Tahira Kashyap | Motherhood, Being An Author & Learnings From Battling Cancer

0:00 hey tahira welcome to the kidsra press podcast uh really excited to chat with you because i read the 12 commandments of being a woman and like i was chatting with you earlier you've literally bared your soul so what gave you the idea to write i don't think i was in my right senses when i took to writing this book [Laughter] clearly i was not in my senses so um yeah like i said as much as i'm

0:28 glad people are liking it but i've given a lot of palpitations to my family members so it's i'm living under the same roof with the people that have mentioned in the book um but yeah it was good and that's the person that i am i'm quite unfiltered that way so i think that's what has been the voice of my book as well it's just just an extension to how i am right and it's ironic that i met you

0:57 just before the lockdown i think that was possibly our last event i think that anybody would have done on a large scale when we met at the aerial event and uskebat straight meeting you uh with a new cred that's added to your profile which is that of being an author um what's next what what you're working on next so yeah i think i i am a storyteller by heart so and i extend that storytelling thing across mediums so whether that's

1:26 the form of a book or in the form of a movie or podcast it's a beautiful world that we are living in and mass media is reaching new whites and i have a terrible cold right you can see tyra tell me you know i always believe that you're a product of your childhood did you always know that you are going to be a storyteller author filmmaker you know when you when you mention in the book about um you know this girl with low

1:56 confidence and you know being this really shy sort of girl and thinking uh and you know you were you've literally said like you know not having the biggest stress size was like a big uh big issue did you ever think that that shy um girl would turn out to be this fearless person that she is today you know it's very beautifully how you just ask them the question that you know your childhood is basically uh it's it's you

2:25 know reflection of of your um those qualities that you exhibit while you're in your childhood and somehow um those qualities or the the areas that you're attracted to they get diluted by your vision of working secular world and your conspiracy theories that i'm i'm not cut out for this even though your heart isn't there so just to take that further um my mom just showed me um my report card my nursery report card

2:55 and in that report card my nursery i was four oh yeah i was four and that's where my teacher had written there's a remark that you know tyra is okay in studies she's good in studies but she's the grandmother of the class and why she said the grandmother was because i used to tell stories and so when there was no one in the class i used to take over and i used to start telling stories to the kids and to my

3:22 friends and became a storyteller since then and my teacher could see that so i don't know if i could ever see that but clearly my teacher saw that though she termed me as a grandmother but uh but i have really truly taken a lot of solace a lot of happiness and it's very cathartic when i write and i don't have a sibling you know so when i was a kid my way of expressing uh whatever i was

3:48 going through was um in my diary so i had those funny secret diaries those that had a lock but the chubby also was his mama so i am very uh i feel very sabotaged so then she she always had uh she used to she knew what was there in my diary but i used to maintain that i used to write and uh you know and it's something that has been a very intrinsic part of my my life in terms of it is a source of

4:17 happiness and joy but as i grew up um my of course interests got diversified into theater and all of that which is also an extension of storytelling uh but my intelligence which is silly at times uh it told me that you know uh you can't make a career out of this you know so which is why i went the science route i go into corporate sector i did all of that but by the end of it now i'm back to my

4:44 roots and this is what gives me happiness right when you talk of the silliness i it reminds me of the time when you mentioned that your parents had gone for their annual overnight holiday and you sneaked in the boys [Laughter] yeah i ever think that you know going into that uh going into getting that blue blue film dvd and doing all those silly things uh with of course your friends and now husband

5:14 do you ever think you guys would be where you are today did you have the slightest doubt that you'd make it so oh big honestly speaking i don't know about big or not but uh nobody knows about um especially me i can only speak about myself you know there are a lot of people who know what they want and they have a very clear cut career thinking within five years two years short term goals five years

5:41 long time dog goes this is the sage kids this is this age this and this everything is so meticulous but for me i have been such a all over the place pelva omelette and i absolutely had no clue what was your tipping point that you said i'm a storyteller this is this is who i am what was your tipping point so honestly speaking there is no alpha and beta in our relationship i don't know how does

6:09 it work for other people but there are certainly some areas that i have taken over and there's certain some areas that he has taken over it's a beautiful environment at home where we let each other grow in fact if at all we have given each other a lot of space so that is there when did i figure out my true calling was it's very inspiring to have someone in your environment who's so charged and motivated you know it's very very so the

6:36 two ways to look at it either you get beaten down by it and think that this is this alpha guy who's really achieving what he wants to do or you take a note from that inspiration and see wow that person is so passionate about what he wants to do i can find my own passion too when you were battling with um you know battling with cancer did you have a question why me no so with god's grace

7:02 not even once till date what's the date today till 28th of november 2020 i have it right how how are you so strong taira how could you not question because when we're dealing with adversity the first thing you say to yourself is why me why did you do this to me like we just blame the sun moon stars god everybody and say that so yeah with me honestly speaking i have a beautiful philosophy that really

7:33 pulled me up from the from the depths of despair that i was in um which i met and mentioned about in the book as well that you know everybody have their own fights they have their own battles and just because there's a health battle doesn't mean that's more serious uh or that's more consequential more than a heartbreak i mean it could have equal repercussions and and whoever is going through whatever challenge that challenge is is really huge for that person

8:03 so um i for me fighting my mental uh unhappiness and sadness that was a bigger challenge and so i could do that with the help of a beautiful uh philosophy i i chant i follow nitrogen's bitism and i was going very strong in my faith is when cancer happened so when it happened my perspective towards life had changed at the fundamental level because of this practice and so i saw it this practice also tells you that

8:33 when problems come you know they are sort of windows for you to make a change in your life these are the times that you can change the causes that you've made in the past do not succumb to to the challenging situation which is there and thereby change your karma and thereby change the causes that you're making and thereby look at it as an opportunity to change something about your own self because nobody changes in the most congenial

8:57 environment you know so if the going is good you are as is the only time an opportunity that you get to become a better version of yourself is in a challenging situation and so for me that was uh the health uh challenge that i had and with that perspective i took it up i have no one else to blame why should i blame anyone there's no one to blame if i haven't given credit for all the good things happening in my life to

9:22 anyone why should i give the blame to anyone you know blame anyone for it so yeah it's all critical you're so sorted you are just so sorted tell me when you you mentioned earlier on in the interview that you get a single child was being a single child one of the reasons why you have two kids um yes also no also but um generally we had two unplanned babies trust the punjabi hormones that we have excited ones and so who does it twice

9:55 you become more careful but this is where that's who we are as people and so but the thing is uh each time we had an unplanned pregnancy uh i went ahead with it the decision to go for it and maybe some uh consciously uh maybe that's might have played in my head honestly speaking there are whatever decisions we make and say there's a lot of role that our background our intentions have and our subconscious mind so i'm sure maybe that

10:26 was a working guess maybe uh because i was a single kid perhaps that might have worked but or genuinely both of them are not bland so have people murdered you for spilling so many beans in the book yeah yeah like i'm telling you my father refuses to go beyond the second chapter he's like i'm not reading it i don't care about what all you did i don't want to know and i don't want to discuss so

10:51 he's super embarrassed my mother had a good laugh but she was also shocked and she was like oh god this is what you all did and listen like yeah and so now when i enter the living area everybody zips up because i they they figure it out and that becomes material for me so sorry you're like flying eyes like someone mistaken

11:26 is there an audience for this did you feel that yeah for sure i mean to say it's again these are the fears so whenever you know a low-life state whenever you feel you will see that all these fears that you have fought in the past all of them will come gushing to the surface they'll all come to the surface whether you have fought anxiety or whether you have fought depression you've fought in security you've fought envy

11:55 all of us have these emotions but who are we fooling nobody is perfect out here we all have these emotions but the thing is uh we managed to overcome them on most of the good days and what are good days it's nothing but your own life state and so if your life state is low it's dipping then all these fears do come back and so yes i did think about it a few times but then i also thought that

12:19 i am not going to really now again it's like being aware and work in progress towards yourself working towards your own happiness i think i took up to writing this book because i like writing and i love writing and i have spoken with my publisher she likes my work um this is the place that we are headed at i'm going to enjoy every piece that i write i'm going to enjoy every chapter that i write i wanted to be a

12:44 source of biggest happiness for me and uh that's how then it just the feelings i think i hope you get you you too feel that when you as a reader read it you feel the same joy or the same because it really has come from a very honest heart and an honest place and so when you try to figure out whether people will read or people will write will will appreciate this then you become little pretentious because you're

13:11 trying to please a certain section of society um but my idea was to have fun genuinely have fun uh while writing these incidents in my life were a source of um you know it was very intense at the point of time that i experienced it but in retrospect it it was quite funny for me and so i wanted to share that with the world and yes these fears this is not the last time these fears are going to come to me i have

13:39 come to me i know for the rest of my life these fairs are going to keep coming for every project for each one of us man see i mean to say when you take an interview when do you do something i'm sure this thing plays in your head also will people like it and i ask the right things and i look good these prayers always come for each one of us but by the end of it i think

13:59 we need to put them aside and really have fun in our present tenni with the abundance of having so much taira how do you keep your butchers grounded how do you make sure that your upbringing and what they have today is is kind of the same and what part of your childhood values you're like this this they must have you know there's something that my father has ingrained it in me ingrained in a sense every time he used to drop me

14:31 to my kindergarten school i was brought up in chandigarh so my daddy should drop in every time i used to so i didn't need a moral science uh class anywhere in school because my dad used to do that every morning so he ingrediented me and one of the few things that he did was he told me time and again that you know if wealth is lost nothing is lost i'm sure he must have heard of it too and so if health is

14:57 lost something is lost but if character is lost then everything is lost and that just became a part of me and my being and that's something i try to make my kids understand it's very important to have a strong character a grounded character because that's the closest thing that you have for the rest of your life they're going to be ups they're going to be lows you know but if you have a sturdy foundation you don't get easily swayed you know so

15:27 um i think i give complete credit if at all my kids are grounded and good kids so i give complete credit to the kind of uh parenting that my parents did the kind of upbringing that i had i do have complete middle class values i am i think 40 times before buying something for myself i have a heart to buy things for others but for myself i think 20 30 40 times and so i calculate okay this is what i made in the month

15:57 maybe i can buy this thing for myself so i i do that i do that and my kids see doing that so they do i don't know if they know the denominations money but they do have value um and there is extreme uh value for human emotions also in my house and so uh that is what is at utmost precedence for all of us like where we really really respect humanity and really respect people so

16:27 these are the some things that i have learned from my parents and i hope to sort of extend them the same to my kids as well so yeah it is which is so uh heartwarming i i always feel and i always tell this to all my friends and i feel like even if i've been half as good as my parents were i'll be sorted incredible how do you carve out time how do you carve out time between your writing storytelling

16:49 and the bachelors and family i i think once you like what you do you do figure out time for everything i think it's about liking what you're doing so i have a lot of gratitude each time i get an opportunity to work uh i become very excited and i'm very very kicked about it and so i do try to make time and i do have time just like how you are doing it mansi what are you asking me just like how you

17:20 are doing it exactly so i want to ask you how do you do it whatever your answer is my answer okay i'm gonna save my answer for next time okay this is a rabbit five with a writer so i'm expecting a lot of under a lot of pressure my nose is blocked my mind is blocked everything is blocked i don't know what am i going to say okay uh quickly the book you're reading right now uh becoming

17:46 okay one tip to get kids starting to read try to share a book with them so yeah like the prince prince is such a nice book we can read it and you can read with your kids too so yeah okay uh have you learned to say no better it's tough but yes okay mom brain is a real thing true or false mom brad

18:24 how much time do you spend on it [Music] maybe 30 to 30 to 40 minutes in a day and how many minutes do you spend taking that picture so these are very quick ones very quick ones whatever whenever i am i click and i just put it genuinely okay uh social media to me is um it is uh social media is is a place for information a lot of

18:55 information okay um one subject i can't teach my kids um mathematics did you take science i did i but i was meditating how was your maths week no no i was medical so i didn't have maths i had physics chemistry biology i was very good with biology i was very good with zoology and yeah whatever math was there in the physics part of it i used to struggle i used to struggle i was very bad with with equations so i

19:26 just got through just because my zoology and biology was very very good okay one quality i want my son to have respect for humanity okay one quality i want my daughter to have respect for humanity okay one adjective that describes your relationship with your son oh i don't know it's a

19:57 see my mind is completely blocked right is blocked hello give me some choices no [Laughter] okay uh your biggest fear [Music] losing out on someone i guess yeah what is the new normal for your family this living in pandemic and this lockdown has become the new normal so

20:27 masks and sanitizer has become an accessory more than anything else we have now masks different sort of yeah what made you think of one day at a time what what prompted you with that hashtag oh did i i have been using that a lot no one day at a time yeah because that's how it is i realize it's about living one day at a time there's no point thinking about 10 days in advance and having all those

20:54 sort of goals it's about making daily determinations of being happy each day so one day at a time right three books that shaped you oh my you know i i really like um there's this book called 40 rules of love by alex shafa so that i really like um i like murakami books so yeah and i like um i like mitch album so not just two three books these authors i usually

21:26 go into this excuse me sorry so yeah so these are the authors that i have i've read most of their books so yeah okay did you like write something and you said yeah this is too much that happened i'm a very bestie excuse me wow this is such an amazing interview [Laughter] thank god i'm not doing this in person imagine on

21:57 [Laughter] people sneezing with so much of suspect that i know like literally what i would have had sleepless nights you've been incredible and i'm really really looking forward to seeing what's next from tahira because it's just like i said it's so amazing to

22:28 see the same sort of values and you know the realism that you have in you across your feet across your books across meeting you in person or or through zoom you're just the same warm person so it's just amazing to meet you and chat with you each time thank you so much mansi i hope not to sneeze the next time when we meet or eat i'm looking forward to that and i hope to meet you in person again i'm done

22:53 with zoom in yes yes so am i i think we are going to head there's oops i think good days are coming okay cool thank you so much thank you so much thank you thank you so much bye [Music]