November 22, 2024 • 52 mins
In this episode of Love Matters, host Leeza Mangaldas welcomes writer Karuna Ezara Parikh for an intimate conversation about a woman’s relationship with her body. Known for her acclaimed works, including The Heart Asks Pleasure First, Karuna shares her deeply personal journey, from navigating the pressures of the media’s gaze to being diagnosed with lung cancer. Together, they discuss self-care, societal expectations, and reclaiming agency over one’s body. Karuna also reflects on how her diagnosis reshaped her perspective on health, beauty, and life itself. This heartfelt episode offers insights and inspiration for anyone seeking to redefine their relationship with themselves.
Leeza Mangaldas’ Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/leezamangaldas/
Karuna Ezara Parikh's Social handles:
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/karunaezara/
X- https://x.com/karunaparikh
Credits:
Produced by:
Patricia Szilagyi (DW)
Charulata Biswas (IE)
Khyati Rajvanshi (IE)
Researcher & Editor:
Sana Rizvi (DW)
Audio Editor:
Suresh Pawar (IE)
Project Manager:
Patricia Szilagyi (DW)
Executive Producer:
Melanie von Marschalck (DW Life & Style)
Anant Nath Sharma (IE)
Love Matters with Leeza Mangaldas is a cooperation between The Indian Express and DW, Germany’s international broadcaster.
Learn more about DW:
https://www.dw.com
Get in touch lovematters@dw.com
Leeza Mangaldas’ Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/leezamangaldas/
Karuna Ezara Parikh's Social handles:
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/karunaezara/
X- https://x.com/karunaparikh
Credits:
Produced by:
Patricia Szilagyi (DW)
Charulata Biswas (IE)
Khyati Rajvanshi (IE)
Researcher & Editor:
Sana Rizvi (DW)
Audio Editor:
Suresh Pawar (IE)
Project Manager:
Patricia Szilagyi (DW)
Executive Producer:
Melanie von Marschalck (DW Life & Style)
Anant Nath Sharma (IE)
Love Matters with Leeza Mangaldas is a cooperation between The Indian Express and DW, Germany’s international broadcaster.
Learn more about DW:
https://www.dw.com
Get in touch lovematters@dw.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to another episode of Love Matters, where we deep
them into topics of the heart that matter the most.
I'm your host, Lisa A Mangledas, and today we're exploring
a subject that's both personal and universal, a woman's relationship
with her body. Often it is one of the most
fraught relationships that can be. The guest we're going to
be unpacking this subject with is Karana Azarah Park. Karena
(00:27):
is a woman of many talents. She's one of the
most recognizable writers of our generation, and her beautiful novel
The Heart Asks Pleasure First and subsequent poetry collection Where
Stories Gather received widespread acclaim for their treatment of themes
like love and identity. She's also been a TV presenter,
something we both have in common. And before I share
(00:48):
further context with our listeners, Karana, I want to welcome
you to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Hi.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
I'm so glad we can talk to me.
Speaker 4 (00:54):
Hi, Lisa, it's wonderful to be here.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Thanks so much for joining us now.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Earlier I dread the publisher's announcement of Karena's upcoming book,
Water Baby, a memoir chronicling her experiences from her television day.
Is hosting a wildly popular show about beach destinations.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
But where the camera typically focused.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
More on her body in a bikini than on the
travel itinerary. And as someone who's presented football in unjustifiably
tight dresses often also as the only woman in an
all male crew and for a largely male audience, I
could relate to that media landscape that Karena was describing,
And I thought we'd have so much to discuss, given
that the book explores her journey to finding comfort and
(01:33):
confidence in her own skin. And when I called Karena
to share this idea, she actually shared something that ended
up reconfiguring the conversation somewhat. She shared that her book
was on hold and that she'd recently been diagnosed with
lung cancer. She explained that she was experiencing perhaps the
most profound inflection point in her relationship with her body.
So it seemed fitting that we talk about how contending
(01:55):
with the body in a state of crisis makes you
reassess your relationship with your body anew while honoring all
that came before, as well as looking forward with hope
for all this yet to be experienced. So Karena, I
want to dive right in and ask you, how are
you feeling in your body today?
Speaker 5 (02:12):
Hi, Lisa, Oh my goodness, that was a wonderful introduction.
It made me feel really good. And I actually woke
up really excited today because one of the things that
I've been doing for the past five months, ever since
I discovered I had cancer.
Speaker 4 (02:28):
Is indulging in deep rest.
Speaker 5 (02:32):
Even the language around it is funny, right, I just
use the word indulging, And should it really be an indulgence?
I don't know, you know, shouldn't it be something that
we allow ourselves anyway? But that's what I've been spending
the last few months doing. And part of taking that
space for deepressed was accepting that I will not be
working a certain way. And so today I woke up
(02:54):
with great excitement because I thought, Wow, I'm going into
the studio after a while, and I'm going to be
doing something that.
Speaker 4 (03:01):
Really sparks creativity.
Speaker 5 (03:03):
And it felt good, particularly doing this after such a
long break. And the funny thing is, I think if
it had been part of my regular life, and if
this had been six months ago, I would have just
come into the studio to meet you, sure with some
level of excitement, but mostly I think with the attitude
of this being just another work thing, and instead I've
(03:25):
come in here really appreciating creating something with someone someone
like you. So it puts things in perspective, doesn't it.
But today I feel good.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
Thank you. I have those bumps just hearing you described that.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
You know, you sent me a voice note earlier saying
that it took cancer to recognize that you can look
after yourself in the ways. Let's say, you know, indulging
in rest perhaps seems vital and not an indulgence, and
that isn't it unfortunate in so many ways that we
don't look after ourselves, know, just every day. So what
(04:01):
has that been like for you, kind of taking care
of yourself in these new ways? And does it make
you re examine your previous relationship with your body in
a way that you know, perhaps you should have had
permission to do this all along.
Speaker 4 (04:16):
Yeah, that's such a good question.
Speaker 5 (04:18):
I absolutely did not take care of myself many many
years before this. I was someone who went to the
grocery store and thought, oh my god, those walnuts are
really too expensive.
Speaker 4 (04:29):
I'm not going to buy them.
Speaker 5 (04:31):
And the very same evening would go to a bar
and buy a cocktail for more expensive than that, right,
And I think a lot of us think like that,
and investing in our health is you know, it feels
a little boring. It feels like something that should be
left to the later years.
Speaker 4 (04:50):
And I, for.
Speaker 5 (04:51):
Example, always thought I had a little more time to
kind of mistreat my body. In fact, it wasn't even
such an active thought. It was just the way I
went about things, and no regrets, of course.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
And I truly mean that.
Speaker 5 (05:07):
I'm not someone who is looking at cancer and saying, oh,
I wish I had done this differently, or I wish
I had not done that. I think this is also
part of the journey, and I'm curious to see where
I end up on this journey and at the end
of it. But yeah, it did take cancer for me
(05:29):
to actually start prioritizing my health. And when I say health,
I speak of it holistically, you know. I am speaking
about the physical aspect, whether it's eating right, getting enough sleep,
just allowing myself a day off work. And I also
speak about the mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects of it.
(05:51):
I have been deeply out of touch with those things,
and I think most of us as a generation are,
you know, we work way too hard, and we have
a lot of guilt when it comes to our work.
We have a lot of guilt when it comes to
our rest. Had to actually work very hard to shed
that guilt. And even now there are days where I
(06:12):
tell myself, Oh, you're you're useless, You're doing absolutely nothing,
Like you're fine, Like why are you just lying in bed?
Get up and do some work. And then there's a
second voice that I've had to develop a conversation with
and a relationship with in my head that comes in
and says, you have cancer, you have every right to rest.
(06:33):
And even if you didn't have cancer, you still have
every right to rest. I do think it's also part
of a deeply capitalist society and economy and time that
we live in, you know, hustle culture.
Speaker 4 (06:45):
But really it's exactly like who are.
Speaker 5 (06:50):
We trying to prove what to when we are working
ourselves to the bone like that. So, yeah, it did
take cancer, And in a way, I'm almost grateful that
this very feared disease came to visit me, because I
don't know if I would have ever actually stopped and
paused and given myself the time I needed.
Speaker 4 (07:09):
To relax, actually need to put it simply.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
You know, I can only imagine though the journey has been.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
I suppose a lot.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Of emotions come up when when you find that your
body is in a state of crisis and that I
had a lump in my breast recently.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
It turned out to leave benign.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
But just the the word cancer and the you know,
like doctors to the whole process was very It was
a roller coaster of the discovery, the you know, just
trying to be objective about it, and also like hustling
along because you don't even.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
Want to tell people, but you're dealing with this one
also trying to deal with real life. Do you want
to do?
Speaker 1 (07:51):
You want to take us through the sort of process
of this, yeah, diagnosis, making sense of it, getting to
a point where you're willing to talk about it in
a public setting like this, because that is also important,
I think for people to know what you're going through,
but it can can take time to feel ready. I'd
love to just hear what it's been.
Speaker 4 (08:11):
Like for you. Gosha.
Speaker 5 (08:12):
Firstly, I'm sorry that you went through that, because I've
had scares like that in the past as well before
this happened, and I know how harrowing, that is. And
you know, we live in this world currently, we live
with so much fear of cancer, and I think there's
this feeling that well, all of us.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
Are going to get it someday. You know.
Speaker 5 (08:34):
It is the disease of our times, and it is
very much a lifestyle disease. In fact, most of the
research that I've done over the last six months shows
me that even if you do have cancer genes or
cancer prone genes, let's say, you can control that with
your lifestyle. And I think we are not given that
(08:57):
tool to begin with. We are not given that information.
You know, Big Pharma definitely benefits from us not knowing
that that our lifestyles have the power to turn those
genes on and off within our bodies, or those cells
on and off within our bodies. So yeah, I'm I'm
sorry though that sounds scary, and whether or not it's benign,
(09:20):
I think that process is always very difficult, and I've
been there before, so yeah, but in my case this time,
I found a lump in my neck, at the base
of my neck. And it's interesting, right because I think, Lisa,
you know this that when it comes to women and cancer,
(09:41):
the two cancers were told to really look out for
our breast cancer and cervical cancer. So those are the
things that we really focus on as women, right. We
now most of us know to check our breasts, to
get frequent pat smears, to check our breast in the shower,
for example, mammograms, And of course that is a wonderful
(10:05):
and very good thing, because we went through many years
in the history of the world where these were the
cancers that were most ignored because they only happened to women, right,
And to me, what's wonderful is that finally there's a
focus on them. And of course these cancers affect women
in astronomically high numbers, but it doesn't mean you cannot
(10:28):
get other cancers. And in some way, my reading of
this today is also we need to move forward from
just checking for these cancers, because once again they kind
of reduce women to their reproductive or sexualized thoughts. And
there's you know, a woman is an entire body, a
woman is a human being, and it's ridiculous that I
(10:50):
have to say that sentence, right, But the fact is
I never once thought that I could get cancer anywhere else.
So you know, I checked my breast, I looked into
the HPB vaccine.
Speaker 4 (11:00):
All those things that.
Speaker 5 (11:02):
Are feminine cancers, let's say, but cancer is not gendered
in so many ways, and so I never thought to
check on other things. So when this lump came up
on my neck, I inmediately thought it was something else.
In fact, the doctors wanted to test for tuberculosis because
that's what they thought it was most likely going to be,
(11:24):
and it turned out to be pretty advanced lung cancer.
Speaker 4 (11:27):
And you know, I went through a series of tests immediately.
Speaker 5 (11:31):
And I say this to anyone who finds anything weird
on their body, do not hold it to yourself.
Speaker 4 (11:38):
Do not wait.
Speaker 5 (11:39):
What really saved me was going to a doctor immediately
the day I found the lump.
Speaker 4 (11:46):
I was at the.
Speaker 5 (11:47):
GP by that evening, and the next morning I was
getting an FNAC.
Speaker 4 (11:51):
Which is a fine needle biopsy.
Speaker 5 (11:53):
I was, you know, getting scans, X rays, all of
it within twenty four hours. And I'm so glad I did.
And I will say this, I was scheduled to go
for writing retreat to go out. I was teaching a
writing retreat there and because I wasn't taking it very
seriously when the lump came up and I was prescribed
(12:16):
all these tests. I said, right, but I need to
go to go up first, and the doctors, the doctor
looked at me like I was insane, and so I
changed my ticket. I got all my tests done and
of course found out that there was a malignancy in
my body. So yeah, it was a strange, strange process,
and it is not what I had planned for at
(12:39):
thirty nine. You know, no one does. The other thing
I do want to say is, and I think this
is another way women don't take care of themselves. Look
into medical insurance. Whatever age you are, you know you
should have a medical insurance. Life is full of surprises,
and not all of them are kind surprises. So just
(12:59):
small things that that I'm grateful for and that I
pass on to anyone who comes at this with fear.
There are ways that you can prepare for the worst
without it actually being a panic button. So yeah, but
it was sobering of course when I first found out,
and it was terrifying as well. But I also decided, Lisa,
(13:20):
that I don't want to choose fear. I think as women,
we have incredible strength right within us, and I do
think women are really spectacular when it comes to that
but that also means that very often we tend to hide,
let's say, our deepest fears. Very often when it means
(13:42):
that we need to protect family members or we need
to put on a brave face.
Speaker 4 (13:47):
We do that.
Speaker 5 (13:48):
And so I will say, while I didn't choose fear,
and I decided that that's not going to be the
path for me, over year, I did give myself the
days I need to feel the those things, to be scared,
to be terrified, to mourn whatever came before this. I
knew that my life was going to change forever after this,
(14:10):
so I just took the time to kind of mourn
that as well. And I didn't move fast. This is
the other thing. Yes, I did the tests really fast,
and I got the results, and I knew that the
way forward was going to be probably chemotherapy, which I
am now in hospital for mostly, and other newer treatments.
(14:34):
But I wanted to take my time with it, so
I actually took a month between diagnosis and starting treatment,
and that's typically quite long when it comes to cancer.
I think most people decide to move within a few
days sometimes of a diagnosis. But I just want to say,
for anyone listening who might go through this, or who
(14:55):
has a family member going through this, or has ever
thought about this. That you are allowed to take your time,
You are allowed to set the pace that you want.
You are allowed to get comfortable with an idea of
I don't even want to say a sick body, but
an altered body before you actually move to heal it.
So I think it's very important to take that time
(15:17):
to gather the information that you might need on this journey,
to gather the people around you who are going to
support you for it, to talk to different doctors, to
meet perhaps holistic healers, whatever it takes to make you
feel comfortable on the journey. And so much of this
being a success is how you approach it. So this
(15:38):
is how I wanted to approach it, and I think
it's served very well so far.
Speaker 4 (15:42):
So yeah, I think for a.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Lot of people it can be quite like people feel
like they don't know how to receive this information even
when someone shares that, people say a diagnose with can
So I think, and you said to me, you know,
I don't need this energy of people like I think
you're in the worst human energy. And I think people
don't like nobody talks about even how to have these conversations.
(16:05):
So for me, it's really it was very special also
that you were willing with such warmth and Canada to
talk about this stuff, because I haven't even really I
didn't know how to share even just the fact that
like I maybe had something up with my boob, you know,
to tell my mom like she was crying on the phone,
like nothing even happened yet. And it can be so
hard to have these conversations. You feel like you want
(16:26):
to share it, but the other person might not receive.
You also don't want pity, and it's really quite difficult
to navigate topic. I think for many many people, either
when a loved one is going through something or when
they themselves are going through something and want to share.
So I really I am grateful for this opportunity to
navigate that with you, and for you to really with
(16:47):
so much openness share from your perspective.
Speaker 4 (16:50):
So thank you, Thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
Willing to have this conversation. You know, and your book
What a Baby.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
When I read about it, and before we'd even gotten
in touch, I was so already that was exploring your
relationship with your body in so many ways, right focus
on rest and cervical cancer, but just in general, like
there's this tendency to see women as vessels of reproduction,
you know, and society and often in medicine also, and
then in the media, the tendency to sexualize, right, And
(17:18):
I just would love to hear from you how you
reflect on all of this. This might be quite a
long answer, but that's your body was front and center
and your imagination already at this point writing water Baby.
I think, like reclaiming the body is something you've spoken
about a lot, and I'd love to hear what that
meant for you in the context of everything that you've
been through up until this point, and then perhaps the
(17:39):
new reflections that came after the diagnosis.
Speaker 4 (17:43):
Yeah, that's actually a really good question.
Speaker 5 (17:46):
I just I want to just go back to one
of the things you said about, you know, people bringing
their own energy to my diagnosis. And that's been so
interesting because so much of what we project upon ourselves
are the opinions of other people, right, And we live
in especially in India, I think, actually, I don't know,
(18:06):
perhaps all over the world, but I speak for an
Indian context. Here we live with this immense pressure of
the outside world and the scrutiny of the outside world constantly,
and that too, is something I had to renegotiate when
it came to cancer, because I was used to being
a yes girl, right and I was used to kind
(18:28):
of just being polite about things constantly. And I don't
think we realize how much those things are making us
unwell as well. And when I got cancer, it was
one of the things that I felt, I'm going to
draw a line about because I remember the first few
people who found out. Some of the responses were pretty weird.
(18:52):
I'm going to say, you know, they were really strange
things that came up. And of course everyone has an opinion.
Every auntie has an opinion. Everyone wants to tell you
how they think you're looking. So one of the big
things for me is that my chemotherapy drug is such
that I haven't lost my hair. I am losing it currently,
and every time I brush it, you know, a piece
(19:15):
of my heart breaks. Because my hair. I've made it
a part of my identity. It's very much a security
blanket for me. Over the years, you know, I know
many people have referred to me as, oh, the girl
with the long hair, you know, because that's always been me.
Speaker 4 (19:30):
And so I needed to cut it.
Speaker 5 (19:33):
I know it probably doesn't look a short to anyone
right now, but it feels very short to me because
I cut off a whole chunk and it's still falling.
But because I mostly look like this right now. I
think that was one of the things most commented on.
When I stepped out of the house or bumped into
(19:53):
people or met relatives. It was like, oh, you look great.
You know, you look so good. It doesn't matter. Just
because I look a certain way right now, I haven't
lost my head, doesn't mean I'm not suffering from the chemotherapy.
It doesn't mean that internally I'm not in pain or
nauseated all the time or having a difficult time with
(20:14):
this right so, I think that was one of the
harshest realities, that people are just going to judge you
by how you look, and that works both ways. Even
the fact that I've lost a lot of weight. I've
lost weight partly because I became healthier than I've ever
been in my life, but also because with cancer your
body is unweal, you typically do lose weight, right And
(20:37):
as a society, again, we are so conditioned to believing
that weight loss is always ninety eight percent of the
time is a great thing, and until you look emaciated,
which of course then you are again blamed and bullied
for any kind of weight loss is usually seen as
a great thing. And I find that so problematicly, sir,
(20:57):
because you know, the last time I lost a lot
of weight, I was severely depressed, and now I've lost
all this weight and I have cancer. But people tend
to equate weight loss with positive things, and it's really
frustrating to often hear people say that, and separately, you know,
I mean, I have never been overweight myself, but I
(21:20):
also think the problem with that is I used to
eat very, very unhealthily constantly. I lived on a diet
of like high cbs, you know, sugar high cubs, and
I didn't put on weight, possibly because I had very
high metabolism due to very high anxiety, and that was
(21:40):
no healthy weight to be living. But because I was
relatively slim, I think I got away with it. No
one would ever turn to me and say, hey, you know,
you need to be healthier. And I think the same way.
We kind of fall for the idea that someone who's
larger is unhealthy, which isn't always true, we also fall
(22:03):
for the idea that someone who's slimmer is healthy. So again,
another frustrating comment that I often got in this journey
is you have cancer. Oh, but you've always been so healthy.
And the truth is I've not been healthy. I've just
been slim. And it's kind of shitty that people equate
the two and that there's so little room for nuance
when it comes to viewing our bodies or the bodies
(22:25):
of people around us. So, yeah, I just wanted to
talk about that for a second, and I feel like
this relates to what you were asking about the body
and my relationship with it through this journey. One of
the things that's happened is, for the first time, because
I've also been kind of in this quarantine situation at
(22:46):
home alone most of the time, either with my mother
or my partner or my dog. You know, a very
kind of limited amount of people can see me because
of my very low immunity levels. Right now, my body
has also been de sexualized in some sense because it's
not on display. I'm not dressing up, i'm not going out,
(23:09):
I'm not being seen, and so for the first time
in a long time, it's kind of like I have
my own COVID lockdown, you know, all by myself. So
if you look back to that time, perhaps you'll also
remember what it felt like. Do not wear makeup, do
not have to dress up, to just be alone at
home with your thoughts and your being, your internal being.
(23:33):
And another decision that I made very soon after the
diagnosis was that I didn't want to be on social media.
It was too difficult to view the outside world and
everything that was happening, and you know, fashion launches and
politics and even everything that was happening let's say in Palastine,
(23:55):
which I had been very invested in.
Speaker 4 (23:57):
I just could not witness those things any longer. You know.
I kept up with the news, but I could not.
Speaker 5 (24:03):
Have that endless scroll either of joy or of sorrow,
of what's going on in other people's lives. So I
cut off from that as well. And I certainly was
not in a place to share anything from my own
life in this time. I wanted to digest it for
a long time before I got to this point. And honestly,
this is I think the first time that I'm talking
(24:25):
to anyone about this in a way where it's going
to be witness publicly so I think that changed my
relationship with my body in this time as well, where
it's not a body on display, and female bodies in
particular are constantly on display, and it has been so
refreshing to remove myself from that, and it has allowed
(24:48):
me to in a sense, be more than my body.
My relationship with my self is very much right now
a relationship with my innermo self. You know, I finally
brought those things back to the forefront after years, and
so it has been six months of kind of negotiating
my spiritual being or my emotional being, of journaling daily,
(25:14):
of meditating, of bringing those aspects of physicality back. So
that's been super, super interesting. We would talk about reproductive
aspects of a woman, and I don't know if many
people know this, but I wanted to talk a little
bit about what chemo does to the body in terms
of those things.
Speaker 4 (25:33):
Is that all right?
Speaker 3 (25:34):
Of course?
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Of course, there's so many aspects of what you just
said that I'd love to talk about some more. Let's
absolutely talk about how chemo can impact fertility.
Speaker 5 (25:43):
I'll just say a little bit about that because I
think most people, and particularly menstruating people, do not know
much about this and I was certainly not told this.
But you know, when you have chemotherapy, because is just
such a high dose of very toxic materials going into
(26:04):
your body to kill cancer cells, you essentially lose the
ability to menstrate for the time that you are having treatment. Now,
that meant differ based on the drug that they choose
to give you. But one of the other things that
happens is if you're my age. I'm thirty nine right now,
if you're my age, which is close to forty, you
(26:26):
might actually completely lose the ability to have children. You
are essentially rendered in futile after this. And it's interesting
to me that the doctors did not tell me that.
And I'm really going to some of the best doctors
in the country, and I'm so grateful for it, But
I was never actually told that by any doctor. And
(26:46):
it's something that I needed to find out through friends
who've had cancer before me and through the online space,
and I felt like that is something that I should
have been told. You know, if at thirty nine and
I'm going to lose that ability, perhaps I wanted to
have a child. I mean, side note, I did not
(27:06):
want to have a child at this point, but if
I had wanted to, I think I would be devastated.
And I also don't know if at thirty nine I
was ready for menopause. And I'm not sure at this
point if my body is going to respond differently to
the treatment of what's going to happen in the long run.
But it is very strange to be sort of experiencing
(27:30):
symptoms of menopause at thirty nine when you're certainly not
ready for it, and to have not even been told
these things. So I just thought that's also interesting. You know,
many women, if anyone's listening here and this context is
for you, I do say look into, say freezing your
(27:51):
eggs if that's what you want, because you might not
have that ability after this. But yeah, it's just interesting
how this whole little lination because it's a woman's body.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Yeah, and there's also I think again social media, medical,
all avenues by which women's lives are impacted and shaped
and controlled typically tend.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
To deny women agency.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
You know, It's like, by design, women's agency is systemically
surveiled and controlled. I imagine across various times in your life.
As also in mind, we've probably experienced firsthand some of
these ways you know whether it's a lack of agency
in terms of how you're perceived just because you're because
(28:39):
you look a certain way, or because you're you know,
posting a travel show, making sex education content online or
like that you're you talked about, whatever relief it is
to not be.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
On display, but even if one is on display, it is.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
A shame that one kind of loses the ability to
do kind of ensure you're.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
Read the way you wish to be read.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Right, Why could I not choose my own clothes as
a football presenter?
Speaker 3 (29:07):
The men were wearing.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
Suits, you know, Speaker's air conditioned and freezing in the
studio and you're in a bandage dress, or you're in
a football pitch and stiletters making holes on the pitch,
like super uncomfortable.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
You can't eat anything that that type of dresses. And
you don't really have to say, like if you want
that pacheck, you wear what you're told and you go
do your job.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
And you're too young to really even see the lack
of agency it's an issue. You just think this is
how it is, you know, doctor, also like this is
how it is with women. Your lack of agency around
your body is just supposed to be. This is how
it is matter. Rape is illegal, you know, and pre
medal sex is frowned upon, So you can't.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
Even yeah what.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
You can neither say yes nor no on your own
terms in so many ways. Right before we move on,
I'd like to recommend another great podcast to you. If
you're like me and love to hash out every burning
culture question, then tune into Respectfully Disagree, a weekly audio
podcast from the Squaddle team. From whether hookup culture is
empowering to why chadwives are cool again, nothing is off limits.
(30:10):
It's smart, it's sharp, and full of respectful disagreement. Check
out Respectfully Disagree wherever you get your podcasts. And now
back to love matters.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
I would love to hear your thoughts on just agency.
It sounds like in some ways you've been thinking a
lot about agency and also reclaiming more and more age.
I feel like even just going from twenty to thirty
to forty is like a really powerful.
Speaker 3 (30:34):
Process of you know, taking back some of your agency.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
What are your thoughts on just a sort of female agency,
you know, in the body, both as a physiological entity
as well as a social engendered entity.
Speaker 5 (30:51):
It's so funny, you know, the things you were saying
about wearing a dress on the football field, and all
I was thinking about all those times when I do
when in my own twenties. I think we're probably on
television around the same time you and I, and I
was remembering all those times where you know, you just
feel like such an idiot, and I can imagine when
it comes to spot it was even more exacerbated because
(31:14):
you know, you're kind of standing next to men who
are just wearing like jeans and a T shirt or
a suit, or you know, speaking to like sweaty players,
and there you are like dolled up as if you're
about to go to the disco, you know, so I
can I can only imagine what that's like. And I
had several experiences like that where you know, I just
felt like I was being.
Speaker 4 (31:33):
Reduced to a body or a bobble, really.
Speaker 5 (31:37):
And I was not there for how I could speak
or present or for my brain at all.
Speaker 4 (31:44):
And I remember that.
Speaker 5 (31:45):
And you know, you say that we are scared in
those moments to ask for better or to demand something different,
and I remember that feeling as well, thinking, oh, but
what if I lose my job because of this?
Speaker 4 (31:59):
So what if I, you know, you don't want to be.
Speaker 5 (32:01):
The difficult woman at all, like God forbid, you know.
So I remember that really clearly, and I just want
to relate it to what I've been going through, because
those feelings don't end, right. We continue with them as
we grow older, We carry them with us, and unless
(32:21):
we actively fight them, I think they become a part
of our beings, and we just continue to say yes
to things that we don't actually agree with. And it's
interesting because right at the start of this journey, I
was reading about different responses people have had tu diagnosis,
(32:41):
and one of the key things that was found is
that women who typically asked a lot of questions and
demanded a lot of answers from their doctors statistically tended
to live longer post to cancer treatment. And it goes
to show right that all that suppression and all that
(33:04):
submission somewhere is also messing with us internally. And I
think like for anyone who thinks that you're being difficult,
if you put up a fight, maybe the statistic will
help you because and not just for cancer, for anything
out there, right anything, we should be demanding more, We
should be demanding better pay, We should be demanding better
(33:24):
hours off. We should be demanding you know, someone like
about their gaze when we don't want it on us.
Speaker 4 (33:32):
We should be demanding a change in laws, all of it.
Speaker 5 (33:35):
So yeah, I actually found that really heartening and I
decided to utilize that fact more and going forward maybe
asking for better. And I again, I can't believe it
took cancer for me to actually do that, but it
took me back to these early days of.
Speaker 4 (33:56):
Filming and even writing for magazine.
Speaker 5 (34:00):
Is where say a publisher once asked me if I
had had a book job. I mean, just my boss
casually asking me that. You know, when I went to
tell him, I filed an article. So you know, it
took me back to all those things and reminiscent of
the stuff you were talking about as well. And I think,
(34:22):
particularly for women who have families, that is something.
Speaker 4 (34:27):
To really really look at.
Speaker 5 (34:29):
We always put our partners and children and in laws
and parents before us always, you know, they asked for anything,
and we are there. We turn our lives upside down
in order to provide whatever emotional care we can often,
financial care, physical labor, all of it. And I just
(34:53):
think that somewhere it's killing us on so.
Speaker 4 (34:57):
Many different levels.
Speaker 5 (34:58):
Yeah, it's pissing off, but I think that we know
enough now about the body mind and body spirit connection
to know that saying yes to those things and gritting
our teeth and getting through them and constantly putting someone
else before us, it's not just exhausting and pissing off.
It is inside your body some It is creating a
(35:21):
lot of some sort. So that's also part of what
I've been looking at in these last few months, the
idea of agency and what it does to us internally.
Speaker 3 (35:34):
And that's so powerful, Karena, and it really.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
Like hives hard because I think the idea of beauty
and acquiescence is something that women owe to the world.
You know, it's like the rent you pay and whoever
plays that rent best, like the Golden Apple, where I
think as a young woman, there's you know you are.
You're bombarded with this messaging with like your appearance is
the most important thing, and you women don't get angry.
(35:59):
You should just be pleasant looking and pleasant, right yeah,
and constantly minimize, make yourself small. Don't even laughed loud.
You don't sit real legs apart, you know, don't ask
too many questions, don't and and but also be presentable,
have your hair tidy, have you Like.
Speaker 3 (36:16):
This whole thing of making yourself palatable.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
And small and undemanding, I think is so relentlessly sort.
Speaker 3 (36:25):
Of hammered in. And even if you have parents.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
Who are not like that, and I'm grateful I didn't
have that conditioning directly from my parents, but it is
so pervasive that the idea of the good woman as
like a beautiful and acquiescent being, especially in a pre
social media ear where I feel like we had less
diverse reference points and things as well. I think that
there's so much internalized misogyny also, where like maybe twenty
(36:52):
year old Lisa didn't even see the issues with being
in that tight dress on that pitch, or maybe even
I mean it's a glamorized role, like okay, I guess maybe,
I mean you kind of know that how you look
plain into why you were hired. It helps that you're
educated and can speak and all of that. So now
you're the golden girl who looks good in the tight
dress and can speak English, you know, and you recognize
(37:12):
everything that's wrong with that, everything that's wrong with that,
but you do it anyway, partly because you have bills
to pay, but partly also because I think there is
some amount of internalized misogyny where male attention seems like
something that's back in you, but like.
Speaker 3 (37:25):
Male attention is valuable. That what a scamp. It's so
unfortunate how I've recruited into being foot soldiers.
Speaker 1 (37:33):
Of our own and each other's sort of like, you know,
like how how closely can a woman follow a beauty standard?
You know, how straight, shiny, long, et cetera can your
hair be? Or how perfectly round can your boobs be?
Speaker 4 (37:46):
Or your finger?
Speaker 1 (37:46):
Like there's beauty standards for every single part of the body. Right,
And even when you know, despite feminist and queer and
other wonderful reading and kind of like ideas that you
try and immerse yourself in, just even when you know better,
you still I will still look in the mirror sometimes
and wish I have a prettier knees or like thinner
thighs or big whatever, Right even though I really wish,
(38:11):
given all that I know now, I did not feel
that way?
Speaker 4 (38:13):
Do you do?
Speaker 1 (38:14):
You struggle with that still, that the relationship to beauty
and beauty standards And.
Speaker 5 (38:19):
Oh definitely, I mean, and you can imagine like having cancer. Initially,
you know, there's you look tired so many days. You know,
you come home and you you look awful. You know,
your grain in the face, your hair is coming out
in clumps. You're just kind of lying there. You know
that you're not desirable at this point. So it's you know,
(38:41):
it's a constant fight in the head even now. But
like I said, I have actively been working on that.
And I think this is part of what you know
in feminists discourse we call radical self care, right, because
there's one aspect of self care, which you know is
it's not an unless version of it, but it's just
(39:02):
one version of it where you know, you make sure
you book yourself the massage, and you take the day
off and you you know, spend time in the shower
and give yourself a nice shampoo and you know, get
the manicure, all of those things. But then there's the
radical aspect of it where you really do have to
change the fabric of your thinking, and that is a
self care on a different level. And you know what
(39:24):
you were talking about and this misogyny and how it
becomes so internalized, it also becomes a weaponized because we
begin to use it not just against ourselves, but against
each other. And that is the tool of patriarchy that
you know, is placed in our hands, and we brandish
it so conveniently. You know, men don't really need to
know anything, because we take each other down so often,
(39:45):
you know. And I think that's the kind of radical
selfkit that I've been looking into, where I check myself
when I'm speaking about another woman in those tones. You know,
I check myself when I'm making a joke about the
way someone on look so how they're dressed, or you know,
why is she behaving that way? And that's not to
(40:06):
say that, you know, you don't discuss human behavior, but
I think it's important to question whether we're looking at
something through a gender lens. And you know what you
were saying about us constantly saying yes to these things,
to the bandage stress and to looking good, and you know, oh,
I'd better do this, I'll fit in more. I think
the darker side of that is when we start blaming
(40:30):
ourselves for not fitting into those things. And then the
next step is we start blaming each other for certain things.
And I found this even with the cancer, like, for example,
when I told certain people that I had lung cancer.
One of the things that often came up is this
idea of blame, and it was like, what did she
(40:52):
do wrong? And I get that that comes perhaps from
a sense of fear. People want to know what I
did wrong so that they can tell themselves that they
aren't doing that, you know. So for example, a couple
of people were like, oh, you know, she must have
smoked a lot, or I'd better stop smoking now, or
I no longer smoke like that, or one friend send
(41:15):
me a message saying, I hope you will stop smoking now.
Speaker 4 (41:18):
And the fact is I've never been a regular smoker.
Speaker 5 (41:21):
And the kind of lung cancer I have typically affects
non smokers. And that's just the truth of it. That's
not to say smoking is good for cancer.
Speaker 4 (41:32):
It's terrible.
Speaker 5 (41:33):
And one of the first things they do tell you
with any cancer is if you do smoke, you might
want to stop that. But I wasn't even in that position, right,
But people were looking to blame me, especially other women,
were looking to blame me for something that was happening
to me. And that is part of this thinking, I think,
(41:55):
where if we don't check it and if we don't
radicalize our thoughts and fight back on instantly within our
own heads.
Speaker 4 (42:02):
It can be a slippery slope to being a you know.
Speaker 5 (42:06):
So, yeah, I I have been working very deeply on
that aspect of self care, and I call it self
care because at the end of the day, no one
benefits more from it than you. You know, once you
look into those thoughts. And I'm not one of those
people who's like, oh, I have no negative thoughts, That's
(42:26):
not true. But I think there's a way to process
those thoughts and we technically lash out or lash inwards,
and they're always of control or feel that come from
a feeling of lack of control or wanting control. You know,
they come from deep insecurity. Is they come from deep
(42:47):
patterns that have been put into us through a misogynistic
culture that we exist in. And so yeah, it's it's complicated,
and it's not always easy to show up as your self,
especially when you're showing up only to yourself, right, But
being alone for so many hours during this time and
(43:10):
just sitting with my thoughts has been a great place
to start.
Speaker 4 (43:15):
Work on that and to question who I want to
be at the end of this.
Speaker 5 (43:20):
And that's the other thing I think that cancer us
you know Lisa Ray, who's such a wonderful human being
in an advocate of living positively post cancer. She's a
dear friend as well, and right at the very start,
she said, I'm sorry that you have to go through this,
but you know that it can be a doorway, and
(43:41):
the question is are you going to step through it?
And adversity comes to each of us at some point
in our lives. But I really did want to think
of it as that doorway to something better. And once
I step through the doorway, I'm not kidding when I
say that I don't even see it as a better
place or something I need to get over, or something
(44:04):
I need to fight. I actually see it as a
gift that came into my life, because I don't think
I would have ever had these conversations or these thoughts
if I hadn't been pushed against the wall so harshly
as cancer has done to me.
Speaker 4 (44:19):
And one of the other.
Speaker 5 (44:22):
Things that I started as a practice, and I don't
think you need to have cancer to do this is
actually talking to my body.
Speaker 4 (44:31):
And I don't think we.
Speaker 5 (44:33):
Acknowledge our body as this living, breathing being. You know,
we think of ourselves as our mind and the body
exists as something the mind dolls up or presents to
the world, but we are very much our bodies as well, right,
and feeling that connection and talking to my body and
(44:54):
asking it each morning, how are you, how are you
doing today, or telling it during a medai that you know,
every cell in you is alive and well and you're
good and I'm going to.
Speaker 4 (45:05):
Take care of you.
Speaker 5 (45:08):
I read the story of one cancer survivor who said
that she just told her body every day, I'm showing
up for you. I'm here for you, and I'm not
going to let go. And so I've been having these
really kind of I won't even say they're deep, they're
just really like kind conversations with my body, who I
(45:30):
didn't acknowledge for so many years, and to acknowledge that
and to say, you have done so well for me,
despite all the alcohol I've put in you, despite all
the shitty food I've put in you, despite all the
trashy things I've done to you, you know you have
shown up for me consistently, and I'm going to show
up for you and I'm going to take such good
(45:51):
care of you and thank you for being there for
me and we're on this journey together, and it's so
beautiful to kind of come friends with your body at
this age, you know. And I think once you do that,
you no longer judge it so much for how it looks.
It's even how it's performing. You know, you have a
(46:12):
deeply empathetic relationship then with your body. And so that's
the place I'm trying to be in mostly, and it
really is beautiful. And I think for a long time
I didn't want to do these things also because they
just seemed so.
Speaker 4 (46:32):
Woo you know.
Speaker 5 (46:33):
I was like, Oh, my goodness, Like, am I really
going to be someone who like manifests good health? Like
this is so ridiculously cheesy. And I think that we
are a generation of cynics. And I don't blame us
look at the world around us, but I think I confused.
Speaker 4 (46:53):
My spiritual relationship with my body.
Speaker 5 (46:56):
With what was going on when it came to spirituality
religion in the country around us and the world around us.
And I began to view my relationship with what I
call the spiritual through this lens, and it became very
tarnished by that, and I wanted to step away from
(47:17):
anything that kind of acknowledged the divine even because to
me it just felt disgusting because of the violence done
in the name of the Divine around this world, particularly
in this moment for living in particularly in India, I
just did not want any part of that. And so
(47:39):
it's also been a process of kind of reinventing what
the spiritual means for me. You know, what does it
mean when something moves you so deeply that it helps
you believe that there is a power greater than you,
And that power is not a man. That power is
just something gorgeous out there that you are going to
(48:01):
apply to your life in the best possible way. And
maybe we are that power, you know, maybe that power
resides within you. I don't know, but it has been
a really, really beautiful journey, and I do know that
it is partly a cliche as well to kind of
(48:21):
be hit by cancer and then to begin to believe
in something greater than yourself.
Speaker 4 (48:26):
But perhaps that's why it is a gift.
Speaker 1 (48:30):
Thanks so much for sharing that, Karana, and I think
so much of the wisdom that you've shared is are
things that women, including myself, should begin applying immediately. Rest
you know, on the incredible resilience and joy and feeling
that this body gives you. And I think that it
(48:52):
would really do us all well to also realize that, perhaps,
you know, our appearance is one of the less interesting
things about us actually, like so many of the things
that maybe we don't even take the time to think about,
Like so much of life is spent just not not
questioning and just doing just you know, playing the bills
and losing the weight. And I don't know, I read
(49:12):
the other day like life, there's life and paying bills
and losing weight.
Speaker 6 (49:15):
And I thought, maybe it's so profound sometimes, and it's
sad that it takes sometimes these drastic events, you know,
to make you stop and see what should have been
obvious all along.
Speaker 1 (49:31):
And I think unfortunately when it when big events like
that happen, actually the time for reflection with others is
really rare.
Speaker 3 (49:39):
So thank you for being so generous with that, because
I really think we've.
Speaker 1 (49:42):
All got to to begin now, begin doing all these
things now.
Speaker 5 (49:49):
Yeah, we shouldn't have to wait for something big or
horrible to happen. And uh, I know that's easier said
than done, But if there's anyway to live like you
have cancer, I would say do it.
Speaker 4 (50:06):
And I'm still on.
Speaker 5 (50:07):
This journey, Lisa, and I don't know how it's going
to end or where it's going to end, but I
will say that I'm really enjoying it. And that might
sound ironic because I do have cancer and it isn't
always fun, but I am trying to enjoy this journey
as much as I can and to honor it as
part of my wider journey as well. And I just
(50:28):
wanted to say thank you for offering to have this
conversation with me despite the fact that my book is
currently on hold because of what I'm going through, and
welcoming that we could have a different kind of conversation
about the body and giving me a space to voice
these feelings and thoughts in a way that is not
just generous but also empathetic and sensitive. And trust me,
(50:53):
so many people have asked me the wrong questions or
not listened or judged the way I'm approaching this journey,
and I didn't feel any of those things from you.
I only felt welcomed and loved and heard. So thank you,
very very very much.
Speaker 3 (51:09):
Thank you, Karen.
Speaker 1 (51:11):
I wish I could give you a big hug, because I.
Speaker 3 (51:14):
Really, yeah, I feel like we were meant to be
friends sooner.
Speaker 1 (51:17):
I relate to so much of what the way you described.
I think I could listen to you all day. So
thank you. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to
listen to you and to help share your perspectives on
what you're going through. To everyone tuning in, Thanks so
much for joining us on Love Matters, produced by Indian
Express and DW, Germany's international broadcaster. We would love to
(51:41):
hear your thoughts on this podcast. If you don't want
to reach out to us, you can write in at
Lovematters at DW dot com. Please do share this with
your friends and family, subscribe wherever you're listening, and do
join us again next time.
Welcome to another episode of Love Matters, where we deep
them into topics of the heart that matter the most.
I'm your host, Lisa A Mangledas, and today we're exploring
a subject that's both personal and universal, a woman's relationship
with her body. Often it is one of the most
fraught relationships that can be. The guest we're going to
be unpacking this subject with is Karana Azarah Park. Karena
(00:27):
is a woman of many talents. She's one of the
most recognizable writers of our generation, and her beautiful novel
The Heart Asks Pleasure First and subsequent poetry collection Where
Stories Gather received widespread acclaim for their treatment of themes
like love and identity. She's also been a TV presenter,
something we both have in common. And before I share
(00:48):
further context with our listeners, Karana, I want to welcome
you to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Hi.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
I'm so glad we can talk to me.
Speaker 4 (00:54):
Hi, Lisa, it's wonderful to be here.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Thanks so much for joining us now.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Earlier I dread the publisher's announcement of Karena's upcoming book,
Water Baby, a memoir chronicling her experiences from her television day.
Is hosting a wildly popular show about beach destinations.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
But where the camera typically focused.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
More on her body in a bikini than on the
travel itinerary. And as someone who's presented football in unjustifiably
tight dresses often also as the only woman in an
all male crew and for a largely male audience, I
could relate to that media landscape that Karena was describing,
And I thought we'd have so much to discuss, given
that the book explores her journey to finding comfort and
(01:33):
confidence in her own skin. And when I called Karena
to share this idea, she actually shared something that ended
up reconfiguring the conversation somewhat. She shared that her book
was on hold and that she'd recently been diagnosed with
lung cancer. She explained that she was experiencing perhaps the
most profound inflection point in her relationship with her body.
So it seemed fitting that we talk about how contending
(01:55):
with the body in a state of crisis makes you
reassess your relationship with your body anew while honoring all
that came before, as well as looking forward with hope
for all this yet to be experienced. So Karena, I
want to dive right in and ask you, how are
you feeling in your body today?
Speaker 5 (02:12):
Hi, Lisa, Oh my goodness, that was a wonderful introduction.
It made me feel really good. And I actually woke
up really excited today because one of the things that
I've been doing for the past five months, ever since
I discovered I had cancer.
Speaker 4 (02:28):
Is indulging in deep rest.
Speaker 5 (02:32):
Even the language around it is funny, right, I just
use the word indulging, And should it really be an indulgence?
I don't know, you know, shouldn't it be something that
we allow ourselves anyway? But that's what I've been spending
the last few months doing. And part of taking that
space for deepressed was accepting that I will not be
working a certain way. And so today I woke up
(02:54):
with great excitement because I thought, Wow, I'm going into
the studio after a while, and I'm going to be
doing something that.
Speaker 4 (03:01):
Really sparks creativity.
Speaker 5 (03:03):
And it felt good, particularly doing this after such a
long break. And the funny thing is, I think if
it had been part of my regular life, and if
this had been six months ago, I would have just
come into the studio to meet you, sure with some
level of excitement, but mostly I think with the attitude
of this being just another work thing, and instead I've
(03:25):
come in here really appreciating creating something with someone someone
like you. So it puts things in perspective, doesn't it.
But today I feel good.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
Thank you. I have those bumps just hearing you described that.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
You know, you sent me a voice note earlier saying
that it took cancer to recognize that you can look
after yourself in the ways. Let's say, you know, indulging
in rest perhaps seems vital and not an indulgence, and
that isn't it unfortunate in so many ways that we
don't look after ourselves, know, just every day. So what
(04:01):
has that been like for you, kind of taking care
of yourself in these new ways? And does it make
you re examine your previous relationship with your body in
a way that you know, perhaps you should have had
permission to do this all along.
Speaker 4 (04:16):
Yeah, that's such a good question.
Speaker 5 (04:18):
I absolutely did not take care of myself many many
years before this. I was someone who went to the
grocery store and thought, oh my god, those walnuts are
really too expensive.
Speaker 4 (04:29):
I'm not going to buy them.
Speaker 5 (04:31):
And the very same evening would go to a bar
and buy a cocktail for more expensive than that, right,
And I think a lot of us think like that,
and investing in our health is you know, it feels
a little boring. It feels like something that should be
left to the later years.
Speaker 4 (04:50):
And I, for.
Speaker 5 (04:51):
Example, always thought I had a little more time to
kind of mistreat my body. In fact, it wasn't even
such an active thought. It was just the way I
went about things, and no regrets, of course.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
And I truly mean that.
Speaker 5 (05:07):
I'm not someone who is looking at cancer and saying, oh,
I wish I had done this differently, or I wish
I had not done that. I think this is also
part of the journey, and I'm curious to see where
I end up on this journey and at the end
of it. But yeah, it did take cancer for me
(05:29):
to actually start prioritizing my health. And when I say health,
I speak of it holistically, you know. I am speaking
about the physical aspect, whether it's eating right, getting enough sleep,
just allowing myself a day off work. And I also
speak about the mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects of it.
(05:51):
I have been deeply out of touch with those things,
and I think most of us as a generation are,
you know, we work way too hard, and we have
a lot of guilt when it comes to our work.
We have a lot of guilt when it comes to
our rest. Had to actually work very hard to shed
that guilt. And even now there are days where I
(06:12):
tell myself, Oh, you're you're useless, You're doing absolutely nothing,
Like you're fine, Like why are you just lying in bed?
Get up and do some work. And then there's a
second voice that I've had to develop a conversation with
and a relationship with in my head that comes in
and says, you have cancer, you have every right to rest.
(06:33):
And even if you didn't have cancer, you still have
every right to rest. I do think it's also part
of a deeply capitalist society and economy and time that
we live in, you know, hustle culture.
Speaker 4 (06:45):
But really it's exactly like who are.
Speaker 5 (06:50):
We trying to prove what to when we are working
ourselves to the bone like that. So, yeah, it did
take cancer, And in a way, I'm almost grateful that
this very feared disease came to visit me, because I
don't know if I would have ever actually stopped and
paused and given myself the time I needed.
Speaker 4 (07:09):
To relax, actually need to put it simply.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
You know, I can only imagine though the journey has been.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
I suppose a lot.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Of emotions come up when when you find that your
body is in a state of crisis and that I
had a lump in my breast recently.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
It turned out to leave benign.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
But just the the word cancer and the you know,
like doctors to the whole process was very It was
a roller coaster of the discovery, the you know, just
trying to be objective about it, and also like hustling
along because you don't even.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
Want to tell people, but you're dealing with this one
also trying to deal with real life. Do you want
to do?
Speaker 1 (07:51):
You want to take us through the sort of process
of this, yeah, diagnosis, making sense of it, getting to
a point where you're willing to talk about it in
a public setting like this, because that is also important,
I think for people to know what you're going through,
but it can can take time to feel ready. I'd
love to just hear what it's been.
Speaker 4 (08:11):
Like for you. Gosha.
Speaker 5 (08:12):
Firstly, I'm sorry that you went through that, because I've
had scares like that in the past as well before
this happened, and I know how harrowing, that is. And
you know, we live in this world currently, we live
with so much fear of cancer, and I think there's
this feeling that well, all of us.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
Are going to get it someday. You know.
Speaker 5 (08:34):
It is the disease of our times, and it is
very much a lifestyle disease. In fact, most of the
research that I've done over the last six months shows
me that even if you do have cancer genes or
cancer prone genes, let's say, you can control that with
your lifestyle. And I think we are not given that
(08:57):
tool to begin with. We are not given that information.
You know, Big Pharma definitely benefits from us not knowing
that that our lifestyles have the power to turn those
genes on and off within our bodies, or those cells
on and off within our bodies. So yeah, I'm I'm
sorry though that sounds scary, and whether or not it's benign,
(09:20):
I think that process is always very difficult, and I've
been there before, so yeah, but in my case this time,
I found a lump in my neck, at the base
of my neck. And it's interesting, right because I think, Lisa,
you know this that when it comes to women and cancer,
(09:41):
the two cancers were told to really look out for
our breast cancer and cervical cancer. So those are the
things that we really focus on as women, right. We
now most of us know to check our breasts, to
get frequent pat smears, to check our breast in the shower,
for example, mammograms, And of course that is a wonderful
(10:05):
and very good thing, because we went through many years
in the history of the world where these were the
cancers that were most ignored because they only happened to women, right,
And to me, what's wonderful is that finally there's a
focus on them. And of course these cancers affect women
in astronomically high numbers, but it doesn't mean you cannot
(10:28):
get other cancers. And in some way, my reading of
this today is also we need to move forward from
just checking for these cancers, because once again they kind
of reduce women to their reproductive or sexualized thoughts. And
there's you know, a woman is an entire body, a
woman is a human being, and it's ridiculous that I
(10:50):
have to say that sentence, right, But the fact is
I never once thought that I could get cancer anywhere else.
So you know, I checked my breast, I looked into
the HPB vaccine.
Speaker 4 (11:00):
All those things that.
Speaker 5 (11:02):
Are feminine cancers, let's say, but cancer is not gendered
in so many ways, and so I never thought to
check on other things. So when this lump came up
on my neck, I inmediately thought it was something else.
In fact, the doctors wanted to test for tuberculosis because
that's what they thought it was most likely going to be,
(11:24):
and it turned out to be pretty advanced lung cancer.
Speaker 4 (11:27):
And you know, I went through a series of tests immediately.
Speaker 5 (11:31):
And I say this to anyone who finds anything weird
on their body, do not hold it to yourself.
Speaker 4 (11:38):
Do not wait.
Speaker 5 (11:39):
What really saved me was going to a doctor immediately
the day I found the lump.
Speaker 4 (11:46):
I was at the.
Speaker 5 (11:47):
GP by that evening, and the next morning I was
getting an FNAC.
Speaker 4 (11:51):
Which is a fine needle biopsy.
Speaker 5 (11:53):
I was, you know, getting scans, X rays, all of
it within twenty four hours. And I'm so glad I did.
And I will say this, I was scheduled to go
for writing retreat to go out. I was teaching a
writing retreat there and because I wasn't taking it very
seriously when the lump came up and I was prescribed
(12:16):
all these tests. I said, right, but I need to
go to go up first, and the doctors, the doctor
looked at me like I was insane, and so I
changed my ticket. I got all my tests done and
of course found out that there was a malignancy in
my body. So yeah, it was a strange, strange process,
and it is not what I had planned for at
(12:39):
thirty nine. You know, no one does. The other thing
I do want to say is, and I think this
is another way women don't take care of themselves. Look
into medical insurance. Whatever age you are, you know you
should have a medical insurance. Life is full of surprises,
and not all of them are kind surprises. So just
(12:59):
small things that that I'm grateful for and that I
pass on to anyone who comes at this with fear.
There are ways that you can prepare for the worst
without it actually being a panic button. So yeah, but
it was sobering of course when I first found out,
and it was terrifying as well. But I also decided, Lisa,
(13:20):
that I don't want to choose fear. I think as women,
we have incredible strength right within us, and I do
think women are really spectacular when it comes to that
but that also means that very often we tend to hide,
let's say, our deepest fears. Very often when it means
(13:42):
that we need to protect family members or we need
to put on a brave face.
Speaker 4 (13:47):
We do that.
Speaker 5 (13:48):
And so I will say, while I didn't choose fear,
and I decided that that's not going to be the
path for me, over year, I did give myself the
days I need to feel the those things, to be scared,
to be terrified, to mourn whatever came before this. I
knew that my life was going to change forever after this,
(14:10):
so I just took the time to kind of mourn
that as well. And I didn't move fast. This is
the other thing. Yes, I did the tests really fast,
and I got the results, and I knew that the
way forward was going to be probably chemotherapy, which I
am now in hospital for mostly, and other newer treatments.
(14:34):
But I wanted to take my time with it, so
I actually took a month between diagnosis and starting treatment,
and that's typically quite long when it comes to cancer.
I think most people decide to move within a few
days sometimes of a diagnosis. But I just want to say,
for anyone listening who might go through this, or who
(14:55):
has a family member going through this, or has ever
thought about this. That you are allowed to take your time,
You are allowed to set the pace that you want.
You are allowed to get comfortable with an idea of
I don't even want to say a sick body, but
an altered body before you actually move to heal it.
So I think it's very important to take that time
(15:17):
to gather the information that you might need on this journey,
to gather the people around you who are going to
support you for it, to talk to different doctors, to
meet perhaps holistic healers, whatever it takes to make you
feel comfortable on the journey. And so much of this
being a success is how you approach it. So this
(15:38):
is how I wanted to approach it, and I think
it's served very well so far.
Speaker 4 (15:42):
So yeah, I think for a.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Lot of people it can be quite like people feel
like they don't know how to receive this information even
when someone shares that, people say a diagnose with can
So I think, and you said to me, you know,
I don't need this energy of people like I think
you're in the worst human energy. And I think people
don't like nobody talks about even how to have these conversations.
(16:05):
So for me, it's really it was very special also
that you were willing with such warmth and Canada to
talk about this stuff, because I haven't even really I
didn't know how to share even just the fact that
like I maybe had something up with my boob, you know,
to tell my mom like she was crying on the phone,
like nothing even happened yet. And it can be so
hard to have these conversations. You feel like you want
(16:26):
to share it, but the other person might not receive.
You also don't want pity, and it's really quite difficult
to navigate topic. I think for many many people, either
when a loved one is going through something or when
they themselves are going through something and want to share.
So I really I am grateful for this opportunity to
navigate that with you, and for you to really with
(16:47):
so much openness share from your perspective.
Speaker 4 (16:50):
So thank you, Thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
Willing to have this conversation. You know, and your book
What a Baby.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
When I read about it, and before we'd even gotten
in touch, I was so already that was exploring your
relationship with your body in so many ways, right focus
on rest and cervical cancer, but just in general, like
there's this tendency to see women as vessels of reproduction,
you know, and society and often in medicine also, and
then in the media, the tendency to sexualize, right, And
(17:18):
I just would love to hear from you how you
reflect on all of this. This might be quite a
long answer, but that's your body was front and center
and your imagination already at this point writing water Baby.
I think, like reclaiming the body is something you've spoken
about a lot, and I'd love to hear what that
meant for you in the context of everything that you've
been through up until this point, and then perhaps the
(17:39):
new reflections that came after the diagnosis.
Speaker 4 (17:43):
Yeah, that's actually a really good question.
Speaker 5 (17:46):
I just I want to just go back to one
of the things you said about, you know, people bringing
their own energy to my diagnosis. And that's been so
interesting because so much of what we project upon ourselves
are the opinions of other people, right, And we live
in especially in India, I think, actually, I don't know,
(18:06):
perhaps all over the world, but I speak for an
Indian context. Here we live with this immense pressure of
the outside world and the scrutiny of the outside world constantly,
and that too, is something I had to renegotiate when
it came to cancer, because I was used to being
a yes girl, right and I was used to kind
(18:28):
of just being polite about things constantly. And I don't
think we realize how much those things are making us
unwell as well. And when I got cancer, it was
one of the things that I felt, I'm going to
draw a line about because I remember the first few
people who found out. Some of the responses were pretty weird.
(18:52):
I'm going to say, you know, they were really strange
things that came up. And of course everyone has an opinion.
Every auntie has an opinion. Everyone wants to tell you
how they think you're looking. So one of the big
things for me is that my chemotherapy drug is such
that I haven't lost my hair. I am losing it currently,
and every time I brush it, you know, a piece
(19:15):
of my heart breaks. Because my hair. I've made it
a part of my identity. It's very much a security
blanket for me. Over the years, you know, I know
many people have referred to me as, oh, the girl
with the long hair, you know, because that's always been me.
Speaker 4 (19:30):
And so I needed to cut it.
Speaker 5 (19:33):
I know it probably doesn't look a short to anyone
right now, but it feels very short to me because
I cut off a whole chunk and it's still falling.
But because I mostly look like this right now. I
think that was one of the things most commented on.
When I stepped out of the house or bumped into
(19:53):
people or met relatives. It was like, oh, you look great.
You know, you look so good. It doesn't matter. Just
because I look a certain way right now, I haven't
lost my head, doesn't mean I'm not suffering from the chemotherapy.
It doesn't mean that internally I'm not in pain or
nauseated all the time or having a difficult time with
(20:14):
this right so, I think that was one of the
harshest realities, that people are just going to judge you
by how you look, and that works both ways. Even
the fact that I've lost a lot of weight. I've
lost weight partly because I became healthier than I've ever
been in my life, but also because with cancer your
body is unweal, you typically do lose weight, right And
(20:37):
as a society, again, we are so conditioned to believing
that weight loss is always ninety eight percent of the
time is a great thing, and until you look emaciated,
which of course then you are again blamed and bullied
for any kind of weight loss is usually seen as
a great thing. And I find that so problematicly, sir,
(20:57):
because you know, the last time I lost a lot
of weight, I was severely depressed, and now I've lost
all this weight and I have cancer. But people tend
to equate weight loss with positive things, and it's really
frustrating to often hear people say that, and separately, you know,
I mean, I have never been overweight myself, but I
(21:20):
also think the problem with that is I used to
eat very, very unhealthily constantly. I lived on a diet
of like high cbs, you know, sugar high cubs, and
I didn't put on weight, possibly because I had very
high metabolism due to very high anxiety, and that was
(21:40):
no healthy weight to be living. But because I was
relatively slim, I think I got away with it. No
one would ever turn to me and say, hey, you know,
you need to be healthier. And I think the same way.
We kind of fall for the idea that someone who's
larger is unhealthy, which isn't always true, we also fall
(22:03):
for the idea that someone who's slimmer is healthy. So again,
another frustrating comment that I often got in this journey
is you have cancer. Oh, but you've always been so healthy.
And the truth is I've not been healthy. I've just
been slim. And it's kind of shitty that people equate
the two and that there's so little room for nuance
when it comes to viewing our bodies or the bodies
(22:25):
of people around us. So, yeah, I just wanted to
talk about that for a second, and I feel like
this relates to what you were asking about the body
and my relationship with it through this journey. One of
the things that's happened is, for the first time, because
I've also been kind of in this quarantine situation at
(22:46):
home alone most of the time, either with my mother
or my partner or my dog. You know, a very
kind of limited amount of people can see me because
of my very low immunity levels. Right now, my body
has also been de sexualized in some sense because it's
not on display. I'm not dressing up, i'm not going out,
(23:09):
I'm not being seen, and so for the first time
in a long time, it's kind of like I have
my own COVID lockdown, you know, all by myself. So
if you look back to that time, perhaps you'll also
remember what it felt like. Do not wear makeup, do
not have to dress up, to just be alone at
home with your thoughts and your being, your internal being.
(23:33):
And another decision that I made very soon after the
diagnosis was that I didn't want to be on social media.
It was too difficult to view the outside world and
everything that was happening, and you know, fashion launches and
politics and even everything that was happening let's say in Palastine,
(23:55):
which I had been very invested in.
Speaker 4 (23:57):
I just could not witness those things any longer. You know.
I kept up with the news, but I could not.
Speaker 5 (24:03):
Have that endless scroll either of joy or of sorrow,
of what's going on in other people's lives. So I
cut off from that as well. And I certainly was
not in a place to share anything from my own
life in this time. I wanted to digest it for
a long time before I got to this point. And honestly,
this is I think the first time that I'm talking
(24:25):
to anyone about this in a way where it's going
to be witness publicly so I think that changed my
relationship with my body in this time as well, where
it's not a body on display, and female bodies in
particular are constantly on display, and it has been so
refreshing to remove myself from that, and it has allowed
(24:48):
me to in a sense, be more than my body.
My relationship with my self is very much right now
a relationship with my innermo self. You know, I finally
brought those things back to the forefront after years, and
so it has been six months of kind of negotiating
my spiritual being or my emotional being, of journaling daily,
(25:14):
of meditating, of bringing those aspects of physicality back. So
that's been super, super interesting. We would talk about reproductive
aspects of a woman, and I don't know if many
people know this, but I wanted to talk a little
bit about what chemo does to the body in terms
of those things.
Speaker 4 (25:33):
Is that all right?
Speaker 3 (25:34):
Of course?
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Of course, there's so many aspects of what you just
said that I'd love to talk about some more. Let's
absolutely talk about how chemo can impact fertility.
Speaker 5 (25:43):
I'll just say a little bit about that because I
think most people, and particularly menstruating people, do not know
much about this and I was certainly not told this.
But you know, when you have chemotherapy, because is just
such a high dose of very toxic materials going into
(26:04):
your body to kill cancer cells, you essentially lose the
ability to menstrate for the time that you are having treatment. Now,
that meant differ based on the drug that they choose
to give you. But one of the other things that
happens is if you're my age. I'm thirty nine right now,
if you're my age, which is close to forty, you
(26:26):
might actually completely lose the ability to have children. You
are essentially rendered in futile after this. And it's interesting
to me that the doctors did not tell me that.
And I'm really going to some of the best doctors
in the country, and I'm so grateful for it, But
I was never actually told that by any doctor. And
(26:46):
it's something that I needed to find out through friends
who've had cancer before me and through the online space,
and I felt like that is something that I should
have been told. You know, if at thirty nine and
I'm going to lose that ability, perhaps I wanted to
have a child. I mean, side note, I did not
(27:06):
want to have a child at this point, but if
I had wanted to, I think I would be devastated.
And I also don't know if at thirty nine I
was ready for menopause. And I'm not sure at this
point if my body is going to respond differently to
the treatment of what's going to happen in the long run.
But it is very strange to be sort of experiencing
(27:30):
symptoms of menopause at thirty nine when you're certainly not
ready for it, and to have not even been told
these things. So I just thought that's also interesting. You know,
many women, if anyone's listening here and this context is
for you, I do say look into, say freezing your
(27:51):
eggs if that's what you want, because you might not
have that ability after this. But yeah, it's just interesting
how this whole little lination because it's a woman's body.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Yeah, and there's also I think again social media, medical,
all avenues by which women's lives are impacted and shaped
and controlled typically tend.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
To deny women agency.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
You know, It's like, by design, women's agency is systemically
surveiled and controlled. I imagine across various times in your life.
As also in mind, we've probably experienced firsthand some of
these ways you know whether it's a lack of agency
in terms of how you're perceived just because you're because
(28:39):
you look a certain way, or because you're you know,
posting a travel show, making sex education content online or
like that you're you talked about, whatever relief it is
to not be.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
On display, but even if one is on display, it is.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
A shame that one kind of loses the ability to
do kind of ensure you're.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
Read the way you wish to be read.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Right, Why could I not choose my own clothes as
a football presenter?
Speaker 3 (29:07):
The men were wearing.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
Suits, you know, Speaker's air conditioned and freezing in the
studio and you're in a bandage dress, or you're in
a football pitch and stiletters making holes on the pitch,
like super uncomfortable.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
You can't eat anything that that type of dresses. And
you don't really have to say, like if you want
that pacheck, you wear what you're told and you go
do your job.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
And you're too young to really even see the lack
of agency it's an issue. You just think this is
how it is, you know, doctor, also like this is
how it is with women. Your lack of agency around
your body is just supposed to be. This is how
it is matter. Rape is illegal, you know, and pre
medal sex is frowned upon, So you can't.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
Even yeah what.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
You can neither say yes nor no on your own
terms in so many ways. Right before we move on,
I'd like to recommend another great podcast to you. If
you're like me and love to hash out every burning
culture question, then tune into Respectfully Disagree, a weekly audio
podcast from the Squaddle team. From whether hookup culture is
empowering to why chadwives are cool again, nothing is off limits.
(30:10):
It's smart, it's sharp, and full of respectful disagreement. Check
out Respectfully Disagree wherever you get your podcasts. And now
back to love matters.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
I would love to hear your thoughts on just agency.
It sounds like in some ways you've been thinking a
lot about agency and also reclaiming more and more age.
I feel like even just going from twenty to thirty
to forty is like a really powerful.
Speaker 3 (30:34):
Process of you know, taking back some of your agency.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
What are your thoughts on just a sort of female agency,
you know, in the body, both as a physiological entity
as well as a social engendered entity.
Speaker 5 (30:51):
It's so funny, you know, the things you were saying
about wearing a dress on the football field, and all
I was thinking about all those times when I do
when in my own twenties. I think we're probably on
television around the same time you and I, and I
was remembering all those times where you know, you just
feel like such an idiot, and I can imagine when
it comes to spot it was even more exacerbated because
(31:14):
you know, you're kind of standing next to men who
are just wearing like jeans and a T shirt or
a suit, or you know, speaking to like sweaty players,
and there you are like dolled up as if you're
about to go to the disco, you know, so I
can I can only imagine what that's like. And I
had several experiences like that where you know, I just
felt like I was being.
Speaker 4 (31:33):
Reduced to a body or a bobble, really.
Speaker 5 (31:37):
And I was not there for how I could speak
or present or for my brain at all.
Speaker 4 (31:44):
And I remember that.
Speaker 5 (31:45):
And you know, you say that we are scared in
those moments to ask for better or to demand something different,
and I remember that feeling as well, thinking, oh, but
what if I lose my job because of this?
Speaker 4 (31:59):
So what if I, you know, you don't want to be.
Speaker 5 (32:01):
The difficult woman at all, like God forbid, you know.
So I remember that really clearly, and I just want
to relate it to what I've been going through, because
those feelings don't end, right. We continue with them as
we grow older, We carry them with us, and unless
(32:21):
we actively fight them, I think they become a part
of our beings, and we just continue to say yes
to things that we don't actually agree with. And it's
interesting because right at the start of this journey, I
was reading about different responses people have had tu diagnosis,
(32:41):
and one of the key things that was found is
that women who typically asked a lot of questions and
demanded a lot of answers from their doctors statistically tended
to live longer post to cancer treatment. And it goes
to show right that all that suppression and all that
(33:04):
submission somewhere is also messing with us internally. And I
think like for anyone who thinks that you're being difficult,
if you put up a fight, maybe the statistic will
help you because and not just for cancer, for anything
out there, right anything, we should be demanding more, We
should be demanding better pay, We should be demanding better
(33:24):
hours off. We should be demanding you know, someone like
about their gaze when we don't want it on us.
Speaker 4 (33:32):
We should be demanding a change in laws, all of it.
Speaker 5 (33:35):
So yeah, I actually found that really heartening and I
decided to utilize that fact more and going forward maybe
asking for better. And I again, I can't believe it
took cancer for me to actually do that, but it
took me back to these early days of.
Speaker 4 (33:56):
Filming and even writing for magazine.
Speaker 5 (34:00):
Is where say a publisher once asked me if I
had had a book job. I mean, just my boss
casually asking me that. You know, when I went to
tell him, I filed an article. So you know, it
took me back to all those things and reminiscent of
the stuff you were talking about as well. And I think,
(34:22):
particularly for women who have families, that is something.
Speaker 4 (34:27):
To really really look at.
Speaker 5 (34:29):
We always put our partners and children and in laws
and parents before us always, you know, they asked for anything,
and we are there. We turn our lives upside down
in order to provide whatever emotional care we can often,
financial care, physical labor, all of it. And I just
(34:53):
think that somewhere it's killing us on so.
Speaker 4 (34:57):
Many different levels.
Speaker 5 (34:58):
Yeah, it's pissing off, but I think that we know
enough now about the body mind and body spirit connection
to know that saying yes to those things and gritting
our teeth and getting through them and constantly putting someone
else before us, it's not just exhausting and pissing off.
It is inside your body some It is creating a
(35:21):
lot of some sort. So that's also part of what
I've been looking at in these last few months, the
idea of agency and what it does to us internally.
Speaker 3 (35:34):
And that's so powerful, Karena, and it really.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
Like hives hard because I think the idea of beauty
and acquiescence is something that women owe to the world.
You know, it's like the rent you pay and whoever
plays that rent best, like the Golden Apple, where I
think as a young woman, there's you know you are.
You're bombarded with this messaging with like your appearance is
the most important thing, and you women don't get angry.
(35:59):
You should just be pleasant looking and pleasant, right yeah,
and constantly minimize, make yourself small. Don't even laughed loud.
You don't sit real legs apart, you know, don't ask
too many questions, don't and and but also be presentable,
have your hair tidy, have you Like.
Speaker 3 (36:16):
This whole thing of making yourself palatable.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
And small and undemanding, I think is so relentlessly sort.
Speaker 3 (36:25):
Of hammered in. And even if you have parents.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
Who are not like that, and I'm grateful I didn't
have that conditioning directly from my parents, but it is
so pervasive that the idea of the good woman as
like a beautiful and acquiescent being, especially in a pre
social media ear where I feel like we had less
diverse reference points and things as well. I think that
there's so much internalized misogyny also, where like maybe twenty
(36:52):
year old Lisa didn't even see the issues with being
in that tight dress on that pitch, or maybe even
I mean it's a glamorized role, like okay, I guess maybe,
I mean you kind of know that how you look
plain into why you were hired. It helps that you're
educated and can speak and all of that. So now
you're the golden girl who looks good in the tight
dress and can speak English, you know, and you recognize
(37:12):
everything that's wrong with that, everything that's wrong with that,
but you do it anyway, partly because you have bills
to pay, but partly also because I think there is
some amount of internalized misogyny where male attention seems like
something that's back in you, but like.
Speaker 3 (37:25):
Male attention is valuable. That what a scamp. It's so
unfortunate how I've recruited into being foot soldiers.
Speaker 1 (37:33):
Of our own and each other's sort of like, you know,
like how how closely can a woman follow a beauty standard?
You know, how straight, shiny, long, et cetera can your
hair be? Or how perfectly round can your boobs be?
Speaker 4 (37:46):
Or your finger?
Speaker 1 (37:46):
Like there's beauty standards for every single part of the body. Right,
And even when you know, despite feminist and queer and
other wonderful reading and kind of like ideas that you
try and immerse yourself in, just even when you know better,
you still I will still look in the mirror sometimes
and wish I have a prettier knees or like thinner
thighs or big whatever, Right even though I really wish,
(38:11):
given all that I know now, I did not feel
that way?
Speaker 4 (38:13):
Do you do?
Speaker 1 (38:14):
You struggle with that still, that the relationship to beauty
and beauty standards And.
Speaker 5 (38:19):
Oh definitely, I mean, and you can imagine like having cancer. Initially,
you know, there's you look tired so many days. You know,
you come home and you you look awful. You know,
your grain in the face, your hair is coming out
in clumps. You're just kind of lying there. You know
that you're not desirable at this point. So it's you know,
(38:41):
it's a constant fight in the head even now. But
like I said, I have actively been working on that.
And I think this is part of what you know
in feminists discourse we call radical self care, right, because
there's one aspect of self care, which you know is
it's not an unless version of it, but it's just
(39:02):
one version of it where you know, you make sure
you book yourself the massage, and you take the day
off and you you know, spend time in the shower
and give yourself a nice shampoo and you know, get
the manicure, all of those things. But then there's the
radical aspect of it where you really do have to
change the fabric of your thinking, and that is a
self care on a different level. And you know what
(39:24):
you were talking about and this misogyny and how it
becomes so internalized, it also becomes a weaponized because we
begin to use it not just against ourselves, but against
each other. And that is the tool of patriarchy that
you know, is placed in our hands, and we brandish
it so conveniently. You know, men don't really need to
know anything, because we take each other down so often,
(39:45):
you know. And I think that's the kind of radical
selfkit that I've been looking into, where I check myself
when I'm speaking about another woman in those tones. You know,
I check myself when I'm making a joke about the
way someone on look so how they're dressed, or you know,
why is she behaving that way? And that's not to
(40:06):
say that, you know, you don't discuss human behavior, but
I think it's important to question whether we're looking at
something through a gender lens. And you know what you
were saying about us constantly saying yes to these things,
to the bandage stress and to looking good, and you know, oh,
I'd better do this, I'll fit in more. I think
the darker side of that is when we start blaming
(40:30):
ourselves for not fitting into those things. And then the
next step is we start blaming each other for certain things.
And I found this even with the cancer, like, for example,
when I told certain people that I had lung cancer.
One of the things that often came up is this
idea of blame, and it was like, what did she
(40:52):
do wrong? And I get that that comes perhaps from
a sense of fear. People want to know what I
did wrong so that they can tell themselves that they
aren't doing that, you know. So for example, a couple
of people were like, oh, you know, she must have
smoked a lot, or I'd better stop smoking now, or
I no longer smoke like that, or one friend send
(41:15):
me a message saying, I hope you will stop smoking now.
Speaker 4 (41:18):
And the fact is I've never been a regular smoker.
Speaker 5 (41:21):
And the kind of lung cancer I have typically affects
non smokers. And that's just the truth of it. That's
not to say smoking is good for cancer.
Speaker 4 (41:32):
It's terrible.
Speaker 5 (41:33):
And one of the first things they do tell you
with any cancer is if you do smoke, you might
want to stop that. But I wasn't even in that position, right,
But people were looking to blame me, especially other women,
were looking to blame me for something that was happening
to me. And that is part of this thinking, I think,
(41:55):
where if we don't check it and if we don't
radicalize our thoughts and fight back on instantly within our
own heads.
Speaker 4 (42:02):
It can be a slippery slope to being a you know.
Speaker 5 (42:06):
So, yeah, I I have been working very deeply on
that aspect of self care, and I call it self
care because at the end of the day, no one
benefits more from it than you. You know, once you
look into those thoughts. And I'm not one of those
people who's like, oh, I have no negative thoughts, That's
(42:26):
not true. But I think there's a way to process
those thoughts and we technically lash out or lash inwards,
and they're always of control or feel that come from
a feeling of lack of control or wanting control. You know,
they come from deep insecurity. Is they come from deep
(42:47):
patterns that have been put into us through a misogynistic
culture that we exist in. And so yeah, it's it's complicated,
and it's not always easy to show up as your self,
especially when you're showing up only to yourself, right, But
being alone for so many hours during this time and
(43:10):
just sitting with my thoughts has been a great place
to start.
Speaker 4 (43:15):
Work on that and to question who I want to
be at the end of this.
Speaker 5 (43:20):
And that's the other thing I think that cancer us
you know Lisa Ray, who's such a wonderful human being
in an advocate of living positively post cancer. She's a
dear friend as well, and right at the very start,
she said, I'm sorry that you have to go through this,
but you know that it can be a doorway, and
(43:41):
the question is are you going to step through it?
And adversity comes to each of us at some point
in our lives. But I really did want to think
of it as that doorway to something better. And once
I step through the doorway, I'm not kidding when I
say that I don't even see it as a better
place or something I need to get over, or something
(44:04):
I need to fight. I actually see it as a
gift that came into my life, because I don't think
I would have ever had these conversations or these thoughts
if I hadn't been pushed against the wall so harshly
as cancer has done to me.
Speaker 4 (44:19):
And one of the other.
Speaker 5 (44:22):
Things that I started as a practice, and I don't
think you need to have cancer to do this is
actually talking to my body.
Speaker 4 (44:31):
And I don't think we.
Speaker 5 (44:33):
Acknowledge our body as this living, breathing being. You know,
we think of ourselves as our mind and the body
exists as something the mind dolls up or presents to
the world, but we are very much our bodies as well, right,
and feeling that connection and talking to my body and
(44:54):
asking it each morning, how are you, how are you
doing today, or telling it during a medai that you know,
every cell in you is alive and well and you're
good and I'm going to.
Speaker 4 (45:05):
Take care of you.
Speaker 5 (45:08):
I read the story of one cancer survivor who said
that she just told her body every day, I'm showing
up for you. I'm here for you, and I'm not
going to let go. And so I've been having these
really kind of I won't even say they're deep, they're
just really like kind conversations with my body, who I
(45:30):
didn't acknowledge for so many years, and to acknowledge that
and to say, you have done so well for me,
despite all the alcohol I've put in you, despite all
the shitty food I've put in you, despite all the
trashy things I've done to you, you know you have
shown up for me consistently, and I'm going to show
up for you and I'm going to take such good
(45:51):
care of you and thank you for being there for
me and we're on this journey together, and it's so
beautiful to kind of come friends with your body at
this age, you know. And I think once you do that,
you no longer judge it so much for how it looks.
It's even how it's performing. You know, you have a
(46:12):
deeply empathetic relationship then with your body. And so that's
the place I'm trying to be in mostly, and it
really is beautiful. And I think for a long time
I didn't want to do these things also because they
just seemed so.
Speaker 4 (46:32):
Woo you know.
Speaker 5 (46:33):
I was like, Oh, my goodness, Like, am I really
going to be someone who like manifests good health? Like
this is so ridiculously cheesy. And I think that we
are a generation of cynics. And I don't blame us
look at the world around us, but I think I confused.
Speaker 4 (46:53):
My spiritual relationship with my body.
Speaker 5 (46:56):
With what was going on when it came to spirituality
religion in the country around us and the world around us.
And I began to view my relationship with what I
call the spiritual through this lens, and it became very
tarnished by that, and I wanted to step away from
(47:17):
anything that kind of acknowledged the divine even because to
me it just felt disgusting because of the violence done
in the name of the Divine around this world, particularly
in this moment for living in particularly in India, I
just did not want any part of that. And so
(47:39):
it's also been a process of kind of reinventing what
the spiritual means for me. You know, what does it
mean when something moves you so deeply that it helps
you believe that there is a power greater than you,
And that power is not a man. That power is
just something gorgeous out there that you are going to
(48:01):
apply to your life in the best possible way. And
maybe we are that power, you know, maybe that power
resides within you. I don't know, but it has been
a really, really beautiful journey, and I do know that
it is partly a cliche as well to kind of
(48:21):
be hit by cancer and then to begin to believe
in something greater than yourself.
Speaker 4 (48:26):
But perhaps that's why it is a gift.
Speaker 1 (48:30):
Thanks so much for sharing that, Karana, and I think
so much of the wisdom that you've shared is are
things that women, including myself, should begin applying immediately. Rest
you know, on the incredible resilience and joy and feeling
that this body gives you. And I think that it
(48:52):
would really do us all well to also realize that, perhaps,
you know, our appearance is one of the less interesting
things about us actually, like so many of the things
that maybe we don't even take the time to think about,
Like so much of life is spent just not not
questioning and just doing just you know, playing the bills
and losing the weight. And I don't know, I read
(49:12):
the other day like life, there's life and paying bills
and losing weight.
Speaker 6 (49:15):
And I thought, maybe it's so profound sometimes, and it's
sad that it takes sometimes these drastic events, you know,
to make you stop and see what should have been
obvious all along.
Speaker 1 (49:31):
And I think unfortunately when it when big events like
that happen, actually the time for reflection with others is
really rare.
Speaker 3 (49:39):
So thank you for being so generous with that, because
I really think we've.
Speaker 1 (49:42):
All got to to begin now, begin doing all these
things now.
Speaker 5 (49:49):
Yeah, we shouldn't have to wait for something big or
horrible to happen. And uh, I know that's easier said
than done, But if there's anyway to live like you
have cancer, I would say do it.
Speaker 4 (50:06):
And I'm still on.
Speaker 5 (50:07):
This journey, Lisa, and I don't know how it's going
to end or where it's going to end, but I
will say that I'm really enjoying it. And that might
sound ironic because I do have cancer and it isn't
always fun, but I am trying to enjoy this journey
as much as I can and to honor it as
part of my wider journey as well. And I just
(50:28):
wanted to say thank you for offering to have this
conversation with me despite the fact that my book is
currently on hold because of what I'm going through, and
welcoming that we could have a different kind of conversation
about the body and giving me a space to voice
these feelings and thoughts in a way that is not
just generous but also empathetic and sensitive. And trust me,
(50:53):
so many people have asked me the wrong questions or
not listened or judged the way I'm approaching this journey,
and I didn't feel any of those things from you.
I only felt welcomed and loved and heard. So thank you,
very very very much.
Speaker 3 (51:09):
Thank you, Karen.
Speaker 1 (51:11):
I wish I could give you a big hug, because I.
Speaker 3 (51:14):
Really, yeah, I feel like we were meant to be
friends sooner.
Speaker 1 (51:17):
I relate to so much of what the way you described.
I think I could listen to you all day. So
thank you. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to
listen to you and to help share your perspectives on
what you're going through. To everyone tuning in, Thanks so
much for joining us on Love Matters, produced by Indian
Express and DW, Germany's international broadcaster. We would love to
(51:41):
hear your thoughts on this podcast. If you don't want
to reach out to us, you can write in at
Lovematters at DW dot com. Please do share this with
your friends and family, subscribe wherever you're listening, and do
join us again next time.
Popular Podcasts
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com