A Conversaion With Suhrita Das

Pooja sits with writer-filmmaker Suhrita Das, a woman who had to lose everything she was before she could finally become who she is. Das, the director of Tu Meri Poori Kahaani, and Pooja speak of the price of awakening —a motherhood lived in absence, a marriage left behind, a body changing before the world was ready to see her, and a film born through fire instead of applause. Two women —no masks, no posturing —holding space for the truth that: sometimes a life is not built, it is survived into. Not achievement. Rebirth.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
My guest on this episode is someone whose life story
is nothing short of extraordinary.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
A woman who stood up for.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Me before she ever met me, and when she did,
introduced me to the revolutionary writings of marsh Weather Devi
and the treasure trove that is Seagal books. The one
who watched with lack of judgment as my hands shook
while I typed out a message standing on a street
in Kolkata proclaiming to the world that my marriage was over.

(00:39):
From hairdresser to writer to filmmaker, she is a woman
who has truly scripted her own destiny. Shuritha thas writer
and the director of to Mari Puri Kahani.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Welcome to the Puja Butt Show.

Speaker 3 (01:01):
Thank you for that welcome.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
So you know beginnings and you know endings too, and
life in debt. So let's start with the ending of
your comfortable life, which was actually a beginning, one that
brought you to where you are today.

Speaker 4 (01:14):
Yes, but first of all, that image that visits me
today while you are sitting here, your immaculate self, that
archies poster with a white lace kind of a fabric,
and your wavy hair in my conservative Bengali joint family
that I lived, My room shifted to various parts of
the house, and that poster kept shifting with me. In

(01:38):
those days, we had the culture of putting up posters.
So I had poujab Hut, Gabriella Sabatani and Stephi Graff
August Company.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
I must say, but you told me that you used
to fight for me.

Speaker 1 (01:51):
Yes, with your classmates who would say, see what your
poo jab.

Speaker 2 (01:55):
Hut is done?

Speaker 4 (01:56):
Yes, So there was a there was an our ravena
tandon our club, and that was my.

Speaker 3 (02:02):
Puja Hut club.

Speaker 4 (02:03):
I used to think, what is this person like? She
knows what she's doing. So pou jab Hut is not
just playing a character. She is a person with a
mind of her own and she speaks like nobody can.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
Well if only in you. I had no idea what
I was doing.

Speaker 1 (02:18):
I was a misfit, yes, and I think you were
a misfit too, Yes. And it was one misfit recognizing
something of herself in another misfit.

Speaker 4 (02:26):
If she's there, if she's doing so well, if I
have a chance in the world.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
But tell me where did this all begin for you?
I mean, you know this whole thing about you have
to be an insider to make it in movies.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
I think you just bust that myth completely.

Speaker 1 (02:41):
You came from a town, which, of course was very
rich with regards to its culture.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
You saided writing stories.

Speaker 4 (02:50):
I did my graduation in English Honors from Calcutta University.

Speaker 2 (02:54):
Oh God, I'm intimidated.

Speaker 4 (02:56):
Then my father had the foresight to say that you
should study business management. I don't know why he said that,
but I also did not want to do masters because
I loved literature beyond putting it insider syllabus. By the
time I had finished my graduation, I thought a master's
degree will not let me fetch that love for literature
that I have. I can pick up all the books

(03:16):
read and I can write. Also, writing is something that
I wanted to do since I think I was eleven
or twelve years old. I come from a conservative, joint family.
In Bengali families, you know, the younger people are normally
people who stay quiet. Like we come from a culture
where you usually supposed to look down or when an

(03:37):
elder is speaking, not speak back at all. So I
found the pen and a diary to be a very
easy mode of communication. I felt all those words that
are bursting to come out, let me put them down.
So writing was a necessity for me. It was self
expression for me. But I was not a very brilliant student.

(03:58):
My marks were not too good and my father said,
you should do an MBA. It will give you some
kind of a semblance as to what you want to
do for the rest of your life. So I was
doing a marketing specialization with this college called Wigan and
Lee Business School in Calcutta. I had also met someone
with whom I think I wanted to spend the rest
of my life. I thought I wanted to But while

(04:19):
that course was coming to an end, I was also
in a two mind of I am signing up for
a marriage or a institution where I'm expected to only
be that much and not beyond that. My limited understanding
for writing at that time told me, you just want
to write, so you keep reading and you just.

Speaker 2 (04:39):
Write for yourself.

Speaker 4 (04:40):
Yes, for yourself. I thought that was all of it.
But as I started really start getting into this journey
of marriage, living inside a family which is not biologically mine,
and it appeared to be something from the outside, and
when you enter those walls it becomes something else.

Speaker 2 (04:58):
Like most families, most.

Speaker 4 (05:00):
Families I felt like this is not me. So I
used to seek some kind of comfort by stepping out
doing something else, attending to something else, because my father
had a very clear philosophy in life. You should leave
something that you've done in the world. If you have learned, trained,
given yourself education, there must be something you should do
very useful. And I also used to see him as

(05:22):
a child. You know, he was very close to this
rotary club, which was a community service club.

Speaker 2 (05:27):
He was a musician.

Speaker 4 (05:28):
He loved to play the violin. He came from Dhaka
during the partition. He came with his widow mother who
held her children with one hand and a cow with
one hand, and they moved on to this part of
the world. So violin, I think, expressed some kind of
a deep embedded anguish or something that he could not express.

Speaker 2 (05:48):
In his day to day living.

Speaker 3 (05:50):
So he also passed that on to me.

Speaker 2 (05:51):
So you learned to play the violin, doo.

Speaker 4 (05:53):
Yes, I have laid it for three years. I've played
in my school, teacher's day or.

Speaker 3 (05:57):
Children's day functions.

Speaker 2 (05:58):
Not an easy instrument amongst the.

Speaker 4 (06:00):
String instruments, violin is the toughest one. And I did
that for three years. Until last ten exams came up
and it was too much to take. So so here
I was in my married life.

Speaker 2 (06:11):
And motherhood had happened.

Speaker 4 (06:13):
By that time, No motherhood had not yet happened. It
was just around that corner that you might as well
become a mother.

Speaker 1 (06:18):
So you felt the stirrings before that of this is
not quite what I have signed up for.

Speaker 4 (06:24):
Yes, that you can just pick up a book and read,
and you can just write for some hours in the
day and you are taken care of automatically. That was
not happening. Then motherhood happened. And when motherhood happened, something
told me that I will now get up on my
own and do something. So I got in touch with
a friend of mine. I actually she had invited me.

(06:46):
My first step out to do some work was I
got into a direct marketing business selling shampoos and beauty
products okay, and I just loved it. I said, Wow,
I want to do this. It will take some three
four hours of a day. But then the family I
had married in too. For them, it was not quite
a fanciful thing to see that the woman of the

(07:07):
house is going out to her friends and relatives and
talking about a direct marketing. So that was the first
signal that.

Speaker 2 (07:15):
Was it, why do you need to work when you're
being looked after? Yes?

Speaker 3 (07:18):
And why is such an odd kind of thing to do.

Speaker 4 (07:22):
So that perhaps led my father in law to say
that you can start a beauty salon of your own
if you want.

Speaker 3 (07:28):
You can start a parlor to be an owner. Yes.

Speaker 4 (07:31):
So his idea was, you will sit at the cash
at the end of the day and you're going to
collect the cash and come back home and for the
rest of the time, your life is going to be
more around. We'll have guests coming from all over the
world at any part of time of the year. You
attend to them, you take them out. We have a
very active social circle. We have parties, so you attend
to that.

Speaker 3 (07:49):
And just be home.

Speaker 4 (07:51):
And for me it was life at playtood somewhere already.
This is what it's going to be. It's going to
be more of the same. So the parlor started, and
keeping to my instincts of wanting to do something with
my own hands, I started training myself. I went to
the best in makeup, the best in hair in Calcutta.
I learned hairdressing from Rahman Bhadwaj, who has aimed on

(08:15):
as a major brand in Calcutta. I learned from Kakuli
se Ruby Biswas. They are the major makeup artists in Calcutta.
And I started doing it on my own. And those
hours that I used to spend in the beauty parlor
with my girls, specially who used to come from the suburbs,
some traveling in trains for hours, some coming from shanty's
and their mothers bringing them to a parlor because if

(08:38):
they were left abandoned in the shanty, there were chances
of them being taken away.

Speaker 2 (08:42):
Correct, So I had a world of my own.

Speaker 3 (08:45):
I felt like I had set up a world of
my own.

Speaker 2 (08:47):
So you trained these girls?

Speaker 4 (08:48):
Yes, I trained them, and I had grown a clientele
by then who essentially came to me because it's just
not a haircut that I did, or just a beauty
consultation that I did. I used to sit with them,
listen to their lives, and honestly, I think that is
the time when.

Speaker 3 (09:04):
I actually touched life.

Speaker 4 (09:06):
I think I touched life the closest when I was
in my beauty parlor. I can't tell you the anguish
of these women who used to come married women, young
girls just getting into corporate jobs, various kinds of pressures
on them to look a certain way, to look a
certain way, to feel a certain way. So I think
I learned more of life in my tiny beauty parlor.

(09:27):
But my girls used to say, you do all the talking,
you do all the consultation. Please don't tell them how
much they have to pay, because we have to earn
our salariest, so.

Speaker 3 (09:36):
You'd be waving after So I was bad with that.

Speaker 4 (09:38):
One girl would come and say, but ma'am, I just
finished my salary and I was like, okay, then.

Speaker 3 (09:43):
You pay half of this.

Speaker 4 (09:46):
So after a point my girls got very cautious and
they said, you do all the talking and consultation part,
please leave the payment part to us.

Speaker 3 (09:54):
I was bad with that.

Speaker 1 (09:56):
When you have a client who comes to you, you
work with what you have. Yes, you're not going to
be telling somebody who was sitting in your chair that
you know, if your face was a certain way, I
could have done that.

Speaker 2 (10:05):
You work with what you've got. And I think that
you made this.

Speaker 1 (10:10):
Film with the best of your ability, and your gaze
was so respectful and you said, and I will work
with the Givens. Yes, and make the givens shine.

Speaker 2 (10:22):
So I think you're training.

Speaker 1 (10:23):
As a hairdresser stroke makeup artist served you well while
you were directing.

Speaker 4 (10:29):
Every moment, I used to tell myself, just trust those
eyes that used to work in that salon. Relentlessly do
hair straightening, do makeup for a girl with a lot
of patches on her face, or who wanted to look
the best on her wedding day.

Speaker 3 (10:41):
Given her limited attributes.

Speaker 4 (10:43):
And because my salon was not in a very posh place,
I had mixed plinter women from various socioeconomic backgrounds. So
that is why I completely.

Speaker 3 (10:53):
Trust those eyes and they can't lie.

Speaker 2 (10:55):
How long did you do this?

Speaker 4 (10:57):
Seven eight years? I started it as Queen's Beauty.

Speaker 2 (11:00):
Salon, Queens Beauty Salon. I love that.

Speaker 4 (11:02):
Then it became Kings and Queen's Hair and Beauty Salon.
Then from one salon with two sections, it became two salons.
Oh and by then I had my daughter. I remember
my daughter was born the same day as my son,
twenty second August and October, the month of Durgapuja is
a very big time for Bengali's and that is the
best time for the salon to earn its living so I,

(11:24):
despite a cesarean, I said, I'll do that haircut, I'll
do that extra grooming that you need for the season.
And things changed when I was thirty eight, which is
exactly eleven years back. Mister Proshenji, they your father's friend.

Speaker 2 (11:40):
In whose home I met you for the first time.

Speaker 4 (11:42):
So mister day had asked your father to come for
the opening ceremony of his Durga Puja pandal. By then,
in my own personal life, I had kind of segregated
my life from the so called family life. I had
done a book editing course from Segual. I was exposed
to the European literature seagull by then, and I told myself,

(12:02):
you cannot step out of these boundaries and you have
two beautiful children, make the best out of it and
live your own world. So I set up a routine
for myself. I used to wake up at five in
the morning. I set up a tiny table outside in
the verandah with pictures of writers, and I used to
write there for one and a half two hours, irrespective

(12:23):
of where that writing was going to go. I sat
at the table and wrote every morning and then, following
the children's going to school and my going to the salon,
taking care of what's happening in the home. Of course,
I was not in the best of books with my
husband and my father in law at that point of.

Speaker 2 (12:37):
They held, you were doing ambitious.

Speaker 4 (12:38):
Yes, they felt that after you've achieved all of this,
now you are trying to get towards something which you
don't need to.

Speaker 3 (12:45):
You are fine, you are.

Speaker 4 (12:46):
Just there's this beautiful painting that you've done with your
own hands, and now you are trying to destroy it.

Speaker 2 (12:51):
Why do you want more? Question?

Speaker 3 (12:53):
Yes, And I was at the opposite side.

Speaker 4 (12:56):
Of the coin, saying, this is not all of me,
this is not mere I read. The more exposure I
had to this world through seagull, I felt there is
someone waiting to come out. There is a Shurita who
cannot be inside this bubble forever. And I also thought
of my children, that I was the mother to them.
I had gifted them this life of luxury, but they

(13:17):
were inside a bubble where probably their sensibility would not
grow inside this. So a mother takes a leap and
probably a child follows.

Speaker 2 (13:26):
That's what I felt.

Speaker 3 (13:28):
So that Durga Puja.

Speaker 4 (13:30):
I had finished my work in the salon, but mister
Day had invited and he was my husband's friend. So
to be very honest with you, I stepped back and
I thought, maybe I shouldn't take advantage of the fact
because your father visiting town was a news all over
Salt Lake where I lived, and I have grown up
watching your and your father's work. Shub k jag Whue
was like an anthem. I used to hum every evening

(13:53):
while going back home because that is when the switch
over happened from that magical tiny salon to going back.

Speaker 2 (13:58):
To that stipulated my favorite. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (14:01):
So I thought, am I going to stand in a
crowd and watch mister marsh but cut a ribbon? So
I told myself, no, I don't want to do that.
I had earlier met you at mister Day's house. I
wanted to have a feel of having met a person,
so I told mister Day, I'm a little busy with
my salon. Then later again, at around eight thirty, he called.

(14:22):
He said, Shorita, I'm bringing mister butt to your puja pandal.
You did not come to mine. You better come and
show show him yours. I was like, okay, I'm coming.
I got ready. My husband was also ready, and I clearly.
Remember he said, you don't have to come, It's okay,
I'll show them.

Speaker 3 (14:38):
I said, no, I have.

Speaker 4 (14:39):
To go, and we got into mister Day's car and
the first memory of your father is a backshot of
his head. He was sitting in the front seat and
while we were going to the duja, he said, hungry,
mister Day, I'm hungry.

Speaker 3 (14:56):
That was the first line I heard.

Speaker 4 (14:59):
So mister Day said yes, after we visit this pandal, surely,
and then he introduced me and my husband, and it
was very kind of mister Day, who knew that I
was not in the best of relationship with my husband.
But he said, Shurita, I want you to tell Btsab
what is it that you do. So I said so,
so I have a salon. He said no, no, no,
tell me about that writing that you do. So I

(15:19):
took a pause and I said, Sir, I cut hair
with my left hand and write with my right hand.

Speaker 1 (15:24):
Ah.

Speaker 3 (15:26):
I felt that would sum it all up.

Speaker 4 (15:28):
So then he later got off from the car and
I showed him the pandal, and after he had seen
it and he was coming back, I remember clearly he
placed his hand on my shoulder while we were talking
about writing how he was comparing writing with something not
different from what a cobbler does or what a mason does.
And I swear that evening, under that October sky something

(15:51):
told me I'm going to be with him. There is
no logical explanation, but I clearly felt I'm going to
be with him in some way. So when the joie
up to the car came to an end, I said, so,
can I have your email? I would like to send
you what I write. I knew that I did not
have what we call as an elevator pitch to present
to him, but I had a space and I used

(16:12):
to every day write about that space. It used to
be about a palatial house where a woman is trapped
keeping to the strings of the life I had lived.
So he gave me his email address. The next day,
also I met him because mister Day said that he's
leaving today if you would like to meet mister But
once I remember, I took a journal of the Seagull
publication where every student is allowed to write something and

(16:34):
submit it to the editing house. So I took that
journal with me and I presented it to him. So
he said, why don't you read what you have brought
with you. So I read a few lines. It happened
to be about a woman who was abandoned by her
soldier husband and was bringing up a child all by herself,
with a dream that someday the father is going to
be back. After that, I ordered A Taste of Life

(16:59):
and Yuji Christian Mauthia Life. I read the first one
and a half pages of A Taste of Life back
to back four to five times. So I told myself, Sharitha,
you're fooling yourself saying that you are writing and somebody
you're going to publish. There is something in this writing
which is wanting you to go back to it again
and again, which despite so many attempts of writing a story,

(17:21):
you're not being able to come up with. So then
I started writing to him and he was writing Hamaryadhurri
Kahani at that time. I told him roughly about where
I was in my life, and he gave me a
situation about a woman who lives with her son in
another city until the husband suddenly comes to claim her

(17:41):
after many years. It felt like I was just writing
from my life. I placed her in Calcutta. I gave
her a son like mine. I could feel the room.
I did not know screenplay writing, I did not know dialogues,
and I sent him four five pages and I said,
so this is what I feel and this is what
has come out of me. He of course, he culled

(18:02):
out something from it, and he said that the material
comes from your life. That is very clear to me.
So why don't you do something. I will send you
other parts of the film that has already been written.
Why don't you now lead it with your sensibility and
find the places that you think you can work on.
That is how I was suddenly sitting in front of
the script of Hamari Adhuri Kahani. But it did not

(18:25):
reflect well on that conservative, well to do Bengali family.
They had a certain respectability. There was always already this
woman of the house who was not quite in conformity
of what was expected from her. And then suddenly she
had sent her work to maheshpat and he was also responding.

(18:45):
So it seemed like some kind of a minefield that
I was working on all the time. But that voice
kept telling me, shurtit's now or never. You are not
this person, and somewhere you're just beginning to across the fog.
See that person you are. Don't let this go away
from your life. My father used to keep coming to
my in law's house. I always had a very deep

(19:07):
contact with him. I did not need to express to
him in words where I was in my life.

Speaker 3 (19:13):
He was encouraging.

Speaker 4 (19:15):
It came to a point where the entire film was shot,
and then your father said, why don't you make a
book out of it? I said, really, is that possible?
And he said, I'm sending you the script. You read
the entire screenplay, and you give me a book. I
was nervous, but as I told you, the single voice
that kept going with meats either now or never.

Speaker 3 (19:33):
I have to do this.

Speaker 4 (19:35):
So in twenty three days I made a manuscript possible.
I sent it to Ravisinghav speaking Tigers, and then the
book was released in Pragati Madan in Delhi. And I
remember when I came back that night.

Speaker 3 (19:46):
I spoke to your father.

Speaker 4 (19:47):
I say that I've come back and it's a sense
of having reached somewhere where I never thought I could.
So he said, so when you came back, did you
speak to your husband? Did you speak to your family?
And I was silent because I could not tell him
in words that there were so many oceans in between
this world that I had just tasted and the world

(20:08):
that they were still expecting me to walk in. So
then I gently I think, I said no, I haven't
spoken to them about it.

Speaker 3 (20:17):
Then he said, then I don't understand what are you
spending your life over there for.

Speaker 4 (20:22):
And that sparked something in me that now I'm in
a position where I'm neither here nor there and will
stay here forever. Then one day I spoke face to
face with my father in law, who until then was
an extremely fierce character for me to face, and I said,
I can't carry on anymore. He could not find a reason.
What is it that's bothering you? I said, no, there

(20:45):
is nothing that I can put my finger on. But
I'm saying this is not my life and I can't
live it anymore. I did not try to pick up
my children from there. Knowing the kind of power and
authority he had, I felt I would both do damage
to them as well as even this little tiny step
that I had taken would completely go against me. So,

(21:06):
no matter how harsh or how fierce my children might
think me to be, for the rest of my life,
at that point I felt it was wisest to just pick.

Speaker 3 (21:14):
Myself up and go back.

Speaker 1 (21:16):
So you left your husband's home my husband's and you
moved back in with your parents.

Speaker 4 (21:24):
One of the salons was in the ground floor of
my father's house. It was a very large room with
an attached bathroom and a separate entry, so that evening
when I went, that place had become a deserted room
with a tiny cot at one end. So there were
two cutting chairs, one facial bed, one pedicure station, and

(21:44):
one hair wash station. They were all gone. It was
suddenly an empty, large room with my certificates hanging on
the walls, and they had brought down one court from upstairs,
and that is where I was supposed to stay. The
night was not very comfortab I tried to sleep. I
was feeling very hot, and I felt I was having

(22:06):
a panic attack. I think that was the first time
I had a panic attack in my life. I went
into the show and just stood under the show to
be able to breathe. Because my children are another house
and not in the best of circumstances have I left.

Speaker 2 (22:19):
They couldn't understand why their mother had left.

Speaker 4 (22:21):
Yes, and I had come to a house where my
mother's limited understanding. She could not understand why had he
landed up here, and I found it difficult to breathe
at that time of night. After a while it passed by,
I settled down. I told myself, let's take it one
day at a time. I have only this much ability
to see and understand life. I signed off whatever I had,

(22:43):
so I was not an owner of that salon anymore.
I had handed it over to my husband, and the
one in my father's house that was nonexistent, I had
closed it down. At that time, I did not understand
why my father told me to close them down, because
I thought I still did not have a running income.
But as the days pased, I realized he wanted me
to fully attend to what I wanted to do, instead

(23:05):
of giving myself a false security of still something being there.
And your mother, you said, would not understand your decision.
So when you say that with her limited understanding, is
that what you mean that she couldn't understand why you
would give up this comfortable life. Yes, And you know,
a very scary part was for me to come back
to a house with my mother because I did not

(23:26):
have the most comfortable of relationships with her. She came
from South Calcutta, and South Calcutta is a different culture.
North Calcutt is a different culture. My father's house, it's
a loud, boisterous family, everyone staying together, sticking together. She
came from a family where speaking softly, putting everything on
the table very neatly.

Speaker 3 (23:48):
These were major assets.

Speaker 4 (23:51):
And I was a troublemaker. I was never good with
my studies. I loved reading all the time, but that
did not mean that I brought marks for mathematics and
chemistry and physics.

Speaker 2 (24:02):
And that worried her.

Speaker 4 (24:03):
That worried her, and there was a kind of scare
all the time in me. I understood that she was
coping with a lot of differences. She could not put
up with the culture of the house she was married into,
and that left her with me. So it felt like
all the anguish or all the anxiety or unexpressed emotions
that she had she expressed with this child of hers
who was not a well to do student. I was

(24:26):
in my sixth standard and our final report cards were
supposed to come out, and I.

Speaker 2 (24:31):
Knew that I would not do well.

Speaker 4 (24:33):
She had told me that if you don't do well,
this time, the consequence is not going to be good.
So I went to school and after tiffin break, our
report cards were distributed to us. We had a lot
of carerolite Christian teachers in our convent, so my teacher's
name was Miss Celine Thomas. She gave me the report
card and there were multiple red marks in my report card.

(24:57):
And by then I had made up my mind that
I don't want to go back home today. When I
look back at that afternoon, I don't know how I
could just pick up my school bag, water bottle, that
report card and leave school. I walked through that afternoon
several times later in life. So the school gets over
at three pm. The school buses are on the right side,

(25:20):
and I started walking towards the left, and I really
did not know what is on the left side of
the school. I just started walking to the left alone alone.
After a while, I started hearing loud honks of the
school bus and I knew it was my school bus
calling for me. I was the only student who was
still not there in the bus. I continued walking. After

(25:42):
a while, the bus honks stopped and I started taking
a very narrow lane. I had saved some green grapes
from my tiffin. I don't know why I saved it,
and I felt hungry and thirsty. So I sat down
on the staircase of a house and I had those grapes.
I had about thirty rupeas in my bag. Because those
days we did not have a pocket money with us.

(26:03):
It must have been left over from something. And I
still told myself, I'm not going back home. I'm going
to make it somehow. Then gradually evening descended, everything started darkening,
and I started feeling a little cold. Then I started
walking again. The road seemed unending, but my energy, or
my enthusiasm of moving away from home, was gradually depleting,

(26:27):
and I started feeling scared for myself. Then after a
point of time, I told myself, you have to stop.
You don't know where to turn back, but you have
to stop. I stopped and I looked to the right.
There was a little house with a little garden in
front of it. I don't know why that house called
me of all the things. I opened the front gate,

(26:48):
I went inside. I rang the doorbell. A woman came
out with beautiful long hair and a baby in her arms,
and she said yes. And by then I had removed
my school tie and my school ribbon. They were very
typical of the convent, you know, our ribbons. We were
not even allowed satin ribbons. There was a particular nylon
wide ribbon, and I had removed my tie because it

(27:08):
had the Auxilium Convent emblem on it. So she said,
are you from the neighboring convent. I said yes, So
she said yes, you want anything? And I said, do
you have some work? So she said what work? I said,
can you keep me in your house for a house help?
She immediately went inside and she called her husband. Her

(27:32):
husband came and they said, please come inside, and they
made me sit on the sofa. And we used to
have a school calendar. You know that school calendar is
supposed to have your details of your address, father's signature,
father's phone number, everything. So that gentleman said, can you
give me your school calendar? And I knew that the
game was up, But that one moment when I felt

(27:53):
that I have completely touched something called a bottom and
I can't move up from your felt helpless, completely helpless
that day I felt.

Speaker 2 (28:03):
Then, after a.

Speaker 3 (28:03):
While, my father came. We did not speak in the
car much.

Speaker 4 (28:08):
He later told me, you realized that it hurt me
a lot, right when the school bus came and you
were not there. So then again, from that moment onwards
between me and my mother, that became a major code
of anguish. Why did you bring shame to your father?
Why did you bring shame to us?

Speaker 1 (28:27):
So when you got married, she thought that finally this
problem child and has settled into matrimoney, has two kids,
and she couldn't understand why you would give this comfort up.

Speaker 2 (28:37):
Yes, and you were back at her doorstep.

Speaker 4 (28:40):
Yes, with everything going for her, why does she need
to say that it's not working for me? The same
person was asked to me, what is wrong with your marriage?

Speaker 2 (28:49):
Yes? Is there somebody else? Yes?

Speaker 1 (28:52):
The first question I said, No, there's nobody else. Then
why are you ending it? It's been ten years, so
I said, I've lost myself. I forgot who I was.
I need to reclaim that woman again. Nobody could understand it.

Speaker 4 (29:08):
If I now look back, I see it like a montage.
It just flew by. The children eventually came here. My
mother settled down despite her immense differences, and still till
dates she can't understand how can someone just pluck herself
out and live another life completely. And I took up
a place for myself in Calcutta. It was in Sector five.

(29:29):
Sector five is where all the offices are, so I
used to pay ten thousand rupees rent every month. I
brought all my books and I settled over there with
my laptop. In the morning, I used to have a
conversation with your father and I used to ask, Sir,
what is it that you want me to work on
or what is it that you want me to study.
He at that point of time, wanted to make a
film for Gurudev Bala and the initial concept is something

(29:53):
I had written and I had shared with him. So
he told me the films that I needed to watch
out the books that I needed to read. So sitting
in that office, which was just one room and one washroom,
I used to tell myself that I have come for
this work and from ten to five I'm going to
work and then I'll go back home by when my
children will be there and I will spend the rest
of my evening taking care of their studies or whatever.

(30:17):
So I'm telling it very clearly now, but at that time,
every step, every second used to feel very scary.

Speaker 2 (30:23):
I can imagine because.

Speaker 4 (30:25):
The place I left was not a very easy place
to leave. And when you stay inside a place, you
usually forget that there is a world out there.

Speaker 1 (30:33):
We find ourselves in cages and it takes a long
time to realize that the lock is actually on the
inside of the cage.

Speaker 2 (30:40):
So this was around the time when I was there.

Speaker 1 (30:43):
Remember during the requie of Cabaret that fateful day and
you and my father were in one car. I was
with Costi and Ancho and Malay in the car in
the front, and I think Bombay Times called my dad
and said, that is your daughter's marriage on the rocks.
Stopped the car and I jumped out on the sidewalk.

(31:03):
So remember that sidewalk, Beautiful, Decaying, Calcutta. You know where
beauty and decay is in the same frame, and it
just merges so beautifully. And I took the phone and
my hands were shaking, and I remember you looking at me,
and I said, I'm going to put it out there
that my marriage is over. I'm not going to give
anyone the privilege. I was sniffing around my life and

(31:24):
breaking a story. And then I told my father, my
hands are shaking, and he said, you would not be
human if your hands were not shaking.

Speaker 2 (31:31):
And I said that, you know, to all of those.

Speaker 1 (31:33):
Who care, and especially those that don't care, I am
ending my marriage after ten glorious years, And that's all
the information you must have. And then we walked into
Seek and we bought lots and lots of works equal ease.

Speaker 3 (31:49):
You admired the painting. You told I want this, I
want this.

Speaker 5 (31:53):
And I was like, yes, just a few minutes ago
this moment just took the most major decision of our life.
And with equal elegancy's just buying this and that, Yes,
that's what life should do.

Speaker 2 (32:04):
What happened. And then we put the TV on. Every
ticker of every news.

Speaker 1 (32:07):
Channel had pu ends and marriage, and the next morning
all the newspapers had me on the front page. So
that was around the time when you were living in
that studio workplace of yours. Yes, when with the big
decision to come to Mumbai happened.

Speaker 4 (32:23):
First of all, the decision to divorce did not come
from me. My husband one evening suddenly turned up and
I think he thought I would backtrack or feel scared,
so he very casually said that, so things are not
working between us, so let's apply for a mutual separation.

Speaker 3 (32:42):
At first I thought I.

Speaker 4 (32:43):
Could didn't hear what he said, and then to be
covering up my nervousness, I said, okay, okay, so what
do I have to do? So he said, you have
to apply for divors I said, okay, I don't know
how to do this, but I'll try and find out
what to do. I was handling everything on a day

(33:05):
to day basis at that time. But I told myself
that if you have given that proposal, and if you're
expecting me to say no, no, no, I wasn't expecting
it to go this far, then I might say that
for me, the way ahead.

Speaker 3 (33:18):
Is only an only future forward. So I'm not stepping back.

Speaker 4 (33:21):
My friend's relatives everything had cut off from me by then.
I picked up the phone, and we have this just
Dial service. And I know just Dial because for my salon,
I used to get a lot of orders.

Speaker 3 (33:30):
From just Dial.

Speaker 4 (33:31):
So I saw the list of lawyers and I just
ticked on the first lawyer and I said, I'm coming
to meet you tomorrow. I need to talk about my separation.
So when I went to him, he heard that I
want a separation and I have two children and my
husband is also in agreement. So he looked at me
and he said, do you have cigarette.

Speaker 3 (33:51):
Burns marks on your hands?

Speaker 4 (33:53):
I said, no, shards of glass that your husband might
have thrown at you while drinking.

Speaker 3 (33:59):
I said no. Does he force you to drink? I
said no, he doesn't drink or ask me to drink.
He was on a rocking chair. He suddenly sat up
and said, then, why do you want a divorce?

Speaker 4 (34:15):
Oh my god, I said, I want a divorce because
I can't be with him anymore.

Speaker 2 (34:20):
No, why is it that you.

Speaker 4 (34:22):
Why don't you take the children and him and go
away and start all over again. I said, because he's
not that man. And I must tell you the character
in my film. To Mary Puri Kahani, the male protagonist Rohan,
I essentially drew it from what I had seen of
my husband and his.

Speaker 3 (34:39):
True devotion to his father.

Speaker 4 (34:40):
So come a world where he has to choose between
his family and his father. He would definitely stand by
his father, and I don't hold anything against him.

Speaker 3 (34:49):
That is how people are, I said.

Speaker 4 (34:50):
I My husband will never step out and try to
think of a future with the children and keep his
father away.

Speaker 3 (34:56):
His father's a widower, so he said, oh, okay.

Speaker 4 (35:00):
Then by and by he got a hang of it
that this woman is persistent and she keeps coming back.
So then he said, okay, I will do something. And
all that while I knew that my husband knew whom
I had spoken to, who is the person handling the case.

Speaker 2 (35:16):
You'd kept him in the loop, yes.

Speaker 4 (35:18):
And I knew they were not going to make it
easy for me. So I had to make three journeys
back and forth from Bombay to Calcutta, and I could
not understand why this mutual divorce case, which is settled
and ready to be signed by both parties, is not happening.
So I realized that it was also a kind of
interference from the other side to be able to delay it.

Speaker 1 (35:39):
I mean, considering he came to you and said let's
do this mutually, you had to go and file yes.

Speaker 4 (35:46):
So the game was very open and clear to me
that it will be very transparent and I'm going to
find out what's happening. At that time, I'd let nothing
stop me. I said, okay, take it on. I just
need to move ahead, and I need to step forward
because I want to step forward.

Speaker 2 (36:00):
So they tried to tire you with the process, but
you refuse to be. I refuse to be.

Speaker 4 (36:05):
At that time, my routine started with staying three four
days in Bombay and going back for the rest of
days to Calcutta. I used to come and sit while
the Z team used to come. They used to talk
about this film called abrad Guzard Nevali here. It came
from a piece that I had written and had shared
with your father in the beginning about a boy from
a regal family in Calcutta whose good days have passed

(36:25):
and the mother has to sell the property, and he
tells himself that no, it's my patriarchal value, that I
won't let this house go. Let me go to Bombay
and find a way to do something. And around that
we started building a script. So I used to come
for three four days. The music used to happen. The
Z team used to come and talk about it used
to be very exciting. I used to look forward to that.

(36:47):
Over a year the project developed. Everything was ready, but
as it happens in this industry, you would know better
than anyone that it takes what it takes.

Speaker 3 (36:55):
And finally they pulled the plugs from the project. But
by then father had already started something on television. So
he said do this.

Speaker 2 (37:04):
I said, so, I.

Speaker 4 (37:05):
Don't know anything in film. I also don't know anything
in television.

Speaker 3 (37:09):
So he said learn.

Speaker 2 (37:11):
As simple as that.

Speaker 3 (37:12):
Learn.

Speaker 4 (37:14):
So I was suddenly in this room or of four
to five writers who have been writing television for years,
and they used to just create episode after episode. And
I used to sit and wonder that while we acknowledged
literary writing, it takes more two month after month, write episodes,
shot out story. Listen to that unfriendly note on a

(37:35):
Thursday from a channel saying that it did not.

Speaker 2 (37:37):
Get the tire.

Speaker 4 (37:39):
Kill that character, reinvent that person, bring that back to life.
So when Namkaran happened, I was facing a lot of
challenges of placing myself in Bombay while the production paid
for me as a visiting writer. They said, well, we
can't give you anything for because you're starting.

Speaker 2 (37:56):
And you're learning and expensive city.

Speaker 4 (37:58):
Yes, and I had lived a certain lifestyle and it
gets a little difficult to change your lifestyle rapidly. They
sound very romantic in books and in firms something the
reality is something else. So then your father also suggested
that you're working for them, you are going to be here,
So why don't you tell them that when the money
comes for the work that you're doing, you ad just

(38:20):
I said, okay, that is also possible. So everything happened
on that basis of that one thing that I had
done that no matter what happens, that I'm going to
keep working. So there were these channel meetings where I
used to go. I used to sit and just watch
everybody's faces understand that, Okay, things are moving now something
we worked on is not working, and the risk that

(38:41):
the show might end. So then things just started flowing
like that. That is that is a beginning.

Speaker 1 (38:48):
But I think we work best under pressure pure And
that reminds me of what you told me when you
found yourself in the middle of post production of your
first film as a director. Yes, and you send me
note early one morning saying I feel the first bangs
of perimenopause. Yes, and does the world even understand what
a woman actually feels going through this physical change? And

(39:10):
then it happens right now, so I could completely identify
with that.

Speaker 4 (39:16):
I thought, this is not happening to me, actually, And
I remember that first morning of waking up groggy with
innumerable messages on the phone that I have to follow
up with a long day ahead, and I have to
catch up with all of these things. And I was
also amidst shifting to another apartment handling post production when
I started feeling the changes in my body. The first

(39:39):
defeat that I felt with my body was, here is
a plan.

Speaker 3 (39:42):
That I have for myself.

Speaker 4 (39:43):
I want to do films. I know the script, I
know the space, and here comes Perry menopause knocking. And
I stare at myself and say, well, you have a plan,
and life has a plan for you. And when I
started feeling a little jittery of a thing is placed
in my own study table. Why is the curtain this way?

(40:05):
These minute things I picked up and I thought, okay,
I am behaving like my mother. The restlessness, the continuous
distaste towards the way things are happening, not being able
to adjust with what is being served. I gradually began
understanding where she comes from. And I was startled that

(40:25):
while perimenopause or menopause are just a few notes for you,
until then, enough has not been spoken and we are
not ready for it when it comes. It was extremely painful, scary.
Then I had to take medical assistance, but the work
as they are what they are, and I want it
to be in every part of it. Post production, dubbing.

(40:46):
I wanted to see each of the VFX shots and say, no,
this is not working. We have only that much scope
to make the audience feel that we are in Dubai.
So let's do what needs to be done. If given
a chance, I really want to write about this phase
where for a woman her life becomes a before and after.
No matter what others speak about, only you know what
you're going through.

Speaker 2 (41:07):
Bomby Begum.

Speaker 1 (41:08):
With my so called come back to acting, I was
enacting what menopause is. I didn't know what it was,
but I was enacting it. Then I was doing this
show called Nanda Devi and soon after I was offered
Big Boss. Now, four or five days before I enter
that house, I get my first hot flash and then

(41:30):
I said, hey, hang on, this is possibly what I
was enacting in twenty nineteen.

Speaker 3 (41:34):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (41:35):
And then the question was that can I go into
a space which.

Speaker 1 (41:38):
Is the most massed show in India with there two
hundred and twenty two cameras trained on you?

Speaker 2 (41:44):
Yes? And I almost said no. Then I said I'm.

Speaker 1 (41:48):
Not going to allow this to paralyze me. I'm going
to brave it. And the first couple of weeks were
not easy. And then two weeks into it, I found
a large lump on my breast. So I said, okay,
let's just watch to see whether this is going to subside.
I've got six weeks to INDI or here. It didn't
subside the week after, I said, let's wait another week.

(42:14):
The week after no change, and they say that if
you have a lump and it's not hurting, then you
must bury. Yes, so I said, okay, I've got two
more weeks to go. I can't possibly die in two weeks.
And then they decided to extend the show, so I said,
hang on, I need to then let them know. They
inmedially got a doctor into test me, etc. And then

(42:35):
I was told that you have to go to the
hospital to do.

Speaker 2 (42:40):
A series of tests.

Speaker 1 (42:42):
So I was taken out blindfolded that while I'm doing
my sonography, the doctor complimented me on how well I
played the part in Bombay Begums and how I enacted menopause,
and here I was getting a test to figure whether
I had breast cancer. But everything was clear. So I
went back into the home with renewed enthusiasm. But you

(43:03):
do look at the body and say, why are you
turning on me now? So I can imagine that you
must have felt the same thing that why now, why now?
Of all the time? Yeah, a few weeks later, a
few months later, the minute you say peri menopause or menopause,
there's this kind of silent thing that deal with it.

Speaker 2 (43:20):
That's your problem to deal with.

Speaker 1 (43:22):
So wow, post production on your first film, the pangs
of peri menopause, and then a release that was half hearted.

Speaker 4 (43:32):
I don't consider that theater release as a release at all.
It is like a formality, something we had to step over.
I truly did not know that you get so much
of love making a film. And I was telling your
father this morning that I feel I don't know my
country at all. We went to Varanasi, we went to Mirout,
we went to Ghaziabad, some universities in Delhi. So when

(43:53):
you are having a real contact with that audience, you know, Mirrot.
We just entered and we sat down the audience. I'd
already seen the film, and my eyes matched a woman
who was sitting in the crowd, and she raised her
fingers and made this star sign So this experience I
will never forget.

Speaker 1 (44:11):
You're supposedly an outsider, yes, who came in, wrote a book,
first worked with television, found seven a set, writing dialogues,
working with my heghbud On Saduk too, then directing your
first film, being part of the marketing meeting, sitting with experts.
How disconnected is Bombay and the so called experts from

(44:32):
the audience you sample?

Speaker 2 (44:34):
Is there a huge disconnect?

Speaker 3 (44:35):
Yes, there is a huge disconnect.

Speaker 4 (44:37):
What is called marketing sitting inside air conditioned rooms and
on Apple laptops and what is told to you is
going to be a marketing scheme or a marketing plan
that is laid.

Speaker 2 (44:49):
Out before you.

Speaker 4 (44:50):
It is probably within someone has in his head the
demographics of that place where he or she lives. It's
probably from Lokanwala to Bandra or from j Hutu. That
is not where India is and that is not where
we made our films for So we found our real
audience there in those crowds that cheered, that whistled, that

(45:11):
laughed when they needed to laugh. And it is an
emergerish feeling in our later marketing plan, which I find
worked out. Anything that is too organized. That gives you
a feeling that I have it in control. It doesn't work.
And I'm a student of marketing. I used to tell
your father, these are event management. This is not marketing
of a film. The theme and the space from where

(45:31):
a film comes. You have to reach that place. So
now we are waiting for that date when we will
have an o TT release, and just before that those
two weeks we are again going to go out there.
I haven't shown my film to my city yet. I
was so heart broken that not a single theater opened
to to Maripurikahni. It was Duruga Puja time. I was
told that we have got fifteen halls. Later I found

(45:54):
out from my hometown itself that the government had made
it quite clear that they will not allow any Hindi
film in thea week.

Speaker 2 (46:01):
Oh so you didn't know that before.

Speaker 3 (46:02):
I did not know that.

Speaker 1 (46:03):
But your music was a rage before you even began
promoting your filmy and Sarigama believed in Anumalik in the
songs and went all out. Was it intimidating for you,
as the first time director to work with him and
the legacy that he brings to the table.

Speaker 4 (46:24):
Yes, Initially, I was intimidated because the first time I
saw Anumalik circum into the room was for Namgaren. He
was doing the title track, and I had seen him
obsessively come and go from the office to just make
sure that your father likes the first line the second tune,
And then when the recording happened, it was in a
distance studio, but he made sure that your father was

(46:45):
present during the recording. So I understood that he has
an obsessive way of doing things, very passionate, very passionate.
Schweta had a bank of songs that she had written.
Song was this, this is the title track? Ah, so
she had the lyrics before the tune came to Mary Pouri.
Your father did not create a pressure on him of
making an entire song. He said, there's something born in

(47:07):
your heart, go with it and stay with it. Then
your father inspired him saying, imagine your father is in
the room, Maliki is here. That gave him a different depth,
a different level. The music comes from the emotional depth
of the characters of the story.

Speaker 1 (47:22):
I told your lead actress that you know you're going
to long for music like this. To get this sort
of music with this depth in your first film, I said,
Taras jog them.

Speaker 2 (47:34):
So he drew from you, drew from your newness.

Speaker 4 (47:37):
Schweta's lyrics are largely responsible for everything sounding so fresh
and new. It became a strange amalgamation, and after a
point of time I started calling him malikda. You know,
there used to be these old black and white Bangala
films we used to watch, and there used to be
one tall patriarch in the house who used to see
the situation and then give one final line, well, this

(47:57):
is how it is. So he looked to me like
one of those patriarchs who knows what he's saying and
you cannot challenge him.

Speaker 3 (48:06):
So I told him, now the relation is born and
there's no leaving you. So that itself and.

Speaker 1 (48:10):
You were in Cashet on the day of the release
at the Jagrn Festival and you got a message from
them saying that people loved it and they wanted to
repeat it in Mirit.

Speaker 3 (48:18):
Yes, so the fault does not lie with your film.

Speaker 1 (48:21):
The fault lies with the people who could not get
your film to the consumer.

Speaker 4 (48:25):
It was a huge realization that air conditioned rooms are
not the best places to understand what the marketing strategy
of your film should be, what the distribution of your
film should be. You just have to go out there
and reach out and say we've come to you. Yeah,
if you can't come to the theater halls, we'll come
to you.

Speaker 2 (48:44):
So what's next?

Speaker 4 (48:46):
I want to draw out from that part of me,
that being in me who could not attend to her children,
probably when she really wanted to, because she had to
make a choice, and they made choices on their own
and moved on. You know, there's this Bengali teacher who
used to teach my children. She told me that, Shuriita,
you're doing a great mistake by not sharing your story

(49:06):
with your children. You should sit them down and tell
them how you one day picked up yourself and first
walked out, and then one by one how they walked out,
and how things have become, how they have become. You
should tell them. So now, when I met my son
after several years, he came.

Speaker 2 (49:23):
Here her sister you on you.

Speaker 4 (49:25):
He assisted me on my first film. While that love
is still there, I can feel that a lot has
flown in between which I cannot bridge right now.

Speaker 3 (49:35):
So I feel that.

Speaker 4 (49:36):
This film that I want to work on next is
going to be giving me the chance to revisit that space,
make those wounds alive again. I would love my son
to be on my set so that those moments all
become real, the way I've seen you and your father
work from real life feelings, real life spaces. I'm very
sure that I only want to make personal films, even
if that says that you can make only that many

(49:59):
if you know what you taking.

Speaker 1 (50:01):
That decision to just follow that piece of your heart,
that voice inside that said right, and how that was
held against you, and how you looked at when you
decided to leave. But if you hadn't left, your children
would not have been able to spread their wings. Really so,
I think someday they look back and realize that my daughter.

Speaker 4 (50:21):
The person she's become, who has a mind of her own,
she writes she wants to do cancer research. I don't
think she would have been the same person if I
wouldn't have picked her up.

Speaker 3 (50:31):
I mean to put it very ruthlessly.

Speaker 4 (50:33):
I just picked them up from that bubble of their
grandfather's plush world and brought them to the austere world
of my father and my mother. And then even after
a few months I left so they were taken care
of by my house. Helped Chumpa, the Fears girl from
Sunderbans who has helped bring up.

Speaker 2 (50:49):
My children like your children.

Speaker 1 (50:51):
Yeah, I've seen videos of your daughter. She's a brilliant dancer.
And you say, now she wants to do cancer research. Yes,
but what you've done beyond anything is that you know
they talk about generational trauma.

Speaker 2 (51:03):
Yes, you pulled the plug on that. Yes, you said
I'm not going to continue that for.

Speaker 3 (51:09):
Both my children.

Speaker 2 (51:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (51:10):
And then my son he refused to go with his
grandfather to a business management college in Bangalore and said, no,
I'm going to go to my mother. I'm going to
find out what she does and I'll do that.

Speaker 1 (51:19):
And there was just something that came from him. You
couldn't at all try to influence that.

Speaker 4 (51:23):
I'm thankful that generational trauma did not pass on and
they became independent individuals.

Speaker 2 (51:29):
Oh. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (51:31):
And then also, I mean through all of this, what
we didn't talk about was you lost your father.

Speaker 4 (51:35):
Yes, when it was first diagnosed, I there first comes
a stage of disbelief that no, it is not happening
to my father, It is not happening to him. Then
you gradually realized that yes, it is happening to him.
Then comes the stage of how much time do we have?
So we had six or seven months and it was
a complicated blood cancer where the bone marrows stop producer

(52:00):
seeing red blood cells. So the doctor told me very
clearly what is going to happen after what and to
an extent blood transfusion will help. But because he's already
seventy three, we can't do any kind of bone marrow transplant,
which is an orthodox solution to the situation.

Speaker 2 (52:16):
So that is.

Speaker 4 (52:17):
When I really saw him stand up and say you
are not coming back, because he knew I was already
thinking of it in my mind.

Speaker 3 (52:25):
I thought, this is my father.

Speaker 4 (52:26):
This is the man who has taken me to every
Calcutta book fair from the time I grew up. This
is the man who taught me music and told me
to keep my years and heart open to music. This
is the man who taught me that on a Sunday,
even if your other friends are sleeping, you come with
me to a suburb in Calcutta and help people by
opening a tube, well pump or a medical camp. I

(52:49):
can't do it, but even before I could tell it
to myself, he said, you are not looking back. You
have taken two children on your back. You have barely
opened that door that takes years for people to open,
and you're not coming back. So I used to mark
my going to calcuton those days when he would get
his chemotherapy, and I made a video on one of

(53:11):
those visits and sent it to your father. You know,
in the morning, when they are just opening up that
chemotherapy unit and there's a children's section where they have
curtains with cartoons on it, they were playing Ashiki.

Speaker 3 (53:22):
Song, Blairing Ashiki song. I said, so this is how
life continues. Your song is a hope.

Speaker 4 (53:28):
Your song brings some kind of fresh air inside this room.
So I used to watch him take the chemo, and
of course he was gradually fading away that last afternoon
with him. I'll never forget for the rest of my life.
And what keeps me grounded, apart from your father's very
clear way of seeing life, is the smell that day
I smelled when I was sitting in the cremation ground,

(53:50):
and I told myself, that is my father burning. That
is the man who has stood and told me that
I have to become something in the world. That is
his flesh burning. At the end of that process, there
is a ritual where you have to go down. It's
kind of a basement of that cremation ground, and you
are handed over an earthen dish in which the ashes
are remain are there. You have to later take it

(54:12):
to the Ganga fluid and whatever. So usually the males
in the family do it. We are two sisters, and
I said, no, I'm going to go there. So we
went barefoot, and I remember the heat of the floor
because there's a burner upstairs. There's continuous furnace burning in
that area, and there was my father in.

Speaker 3 (54:31):
A clay dish. Then we came up.

Speaker 4 (54:34):
We came to the Ganges, and it took me some
time to let that dissolve into the Ganges, but it
eventually did. But I did not cry until four am.
By when I had come back, the house had settled
and I had told myself it.

Speaker 3 (54:48):
Is finally over.

Speaker 4 (54:50):
So he with his living in those last few years,
and in those last few months, he had given me
the biggest lesson of what's standing for someone means. He
read a taste of life. And when my father asked,
what does your father think about it? So my father
said on the phone, if I would read this book
ten years early, maybe I would have lived my life
in some other way. So I keep watching Sarranch over

(55:11):
and over again. And they were asking in one of
the interviews, if there's one film of BT Sabh you
would want to adapt, which would it be. I said
it would be Sarranj because I have met a bb
Bradhan and I know what it takes to stand up
for someone, even when you know she's the dearest part
of your life and in the last few days of
your life you would want to hold her hand, but
you tell yourself, no, you have a life ahead of

(55:33):
you and go go and.

Speaker 2 (55:34):
Live that life. So moving, that is so moving. That's
my father. Oh my god.

Speaker 1 (55:40):
So yeah, that's what I meant when I said that,
you know, in a supposed ending, you found a beginning
and taste of life you related to much before you
experience this and life in depth.

Speaker 4 (55:56):
And how once someone takes a stand. I remember one
incident where there was anger coming from the other side
and my father was being told your daughter has done this,
she shouldn't have done this, and I just saw him
hold himself and say, she's my daughter.

Speaker 3 (56:12):
Hmm, I will only take this much. So a few
days ago, you know.

Speaker 4 (56:17):
When I woke up, I told myself, so we come
from the DNA of our parents. Right, even in this
breathing body of mind, he is present somewhere. His DNA
is present absolutely. And I don't have a photograph of
him hanging on the wall. I don't have a ritual
of putting an Agbadi around. I just live every day
the way I have seen him as an Austereo man

(56:38):
who has felt that life means you have to be
of help to someone, you have to hold someone else's hand,
and you have to reach out to a community.

Speaker 3 (56:45):
That is who he was.

Speaker 2 (56:46):
As a person.

Speaker 4 (56:47):
So I just feel that, to my limited possibility, I
should do only that much and more.

Speaker 1 (56:51):
Well, you've done a lot, I must say, And your
life is a great example to anyone who's sitting in
any part of India now who days to dream. Both
you and Schwether, Yes, what do you say to people
who have the dream but don't know where to begin?

Speaker 4 (57:05):
Like your father's taste of life and you are coming
to mister Day's house suddenly rekindled my hope. I feel
that my voice might reach that one girl or that
one woman in a lane or in a small town
somewhere whose society is telling that you are done with
But she listens and she says that, Okay, if she
started at thirty eight, maybe I can start too. Schweta
comes from a conservative Marvadi family. She has no reasons

(57:27):
to do what she does, and working twelve hours on
a set means actually fourteen hours. You would know that
urs eighteen hours. She went through a very painful process
of trying to have a baby, then the miscarriage, not
knowing how she will make her turn around and come back.
But the lyricist in her was born, so she also
amazes me with her strength. So yes, for anyone out

(57:52):
there who wants to make a start, if that thirst.

Speaker 3 (57:55):
Is there, you will do it somehow.

Speaker 2 (57:57):
I mean.

Speaker 4 (57:57):
I used to go for my foreign trips with my
husband and come back with my suitcase full of books
that I could procure on writing, and keep that window open.
If the window is open, something will happen. I truly
believe that in those jottings that I used to do
at five am, not knowing if it will ever add
up into a novel or a script, I had the
confidence that day to tell your father. So I want

(58:19):
to write with you. You didn't think about whether it's
good or bad writing.

Speaker 3 (58:22):
You just wrote yes.

Speaker 1 (58:23):
And I think that's what we need to do as
creative people. More before we've even written the first word
or given the first shot.

Speaker 3 (58:29):
How will it add up?

Speaker 2 (58:30):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (58:31):
Okay, oh, don't get it wrong. The point is you
have to dare to get it wrong. Yes, you have
to dare.

Speaker 2 (58:35):
To write a bad line.

Speaker 1 (58:36):
My father's to keep telling me, yes, for God's sake,
give me a bad shot.

Speaker 4 (58:40):
Yes, he still tells it. Right, we'll chop off the
head of it. But right, let's start. Let's start somewhere
in Calcutta. I did a course with the University of
East Anglia and I met a writer and professor, Kirsty Gunn.
Kirsty has written a book about her father who was
a bagpipe player, and she took seven years to write
them book. So because my initial training was literature, I

(59:04):
come from a background where it is about essentially keeping
to the paper to the ground and not considering how
long it will take when you will see the story emerge.
The main criteria is to see the story emerge, So
be it ernest Hemingway, Kirsty Gunn, Margaret Atwood, all their
books that I've read, they continuously kept saying, just keep writing,

(59:26):
just keep writing. If you love writing, just keep writing.
You will become something. And even when I was doing
my hairdressing, I remember Roman once said I was very restless,
and I was like, so, when can I do those
slicing that you do with the scissors?

Speaker 2 (59:37):
When can I do that?

Speaker 4 (59:39):
So he looked and said, Shurta, just keep cutting hair.
You will become a hairdresser.

Speaker 2 (59:46):
That's amazing.

Speaker 1 (59:47):
So now we're going to turn the tables, and here's
your opportunity to ask me something that you've always wanted
to and haven't so far.

Speaker 4 (59:56):
I am already working on this sensitive space of that
time when I abandoned my children and then a possibility
of a reunion, and how the reunion, unlike a film's
last scene, is not full of only sweet cheer, and
it has multiple streams running through it.

Speaker 3 (01:00:13):
So I am not asking, I'm actually.

Speaker 4 (01:00:17):
Expressing that I'm really really hoping to explore that personal
space with you.

Speaker 1 (01:00:22):
So you're basically asking me to say yes to your
next film. Yes, and I say yes.

Speaker 3 (01:00:29):
Now you tell me.

Speaker 2 (01:00:32):
What could ask do you even want to know what
the script is. I'll just show up.

Speaker 3 (01:00:36):
My eternal poster.

Speaker 4 (01:00:37):
Girl, I can't tell you from that Archiees poster to
this table what it means.

Speaker 3 (01:00:42):
Now I can fly to the moon.

Speaker 2 (01:00:46):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (01:00:48):
The Poja Part show is produced by Mammoth Media Asia
and Epilogue Entertainment and distributed by iHeart Podcasts.

Speaker 2 (01:00:56):
The executive producer is Jonathan Stricklett.