Ira Khan opens up about her personal journey with depression and the societal stigma that surrounds it. She discusses how her Agatsu Foundation is creating safe, offline spaces to foster human connection and make mental health conversations more accessible.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00mental health is something that is very sensitive and needs to be dealt with in a sensitive manner
00:05and so it couldn't be a whim I couldn't just decide that I wanted to do it or work in the
00:11space so I started talking to people and sort of trying to get to know better what the gaps were
00:19what was already happening understanding my own illness better and I think that's where the idea
00:29for Gutsu started I still took about a year to incorporate the company but it was basically
00:37from my lived experience because what I discovered in my whole talking to people is that there is a
00:44lot of stigma around it hi welcome to Outlook Talks and we have with us Aira Khan and this is about the
00:57mental health issue that Outlook brought out on the independence day and now again we are going to
01:03keep emphasizing on the events to talk about mental health and that's why we have Aira here hi Aira
01:10hello hi thank you for having me yeah hi so basically you know we did almost a hundred page issue
01:16on mental health and the stigma around it and kind of like talked about freedom from stigma you know
01:22why people should come out and talk about it and I think especially a lot of people like you when
01:27they come out I think you also give courage to other people to talk about it because there's so much
01:31stigma around even you know I think about anxiety even right because you know and also a lot of people
01:38are not aware of what it means I don't think we have kind of talked about it in great detail
01:44around different campaigns like Banyan we collaborated with and they talk about everything
01:50you know so they are also helping people but we also wanted to you have a foundation as well
01:56Agatsu foundation so if you can talk a little bit about that and you have also talked about your own
02:03depression and if you can kind of like what led to the foundation I have my own experience with
02:10depression and I would say that it's still ongoing in the sense that I have episodic depression it comes
02:19and goes and I'm on treatment for it so now it happens much less better spotting the signs and reaching
02:30out to my professional professional help when I need it and I've also been in continuous therapy
02:39and I think what I'd like to highlight is that it really is a journey in terms of coming to terms
02:47with it and how it changes because it's not like the world is on pause right the world is continuing
02:54to be and so COVID came in the middle and things keep happening in your life and so I think at different
03:00points in my life I have understood and felt differently about my illness and just about the whole thing so I
03:09think for the first couple of years it was a blur there was no real thinking about the mental health
03:15space really I was just dealing with my own things in my own head and I think somewhere in 2019 was when
03:24I was able to sort of look up a little and see that there were so many other people also who were going
03:31through different types of struggles that I had not actually noticed before and once COVID hit I think
03:41I felt like there wasn't really any sense in doing anything else like nothing else seemed to
03:47there just seemed to be no point in doing anything else and so then I started to look into the education
03:55system the licensing system trying to understand what was what it was like because I knew that I
04:00knew very little about the space and that mental health is something that is very sensitive and needs
04:08to be dealt with in a sensitive manner and so it couldn't be a whim I couldn't just decide that I
04:14wanted to do it or work in the space so I started talking to people and sort of trying to get to know
04:21better what the gaps were what was already happening understanding my own illness better
04:29and I think that's where the idea of Fogotsu started I still took about a year to incorporate
04:39the company but it was basically from my lived experience because what I discovered in my whole
04:45talking to people is that there is a lot of stigma around it and that was very confusing to me
04:51because I've been fortunate enough to grow up in a family where it was okay to talk about anything
04:56and so in my head I couldn't I couldn't understand why there was stigma around it I couldn't understand
05:04why it would be embarrassing to talk about this or why it would make any difference to talk about this
05:10except that it's difficult to articulate that was hard but you know admitting that something was not
05:17okay didn't seem to me like something should be done I wanted to figure it out on my own
05:23because I thought that my parents had better things to do so I didn't ask for help for for a while
05:32for other reasons so not being able to articulate it not being able to understand what's going on
05:37thinking that not understanding whether it's real not real and that I shouldn't bother anyone else about
05:44it and so then I realized there was stigma I realized that there were huge treatment gaps
05:51which means that even the people who are admitting that they need help are not getting help so it's
05:57not even like you know everybody where stigma is a problem and people are not coming up and talking
06:03about their mental illness even the people who are coming up and talking about their mental illness
06:06are not you know getting treatment because we don't have enough professionals in the country
06:10one thing that really bugged me eventually which I managed to
06:16was that the academic space the world the human civilization as such
06:23knows a lot about psychology and mental health and neuroscience and just emotional well-being
06:30but the regular people don't know about it and if you look at any other industry when there's
06:36research and there's progress it makes it into our day-to-day lives so much faster but when it
06:42comes to mental health we seem to be like 20 years behind research and it and found out researchers have
06:49done research that no one is using their research and so it's actually been studied that it takes about
06:5614 to 17 years for research findings to reach clinical practice which means that my doctors don't have the
07:04most updated information it's not being taught in schools to you know the stuff that can be
07:14not the illness stuff but the well-being stuff and if we have such a huge treatment gap then prevention
07:20makes even more sense because we don't necessarily have the professionals to treat you once you get
07:26together to the not good space of illness um so I think Agatsu started from a place of um I was lost in the beginning
07:37didn't know what to do because there were so many things that could be done and I really saw mental health as
07:42something that was intersectional that everything linked to the other things so how do I work on one thing like
07:48that one thing is do 10 other things so how do I pick um so I started with the community center we just
07:54started we don't call it like a mental health community center it's just a community center
07:58um it's free of cost anyone can walk in as long as you're above the age of 12 we have all sorts of
08:04different activities like movement art um dance singing yoga everything uh because all of it is linked to
08:13your mental well-being and the biggest thing is that we're all everything's offline you have to get out
08:18of your house and meet real people and interact with real people because at the end of the day
08:24when if you don't have medication you don't have therapy you don't have anybody you don't have anything
08:28human connection will get you through till a certain point it'll keep you going
08:35that um you know so feeling like you can connect and there's a sense of belonging um it keeps the hope
08:43in you going to you know you can figure out whatever you need to figure out because life is life it'll
08:48have its ups and downs um and we have different types of needs uh but human connection is one of
08:54the biggest needs that we have everything is about you know getting out of your house and coming
08:59and doing activities with different people um with from all different backgrounds and I think we
09:06really skipped the stigma uh barrier because we don't call it a mental health organization
09:12uh we just call it a community center so nobody and we don't ask you whether you have a mental illness
09:16in fact if you have a severe mental illness you can't come to the community center because I don't
09:21have psychiatrists that won't have specialists to be able to um ensure safety um and so if you have a
09:29severe mental illness once you're on your recovery journey uh and you want to re-assimilate into
09:35society because it's a very isolating experience to go through your treatment um then you're welcome
09:41into the community center you know to re-assimilate into into life so and and then we have mental
09:47well-being hour where we explicitly talk about the various different aspects of your mental well-being
09:53and we really try and push to make people understand that mental health is more than just
09:58mental illness so it's mental health there are mental illnesses in mental health but there's also
10:03also mental health um while we disseminate knowledge and information about mental illness
10:11um we focus more on the mental health aspect the stuff that I think you should have been taught in
10:17school um the things that I think parents should have been told before they had kids um you know and
10:25uh room for conversations that people want to have so uh there's the community center and we got a lot
10:34of feedback from the community because we realized that we should be catering to what they need so there
10:39was stuff that we thought was important and then whenever they gave us feedback we tried to sort of
10:44incorporate it as well so um we noticed that a lot of senior citizens were coming so then we made sure that
10:50we had something for senior citizens and we didn't necessarily plan these things it's sort of grown
10:55organically we did door-to-door outreach and uh word of mouth is a big way of a way in which
11:03a lot so has grown um now also social media but in the beginning it was essentially word of mouth and
11:10door-to-door um outreach and so after the community center we started the short-term interventions
11:17um so we have something for depression and depressive symptoms um and we charge between 50 rupees to 750
11:26rupees whatever you can afford because we do think that you should pay something but it's whatever you
11:32can afford it doesn't affect the intake process and that's the only thing that I got through that's
11:37paid for we realize that when people start to trust you they come and tell you anything and everything
11:42and we didn't necessarily have the resources to help with other intersectional issues that would come
11:48up like domestic violence and things like that so we very quickly realized that we needed to
11:55create a referral pathway so that if you come to us and you need other types of help at the very least
12:02we can help you find that help even if we can't give it to you and then we started a lot of peer supports
12:07because we realized that people really wanted them and they worked really well for us um we have
12:12someone with lived experience who facilitates the peer group so it's not a psychologist it's someone who's
12:18healed from their experience uh and now wants to facilitate the group um we also realized that we needed
12:29to create a healthy boundary so that we don't burn out as an organization um and so
12:37because of that we started a listeners program which is where volunteers uh get trained and then
12:41people can just come and chat with them because as we grew the employees at the community center didn't
12:46have time to chit chat with the participants as much as they used to before and then the participants
12:51got very upset with us they were like you all don't hang out with us anymore and i was like
12:55because we're working we're not chilling um so you know i think with the gunsu what's really happened
13:02is that people come in looking for something even if they don't know what that thing is even if it's
13:09loneliness uh just wanting some time to themselves
13:13um anything really doesn't necessarily have to be a mental illness and because everyone is coming
13:21in looking for something all the participants are much kinder to each other as well and that makes
13:29a huge difference because i can't make a safe space unless everyone else in the room is also willing to
13:36participate in making that space right so um i think uh that has also been a big part of it
13:46um and now very recently we started our knowledge vertical which is the dissemination bit that i was
13:52talking about and honestly it's been part of forgot so since the very inception of it it's just been
13:57formalized now is the knowledge vertical where we try and um you know disseminate information that is
14:03there that we had all figured out i just don't know why we don't know it now one of the things uh
14:09very interested in knowing is that you know it's very difficult to articulate you know the specific
14:14language uh which is there when people talk about uh depression anxiety uh schizophrenia you know
14:20like so uh there are different realities i mean some people do uh get into those realities and that
14:27doesn't make sense to the other side i mean who's to say what is normal any which place but but just
14:32about the language itself you know and a lot of stigmas also around uh articulation you know we just
14:37tend to say but let's say we're experiencing this and uh how did you articulate like what was the
14:46language that you used kind of to describe because how do i say so there there is this famous writer
14:51williams tyron and uh you know he had that famous film uh sophie's choice um and he wrote a
14:58very interesting piece in the new yorker and obviously his trilogy where he describes that one night
15:03when he's feeling very suicidal and what happens and then how to call out for help to his wife and
15:08he has obviously felt suicidal in the past as well but that language is very interesting you know the
15:14language of hallucination let's say the language of what you're experiencing how do you make people
15:18understand how did you kind of come out because you know there's a lot of other pressure as well
15:22because you also come from a certain celebrity background all of that i mean and that will come to
15:27later in terms of the pressures uh to perform you know you know in a certain way and we also live in
15:33a performing society right i mean we can't uh you know this whole thing of a lot of emphasis and we
15:39have an article that deals with urban loneliness um where they talk about um this extreme uh pressure
15:46so who gets left out right so this whole pressure on productivity you know emphasis so if i'm not
15:51productive i don't have a right to live or kind of like get that respect or whatever so we become
15:55really machine types but so the the language first as to how kind of you started to talk about it
16:03what were the words that you used how did you describe those feelings i don't know if the language
16:08has that potential uh in terms of encompassing these experiences yeah i think articulation was a big
16:17um thing factor that i also noticed that i was like how am i supposed to explain to you
16:23what i'm feeling um there aren't necessarily words that mean what i mean to say and feel um so i think
16:39i had the luxury of taking time off to work on my mental health um and so in that sense i had the
16:47privilege of taking my time to figure out how to articulate this um you know i i go for therapy
16:55which is psychoanalysis and it's a long-term therapy and there's a lot of like analysis in it um and i
17:04think articulation is something that i really focused on i spent a lot of time and energy thinking about
17:09how am i going to get these words to people so in all my free time when i was not like bogged down
17:17by my symptoms i was trying to figure out how to explain this to people a because i wanted to explain
17:24it to the people around me but also because i was like you know i have a bunch of privilege where
17:30um even if i can't explain this to someone they'll believe me and they'll let me yeah rest right like
17:39i i have very supportive family my aunt is a therapist so we knew that mental illness existed
17:47so i didn't have to explain the concept to them um and so i have all these privileges where i had the
17:53time and so what i one of the things that really scared me was that how is anyone else like if i am
18:01struggling so much with all my privilege how is anyone else dealing with this with everything else
18:09that they have going on and i think what happened with me is that i became afraid of the feeling
18:15of depression and the experience of depression and so if i saw anyone else struggling i would be afraid
18:22that also so i was afraid on their behalf even if they weren't afraid i was like no no this is a
18:29horrible feeling we don't want this feeling um and so it was really important for me to try and explain
18:35it and i think what i've realized is you have to do the opposite of perform you have to just drop
18:44everything and be vulnerable and um and what i mean by vulnerable is like literally tell the person
18:51every single thought that's going in going on in your mind so you usually tell someone
18:58the final thought that you've had you tell them the conclusion that you've come but i realized that
19:04was not helpful because my conclusion was not necessarily making sense yeah and you didn't
19:11understand the the thought process that has gone into this conclusion and so even if the conclusion
19:20does make sense you took 30 seconds i took 45 minutes and so you don't know how exhausted i am
19:29to have to come to that conclusion right and so i realized that when i was much more
19:34honest and open and unfiltered in trying to explain what was going through my head
19:42um it made it more understandable for other people and i think the fact that
19:51that i didn't have the stigma barrier allowed me to admit those things um and then that helped people
19:59go like oh my god i have that which they were otherwise not necessarily being able to say because
20:04a lot of it is feeling a lot of it is feeling and not necessarily thought as well right so anxiety
20:11very common example um i want to reach out to my friends but um i'm not sure whether i want them in
20:19the room and i don't want them in the room and if i ask them to be in the room and then they come and
20:22then i don't want them there anymore how am i supposed to tell them that i don't want them there
20:25and what if i decide when they're on their way they haven't reached my house and halfway through that
20:29i've decided that i don't want them there um or they come to the door i see their face and i realize
20:34oh actually i wanted to be alone and fine they come and we sit and we hang and my mood dips halfway
20:41a i'll be upset that they have not noticed the change in my mood and they are still responding like
20:45everything is fine but i'm feeling horrible inside and on top of that now i'd figure out how to tell
20:49them to go away because i want them gone so my friends have said let's cancel and then i explained
20:56this to them and they said yeah that's what i'm scared of haha okay fine you come because i was like
21:03we code word this you give me this code word i will leave i'm coming with the expectation that you may
21:08ask me to get up and leave at any point you've told me that so now i'm not going to feel bad if i'm
21:14halfway through to your house and you call me and say actually let's cancel or if i reach your door
21:18ring the bell and you tell me let's cancel so i think if uh we're able to allow ourselves to do this
21:26open bizarre explanation about what is going on in our heads and sometimes two different things are
21:35simultaneously going on in my head i know the rational thing and i know the irrational thing and i'm
21:41telling you that i believe both and i think those kinds of conversations really help and then what
21:47i was able to do i think that i thought would be helpful for people is to take the time to find the
21:54right words and find the right examples and find the right analogies so sometimes i told my i told my
22:03psychiatrist that i'm feeling tender which is a little bit different from feelings like when you say
22:11i'm feeling sensitive it could mean many things but when i say i'm feeling tender what i mean is that
22:16you know when you have a bruise the the heart the bruise is here but around that the whole section is a
22:22little bit not hurting but it's a little more likely to hurt faster if you bump into something um yeah
22:31and so i'm okay but i'm a little bit more
22:39yeah but i don't know i don't know the language you know yeah i don't think it's mental language
22:46it's just general language um but i found that there's words that um help and i think at the center
22:53um we do look at language because it's a huge part of communication and human connection depends
23:03on communication whether it's verbal or non-verbal right and so whether i'm able to seek help whether
23:09i'm able to feel connected to someone once i've seeked help i'm able to explain my situation to
23:15someone all of that is based on language and we just use words without knowing what they mean
23:23when it comes to mental health and holding hands or just patting on the shoulder i think
23:29yeah so so we sort of use words um without necessarily understanding the connotation um
23:39or what means something so different to me than it means to you so
23:42so so when we do workshops at community center we actually do look at language and the the thing
23:48that i have tried to drill into everybody is to look at things as um helpful and unhelpful and not as
23:58good or bad or right and wrong so for example if i'm an emotionally if i'm an emotion i'm an emotional
24:05person um and i think to be an overly sensitive human being i'm just like okay hang on
24:12if you're at a job if you're at work and you're trying to ask your boss for a raise
24:17it might be unhelpful to be sensitive or emotional to get emotional in that moment
24:22um yeah but if you're with your friend and you're trying to empathize with them and um you know you're
24:29trying to make them feel better it might actually be really helpful that you're an emotional person
24:34who is in touch with their emotions so in different situations in different contexts things are helpful
24:39and unhelpful and if you categorize them as good or bad or right and wrong so every time they say a
24:46word i'm like and what does that mean um so i think that and i and what you said earlier right about
24:52different realities um with different mental illnesses what i made sure that i i realized and
24:59then i made sure that with the staff and the people who work in the organizations just sort of um
25:06sensitize them to to realize that someone might imagine if there was flies all around you and they
25:15were irritating you and you kept swatting them away and you were getting really really bugged um that's a
25:21normal response to flies around now the person in front of you is getting really really agitated
25:28about something but you're not seeing any flies around them so you're not getting it they are living
25:36in a different reality they they believe in their fear or they believe in the thing that they are feeling
25:42and so they are responding normally based on that reality and to be able to recognize that different
25:53people have different realities um i have my favorite example that i have used everywhere in the
25:59all the time is explaining subjective reality to someone which is to say that the ac is at 24 degrees celsius
26:07i'm feeling hot and you're feeling cold we're not going to debate about who's lying i'm not going to
26:13be like no no you are not feeling like this i get it i get that in the same room you can be feeling
26:20something else and i can be feeling something else yeah um and then to extrapolate that example to
26:27feeling loved to feeling lonely even if there are lots of people around you uh to feeling like you're
26:33not loved even though people are telling you that they love you um to feel scared anything right
26:38everybody's subjective reality is um their truth but if you sort of bring these analogies into things
26:45that people are experiencing in other situations and that's the thing right all of these things are human
26:50experiences so if you find the right analogy you'll be able to help someone understand it better
26:59so there's a psychologist called radhika bapat and she gave me this thought experiment to do and i
27:05it blew my mind so she said describe the taste of salt without using the word like you can't say it tastes
27:13like this and you can't say it tastes like that you can't say salty tell me what salt tastes like
27:20and i just could not i can say it makes your mouth dry but other things make your mouth dry as well
27:28and that's not telling me the taste of it it's telling me what effect it may have on
27:34the inside of my mouth but people will believe you that salt is a taste because they know that salt is
27:41a taste because they tasted it and so to explain to them that mental and emotional and subjective
27:48realities are like mental illnesses are like that it's there i don't have the words to describe it to
27:54you properly i'm doing the best that i can and that you believe me that it's there even if you don't
28:02fully understand it now that is uh so did you uh manage to describe the taste of salt or
28:10tried or i just tried doing it i couldn't i couldn't do it either i was just like
28:17i don't know i don't know what salt tastes like what i wanted to ask when you are in bombay and
28:24everything and you know suddenly we are experiencing like ai let's say uh you have artificial friends
28:29and literature has many examples of it and obviously japan if you look at you know bombay just got a
28:34crying room you know delhi has a rage room all of these things are happening and you know we don't know
28:40where to go with the grief that we have or with the feelings that we have you are kind of like punished
28:45uh by the society but obviously because of because of the emphasis on performance and all of that
28:51that if you're too emotional it's not okay you don't have to feel all the time you don't have to like
28:56sometimes you know when uh you behave in a certain way and it's not acceptable to certain people in terms
29:01of like uh like i have experienced this in terms of like you know i shut down sometimes which is fine i
29:05mean that's my way of dealing with a lot of situations so how about loneliness i mean um in context of urban
29:13loneliness you know so how how how do you um because you are based in pali hill and in bandra
29:19uh so there is a uh an element of class uh here in india caste as well race for instance gender big
29:26example big thing um and then obviously um how do we all come together um so how do you what's your
29:33experience in terms of running the foundation in terms of being somebody who has uh lived experience
29:39uh with this loneliness creeping in you know because you said you want interactive spaces where
29:45people can come and this human interaction is possible is is facilitated i think we are losing
29:51that somehow we are hiding behind our screens and project ourselves as people who we are not actually
29:56if you look at all the filters that are coming in i mean to me it is all um kind of a thing of mental uh
30:04health by the society because they're not even able to show uh who we are on uh on on any uh social
30:13media you know 10 000 filters and then you meet the real person they don't they're not like that so
30:18i don't know i mean so i just wanted to ask about loneliness that that sense yeah so i think loneliness
30:24has been a uh something that has come up in the center a lot a lot of people have told us that you
30:29know they feel like they don't have anyone to talk to um and so that's definitely been our people um so
30:37we're in pali village which is still fancy but it looks less fancy yeah yeah uh and what we realized
30:47is that about 30 percent of our demographic comes from say bandra khar santa cruz and then the next
30:56highest chunk is coming from kandivali and borivali places that are far away yeah it takes time to get
31:04to bandra and so i think that's sort of happened because of word of mouth and because people really
31:11seem to want a place to go to make the effort to come from however far away they are um we had someone
31:21who came to our clinic from gujaq um every week take the train in the morning they would come they
31:30would attend all the activities of that day they would do their session and then they would go back
31:36um and while that was cool it was also sad to see that they didn't have that kind of help where they were
31:45so i think the only thing like in inborn these where people come to for work and things like that
31:51right so they've left their family and their home behind and they're now new relocated to this space
31:58and don't necessarily have a lot of friends and connections and support so we have a lot of that
32:02demographic of people as well so i um keep coming back to vulnerability because i realize that if what
32:10you're looking for is human connection um if i lie to you or if i don't tell you my truth then
32:20i won't feel connected to you because even if you love me i know that you don't know me yeah so i
32:26don't believe that you love me and i think that's something that helped me realize even what it must feel
32:34like um if you're say from like it would apply to many examples but say if you're from the lgbtqi
32:43community and you know your parents love you but they don't know about your sexuality then a part of
32:48you is always worried that if they knew about my sexuality would they still love me and so i don't
32:57feel completely connected to the people i have not told about my sexuality because i don't feel seen
33:04by them because there's a big part of me that i'm not talking to them about and i think um that applies
33:13to many things in your life so if you don't tell someone who you are they're not going to get to know
33:19you and then you're not going to feel connected to them and i think what social media and um
33:25um the the need to look productive um be a certain way it's a two-dimensional platform it's really hard
33:35on social media to be fully you now you don't need to be fully you all the time it's fine not everybody
33:42needs to do everything about you um but you know if you're able to
33:51express yourself and you use the different tools that are available to you instagram and social media
33:59can be one of them you can definitely use those tools as self-expression to feel connected
34:06but it's about how you use them and that would apply to all the tools that we have so in your real
34:15life also and i i have two things to say about loneliness and connection is that one if you you
34:26probably have people who love you but if you really believe that you have absolutely no one in your life
34:32then you need to suck it up and go make friends and go invest in connections and go build those
34:38connections because that nobody's gonna be able to help you with no medicine no therapy nothing will be
34:43able to help you if you don't put in the effort and make connections and everybody's sad and lonely so
34:50everybody wants to make connections so you know don't worry about it most people will want to be friends
34:55with you um so one is that if you don't have connections it's sad sit and feel sad about it for
35:05a little while and then go and make connections um and i think the second thing is that it's social
35:12stigma is hard um social expectations are hard to just be like oh don't don't get upset by them um it's
35:22difficult to do that because so much of our life is dependent on these social constructs that we have
35:28um i think whenever you realize it you realize it but i hope that at some point you reach a place where
35:39you can see that if you put in effort into the people who matter and the things in your life
35:48that matter you will have enough connection to feel happy and satisfied and content and when you feel
35:56that contentment the social pressure will affect you less the reason the social societal pressure affects
36:06you is because you're worried about being outcast yeah you're worried about being excluded
36:13if you are feeling connected then you they are all worried about being excluded you know you have a
36:19place with 10 people not 3 billion but 10 people and as soon as you have that emotional security of i have
36:28these 10 people whose company i enjoy who's who push me and nudge me and look after me and if once you
36:37find those connections it'll automatically be easier to not pay heed to the social expectations that you feel
36:46limit you or not not be heed but you'll be able to navigate the social norms that are unhelpful for you or that
36:55restrict you um and so it's a catch 20 but you've got to do one of those things it's difficult to uh
37:02find friends because of the social you know the the digital age is keeping us like away from each other
37:09right okay that also happens no no i don't think it's okay to blame uh social media for all
37:17it's definitely very addictive and so yes it's very easy to get stuck in the doom scroll um yeah and
37:27one and and if you have a mental illness then yes there are symptoms that are making it much harder for
37:33you to do that so in that case go get professional help but if you haven't reached a place yet where you
37:41have an illness or a disorder if you're in a distress space you still have autonomy um over more
37:50of your behavior than say if you have symptoms and so that means you're not going out there and being
37:57vulnerable and making friends so don't blame social media for that go out there and make you now you
38:02know that this is what you have to do so then go and do it but it's hard for a lot of people oh i'm not
38:11saying it's easy no but you have been very no i mean i also meant to ask you i'm simply out of my own
38:21curiosity uh you know you have been very brave about everything you know um for instance like you know
38:29your childhood uh you know having celebrity parents you know uh kind of like you also talked about the
38:34genetic uh situation in you know you've discussed all of it uh and that's an act of bravery you know
38:41that's something that a lot of people uh may not like talk about and it takes them years and years and
38:47years to kind of and we have met those people where they have something but they want to hide it
38:52because you know they might lose their job they might lose whatever uh or their status just
38:56they don't want to be looked down upon as some bachara types um so how did you do that like how
39:01what did it i mean and and you were very young when you kind of like experienced it and uh and also to
39:06talk about family uh growing up childhood um you know and some people might just say and and we get
39:14a lot of it uh when uh you know arundati roy has just written a book about her mother mary roy and a lot
39:19of people are also looking at it kind of saying that oh how can she blame her mother right uh so this whole
39:25thing of speaking out especially about family is uh is something that takes a lot of courage and a
39:32lot of people just can't do it uh and so i just wanted to ask about how did you manage and in terms
39:38did it ever occur to you that maybe it's not okay to talk about family but then that's also linked how
39:46did how did you manage that so i didn't do it until i was sure i spent two years thinking about it
39:52um because i knew that because of the public image and the fact that my family is in the public eye
40:04would mean that there would be repercussions to beyond me
40:09um and so i can decide for myself what i'm okay with and what i'm not okay with i think there were a
40:17couple of things that worked out in my favor one is my privilege in the sense that i'm not worried
40:24about getting fired from my job um you know and i'm not worried about my friends not being my friends
40:30anymore because um they didn't have that social they didn't have that stigma in their mind so there was
40:37that part i um don't read my instagram comments and i cannot explain to you how much of the difference
40:47that makes if you read so much negativity no matter how strong you are you will be sucked down because
40:57we are affected by moods around us and so if you dwell too much on negativity you will feel a little down
41:06like that's just going down so if you read 900 negative comments even if they're not
41:13at you if that people fighting for you being negative towards other people
41:19still negativity yeah so one of the things is i just do not read my comments because for me the idea was
41:28not to see what people said about what i said so i didn't need to read the comments
41:34um i made sure that i took consent from the people in my family that i spoke about
41:45in terms of what i was going to say and whether they were okay with me saying that
41:51and i think i never spoke about something that had just happened i made sure
41:57that at least six months had passed or three months had passed so that my opinion on the matter was not
42:08coming from an emotionally charged place and it was a reflective opinion rather than and a reflective
42:16sharing rather than an emotionally charged sharing so i had enough time to think about whether i wanted the
42:23world to know this part of the world to know this part of me or not um and how i talked about it because
42:32my goal is to be helpful and if my goal is to be helpful then i need to have figured out what i learned from
42:39the experience before i share that experience with you this whole parent thing comes up all the time for
42:47everybody in any situation because you can't say anything bad about your parents you'll be looked at
42:54like a horrible human being um yeah that does not take away from the fact that when you are growing up
43:05most of your time is you're surrounded by your parents your school your maid your siblings and so all
43:13your experiences will be with them yeah they are not trying to mess you up and
43:22there is love but everybody makes mistakes um and subjective reality they might not even be mistakes
43:32then you know different perspectives on things and i perceive something differently and you perceive
43:38something differently and i realize that i'm only going to be able to form a relationship with my parents
43:45if i start to see them as adults and if i want to have a happy in touch relationship
43:56with my parents and with people i have to be able to look at situations without blaming anybody for them
44:05but not dismissing them either so my dad is an actor who's very busy uh was away from home a lot and my
44:16parents were divorced right um my father being in my house and being with me all day would have had a
44:24certain effect on me and my father not being there would also have had a certain effect on me both things
44:29would have had an effect on me and so if i am able to see that then i'm able to be more reflective about
44:38it and then i think it's in it's in how you tell it i when i tell you about these experiences and i tell you
44:46that you know i was going through depression and at one point um i talked about this i said that when i really
44:55came down and asked for help uh both my parents got really freaked out um and they became extremely
45:01unhelpful and uh i was like guys stop i'm the one who's struggling right now and the thing is i don't
45:11blame them for it they were really troubled by the fact that their daughter was in a lot of pain and
45:16they didn't know what to do about it and that was causing them a lot of pain right and they're human and
45:22they need to be able to express their pain but what i could tell them to do is i could be like hey
45:28go to your friend go to your sister go to your cousin and go freak out in that room with them
45:36panic cry be scared be afraid do whatever you want when you come to me you guys need to be put together
45:44um and i see that you're struggling with this so i'm telling you that i'm seeing it i know that that's
45:50not your intention um and i'm telling you that i really need help right now so uh you know go be a
45:58united front and then come and tell you tell me what you think is best for me uh because i need you
46:04right now and they were able to do that um i'm not blaming them for freaking out i fully understand
46:09that they're freaking out but that doesn't mean they were not freaking out no they were freaking out
46:13and so i think it also depends on how you tell it to them and how you portray them it's all language
46:22and communication and i think once i knew that i was not blaming them i wasn't feeling worried that
46:29someone else will think that i'm blaming them and one last thing you would like to know so uh you know
46:35there's a lot of uh now uh talk about mental health and mental health policy all of that the
46:41government is trying for something uh and we've had a lot of people who work in the sector write about
46:46it but as individuals let's say as uh media people and um you know i would have decided to do that
46:52only because we thought that there's so much silent struggle all around us and um you know it's our
46:57responsibility to kind of so how do you think people should go about it like uh you know people like
47:02you are like very rare you know who will come out and kind of like talk about it and there will be
47:06listeners of course and given uh who you are uh but what can we do to ease this loneliness because you
47:13know it's growing like whatever uh it's like a hurricane coming and i and we are not we don't know how to
47:20deal with it um i mean there's obviously the the rural the poor uh i mean it's across but just as people
47:29just as journalists just as celebrities just as anybody uh what can we do is what we are facing now
47:39the answer to loneliness is connection and i think when people think about connection they put a lot of
47:45pressure on it so you need to feel like someone's best friend or you need to be in love with someone
47:53um and we miss the little connections so i don't know you but we both started to sing uh bohemian
48:03rhapsody at a karaoke bar and i feel a little bit connected to you now because though i have no clue
48:10who you are we are both never met you before we are both singing at the top of our lungs
48:15yes this song that we both know and so i think art culture nature and people can connect us and i
48:26think it's about making you have you have to put in the effort it's not easy uh it's it's it requires
48:35effort small amounts of effort but it requires effort uh and if you do small amounts every day it'll
48:42require less effort now if you decide not do it will become lots of effort but if you if you plan
48:47it such then it can be little amounts of effort every day or regularly um you know there's some
48:53people who find it hard to to check in or whatever send them a meme use social media to find other ways
49:01to you know make sure the person knows that you're thinking about them um and so i think finding bits of
49:09connection and not putting so much pressure on the connections um is a way to deal with your
49:16loneliness expanding your your definition of connection to know that you are a living breathing
49:24being that is part of nature as well it doesn't have to be humans and nature yeah you are technically
49:33part of culture you you are part of culture you you are indian uh when you when you look at the textile
49:42when you look at the pattern on your um curtain you're part of a culture your family will have
49:50certain food recipes that are unique to your family you're part of your ancestry as well um and i so i think
50:00that if you spent a little time figuring out the low-hanging fruits of connection for you and invest
50:08in them when you're feeling good also if you only do it when you're feeling bad then it's not gonna work
50:14because you're already feeling bad so when you're feeling good is when you have to do all of these things
50:22yeah and i think every just remember that everybody wants to connect so just go out there and do it
50:27yeah yeah no good actually i was thinking i was keeping my lunch thing but now i'll go with my
50:32friend yeah uh thank you so much for uh talking to us and um it was great because you know um we
50:45didn't really understand the other perspective we focused a lot on people who are from the rural side
50:51people who are really poor and have struggling people who have been victims of domestic abuse and all of
50:56that and in this issue we also wanted to understand uh what younger people feel like or like urban people
51:03feel like that's something that uh we hadn't really been able to so that's why we keep bringing out uh
51:10issues on mental health because media people we also think that this is something that we completely
51:15over with most of the time we we won't really it's not sensational enough for us to cover as a war
51:21uh but i think this is uh war with oneself so i think it's a battle right then yeah but uh no and and
51:28you've been very brave and i have always really uh admired the fact that you really talked about
51:34which it's very uh difficult uh for a lot of people and uh yeah thank you so much thank you
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