts while you existed. It needs to be who you are as a whole. Imagine you are not Minotaur—half-man, half-beast—you are a full human, or at least that’s what science says. So, there is no half-kindness. It is just whole.

Are you tired? I am exhausted. There is so much conversation today that I can’t be bored. I want to be bored so badly. I am eager to be bored. But I am infested with thoughts and ideas and lame-ass dreams. These dreams are so lucid that when I wake up, I feel I spent the night in a boxing ring. I am angry, and I am sad. I am ecstatic and euphoric because I don’t dump myself with expectations of the unseen future. I look at the now, and it’s enough to look forward to. I am grateful for the life I’ve already lived. Yet, there is so much that my body and my mind haven’t yet experienced. I am yet to meet so many people, travel to different places, eat new food, experience other cultures. When I see people hating as though life has put a full stop to their mortality metre, I wonder if they think they are here to live forever. I would never want to give up on my dreams. They come to me every night. I don’t remember all of them, but I know they pay a visit to my mind, the shrine up there. I don’t know which of my dreams will come true before I die. Maybe I am making plans of not making babies, but one day I will. Maybe I will be sitting alone on that blue bench overlooking the turquoise ocean from the edge of a cliff, reading a book as the waves froth under my skin.

I don’t know how it will all end, but I know how it all started, so I think I know how I ended up here. Why climb a mountain? Because it’s there to be climbed. Ask me again … Why write a book? Because it is meant to be written.

Acknowledgements

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hank you Vivek Desai, the photographer of the cover, and Farrah Kader for organizing the shoot. Jayapriya Vasudevan and Smita Khanna at Jacaranda Agency for the trust and support through the making of my debut as an author. HarperCollins India for betting on a rookie. Trisha Bora for picking up the reins and taking me through to the finish line. Gautham Azad for being my friend and the numerological consult. My family—Mumma, Papa, Danish, Anya—who supported me to become the woman I am. Shifu Sait for making me the mother I am. To all those souls I have met and interacted with, the ones who cast an indelible impression on my existence, and permitted and encouraged me to write my story fearlessly. Bharati Chawathe, my therapist at Spring Consultancy. Writing this book was a cathartic journey of overcoming my hurts and my pain. Rolled into these pages is a brief account of many elaborate therapy sessions that I have endured.

About the Book

At five, she took the stage by storm as Indira Gandhi. At eight, she was bullied. At ten, she hit rock bottom. At thirteen, she discovered a personality development programme that changed her life forever… From being an awkward teen in braces to becoming a sought-after master of ceremonies to successfully portraying the transgender Cuckoo on the hit Netflix series Sacred Games, Kubbra Sait has broken boundaries and made a name for herself. Her ordinary upbringing notwithstanding, Kubbra is an extraordinary woman who quickly learnt how to deal with the harsh ways of the world and shape her life successfully despite them. The bullying she encountered in school as a child helped her face nepotism in Bollywood, an industry known to favour its own, often at the cost of talented ‘outsiders’. Part memoir, part inspirational treatise, Open Book lays bare the struggles, achievements, joys and failures, and the many reinventions of a shy and anxious Bangalore girl who dreamt of making it in the competitive world of cinema.

About the Author

Kubbra Sait is an Indian actress best known for her performance in Netflix’s Sacred Games. The other web series she has been part of include Foundation, Illegal: Justice, Out of Order and The Verdict: State vs Nanavati. She has also starred in films like Dolly Kitty Aur Woh Chamakte Sitare, Jawaani Jaaneman, Sultan and Ready.

‘Readers will marvel at the spirit and resilience of this woman, as Kubbra Sait shares the battles and victories of her childhood that made her the stunning individual she is today. A story well worth telling, reading and applauding.’ —Faye D’Souza ‘This green-eyed girl is a sorceress who transports us to the magical world of a creator. Each chapter is a door to a millennial’s mind.’ —Roshan Abbas

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First published in India by HarperCollins Publishers 2022 4th Floor, Tower A, Building No. 10, Phase II, DLF Cyber City, Gurugram, Haryana – 122002 www.harpercollins.co.in 2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1 Copyright © Kubbra Sait 2022 P-ISBN: 978-93-5489-447-3 Epub Edition © June 2022 ISBN: 978-93-5489-384-1 The views and opinions expressed in this book are the author’s own. The facts are as reported by her, and the publishers are not in any way liable for the same. Some names have been changed to protect the identities of individuals. Kubbra Sait asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. For sale in Indian Subcontinent only All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.