Exclusive | Lisa Ray Cancer Survivor | Close To The Bone

0:00 hi lisa excited to have you and for chatting with you your journey's been so inspiring i mean a picture of you um you know in that afternoon i think any kid in the eight growing up in the 80s and 90s is gonna have that like that song and a picture of you so well etched in their memories and now speaking to today it's it's really surreal because i never thought about each other now two big years 2018 because you had

0:31 your babies 2019 because you have your pork right you're my third baby you could start your third baby the memoir right so um let me have it how did it all come about like how the last 10 months how would like 10 months now right 10 they're 11 months 11 months one year next month june wow so tell us all about that like houses last loving homes fit i've just started a little bit before the last 11 months because um

1:02 it's it's been magnificent you know but it's it hasn't uh our babies haven't come into our life without some challenges of course uh our babies were born by a surrogacy and uh ideally i wanted our babies to be born in india but india went and banned commercial surrogacy um literally a week before we were supposed to begin and that was really heartbreaking i have to say and i don't endorse it at all um because i think

1:31 it's literally throwing out the babies with the bathwater it had to be regulated surrogacy in india but you know banning it often leads to these unethical practices just going underground yeah so anyways that's my that's my rant on commercial surrogacy in india uh but you know in the meantime i'm a very determined bugger and um and so i actually ended up uh

2:02 researching and finding another country the republic of georgia which used to be part of the ussr and it's just actually north of uh north of turkey and that's for surrogacy uh international surrogacy has been going on there in a very ethical way in a very transparent way it's completely legal there's no black and white about it so we had an agency who's helping us with that and so i actually told them to go check out georgia and the

2:31 [Music] managing director of the coordinating agency went there thanked me profusely later because georgia has the best wine so it was a whole voyage of discovery for him and of course he checked out the medical facilities and said okay you are our couple zero starting this entire adventure and process for us we don't have any experience doing this in georgia but if you're willing to go ahead i've checked it out i think it looks like a great option so

3:02 we did so we started our surrogacy journey with our babies um out of georgia but i have to also say simultaneously in the background i was finishing off my work for an amazon series called four shots more peas so that was going on and then i was also finishing the manuscript for my memoir close to the bone uh i had to submit it to my publisher and i submitted submitted my manuscript literally the day before my babies were

3:32 born so june 22nd my babies were born june 21st so there was a lot going on simultaneously in my life but i've come to accept that that's sort of the nature of my life yeah you know my life is always i'm sort of standing in the center of this of this sort of magnificent whirlwind and um you know lots of different forces at play there's serendipity you know chance and faith as well

4:02 and of course also my own personal determination and efforts and support a great deal of emotional support from my little tribe around me and sort of out of this strange combination somehow or the other you know these these beautiful aspects of my life have been born right but tell me how did uh so when when was the time that you know you said that i am going to take this event and help us the journey of those nine months

4:30 really once you actually reached project i'm a funny bugger um i don't you know it didn't bother me at all as i said i have a great deal of uh of uh let me say i have a strong belief in and faith that things will work out uh you could say that my belief system i believe you can divide up everyone in the world to two camps either you believe that life is for you or against you

4:59 and really if you think about it all of your behavior patterns and your actions arise out of that if you believe that life is against you as in life is a struggle and things are going to go wrong before they go right and you know um and and my success is at the expense of someone else's success that will really define you as a person right you you tend to become perhaps a bit more controlling these are from my

5:25 personal observations right you tend to become a little bit more controlling you know uh you tend to become a little bit more anxious about things i now today after many years didn't come naturally after many years of my own personal self-development i come from the second camp for the first camp which is i believe that life is for me so i make a decision i do everything that i can and then i let go right you know so i was really

5:50 cool about it and of course i was kept very very busy in the meantime i didn't have a lot of time to sort of sit and dwell on things we did not go to georgia until the last few two weeks before babies were born i wasn't stationed myself for nine months in georgia we were getting updates i was super busy but um so you know in in a nutshell i do have a great faith that things will work

6:14 out and with a certainty journey it was a journey because it did not work out right in the beginning yet you know we tried with india it didn't happen in india we tried with another country but that didn't happen um and yes there were moments of restoration for sure but i believed that ultimately if it was meant to be it would manifest and that you took an idea of not having it that'll hold you down it just just keep it was just your faith

6:44 that said just go on well faith and determination and stubbornness i'm extremely stubborn yeah as well um you know faith sometimes implies if you're very passive and you're not a passive person but at the same time you have to know when to um when to exert control and when to let go yeah that's the art of life i think because i know that i i know um you know a few of my friends and when they tried

7:08 this they've been there they've been stationed for nine months because they just don't want anything to go i understand yeah so i understand you know i understand and i don't judge anyone who's like that but you know my personal philosophy has risen out of my personal life experiences and a lot of it is embedded in having failed and fallen um and having having fallen well having failed spectacularly has taught me a lot about myself and what it means to rise out of

7:37 those circumstances and you know i incorporate a lot of what these philosophies i think taking a few a few uh steps behind what was the point like when you were battling with so many other things in life including including cancer what was that point like did it ever bother me that my biological clock is sticking and i need to do something about it was that never a conflict in my mind that you were no no

8:09 [Laughter] no no yeah i mean when it came to cancer no while the cancer i would say is probably a watershed moment that's when i realized it was only post cancer that i started feeling that perhaps i wanted to be a mother but for most of my life i didn't want to be a mother yeah it was as simple as that i haven't noticed that yeah so that's fantastic i have no one knows what general instinct i speak

8:36 no no no and i don't think it's even a matter of maternal instincts i just really realized that i it was a conscious decision that there i had other priorities in my life travel was always a very big priority the the lifestyle i was leading did not support having a child i was very independent as well um and i have no desire either to get married or have a partner like zero desire and then how did all of this

9:00 change and what was what was that moment when he said i need help i'm still in shock i'm still in complete and other shock that today like you know like sometimes i like wake up oh my god i just have this dream that i'm married and i have two kids oh it's real so i am that girl that's the thing you know i am that girl that just literally genuinely never had that desire and i think that it's legitimate and i have a

9:30 lot of girlfriends for whom they don't have any overwhelming desire to be mothers no and i'm completely sort of like that was that you said no i there's no particular moment no no my life is not really sort of about that this is when things change it happened very gradually um definitely things change post cancer i started thinking but because cancer helped me to slow down and to reflect and i had done so much work on myself

9:59 sort of personal development works or spiritual work i had you might also say i had no or would i do no should i would have coulda left in my life like that was always a bit of a marker i said i never want to have a should have would have could have in my life and i in all honesty didn't really have that that's the truth nobody can reflect on no and and it's not to say that i have lost my ambition

10:27 or that there still aren't a lot of things on my bucket list i still have a lot of things but i had immersed myself so profoundly in living from a very instinctual place in in living impulsively i had literally lived in one about seven different cities you know i would spontaneously just get up one day and move cities so i lived from that place that was meaningful for me everything you know i think a lot of

10:54 things in life are a matter of timing right as well so after cancer and it still wasn't an immediate thing there wasn't like a switch that happened but you know i had time to implement some lifestyle changes that weren't necessary for me that i had wanted to implement you know so it was a matter of slowing down of assessing what is important to me and what is not important to me and just naturally allowing the things that are

11:19 frivolous or the fact just kind of naturally melted away from my life right at that moment when you first help them like in your hands just describe that so it's an interesting story because we did not know the gender of our kids ahead of time it was a conscious thing we didn't want to know i feel there's so few big surprises left in life this is one of them and the rules in the clinic where the babies

11:49 were born as only one parent could be present because it was a c-section okay with the surrogate and i actually nominated my husband i wanted him to have that experience so i was not there when they were actually born i was waiting along with my mother-in-law and a few other people and uh so the first thing that happened is he walked in and he said we have two girls and i still remember my heart just you know your heart doing a dance

12:18 literally like your heart comes alive it becomes like this little boogie machine in your in your chest and um it felt really right but the whole time i thought that we were gonna have one boy one girl and i had chosen names accordingly um so the first it sounds bizarre the first thought was like oh we have to think of different names i love this how long you know you come off with like the most desirable right

12:43 that was the first thing but then i went into the actual you know to the nursery after they had cleaned them up and they put them both in the same little cot and it was just it was just phenomenal it was just pronounced at a moment that comes close to them yeah there are yeah i i honestly am not i'm not going to say that that is the absolute combination of my life here's my opinion as a woman as a mother

13:10 as someone who loves their kids dearly i believe that motherhood doesn't define me it's one more part of me leading a very rich and full life and something beautiful to share and i believe that i am shepherding these two beautiful souls into the world i don't feel a sense of ownership and i'm telling you that sincerely and i've sat and i thought about it very deeply and and tried to find whether i'm lying to myself i do this strange practice with

13:38 myself am i just saying that you know these are great words or do i actually believe in michael a lot of people we do do that you have had yourself and i do it also sometimes so i have to because this is too important you know what i mean so you know we do these strange things we do these strange things and i really do believe because i have you know there's there's sort of a philosopher a spiritual philosopher that

13:58 i've been following a long time and he often said it and even rumi has a great saying when he says these children do not belong to you they come through you i don't have that incredible possessiveness don't ask me why or how i have a great deal of love and also because i had a great teaching very early on and i write about this in my book close to the bone that love and attachment are two separate things but

14:22 they're often entangled and i went through a really really difficult process uh during the death of my mother of trying to disentangle them because i realized that i was making her stick around for a long time when she was in great pain physical pain rather than let her go and that letting her go as painful as it was was true love rather than even making her yeah it was the attachment so that was a great teaching difficult

14:50 but you know so with my children i adore them but i bringing them up in a way where they're belonging to a community you know i mean here we are in india and my kids are being passed around to my friends houses yeah i want them to be very comfortable in someone else's life i don't want them to be like running after me i don't know maybe that's also a function of because i'm having kids much

15:10 later in life i mean i'm 47 you know and uh so it's a very very interesting experience having children and i'm trying to apply a lot of my teachings and my own you know spiritual practice yeah that's great because because you know i know that so many and having doing historical last five years i know so many women just the minute their mothers they put everything else

15:44 [Music] but you know i also understand that it's really hard like i won't lie i mean i have i have two nannies yeah we can afford to have two nights um so i'm not necessarily spending those long sleepless nights uh with my kids i you know my nannies are are wonderful and loving and one of them has been there since they were born so she's like a real auntie i want my kids you know i want to bring

16:14 them onto sets i want to bring them you know i want to integrate them into our life yes um i want to be able to travel with them extensively it's not easy to be and it's never going to be but at least i have the intention of doing that but i have days also where i'm just like i'm too tired you know what i mean and and i have days when i want space for my kids

16:35 i think that's very the tech detox there right when you tell us about that that's super important i have to go on a retreat i try to schedule them between several times a year for me it's not a luxury it's a necessity i i would actually argue it's a necessity for everybody in today's world we're living in this bizarre sound bath of opinions and noise and you know the world is so noisy so again to find

16:58 your inner clarity to find your stillness to make you a better mother and to make you a better human being you have to cut yourself off and all of that stuff so i do it you know i do detoxes i go to like retreat centers i try to schedule you know two three times a year where it's about the eating but also about my ah you know cutting myself off from social media and from people why you

17:20 done that after the things not as much no no now that you're back into business do you feel like that death is oh my god i want to take that word out of our vocabulary it's just so meaningless actually um no i've been on social media a long time i have been working for a long time i'm

17:52 not suddenly back i've been working in india i haven't i had a career abroad so you know i've never not worked and uh i don't understand any of it no i'm not saying like i cut off but i am on social media and i understand the utility of it i understand how important it is particularly now when i have a memoir coming out close to the room when i have something that's so deeply personal my words

18:19 this creation is purely and entirely me so yes i am using my social media in order to leverage that i'm using my profile in order to leverage that i've been using my profile ever since i was diagnosed with cancer in order to be able to talk about things that are relevant to me yeah relevant i use that word relevant but deeply important to me you know so you know there is a balance that you have to find

18:45 um i think it's fine as long as it doesn't control you as long as you control it how does all that work kids you have your memory i would love to i i wish i wish that i had like an easy formula for it and i don't want to give the impression that i'm like i'm on top of it or i have it figured out i have nothing figured out but maybe because i come from this place

19:13 from my i don't know what the hell is going on somehow or the other i just you know important for all of you guys to say especially people who have the voice and posing it back say i don't have it over i don't have it all figured out and i think it's really important to say that and accept that at the same time you know of course you know i prioritize um yes i mean i have other people who make

19:37 schedules for me when it comes to work and say this is where you have to be on this day um and i'm pretty good about that you know i mean i've just come off of a night shoot i've been shooting uh pretty intensely so then i have to space it out yeah and i tried to like then take off a day to spend time with my kids um you know i it's okay i don't have it

19:56 all figured out you know my one friend gave me really good advice after my kids were born and you know this is i think probably the advice i would give someone else and she said two things number one a lot of people are going to give you a lot of advice when it comes to your your kids shut them up yeah it's your kids trust yourself trust your instincts number two your kids they don't need a perfect mom

20:22 they need a happy mother it's so true and that has really stayed with me so you know that's why i continue to work i don't strictly speaking have to work i choose to work i'm at that stage in my life but i work on things that are meaningful for me and i would love that my girls see that their mother you know what i mean is working has a voice in the world is you know maybe

20:45 creating small little ripples of change i think that would be really important on me and that has really stayed with me so you know that's why i continue to work i don't strictly speaking have to work yeah i choose to work up at that stage of my life but i work on things that are meaningful for me and i would love that my girls see that their mother you know what i mean is working has a

21:07 voice in the world is you know maybe creating small little ripples of change i think that would be really important for me let's talk about the daily [Laughter] i kind of loved read this question because there is no one day uh there was no typical but you know i'm sort of that's to be honest that's my comfort zone yeah i think the routine at this point in my

21:38 life doesn't suit me i've been living like this since i was 16 it would freak me out if i actually knew what i was doing every single day so are you going to be i could be raising your twins just the way your parents raised you like i know i know a lot of people say that if i do half a good job as my mom in raising me or my dad raising me i think i'm right

21:59 do you feel that or how's it gonna be different i think that there will be some some essence of it will be there for sure but the world has also changed so much since my cancer is i think also my parents gave me a very beautiful idyllic upbringing but you know they were also very rebellious so so much has changed the context has changed imagine my father's in bengali my mother is polish you know they defied both their families and

22:26 ended up bringing me up in canada um and yet i was very deeply connected with india we used to go back to calcutta and that ended up being my strongest emotional connection so it's a very unusual upbringing but you know it was also at a time pre-globalization create the digital world you know there was so much of context like for instance i was like a free-range chicken like nobody you know all of my time has been unsupervised because that's how

22:53 kids were brought up yeah you know i didn't have anyone running after me and giving me my snacks or reminding me that i have to go for piano lessons i just used to spend all my time on my free time alone in the neighborhood riding my bicycle or driving on my back in the grass this is in canada of course and calculator i was just surrounded by my cousins but i was still left to my own devices you know

23:14 wandering around their ancestral home and you know discovering little nooks and crannies and so you know it really fed my imagination but the world has changed you know i don't really know that it's a viable thing to do to let your kids be completely unsupervised so how can i say that i mean i think it's a lot of it is content and how such i've got my try

23:45 i'm very clear about that uh you know aside from my nannies i have such incredible friends in touch with i'm so grateful for them and one of the reasons why my husband and i chose to come back to india is so i could be close to my tribe you know especially when you're a working mom you know and i've landed in the middle of a very heavy schedule because you know i'm filming and it's the debut of the

24:08 release of my book close to the bone which is a huge event in my life and so you know i'm very realistic i just don't have the energy to spend on my kids all the time right now which is fine because i'll make up for it and my kids are quite young and i love that they are as i said very comfortable within this beautiful tribe of people you know i think they learn something precious from

24:35 each and every person advice to women especially in in the business of you know in the beauty and glamour business who are looking to start a family or even otherwise not even if they're not part of this but keep postponing this for like luck now but when the time will die when the time will be right do you feel like that is the right time yeah it is timing is there a right time no there isn't a right time for anyone i

25:03 think we shouldn't be giving each other advice i think we should just simply be supporting people's decisions that's all because there is pressure i mean we do look one thing we have to acknowledge in india is there is a lot of conditioning that has been internalized even in women who are strong and independent we it's a very patriarchal society we have internalized these attitudes that you know you shouldn't put off uh having a kid for too long you know and you must

25:30 become a mother that is the combination of your life and here's what a mother should look like yeah it's all isn't it so we actually have to change the conversation around and say i support you if you don't want to become a mother now i support you that's okay and if you want to become a mother much later in your life or if you want to become your mother early in your life i also support you i support

25:50 whatever decision you make we have to change the narrative yeah um okay we're gonna ask you a quick couple of quick questions and you need to respond in a world although your response to women can't have it all untrue okay being a parent to between is like is like

26:22 becoming a milkshake nothing i know he's just pondering i feel like i'm a milkshake and then suddenly somehow or the other the actual result is really delicious all right trust me nobody's answered anything raising your kids in india is the best place people who judge parents who operate the surrogacy

27:00 no no um i think you just need to mind their own business okay your response when they say say your kids are as beautiful as you my kids are more beautiful if you had more time you would write more books i wish people would not judge moms who think working moms are not good enough or selfish have a lot of time on their hands

27:32 okay your mom inspiration my mom inspiration is my mom the one thing you wish you could do better patience if the genie gave a mom one wish to make her life easier what would it be for you multiple hands what is the one thing you regret about your work that i was not honest with myself in the beginning of my career the one

28:02 lesson your kids have learned because you think their kids will learn because you were i i mean i think they will learn how to um find their voice find their own voice in the world okay um the mom that makes you wonder how does she do it chrissy teigen what is close to both of them and and walk us through walk us through a few pieces because i don't i mean i actually wanted to take a step

28:29 back and tell them what is close to the world not about yes first of all close to the bone is it is a memoir um i wish i could find another way of describing it but someone else who read it described it quite well they called it a travelogue of insights discoveries missteps and triumphs so it you know it it's about me but also not just about me it's also about a lot of the the eras that i've lived through the

28:58 places i've seen the things i've experienced starting right from the beginning in fact even from before the beginning i've you know always included a bit of my personal history and my parents personalities yeah because my parents were the original rebels you know and i thought that to understand myself i have to also understand what to understand certain aspects of myself when i reflected on it i said i have to actually understand my parents decisions and that was also the same sort of

29:25 decision that was made in writing the book because yes there is an aspect of talking about my cancer that comes right at the end of the book but i could not write about cancer and isolation from the rest of my life every part of our life is connected to the heart that came before whether you consciously realize it or not and we are all interconnected everything is interconnected so that's one part of close to the bone the

29:52 other part of it is it's my debut as a writer so what i wanted to share is that you know if you ask me what i always wanted to become as a writer i never wanted to be in this line which obviously begs the question well what the hell are you doing in this line and that was another reason but that's another reason why i wrote the book because my career started in such a bizarre surreal

30:14 serendipitous way that i felt that i have to also write about it you know it just happened it's like like well it literally just happened to me but it's more complex than that and that's why i've written about it you know if this had not happened if this had not happened if this had not happened i wouldn't have um landed up in india and started my career as a model so everything has been ruled by sort of fate and chance at that

30:39 certain point of time and it's genuinely how it happened and it sounds very strange to a generation today who make very conscious decisions but you have to remember when i started in 1991 the entertainment industry was not what it is today i think also is about removing masks right there we all are the victim of labels and other people's perceptions right mother is one label the same mother and there's a whole bunch of perceptions that call

31:06 that you say actress model there's a whole bunch of perceptions that come with that you know so i felt the need to challenge that because i am not what people think that i am and i played along that game for a while but you know again with cancer and announcing my cancer uh publicly that has obviously opened a new kind of dimension to my public perception but it's not deep enough and i've always wanted to take hold of my

31:34 own narrative i think that's important for every single woman and that's what i was finally able to do and i've always wanted to write a book i always felt that i would become a writer because i'm an introvert because i don't like being around people and i know that that again sounds bizarre but what the hell are you doing as an actress but that's why i wrote the book right there's a lot of very peculiar circumstances to my life story and i

32:01 felt maybe i have an interesting story to tell but not just that but it will also mark my debut as a writer and i certainly hope to write more books after this but i hope i'm giving the impression that this is a book that is not just about cancer and in fact i have to say that because if you're looking at this book also as a cancer survivor this is not the book for you there is uh obviously i go into in depth

32:24 into my diagnosis and how i handle that but there's another book in me that happens when i relapse which is not covered in this book or perhaps another book in me that i'd like to write about how i believe i actually healed myself using also complementary therapies but that is not covered in this book tell me lisa when you write the book and especially a memoir how much of it do you let go and how much bits do you

32:48 share so how much did i reveal of myself let me put it this way i actually slashed open a vein for this book how i have you describing it you know i wrote you know certain passages with my blood and uh it sounds a little bit dramatic but it's true it's very very candid and i believe in that but i am a true believer in truth the thing that i have a big issue with is hypocrisy

33:13 and hiding behind masks and you know the first part of my life was about that was about playing the game because i was young and vulnerable and you know a lot of my profession is about masks and manipulation and it never sat well with me so finally i get a chance to actually speak from a place as truthful as me when you talk about it like when you speak when you spoke of your diagnosis of cancer does it become easier

33:41 or does it do you embrace the better i always have it seems to be and and one is of course exactly when you come to a position of power you talk about it i think it makes it it kind of gives the right messages that is not a problem you know i don't know it's not a taboo no it's not a taboo i mean of course you know there's this idea that anything that is hidden anything that is in the

34:06 shadows has power over you yes and as soon as you bring something out into the light yeah it sees us having power over here so that's been really important to me um i somehow have managed to cultivate a sense of objectivity about it but i think that that's more the skills of a writer i'm an observer i'm a natural observer i can be in the middle of a conversation and yet there's a part of me that is

34:30 watching everything you know it's observing so um i i have that peculiar quality yeah so even with my cancer i was sort of perhaps while i was going through it i was sort of already writing a book in my mind and watching and you know picking up on the little details that's that's just how i'm this is our buyer when you spoke of it not many people were talking about it there was no one else there was

34:55 no one else at that moment at that moment so how did you again was the moment you said that i have to talk about you yes there is and i've written about it in my book to underline how that happened but i basically again was feeling very suffocated by what was being asked about me like hide it don't talk about it you know um so i that didn't sit in well with me you know if it sat well with me that would have been

35:21 fine and i honestly don't judge someone we should not judge each other if you are uncomfortable with talking about your diagnosis you must be truthful to that i was uncomfortable with not talking about my diagnosis and that's simply the reason why i chose to go public okay and now we come to the last bit of it where we actually ask you 33 questions and again you just need to okay just hold very quickly okay i'm not

35:49 fond of these i'll have you know but let's go along with it okay if you have one superpower what would it be to make everybody truthful who was the last person you talked on the phone my agent my manager was the last person you sent next to my husband my memoir is a travelogue of personal insights experiences

36:22 missteps and best gift you've ever received my big please the best advice you've received so far i'm going to share the advice that my friends shared with me when i became a mother which is that my girls don't need a perfect mother they need a happy mother perfect the best thing someone told you when you were battling with cancer um when i wanted to express my thanks because i

36:53 received a lot of support from india from a lot of people in the world from nurses from strangers everyone said to me don't thank me just pay it forward so i want to say that if you receive um a great gesture of kindness a forward that gesture the last photograph you took my babies of me getting my makeup done with my babies your favorite social media app instagram how much did you spend on it

37:27 i want to say 15 minutes to half an hour one day what's your beauty right now apple cider vinegar and hot water beans or flats flats your next book will be called for having been broken

37:59 one thing you would tell everyone who's looking to hold face which means is think twice yeah