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The philosopher Thomas Nagel once wrote an essay called, What is it like to be a bat?
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One of his arguments was that while it is possible for a human to intellectually understand
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how a bat functions, by using sound instead of sight to see the world, for example, one
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could not truly understand how it was for a bat to be a bat.
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Closer home, within our species, I think in many ways it is not possible for men to understand
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what it is to be a woman.
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Motherhood makes us stark.
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What is it like to be a mother?
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No man can ever truly know, and even for women, it's a long slog to figuring it out.
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You might have the biological instinct that takes you there, you might have tons of books
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and essays on motherhood, but nothing can truly prepare you, and you never quite master
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And while slipping into that role, you often have to submerge, if not entirely destroy,
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other aspects of yourself.
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This seems like such a terrible condition, and I guess is made doubly painful for women
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by the fact that men can't ever walk in their shoes, even though they are products of it.
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Welcome to The Scene and The Unseen, our weekly podcast on economics, politics and behavioral
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Please welcome your host, Amit Verma.
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Welcome to The Scene and The Unseen.
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My guests today are Priya Mathews and Gunjan Grover Gupta, who are two-thirds of an awesome
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podcast called The Mommy Mixtape.
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The podcast began when Priya, thinking deeply about issues around motherhood, got in touch
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with two friends who were going through a similar journey, Bakul Dua and Gunjan, and
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proposed that the three of them start a podcast on motherhood.
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The Mommy Mixtape, which is linked from the show notes, is so wonderful, and even I learnt
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Priya is a good friend and happens to be married to the editor of the show, Gaurav Chintamani,
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who has also been a guest here.
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I'm a big fan of their kids, their son Ishaan is Asia's best 10-year-old singer, and you
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can hear him on Gaurav's Instagram.
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Anyway, The Mommy Mixtape is a serious and thoughtful podcast, and I was delighted when
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Priya and Gunjan agreed to come on the show during my recent visit to Delhi.
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Bakul, alas, is based in Bangalore.
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In this episode, we spoke about the notions of motherhood, the expectations around it,
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what it does to a woman, how it affects every relationship in her life, how hard it is to
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try and curate a person, the guilt and the shame that comes with being a mom, the difficulty
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of kindness, especially to oneself, how you learn and what you learn, and so on.
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There's tremendous insight in this conversation, do listen, do share with anyone else who might
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Before we start though, let's take a quick commercial break.
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Hey, the music started and this sounds like a commercial, but it isn't.
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It's a plea from me to check out my latest Labour of Love, a YouTube show I am co-hosting
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with my good friend, the brilliant Ajay Shah.
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We've called it Everything is Everything.
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Every week, we'll speak for about an hour on things we care about, from the profound
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to the profane, from the exalted to the everyday.
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We range widely across subjects and we bring multiple frames with which we try to understand
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Please join us on our journey and please support us by subscribing to our YouTube channel at
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youtube.com slash amitvarma, A-M-I-T-V-A-R-M-A.
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The show is called Everything is Everything.
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Please do check it out.
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Priya and Gunjian, welcome to the scene on The Unseen.
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Thank you for having us.
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I'm very excited to have you and also a little intimidated because this is effectively your
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You guys record your podcast here.
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So it's, I almost feel like I'm encroaching in your territory and then saying, feel at
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So you know, I've really loved listening to all six episodes and may there be 600 more
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But I thought that before we start talking about the podcast or motherhood in general
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or whatever, I'd like to know a little bit more about each of you.
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So Gunjian, let's start with you.
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So how do I start introducing myself?
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I'm a clinical psychologist.
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I have twins, Nainthara and Toshur, almost eight now.
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And I was born in Delhi, raised in Delhi.
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And my education was in Delhi and then moved to Bombay with work, lived there for 10 years,
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worked as a school counselor in an amazing school.
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And once the twins were born, I needed to be around my family, I think, and just have
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So we came back to Delhi and for a few years, my work largely involved, you know, finding
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spaces for mothers through whichever way I could connect with other mothers because
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bringing up twins was a very isolating experience till I reached out or I also started writing
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a little bit on my Instagram page or handle whatever it's called.
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People would write back, mothers would send an emoji and that just would feel good and
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feel like, okay, this is not so lonely or not so isolating.
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Maybe someone gets me or, oh, there's another one feeling like this.
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And so through that, through understanding the experience of a community, I think, in
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some ways, I then started to look at if in person I could gather mothers and have some
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gatherings where mothers come together and talk about things, not to hang out particularly.
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I mean, that would be a part of it was, but to facilitate groups that, you know, groups
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of mothers who also perhaps felt isolated or alone in the journey like me.
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And a few years went in just organizing these groups, very organic.
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Sometimes it worked, sometimes very few mothers came.
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And just like that, a couple of years went by.
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And now I practice as an independent practitioner, as a psychotherapist.
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And most of my work is online.
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If schools invite me for workshops, if I, you know, and of course, being a mom is a
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full time, a full time job where we don't get paid.
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So that takes up most of my time.
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One of the sort of tragedies of life and tragedies of our society certainly is that so many people
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sort of drifted along these default pathways that are laid out for them, you know, like
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one frame I discovered last year of looking at the world is thick and thin desires from
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Luke Burgess's wanting where, you know, that takes off from the concept of mimetic desire.
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And the argument there is that a lot of the things that we want, we want them because
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other people want them.
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We don't really intrinsically deeply desire them.
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And the standard example I give for that is getting married and having kids.
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Like when you're young, you want to get married, have kids, because that is the thing to do.
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And you never really put too much thought into it.
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Too many people stumble into parenthood that way and, you know, and it can often be disastrous.
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But I'm guessing that in your case, you didn't stumble into it because I guess just by virtue
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of your profession, for example, you know, therapists, psychology, blah, blah, you know,
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there must have been more self-reflection and sort of a sense of what you really wanted
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and so on and so forth.
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So am I assuming too much?
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Take me through a little bit of that journey of, you know, how you saw yourself when you
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were young was, you know, motherhood and intrinsic part of that.
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Like I did an episode with Natasha Badwar where she spoke about how it was always intrinsic
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She was going to be a mother.
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You know, was it like that for you or how did that evolve?
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That's so much to think about here.
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Yes, it was to a large extent an intrinsic part and something that I really, you know,
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I've always wanted to be a mother kind of a thing.
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But sometimes I do wonder, how do you separate a thought or an intrinsic thought from the
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socializing, the conditioning, the culture you belong to?
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How do you separate and say this is intrinsic and this is something that was told to me?
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Of course, I had no pressures from my family or otherwise or from my partner.
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The only pressure that I felt was, again, something that I hear a lot of women talk
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about is the biological clock.
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The biological clock is ticking.
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And I felt that and I sensed that there were so many ideas that were, you know, that I
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encountered, like motherhood does not have to be defined by age or motherhood does not
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have to be that you're a mother, you know, you could also be with kids and have your
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maternal instincts be fulfilled.
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So there were so many ideas that I encountered on this journey till I actually became a
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mother. So I don't think there is, you know, I wouldn't say that there haven't been
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influences in thinking that a part of my life is to be a mother.
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It's like something that I really want to do.
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So maybe very early on, we start to hear as women that that's something that till a
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certain age, you've got to figure out, right, you've got to figure out by this age what
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you will do about this.
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And I had actually I had endometriosis for many, many years.
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And as a result of its treatment, there's no cure for endometriosis.
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So most doctors that I met would say, you need to get pregnant if you want endometriosis
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too. You know, if you want to kind of a cure for endometriosis, you can you can get
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pregnant. And it made no sense to me.
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And often it felt like a pressure.
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And and I would then feel I'm not ready for it.
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This is not the reason why I want to have a child, not because it's a cure for an
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illness. So so for years after that, I would just be like, then what is the reason?
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What would make me figure out that this is something I want?
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I can't go by what I wanted at age 10 because I had tiny cousins and, you know, they
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were being taken care by my aunts and it was so fun and so cute.
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That can't be a determining factor at 32, 35 to why I want to be a mother.
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So it was a very personal, internal journey also.
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And after I became a mother, a mother, I also reflected on why the hell did I want to
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do this? Who told me to do this?
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You know, no one told me this was so hard.
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And I often would think about if I knew this was hard and I knew it was hard.
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It's just when you're sleep deprived and you're just, you know, running on very little
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fuel and you're just going with it, you're like, why, why did I do this?
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Many things about motherhood were not told, but whatever was told, and I knew this would
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be hard. But what I didn't know and nobody told me is that I can do hard stuff, that
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we can do hard stuff if we decide to do something.
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So it's a very long answer, you know, but I'm just, I'm not, I don't think I can say it
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any other way that this has really, it's been back and forth with, do I want to do
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this? Why did I want to do this?
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Oh, wow. I'm a mother to twins now.
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How am I going to do this?
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So motherhood is the thinking, the analysis, the awareness, all of it that comes with
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my work did help me to sit with those thoughts.
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I wouldn't get scared about questioning myself.
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And maybe that was in a way that guided me, my own internal processes, thinking,
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reflection. Yes, it did guide me and help me decide.
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But I would still think that very early on, we start getting the messages that the
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biological clock is going to be, you know, there's a time by which you have to figure
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this out. And that has a pressure on most of us.
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That's what I would think.
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You know, motherhood is such a sort of a simple term, which means one thing when most
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men think of it. But I love this quote by Adrienne Rich in a book of Woman Born, where
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she says, I try to distinguish between two meanings of motherhood, one superimposed on
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the other, the potential relationship of any woman to her powers of reproduction and to
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children and the institution which aims at ensuring that that potential and all women
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shall remain under male control.
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This institution has been a keystone of the most diverse social and political systems.
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It has withheld over one half the human species from the decisions affecting their
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lives. It exonerates men from fatherhood in any authentic sense.
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It creates a dangerous schism between private and public life.
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It calcifies human choices and potentialities in the most fundamental and bewildering of
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contradictions. It has alienated women from our bodies by incarcerating us in them.
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Stop quote. And Priya, in your first episode, you spoke about how, you know, starting this
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podcast, in a sense, is a political act, right, which kind of got me thinking because I
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would never have thought of starting a podcast as a political act unless it is about
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politics. And but equally, you know, that whole the baggage that motherhood carries
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with it, you know, how do you sort of deal with that?
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Because at one level, you are also feminists, right?
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So you're kind of dealing with what patriarchy means and what agency means and etc, etc,
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etc. And on the other hand, there might be the instinct and the urge to be mothers for
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completely good reasons. And when did you start thinking about these and how do you
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I think for me, motherhood was something I remember, it was a vocation that I want to
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break up even as a child. I just wanted it.
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There is a certain redemptive quality to motherhood, you know, that all will be all
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will be forgiven once you are this ubiquitous mother and you will make all the right
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decisions. And so I was the quintessential naughty kid who who did everything that was
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wrong, quote unquote, and who is who would just have so many problems with authority
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and all of that. And I always saw motherhood as this pedestal that I would stand on and
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it would redeem me from everything bad I had ever done, because then I was raising my own
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little, you know, generation of beings who would understand the true value of what
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freedom is. And it was a very, I think I had put in so much thought. And my only thing was, I
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could never see the face of who I would procreate with. But I always knew that I would have
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babies. And, and this is from a very, very young age, like, I don't have any memories of, you
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know, wanting to become a doctor or any of those normal, regular kind of things. I was like, I
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want to be a mom. And I think that I remember, you know, someone telling me that, oh, if you
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want your parents to get off your back, just get married, because after you get married, nobody
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will ask you any questions and you can do, you know, whatever you want. And I said, Okay, you
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know, North Indian, South Indian context, yes, let's try this. And fortunately, I did find a
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partner who said great gene pool, like fantastic gene pool. So, you know, and of course, my husband
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wasn't very keen on kids at all. But I think he placed his faith and in my conviction of, you
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know, I know what I'm doing. So our first child was planned almost as precisely as a rocket
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launch. I insured detox month, a month before and it was a little bit, excuse me, it was a little
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bit crazy. But, you know, this was my lifelong dream. And I had sort of told him that, you know,
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you never find people who have a baby immediately. And, you know, it'll take some time and we were
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quite young. I was 26 when I got married. And I said, two years later, I'm going to have a child.
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And this is all part of this plan that my husband kind of grudgingly said, well, okay, you know, I
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thought we'll be traveling the world and stuff. But he must really like you a lot. I think he did. I
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think he does. A lot of it has to do with my food. But that's another conversation altogether. But
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yeah, so it was this thing about motherhood, giving you freedom, giving you the sense of, I can do
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whatever I think is right. I think it's, it's more like, you know, we, we went through life,
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listening to other people and what, and largely my life, I come from a family of academics and
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things like that. So it was, you know, these people making very informed decisions. And, and I
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largely went along with that, you know, I did, I did my graduation, I did my masters, all of that.
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And, and I'm like, okay, I'll go along with this for as long as possible until I become a mother,
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and no one will be able to tell me anything. That's where it all changed. Because motherhood
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is a place where unsolicited advice from anyone, it just comes in. It just like, from the time you
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get pregnant, books, this, and I'm like, who are you to tell me? And this was, it went absolutely
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contrary to what I thought the experience would be. Just, you know, letting the world into, you know,
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my little bubble of how things are going to be for, for me. But largely, when I look at having a
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baby, and I literally had the most perfect pregnancy, my son was born exactly on his due date, I had a
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normal delivery and all of that. And it's only in the labor room that you realize how different it is
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and how the invisibility of the mother, even though you're screaming your guts out, you're invisible.
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Because even there, the fact that my husband was with me, and he was so involved, was lauded. And
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they're like, wow, you have, they're coming to me, I'm, you know, shitting out a very large baby. And
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they tell me you have such a nice husband. He's so nice. He's been standing with you the whole time.
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And I'm like, what's going on? And that's when I think that's the first time the reality of what I
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had gotten myself into vis-a-vis the social construct that we live in. That's when it actually
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became very clear what I was actually dealing with, that it was not freedom. It was freedom
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only within the confines of my little bubble. And I was free to create the people that I wanted,
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as long as it was within a confined space that I had complete control over. So, yeah.
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Yeah, I mean, I'm just sort of struck by how Gunjan was offered motherhood as a solution for
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some other problem. And you were thinking of marriage as a solution for some other problem,
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and then motherhood itself. And it's so tragic that one comes upon that. But,
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you know, in a sense, you said the reality was very different from the social construct. But
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actually the social construct, I mean, aren't they really similar in the sense that women
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carry all the burden and men kind of show up once in a while and get all the plaudits and
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etc. etc. Like, in what ways were they different? So for me, the experience has been completely
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different because I have, you know, a very involved partner. And within our partnership,
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those lines were, you know, very clearly drawn. And even though he didn't want to have children,
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I think being a father is his true vocation. And he's excellent at it. And, you know, very often
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will take on a lot more than even he needs to. But so within our space, it's all perfect. But
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as soon as you go out, that's when you realize that the world wants it to be different. The world
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needs it to be different between the two of us. So, you know, things will be said and that, oh,
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you know, he's so involved. Is he really like that? Or is this, you know, just a put on thing
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for the rest of the world? Is he really an involved dad? And I feel like a lot of our misgivings as
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mothers are kind of reinforced by what people say on the outside. And I'm so tired of shutting
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people up. And motherhood can be very isolating, as Gunjan also mentioned. But for me, it has
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become self isolation, because I'm so tired of hearing these people and banging my head against
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the wall when it comes to people being like, No, it's not really like that. You know, it's not
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really like that. And I'm like, I know my context. And then you realize that it is that individual
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context, especially while raising your children. That's the only thing that matters. It doesn't
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absolutely nothing else before even that child. It is only that context that matters. So I remember
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in our first episode, I said that, you know, COVID was a blessing. And, and I felt bad about
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saying that I remember listening to the episode and saying, Oh, you know, I feel like I shouldn't
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have said that. But it was just that it gave us the opportunity to have that bubble with no one
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around. And my daughter was born a month before the lockdown. So in many ways, her birth was
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unexpectedly perfect for us as a family. It's interesting what you know, how COVID can treat
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people differently. Like one of the quotes from Gunjan from your podcast, which I took down was
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the pandemic broke me. So at some point, we'll talk a bit more about that. But you know, on the
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subject of partners, like one of my friends, Mahima Vasishtha, with whom I've done an episode,
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she writes a newsletter womaning in India, she talks about, and her husband is a damn good friend
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of mine, pretty much, you know, another God of in the sense that extremely progressive, always
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helping out, etc, etc. But she was saying that, yeah, he does everything, but equal kabhi nahi
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ho sata hai. Because it is always in, you know, and she just felt the pressure that, you know,
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her life is just taken over by this. And there's a sort of great quote by Rachel Cusk from a life's
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work where she writes, this experience motherhood, this experience forcefully revealed to me something
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to which I had never given much thought the fact that after a child is born, the lives of his mother
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and father diverge. So that wherever before living in a state of some equality, now they exist in a
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sort of feudal relation to each other. Stop code and later she writes from that irreconcilable
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beginning, it seemed to me that some kind of slide into deeper patriarchy was inevitable,
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that the father's day would gradually gather to it the armor of the outside world of money and
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authority and importance while the mother's remit would extend to cover the entire domestic sphere.
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Stop code. And I can sort of imagine that this is in a sense, this is a gap that you cannot bridge.
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Like I just released an episode with Pallavi Yahya and she was talking about how when she had her
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kids, you know, she would always keep complaining to her husband that you're not doing enough and
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he was just doing everything. And he was doing the kind of silly things men do like geeking out and
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figuring out breastfeeding cycles and et cetera, et cetera. You know, and at one point she writes
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in her books, Babies and Byline, that all I wanted him to do was be miserable with me.
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Right. So, so to what extent, what is the role that intentionality plays into it? Like,
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you know, sitting with your partner, talking about stuff, how explicit can you make the divisions?
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And even after you make them explicit, is there a sense in which it sinks on you that this is your
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baby? I love all the quotes that you've got. There's so much to think about and there's such
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wisdom in that. So when I, so I was always a working person till I was just a stay at home mother.
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And all of these labels didn't seem to ever just really kind of hold in them what I was,
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all the stuff that I was doing. Right. So when I started to be at home with the twins and Romit
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had to be outside and on, often that, you know, this, this sense of, you know, I'm stuck,
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I'm alone, I'm doing this by myself would come in. And I would think that I wish we would have had
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more conversations. Romit and I would have had conversations about this earlier. You know, like
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you said, does, does being, you know, being intentional about this or having conversations
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about it. And the funny thing is that we did have conversations about it. But when you're
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actually in it, when your babies are with you, when they are tiny and they're pooping everywhere
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and they're, you know, there can be a projectile vomit and there can be a, and twins is just,
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I don't, I think it's important to emphasize that there are, there were two of them, right.
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And they were both underweight. So there was a lot of pressure on me to increase their weight
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by double in the first month after they were born, which was just intense. So basically I
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never slept for the first three years of my life, of my life as a mother, because I had to wake up,
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change, feed, bottle, breastfeed, a million things. And so the conversations you have before
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somehow, I mean, it's, it's something that you need to do as an ongoing process. And that is
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also very hard when you have so much to do to take care of two dependents, two things that
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are just kind of moving and crying all the time. So it became, you know, whatever we did before,
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however many times we sat down and, you know, all the things that I had planned, none of it
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went that way because I don't think anybody could have prepared me or anything could have prepared
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me for having twins. It is really about going with it and seeing where it takes me and seeing
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where it takes us as a couple also. So conversations are important, being intentional, having, putting
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these things down, you know, making Excel sheets work for some people, you know, reading books
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together, going for classes together, doing stuff together while the woman is pregnant, showing
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support, a very visible support from the man. Okay, there are cravings, I will go run and get,
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none of that happened for me. I did not go for any classes. I did not have cravings. Most of my
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pregnancy, I did not eat. I, all the things that were, were things that I planned, I thought would,
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this is how a pregnancy is or had heard about or read about, none of it happened in my case. So
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preparedness and putting your intentions out is just one aspect of all that you have to still
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figure out once you're, once you become that parent, once you're in it. And I think that's
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when you kind of revisit and continue your conversations. Hard to do, but it's important
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to have that as an ongoing conversation, not just something that you've done and now we will follow
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the track and just do things how we wrote down before even the baby was out. I don't think it
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works like that. It didn't for me. I don't know if it did for Priya. Well, I can say that I planned
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for what I thought would be a dictatorship and it ended up in complete anarchy of, you know,
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that's what families are. It's complete anarchy if, you know, you really think about it. And then
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you have these parents who are going like, what did we just do? And the, I think with my husband
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and I, it's always been the conversation. It has always been there, but there's always been dissonance
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in terms of, I need urgency. You know, if I'm telling you something, then I need you to react.
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And more often than not, I need you to react exactly the way I am. And so that I know that
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you are understanding the urgency of what I'm telling you or the situation at hand. And then
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you realize that control is a myth at whatever level, even within your partnership. And then
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furthermore, with your children as well, the, it's just an illusion that you have control over this
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situation. And then you get to a point of acceptance and submission where you're just like,
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okay, let it be, you know, and then we'll just see where this, where this takes us. And I think even
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conversations can be had with your partner, with your kids and all of that. But at the end of the
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day, especially with small children, it will go the way it has to. Some days, and it's so time
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bound, like life is so time bound, you know, in the first couple of years, at least, and you
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quoted from Rachel Kask, and I really believe like her, her book, The Life, Her Life's Work is one of
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the few true accounts of what motherhood really is. And she got a lot of backlash for, you know,
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how she portrayed it, and people called her a bad mother. And that's what you get for telling the
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truth. And something as simple as taking a nap is a cause for so much resentment. I look at Gaurav
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taking a nap in the middle of the day, and I feel so much resentment. It's like, how are you sleeping
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when I'm not sleeping? And how do you look so peaceful? And, you know, and I still feel that
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10 years after having our first child, if I still see him, and I remember a friend of ours came from
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Berlin, and he said, you know, the toughest part is sleep resentment, because you see your partner
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sleeping, and then you're just like, almost willing the baby to wake up and start screaming so that
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that person would get up. And it's simple, everyday things like that, that it's so much
#
that, you know, it becomes so micro, everything becomes just about that day, that moment. And
#
if we were to actually say these things out loud, people would be looking at me like,
#
what kind of human are you, who has a problem with someone taking a nap? But it's not someone
#
taking a nap, it's him taking a nap. And that's where the feeling of inequality is like,
#
I'm the mother, I should get, you know, I should get more sleep, and I should get more rest. And
#
that's what the books tell you, sleep and the baby sleeps, and, you know, do all of that. And
#
and I didn't breastfeed, as in, I breastfed in a way, I only expressed and that I was very clear
#
about certain things that I knew what were my physical limitations, I was like, I'm not going
#
to be able to sit with a baby strapped onto, I will express, and I will feed. And, and you can
#
do the feeding and the burping. And, you know, in our lives, it was all very well, you know,
#
thought out. And I said that I would express 1.2 to 1.8 litres of milk in a day, and it would be
#
nicely bottled. And then between Gaurav and my mother, they would take care of the feeding
#
and things like that. And it's that very regimented format that worked, that worked for us.
#
That worked for our first pregnancy. And it was very different for our second, because then you
#
know what things entail, like your partner also knows what it all is, is about. So at that point
#
of time, we were also with my second child, it was COVID and things like that. So then he started
#
putting his foot down saying, no, I'm not going to, I'm not going to do this bit, and I won't do the
#
extra extra stuff. And I'm like, how dare you, you know, say I'm, he's like, you know, I'm working
#
and I have classes and I'm doing all these things, but I'm like, you're in the house and I'm the
#
mother. And I think it evolves in a very interesting way, even for your relationship. And I think
#
having kids tests a relationship in ways that are very unexpected, because
#
most of the issues are so trivial. Like we align on most of the major things in our lives,
#
and ideologically and all of that, but it can be the really trivial stuff. But at that point in time,
#
that stuff is so important. So, you know, you mentioned being dictatorial and Kask in a book
#
writes about how a baby can be at once victim and autocrat. There are these beautiful lines by her
#
where she writes about the kid and she says, it is a being destined to live only in the moment of
#
perfection that is his birth, after which it degenerates and decays becomes human and sinful,
#
cries and is returned to the realm of the real stop code. And so I have a bunch of questions
#
leading on from here. And one is a sort of a larger question where I'm going to zoom back a bit,
#
right? For both of you, you know, like all of us are English speaking elites, we've grown up in
#
a fair amount of privilege, we have support systems for whatever we do. But I want to,
#
you know, zoom out a bit and look at the larger context of women in India generally.
#
Like I did this episode with Chinmay Tumbe, who wrote that great book,
#
India Moving about migration within India. And the biggest EIL from that book for me
#
was that most migration in India happens because women get married and move.
#
And that leads you to the realization that men after marriage, they have this pretty much the
#
same lives they always did, except they have a woman at home, but otherwise the same friend
#
circle, the same social circle, everything is the same. Every woman is uprooted and atomized and
#
has to start again. And in so many places, it is even a custom that they change their name.
#
Right. And, and it would seem to me that for most women, motherhood can also be a similarly
#
devastating event where any sort of sense of personhood that you had disappears, where you
#
become slave to this victim slash autocrat. And the rest of your life just goes and the decades
#
have gone. And then you're just left with resentment and bitterness and however you kind of
#
deal with all of this stuff. And, you know, Gunjan, especially you must have, you know,
#
spoken to so many people who've kind of been through stuff like this. So
#
tell me a little bit about your thoughts on this, your experiences.
#
I can think of so many different stories and different ways motherhood has been for women who
#
have spoken to me. I think it, it is important to mention that individuals like us with certain
#
kind of privilege, where we can hire support, where we can buy that and where we can curate
#
stuff, where we can say, I want it this way. There's a lot of agency in being able to
#
do that and a lot of privilege in that, but not many of us have that agency.
#
Some women could be pregnant and birthing in a very huge large family where they are told when
#
to eat and how to sit and why not to lie down like this or like that. And there are women who
#
have to pretty much get, stay at home and just take care of kids one after the other till
#
their entire life is gone. Perhaps my, in fact, my grandmother's life was just like that. Maybe
#
in so many ways, my mother's life was that. She has a master's in Hindi, but she never
#
went out to study. She had me and then she had my brother and that's how life went.
#
So that is how it is for, how it is for many women. And, and I also understand that,
#
you know, sometimes having a child or becoming a mother can really save you in many ways,
#
right? It can give you, it can still, you can, you are still looked as
#
a medium for the family, looked as a medium to give them something they need. So you could also
#
suddenly become this very important thing and then get a lot of attention, love, care,
#
only because you are reproducing, right? And, and, and that can be such a relief for some women
#
because they go out, they work, they earn, they do all of this and then nobody cares for them.
#
They're invisibilized in the labor they do outside their homes maybe. But when they are pregnant or
#
when they're carrying a boy, when they're carrying a son for the family, then there's so much respect
#
and love and care that comes in. It's like it saves them. It's, it's a savior for, for them.
#
And there's some recognition. So the idea of personhood is also such a,
#
you know, we're seeing it also in a way, in a very, I would think, a Eurocentric individualistic
#
way when we think of personhood, that a person's existence or my ideas of self and what I want to
#
do, what I like and what I dislike is the center of my personhood. But for individuals who are
#
in a collective space where, where do I start and where do I end is not so clear. It's not so
#
individual. Then having a child or becoming a mother could really take you to another level,
#
could give you that respect that otherwise you wouldn't. So we sit here with the privilege of
#
also talking as women who are, you know, who have, who can reproduce. There are many women who,
#
who try and cannot and therefore are relegated to, you know, to the, that part where you don't,
#
you don't belong here. You know, you cannot be a part of our society, you know. So that is also,
#
these are also some stories that we hear. So I don't think we can generalize to say motherhood
#
is a certain way or all of motherhood is like that. And of course, through our podcast, we also like
#
to hear these voices and we want listeners to write to us or, you know, anyway, get in touch
#
with us to tell us what has their life story been like, what is their experience in motherhood been
#
like. And as we hear more and as you'd like to hear more, we would like to know because it doesn't
#
have to be a blanket experience. My experience of motherhood is different from Priya's largely
#
also because, you know, even though we are from the similar privileged spaces, also because I think
#
maybe what we value could be slightly different or what matters to us could be slightly different.
#
So that's, I think that's how I think about that. I don't know if that particularly answers the
#
question, but that's, that's what I would like to say. No, it's very insightful. I think my
#
questions are just sort of nudges to nudges for insight. So thanks for that. But I also wonder
#
what, you know, it's a tragic that earlier we were talking about, you know, motherhood as a
#
cure for this or marriage as a cure for this. And now again, it's a motherhood as a means for
#
a woman in this oppressive society to gain some modicum of respect because she's giving birth to
#
a son. And that just feels like incredibly horrible. And, and, and that whole notion,
#
I mean, it's, it often becomes sort of a justification or misogyny when people say that,
#
oh, things like agency and consent and feminism are all Western constructs and it doesn't matter.
#
And I, I totally don't buy that. It's, it's just that, you know, if you choose to be part
#
of a collective, that's a great more power to you. But most of these people just have no option in
#
the matter. And they, I guess, can't even possibly conceive of any other way of being, but that's
#
a different rant. But talking about selfhood, since both of you were privileged enough to have
#
a sense of selfhood and so on and so forth, what was your self like, what was your sense of self
#
before you became a mother? Like, you know, how did you see yourself and how did that change
#
after motherhood? Because, you know, did you imagine that motherhood would be one further
#
aspect of you and the rest of you would remain intact? You know, were you, if you thought that
#
way, were you correct in thinking that way? How did it all work out? I think motherhood
#
really strips you in ways that are very unexpected. Again, you're lauded, you know, the,
#
the baby coming is this lauded event in everybody's life. And even the figure of
#
the pregnant woman is, you know, celebrated and all of that. But the first thing when you go back
#
or your inner hospital, they'll tell you is like, bind your stomach and you know, you have to get
#
it back and things like, and just the sheer physicality of it. And, you know, like Gunjan
#
had twins, but I'm sure somebody at some point would have told her, you know, bind your stomach
#
so that, you know, all of that excess skin and everything goes back in. And for me, it's always
#
been very mind boggling that people talk like this about women. And I know on the flip side,
#
there are people who can't, who do anything for those stretch marks and to actually have the
#
experience of carrying life, healthy life and being able to deliver babies and things like that.
#
And then we're told to, you know, immediately after it's like, oh, the baby's out. And suddenly
#
that's, you know, all the celebration has shifted to this human being. And now you have to get back
#
to where you were prior to this. And I said, why? I like my roles and my babies like my roles,
#
because they asked me like, was I inside? And I said, yeah, you were in this one role and Aisha
#
was in the second, in the second role and that. And, you know, and I see this in hospitals. I
#
remember so distinctly after I had my baby, this nurse coming in saying, you know, you know, bind
#
your stomach and all. I said, no, I'm good. Have you seen the dads out there? Most of them have
#
potbellies and nobody is telling them to, you know, reduce the beer belly because now you'll
#
have a hot wife again and child. And I'm like, why are women so ashamed? Why is there so much?
#
Why is that ingrained in us that our sense of self has to come from our bodies? And I'm like,
#
this is the body that should be celebrated. This is the body who everyone told me I cannot have,
#
you know, normal deliveries because I'm so short. I gave birth to a very large baby and a very small
#
baby, and I shat them out, you know, naturally. And that's, that's the part that should be
#
celebrated. Not this tiny thing because, you know, I'll do everything for it anyway,
#
but most women lose themselves in that. And then it's like the prenatal and postnatal yoga and
#
getting back to it. And so much of who we are is linked to what we look like. And, you know,
#
I have this thing of wanting to look at people who post pictures, like post delivery and all,
#
and I want to see the difference in, you know, what the female looks like. And you'll see these
#
really ridiculously tired women who are just like waiting for the photograph to end and then
#
there'll be these men. And I'm like, nobody's talking about the guy. Like, I would say,
#
you get back in shape before telling me to get, and why should my personhood be linked to
#
getting back that prior state? I have forgotten so much of who I am. Do I have memories of what
#
I looked like or what I was before having children? I'm not sure I do because if I,
#
if I think back and then there's this apprehension and this, this thing of, you know, I used to
#
be really fit and teach yoga and things like that. And, you know, sometimes I feel very,
#
you know, uncomfortable about meeting people who knew me when I was young and fit. And then,
#
and then I think back and say, I had, I birthed two humans in, for nine months in absolutely,
#
with tremendous complications with my daughter. I actually had a doctor pull her head and put her
#
down multiple times because she would never fix. And I went through so much and I said,
#
this is the body that I need to love. And this is the body that I need to accept. And
#
it somehow doesn't happen because we are so much in our heads, like as mothers, so much of who
#
our entire pursuit post the pregnancy is, let me get back to what I was. And
#
that's the part that I feel, I feel truly like people should stop doing that. And people should
#
stop saying that because there is no shame in these, these amazing bodies that have done so much.
#
And yeah, I think I'll stop there. I could go on and on.
#
I mean, there is the, you know, the interesting conflict that I see here is a conflict between
#
your instinct of wanting to look good and all the various ways in which you feel that your body is
#
supposed to be and all that. And at the same time, the, your reasoning self where you're saying that,
#
Hey, I don't have to do this shit. You know, I don't need to do this for anyone. And there is
#
that conflict there. And there is, you know, at one point, you know, has this great sentence
#
where she writes a biological destiny of women remain standing amidst the ruins of their
#
inequality. And she's again talking about that inequality. But again, there is a conflict there
#
between, you know, at the end of the day, sexual inequality is forged as she put it on childbirth
#
and motherhood and so on and so forth. So at one level, there is a biological instinct that I want
#
this stuff, right? You have the maternal instinct. You want to have kids. And at another level,
#
there is the reason person saying that all this is also a trap. All this is going to, you know,
#
screw me up in all these various ways. So how does one sort of reconcile that? Like even today,
#
you can reason it out and say that, Hey, this is what it is and whatever, but then those instincts
#
kick in. So how does one reconcile these sort of different aspects, which I guess is not just a
#
question about motherhood per se, but also, I guess, a question about feminism in some senses,
#
that you're always fighting against instinct and different kinds of conditioning, both nature and
#
nurture, telling you to behave in a particular way. But at the same time, you're a reasoning person
#
and you know, you don't have to do that shit. How does one kind of deal with those?
#
I think I want to start by saying that there's no one way to be a feminist. And I don't think being
#
a feminist means to say, I'm going to do what I want to do. And I'm not going to, you know,
#
I'm going to be a closed person. And I will have these boundaries, which basically is walls. And
#
I'm going to just do whatever I'm going to fight with everybody. I'm going to do what I want.
#
That's called being entitled. That's not being feminist. So when we are talking about,
#
when we're talking about what Priya was talking about, what, you know, the images we have of
#
what a body looks like, a mother's body looks like, a post-birth body looks like,
#
and how we are supplied all these images of how we need to get back to our previous cells,
#
get back to life. I was often told, why don't you get back to life? So, you know, all of that,
#
that is supplied to us makes us also kind of move a little back and forth with what is happening,
#
what's going on. Again, we are all sleep deprived at that time. It makes sense of so much. But what
#
I'm basically trying to say is that when we are talking about identities, we are not talking about
#
something that's happening in a vacuum, something that's happening away from everything. And I'm
#
going to fight with everybody. And I'm going to create this, you know, this person and this child
#
and this beautiful, you know, bubble. It doesn't always have to be this bubble, because your bubble
#
is constantly poked and it's, you know, it's picked and the people looking in and people telling
#
you how to do it and people telling you what not to do. So this, however much you might think that
#
this is one personal project that I'm doing, it turns out not to be like that. And when we are
#
talking about, you know, like you were asking earlier, our previous cells and, you know, this
#
pre and post kind of a thing. When I was not a mother, that self was again a very, I think,
#
I would think that it's a very, it was, you know, it was heavily influenced by the idea of that
#
individual self. You know, I'm going to do things my way. That's the way to be. I'm an empowered woman.
#
I choose my career. I choose my partner. And I've got all of this under control. That was about
#
control. It was not really about, yeah, I don't know what it was about, but it definitely was a
#
lot about control. I'm going to plan this. I'm going to do this kind of a job and I'm going to
#
get this degree. But self actualization also? Yes, perhaps that, of course, it's coming from
#
a space of desire also. I want to have these things. However, what I'm, what I'm, why I'm
#
talking about that is because it's, it's very individualistic, right? It's very for myself
#
and I'm going to, you know, move on in life like this. When you have a child, when you
#
completely flip your relationship with your partner a certain way, that is if you have a child,
#
the father is involved and, you know, everything shifts and the mundane and the everyday becomes
#
like these struggles, you realize that this idea of the self, which is so in vacuum, so
#
individualistic, it has to break. That is just very tiny and that you cannot, you know, and that's
#
where the idea of community and that's where the idea of collective and that's where the idea of
#
where our other voices comes in. So this might, you know, I would think that this is,
#
it's really about figuring a lot, figuring out as you go along, how can you
#
include, how can you be more inclusive rather than dividing things and saying, I don't want to do
#
this, I want to, I don't want to, I don't want to do this, but I don't want to do that. You have
#
the capacity as you become a mother, the capacity for such wisdom, for such change, for such
#
acceptance and sometimes it doesn't happen magically. It takes a while, like a lot of women
#
tell me how they don't feel instant love for their baby and this tiny thing that's crying
#
all the time. I didn't either. A lot of, you know, it's something that unfolds and as it unfolds,
#
I feel that we benefit when we don't minimize it to a very individualistic experience and we open up
#
to create more spaces of togetherness, of collective understanding, listening,
#
even advice giving maybe, you know, but if it's just like Priya said, you know, bind your,
#
the nurse walking in with that and bind your tummy. How about somebody saying, do you want to
#
do this? You know, what will happen with this? If somebody would have said that to me, Gunjan,
#
you know, what is going to happen with, if you bind your stomach, what it's going to help you with
#
and what's not going to help you with, it's your choice. Do you want to talk about this?
#
Do you want five other mothers to tell you what it's like? None of that happens. When we are
#
told that this is how you do it, that doesn't sit well for most of us anymore, I think. And
#
we must understand that that evolving and that opening ourselves to the possibility of,
#
you know, still taking that nurse's help to feed the baby at night while she's just standing there
#
with that bloody, you know, thinking, but you still have to take her help to feed the baby at that,
#
in that hospital at night. So how do you negotiate and navigate something like that?
#
You do not do that by closing doors, by shutting off, by excluding, you do that by opening. And
#
that's such a, you know, it's such a, it can be so, like you said, it can strip you in so many ways,
#
right? You open yourself and you're vulnerable then. And that can sometimes, at least I felt,
#
I wasn't ready for so much of it, but it was essential at that time. And you do the essential
#
more than what, you know, how much you're ready for it. You kind of push yourself in the tolerance
#
and the capacity increases as you go along, I feel. So I had a question, but sparked by what you said,
#
I'm going to kind of state that question and kind of expand it a little bit. So probably be
#
incoherent in the process, but nevermind the show is about talking, thinking out loud.
#
My question was really going to be about in the context of how you begin to relate to your partner
#
in the sense that initially when you get together, it's a romantic partner, you see them in a
#
particular way. Then they become marital companions and you see them in a particular way. And then
#
this seismic event happens and everything is just blasted out. And, you know, in a sense,
#
just as a baby is this terrible catastrophe that has happened to you. And at the same time,
#
this cherished project for the man also, you know, there is a terrible catastrophe
#
and a cherished project. And like you pointed out, Priya, you know, Gaurav had postpartum
#
depression at the start. So my question was really going to be about how the, you know,
#
you begin to see each other differently, but sparked by what you said, Gunjan, I was also then,
#
then, you know, about losing that sense, that individualistic sense and beginning to look
#
at the world differently. And I was just wondering if that individualistic sense is, in a sense,
#
a very constricted vision of yourself and a little bit delusional, much as your vision of your partner
#
as either just a romantic partner or a marital companion would have been really incomplete.
#
And what motherhood does is it provides a shock which trusts you out of that self in which you
#
had limited yourself and shows you all the interconnections and limitations and that
#
terrible social tapestry that you're a part of and terrible, not in a pejorative sense,
#
but just in, you know, so would that be a sort of a summation if I interpreted what you said in that
#
kind of manner? Yeah, I mean, I know that you say it makes so much sense. Yeah, in some ways, I
#
meant it like that. Like, it's just such a shift, right? Even to see your partner a certain way.
#
Now, maybe it, of course, is different for different people. For me, I had my twins
#
after 10 years of being married to Romet, right? And I've known him for many years before that as
#
well. So it felt like we knew each other. Yeah, we just know each other and we just, you know,
#
we know everything about each other. And then you have babies and then you realize you don't,
#
like you said. Is it like an incomplete version earlier? Perhaps it is. And using your words,
#
maybe it is incomplete in the sense and you don't see it till you see it, right? Till you are in it
#
and you have to hold two babies together and you have to make a bottle while one is pooping and
#
the other one is. So there is so much to do. And I think it's a challenge for everybody involved
#
in it, even for the man who has perhaps not even imagined this, right? Again, we're talking about
#
a generation where the previous generation, so fathers before, were not doing this stuff.
#
So you have not even any reference point and that can be a lot to handle or deal with. And so I
#
understand when young fathers don't know what to do and which is what brings me back to
#
opening up the experience and having more fathers to talk to or having more other people and other
#
fathers to share their experiences. That's missing. That's also not there. So not only are we then
#
handling our partners who have become this other thing, we are also having to deal with
#
this other thing who doesn't have other things to talk to. So there is only everything happen
#
between us, right? So there's very little space then we're too into each other trying to make
#
sense of everything together. It can be so pressurizing. And I don't think it has to be
#
like that. I think it can shift if there are spaces for more conversations or just
#
experiencing something together as a community. So if more fathers talk, if more fathers gather
#
together, have chats, have hangout, let's go play soccer together. I don't think that exists much,
#
but I'd like to be wrong if anybody wants to write to us and let us know that they've been
#
able to create such groups. And that would be lovely to know. But I would think that mostly
#
it does come down to the couple. Everything is figured out and discussed. And also because
#
there's fear of judgment. What would others say if I tell them that, you know, whatever, like,
#
our child doesn't sleep till 10 o'clock in the night. Oh my God, I'll be judged for being that
#
father or that mother who doesn't realize that the child must get 12 hours of sleep.
#
There is so much judgment. If I give my children screen time, I'll be judged. So I'm not going to
#
tell anyone. And so we hide and we invisibilize and we shrink ourselves and we become a very tiny
#
unit. But I don't think that helps that puts more pressure. You've spoken both here, you briefly
#
mentioned, and in your podcast, you've spoken at some length about how, you know, your lives are
#
so different from your mother's lives and the kind of motherhoods they had. And also society has also
#
changed in various ways, where at least men have the intention now that, hey, we're going to help
#
out, we're going to, you know, change, do more than just change diapers once in a while. And I'm
#
just thinking about what causes cultural change, because like, you know, like Gunjan said, that
#
there aren't these conversations happening. And at one level, the explanation for this is that
#
it's partly biology and partly, you know, nurture reinforcing that to the extent that these
#
conversations will never really happen. But the other optimistic side of us says that, look,
#
in any 10 year window, it seems like we're going to hell. But you look at a 50 year window, you know,
#
the world has moved forward. So what are sort of the triggers for change? Like, did you think that
#
there are some things that we can just give up on that you'll never have complete equality in a
#
sense? Or, you know, are there triggers for change? Can you turn a vicious cycle into a virtuous cycle
#
where it is actually cool for men, macho men to be involved parents?
#
So I know I can come in there because I've seen this right from the beginning, from when I was
#
pregnant to through the pregnancy, everyone would, I think it was such a novelty to have
#
an involved partner. And for us, it's very normal because our relationship has always been that,
#
that we're friends above everything else. And he's my 4am friend who I'd call and be like,
#
come and put my shoulder back. It's gotten dislocated. Even when we were friends,
#
we were just friends. Then, you know, so for us, our relationship has hasn't changed that much.
#
It's, it's still that person who you would call at 4am. But his involvement has been something
#
that has been eye opening and life changing for a lot of people around, like starting from our
#
fathers, like both our fathers are like, look at him. He does everything. Look at him. He cooks
#
also. In admiration or horror? No, in admiration. And they wonder, like, what would it have been
#
like? Like, would our marriages have been better? Would our experience of parenthood been better?
#
Had we been more involved? And I've seen that questioning happen, you know, and it's spurred
#
our fathers to become fabulous grandparents, you know, to be really involved. Like,
#
Gaurav's dad never took him for a birthday party, but has gone with Ishaan for music class and
#
birthdays. And, and that's just because they saw him do it. And they saw him do it willingly
#
and not being forced. That's just that thing of, you know, someone saying, oh, you know,
#
Gaurav's babysitting the kids. I'm like, no, he's not. They're his children. He would be
#
babysitting the neighbor's children, not his own. So I think it's when the language starts changing.
#
And it's like, even for my gynecologist, it's like, oh, your husband comes for every, you know,
#
every appointment and he wants to know what's happening, this and that. And even like,
#
I remember with Ishaan, it was, I think, she was born one minute before midnight. And at 11.30,
#
they're like, so sweet. He's standing here. And I am like, I am drugged out of my brains,
#
you know, squatting on a bed, trying to get this baby out. And they're like, what a nice
#
husband you have. He's still here. And then I realized, because I've seen my friends
#
give birth, their husbands were not there. One was sleeping in the room while
#
his wife screamed, you know, bloody murder. And one was just, you know, like, call me when it's all
#
done kind of thing. Like, okay, you get to be squeamish and things like that. So yes,
#
him being there and being involved was a very big thing. So now when he talks, and it's coming from,
#
you know, this space of, oh, he's this cool guy who's saying that it's cool to be a dad.
#
And people see him with his kids. And suddenly it's changing from, like, generationally,
#
from our parents to other dads who'll be like, oh, okay, you know, that's pretty cool. And then,
#
you know, he's changing the narrative. I'm not doing anything. I'm just being exactly the way
#
I was in our, and our relationship has not changed. But I feel like I remember he was
#
called on a podcast for dads. And I felt really unaffronted. I'm like, someone has to call the
#
moms. And then I googled, like, is there a mommying podcast? And there wasn't. There's
#
only pops in a pod. And then you started your own so well done. And I have called you here today.
#
Yeah, but you didn't call me before that. So it's that. It's like, for every change to happen,
#
unfortunately, in the kind of patriarchal society that we live in, it's like that top down motion
#
where, oh, it's coming from cis male, you know, he's saying it's cool to be a dad, and it's cool
#
to be like, fully involved with your kids and things like that. And then I'm like,
#
okay, maybe we need to empower the men. And maybe they do need to have these conversations. And
#
maybe they, and maybe other women need to see men who are willing to be involved, and be like, hey,
#
there is an alternative to, I won't change diapers, and I won't do this, and I won't do that. Because
#
we so easily slip into the gender roles and all of that. And again, I think we've talked a lot
#
about Rachel Cusk, but her husband was the primary caregiver, and he gave up his job and
#
stayed at home. And yet she wrote, while she wrote this book about the early months of giving birth,
#
and everyone was like, oh, he's such an amazing dad. And she's like, but I have given birth,
#
and all of this has happened to my body. And it is the experience for me. And yet,
#
who's put on the bed? It is the husband. So. Can I say something? I'm just thinking of two things.
#
One is that, you know, that I think a big part of big, or change happens when we take the shame
#
out of something. When there's a lot of shame around being a certain kind of father. I also
#
want to say that I don't want to feel good about myself as a mother by putting down fathers. That's
#
not how I want to feel good about myself anyways, by putting down somebody. So I feel patriarchy is
#
a disservice to the men as well. They are, like I said, you all don't have a reference point.
#
What else to do other than change diapers, or what else to do than to have the home running,
#
or to earn for the family? You all didn't have a reference point. So I get it. And the thing is
#
that there's a lot available out there now to learn, to change yourself, and to be able to
#
be there for your wife, or for the mother of your child. In fact, if you start listening,
#
she'll be telling you. Sometimes if you just listen, you'll know what to do. That's one thing.
#
And when I was talking about shame, but also wanted to say that sometimes there is a lot of
#
shame attached to how one needs to be as a parent. Even in, in fact, in today's world a lot.
#
So I would think there's sometimes a pressure to look a certain way as a father now. And
#
many times that doesn't actually work in anybody's favor. Not the child, not the
#
person who is now having to maybe put on an act, and look a certain way, and forcefully be this
#
kind, nice person. But you can learn, where you can have conversations, you can pick up books,
#
you can watch videos, put yourself out there as a cool father. Like you said, you know,
#
let's talk about it. This is fun. This is also a choice you can make. I think it's happening.
#
A lot, a lot more voices are coming up. And it's good to hear that a lot of
#
fight towards the established gender roles. And let's break that. I think it's happening.
#
It's been happening for a while, but I think we get competitive and we get a little bit,
#
you know, putting each other down and bringing that shame back into it. How much I'm doing and
#
how much you're doing. And I changed these many diapers. I went through that with Romita as well,
#
where I'm like, I am doing everything and you're not doing this and that and this and that.
#
The fact is that with children, when they're smaller, especially, there is so much to do.
#
There is so much to do. And with twins, there's just so much to do all the time.
#
We didn't have a choice. You know, we didn't have a choice where Romita had to pick up one infant
#
while I was feeding another infant. Right. So when you're thrown in it, and then you're like,
#
okay, how do I make sense of it? Let me not worry about the judgments here. I'm going to feed my
#
baby. Yeah, I'm going to feed my baby. This woman cannot express right now. She's feeding another
#
one. I'm going to figure out how to make this bottle. I'm going to go for every doctor visit
#
and I'm going to figure out how to do this and that and this and that. Start asking questions,
#
start asking others how it's been like for them. I think it would help if more people talk and
#
share their experiences and others start to listen and ask questions. And if we, you know,
#
teach ourselves and we let go of the shame and the judgment, that would perhaps lead to change.
#
My most popular episode is with Shreena Bhattacharya is called loneliness of the Indian woman.
#
And my second most popular episode with Nikhil Taneja is called the loneliness of the Indian man.
#
And they're both about patriarchy in a sense. And Nikhil's point in his episode is exactly
#
the point you just made that men are trapped by patriarchy and in a sense trapped in those roles
#
that they're supposed to play. And in a sense, it's more bewildering for them because women
#
have frames by which they can at least figure it out. You know, even if they can't act upon it,
#
then you know that there is something called feminism and you understand that and you understand
#
what's going on. Men don't even know what is happening to them. And you know, what you pointed
#
out about Gaurav getting tallies because he's standing there, it reminded me of the phrase,
#
the soft bigotry of low expectations. Right. And I think men can so much be trapped by that as well.
#
And, you know, there's a friend of mine who's been on the show a few episodes back,
#
Murali Neelkanthan, who very successful lawyer partner of a law firm in England and US and then
#
came back to India and then gave it all up. And for the last 10 years or so, he's been embarked,
#
he's embarked upon what he calls project Arjun. His son's name is Arjun. He said, till my son
#
reaches a particular age, which I think ends in 2024, that is my full time job. And I'm only going
#
to do that. And his wife is an extremely successful lawyer at the same time. And that gets me to
#
thinking about this whole sense of treating the act of having a child as a project, that you do
#
project planning and you do this and you do that and you put all that. And, you know, one of you
#
quoted Donald Winnicott in one of your podcasts is saying that you've got to, you know, you can't
#
think like an engineer, but you, you know, you've got to treat a child like a plant that you water
#
it and then whatever happens, happens. So tell me about your approaches towards this, because I
#
imagine at one level, and at least your husband, who I do know fairly well is a pretty geeky kind
#
of person, just like me. So at one level, you're going to geek out and you're going to plan
#
everything and you're going to read every book and you're going to do all of that. But at another
#
level, a lot of this shit comes naturally and you kind of deal with it. You know, you sort of
#
navigate the river by feeling for the stones or whatever that phrase is. So tell me about how all
#
of this worked for you. How did you, what was your approach towards parenting and how did you kind of
#
learn on the job as it were? I think the one thing that I, that Gaurav really felt when we had our
#
baby was that I always had this whole thing of feeding and expressing and he's like, I really
#
wish I had the breasts so that I could just feed and then this whole debate would be over
#
because you've birthed and you know, you've done the, and then, you know, men should be the one who
#
are feeding the baby because that makes the most sense. Like, you know, let us take on the load
#
because then it goes to, oh, she's like, I can't physically do anything about your breasts hurting
#
or you're, you know, having to express because like with my daughter, she was allergic to formula.
#
So we had no other option for 12 months till she switched to cow's milk. I needed to pump 1.8 liters
#
of milk, whether you were dying, whether you were, you know, I had food poisoning once and I remember
#
like drip in one hand, expressing in the other and you have, you just have to do it. And I remember
#
the frustration that came along with it for Gaurav. He was like, I really wish that there was something
#
I could do and for us until 12 months, we couldn't switch her to cow's milk. So she had to be fed.
#
And then you realize that nature has stacked up the odds against you in a very real kind of way.
#
And then you have, and then you go into like the social constructs and all of that. But if you
#
break free of that, at least within the framework of what you are calling your family
#
and within that sphere of influence, I think for us, what has really worked and this is something
#
I've learned very much from Gaurav is selective watering. Like we will just not take notice of
#
the problematic bits with our kids and just focus on the good bits. And that's really worked. That
#
thing of selective, we won't just like randomly, you know, fertilize and do everything for these
#
little plants that we have. We will see what works for them. And instead of only bothering
#
about nurture, nurture, nurture, we will pick the good bits and really focus on those so that they
#
outweigh the slightly problematic stuff as we're moving forward. And I think that's something that's
#
really worked for us. And I think it also comes from him being a teacher, that you are able to
#
see that, okay, here is a problem. How do I get around it? And I'm not saying our children are
#
problems. They're fantastic. They're not problematic. But it's that it's the art of
#
that selective watering and picking up the good bits and focusing primarily on those and saying
#
that, okay, there are facets of all our personalities, and they may be reinforced from the outside.
#
And but when we come back home, and we are able to introspect or have some kind of self reflection,
#
and that's something that he's trying to ingrain with our kids at a very young age that sit and
#
write and write and, you know, try and reflect. And I'm like, you know, from the age of six,
#
and now at the age of nine, my son really understands the value of self reflection.
#
And that has only come from years of somebody saying that, you know, do it, it'll help you do
#
it, it'll help you and it's just how you as grownups are weeding out stuff that doesn't work for you.
#
If you apply the same thing in a simplified form for your children, it will work. But it has to be
#
a collaborative approach. It's very, I think parenting is very much like therapy. Like,
#
you know, it's that collaboration that is key. It cannot I think when parents realize that this
#
is not a dictatorship, either of your children of your babies, when they are, you know, these
#
screaming dictators of your life, or when you flip it around, and what we had as our parents being
#
maybe like telling us what to do and making the decisions of our life that that the value of
#
collaboration, at least in our scenario, is paramount. It really is because that's when you
#
give when you give your kids also equal seat at the table, it's at the same height, it's you know,
#
you've got them a high stool because they can't and you're all sitting together, and you're all
#
figuring stuff out. I think that's where that's the best place to start.
#
Gunjan, in one of your great episodes, you wondered aloud, sometimes I wonder if knowledge
#
is a burden. Now, you know, being a therapist, being someone who's been a counselor at the
#
schools for, you know, many years, as you pointed out, expand a little bit on that, because I think
#
and this is a tendency men have much more than women, frankly, where you tend to geek out and
#
plan everything and make flow charts and all of that and it all goes to hell because, you know,
#
I think Mike Tyson once said that every plan goes to hell when you get punched in the face,
#
which is pretty much what life does when you're a parent, I guess. So tell me a little bit about,
#
you know, what was your approach to all of this, because you would have seen yourself as someone
#
who understands human beings, who understands what you're getting into, you know, you went into it
#
with your eyes open. So tell me the story of what happened then. Yeah, I felt once the babies were
#
there, I felt like I just don't know anything. I never understood how to do this. All the stuff
#
that I'd read about, it makes no sense and none of it told me how to take care of these two. So
#
a lot of times I feel that, like I said, like, you know, when we utilize knowledge as a weapon
#
to learn, to, you know, acquire more knowledge, to acquire skills, we also then want control.
#
But when you cannot control, then all of that knowledge is unnecessary and it's a burden
#
because then you might just want to flow. You might just want to, you know, not control things
#
and just see where this takes you. And I had to do that because, you know, I was just left with
#
a lot to do. In my family, nobody had had twins before. So this was all very new. And just to be
#
able to keep up with things like who's being fed how much milk at what time or, and I'm talking
#
about when they were really small, but of course the, you know, it also feels like to me as I talk
#
that I'm really still there, still processing that because they're much older now, their needs are
#
very different. And even now, in fact, I feel sometimes, you know, and this puts a lot of
#
pressure on me, you know, having knowledge or knowing of things. And when I cannot translate it
#
into my conversation with my kids or when I'm trying to be the good mother, it doesn't translate
#
like that. And then I am just putting myself down. The self-doubt comes in, a lot of blame comes in,
#
a lot of shame comes in. And then, and so I think what, what's the point of knowing, yeah,
#
when it's probably about just doing and staying with it. My approach was that I'm very prepared,
#
but then being prepared, you know, a lot of times we also prepare when we are anxious.
#
We're not particularly preparing to know it better. We are preparing because we are feeling anxious.
#
And I think many times we prepare for parenthood like that.
#
Many times when I put pressure on myself for being the therapist, I know these things.
#
In my head, I'm thinking of all of this. It was useless pressure for me. It did not help me
#
become a better mother. That knowledge did not help me become a better mother. What helps me
#
become a better mother is when I'm calm, when I'm relaxed, when I'm well rested, when I've eaten,
#
definitely not when I'm hungry. And when I'm supported in different ways, like, you know,
#
if somebody says, we get this or can we handle this or can we do this or when a school understands
#
your child's struggles or when somebody gives you that understanding, that makes you a better
#
parent and a good parent, not knowing only. Knowledge can be helpful. Learning skills is
#
very helpful. I wouldn't say it's not, but it's not the only thing and therefore it can be a
#
burden. So my approach is I'm not going to put any more pressure on myself trying to fulfill the
#
role of a therapist as a parent. I'm not going to confuse the two. When I'm talking about my kids
#
and when I'm being with my kids, they're my kids. I'm not their therapist. That differentiation is
#
very important. That understanding, self-understanding is very important. Otherwise, it's unnecessary
#
pressure. So before we go in for a break, sort of a question about sort of moving on from that
#
self-understanding to actually understanding the kids. Like there is this iconic book called
#
The Nurture Assumption by Judith Rich Harris, where she talks about how the influence that
#
parents have on their kids is overstated and peers actually have much more of an influence.
#
And I guess even in your time as mothers, there would be this moment where your kid comes out of
#
you and it is a part of you. It's a part of your soul and that's what it is. But then gradually,
#
over a period of time, I'm guessing that the kid becomes something else and someone else and becomes
#
an individual. And there are times where the kid will do something and you'll feel like it's a
#
stranger, like what happened here and so on and so forth. And they kind of go in their different
#
directions. Like even with the twins, I'm sure they must be different from each other in really
#
interesting ways, right? And how do you then sort of begin to adapt to that? Because this was your
#
grand project. This was your family. These are your jigar ka tukra or, you know, pick a cliche of
#
choice. And suddenly these are individuals and beyond the point, you cannot control how they
#
do in life or what they do in life and et cetera, et cetera. And how does one sort of think about
#
that stuff? And, you know, like in many Indian families, that individuality of kids is completely
#
suppressed and it's, you know, parents who've lived lives of quiet desperation now living vicariously
#
through their kids. And as Philip Larkin said memorably, man hands on misery to man. It deepens
#
like a coastal shelf, right? And that is kind of how it can often be. So how do you avoid that
#
trap as sinking people? And how do you then begin to relate to them as individuals and not in that
#
role of mother child? Like the way you said, you know, Priya, you said you relate to Gaurav as a
#
friend. He's a 4am friend. He's not just a lover and a husband and a father of your kids and all
#
of those things. So what has that process been like? Because I imagine that it would both come
#
with a lot of fear and a lot of joy and a lot of like WTF. I think it's mostly just respecting
#
that intuitive journey that we all go through. And, you know, and focusing on those little things,
#
those signs that your kids tell, you know, they may not say it outright or they may not have the
#
language for it. But if they're sending you signals about and children have a way to get
#
their point across, that adults kind of get lost in semantics and all of it. But children have a
#
very simple way of doing things and showing you who they are. I think if you just respect that
#
and you don't transfer your fears and your apprehensions, and that's the I think now more
#
and more, the only thing is I don't want to transfer that anxiety and all my years and all
#
the baggage that has come, you know, in terms of like the kind of pressure that I put on myself,
#
what I feel, all of those things. I don't want that to transfer on to my kids. I don't want my
#
fears to be transferred to them. Let them be fearless. And again, Gaurav keeps saying that,
#
you know, don't do that. Like, don't. Our daughter used to like jumping off chairs as a baby,
#
just like, and she would go like face first into, you know, anything. And that's her trip, right?
#
She loves that feeling. And I'm scared of heights. And it really took a lot to not transfer my fear
#
because I did that with my son. I sterilized everything that fell. I was like, you know,
#
first child, right? You're obsessive. I had counted every Lego, perfectly curated his life.
#
Every experience should be artistic, this, that, the other. And then it's more just letting go
#
and seeing that your anxiety is not going across to them. And they are just doing whatever
#
it is they are doing. And I remember Bakul in one of our episodes said, benign neglect,
#
and that at some points you have to actively do that. Be like, let them figure this out,
#
this state of, you know, and we don't have to be judgmental that our parents did that. And,
#
you know, we don't have to feel like we lost out in any way because for us to become who we are,
#
I think it took that benign neglect for us to be left to our own devices to figure stuff out,
#
whether it was after taking a gap year and realizing that you don't want to do this with
#
your life or, you know, and we maybe learned it a lot later, but for our children, it doesn't have
#
to be like that. It just like, I think it just comes from that respect that you're able to give
#
even your children, that you have to respect them as individuals. And very often I say that
#
the best parenting advice that I get for my daughter is from my son, who's closer to her
#
in age, and then he's able to figure out like what her needs are. And she'll be,
#
she'll be screaming. And I remember this was in Goa, she was just completely unhinged. And
#
I'm like, you know, this was supposed to be a perfect month long holiday. And day one is like
#
this. And he sat her down at one end of this very large, beautiful room. And he sat me down. And he
#
explained entirely the situation, why she was crying and why I was reacting like this and how
#
we were supposed to deal with this. And I was like, you know, Ishan, you should be a therapist.
#
You're great at this. And I realized that that's all, you know, he trusted himself enough and knew
#
that I would take it. I won't just shut him up. And, you know, and I said, yeah, you're right.
#
You know, I'm going to do exactly what you said. And I'm going to defuse the situation and I'm going
#
to walk away. And he took charge and calmed her down and all of that. And that's a nine year old.
#
But we've given him that. So now we know that he said, right, like we can say that, okay, fine,
#
you do what you want to do and take maybe not a lot of control, but the decisions are now run by
#
him without us making decisions for him and him getting the memo in the morning saying,
#
okay, we have decided this for you. So I think one has to also be who we want to be as people.
#
So much of us gets lost in parenthood in those early years. And then I think if our kids see us
#
becoming who we want to be or becoming more of what those dreams look like, it'll be a really
#
great place for them to start. Like, I know the admiration with which he looks at Gaurav going
#
and swimming three kilometers and being like, I want to do an Ironman. And those are his Gaurav's
#
dreams being realized, but they're also giving Ishaan agency and the sense of see, this is how
#
it's done. So without, this is a kind of passive parenting. And I think at a certain point in our
#
lives, we just need to work on ourselves. And it goes back to that point where you're not this
#
actively isolated person with this small child who needs you for everything. So
#
we have both ends right now. We have one person who wants to be stuck to us and wants, you know,
#
to be hugged and kissed and loved and will scream bloody murder if you don't give that.
#
And then there is one person who respects the fact that you need to do stuff for yourself.
#
And I like what you said about, you know, how sometimes kids can see clearly in a way that cuts
#
through the bullshit of adults, right? And I wonder if then there are lessons that, you know,
#
we can learn from them in the course of the whole thing about ourselves and what we're doing wrong.
#
Totally. Yeah, I think they are our guides. I think I also said that in one of the episodes
#
on the podcast. Here, I do want to say that the experiences that we are sharing are personal
#
experiences. And when we talk about instinct, I have a little, I wonder about instincts,
#
instinct as a parent, because I'm not sure about what I think about that. I do know that amongst
#
the listeners would be some individuals who have not birthed a child, right? And who've not done
#
this instinctively. And that's, I don't think that's the only way to be parenting instinctively.
#
Sometimes instincts don't show up, especially when I'm tired and I'm, you know, like I said,
#
when I'm hungry, then it's just like, okay, get this done with sort of a thing. So they'll
#
look at yourself and take care of yourself first and then take care of your kids and all of that.
#
But why I brought this up is because what we are talking about is a very, you know, we are
#
not all parenting and all mothers and everybody would look the same. This is a very privileged
#
you know, a very monogamous privileged situation where there's like a father, mother and son and
#
daughter. Families look different. All families look different. And therefore what we are talking
#
about here can easily be rejected by somebody and that's okay too. I just wanted to put that
#
out there. When it comes to how do we translate something to create our kids who are individuals
#
and who are not carrying forward, how, I mean, I, it's a tough one because we live in a larger
#
world where there are influences. There is a context in which we are bringing them up.
#
It's very difficult to isolate yourself and say, I'm just going to do it like this.
#
When my kids go to school, they learn certain things. When they go play in the colony park,
#
they learn some other things. They bring it back home. The only thing that I depend on
#
is to connect with my children and to have conversations with them. Sometimes even that
#
is very difficult because there's homework to complete and shoes to clean and bags to pack
#
and tiffins to make and, and lots going on there. I now like to see it as a long-term project. I try
#
not to do fixed things right now. And you know, I need to get this under charge and get this in
#
control and try and figure this out like this. So I'm, I've really just kind of, I'm, I'm not
#
trying too hard to do many things. I'm going with it and I'm seeing where will this take us
#
when, you know, for example, my children do not like going to school right now.
#
Now it's been two years of them being in the school in a mainstream school and, and I don't
#
know what to do about it because I cannot do anything about it. But what I can do about is
#
make my children feel safe when they're with me, make them feel that I would never send them to a
#
place or make them do something that is not okay or good for them. Right. So when they're going to
#
school, it's tough, but it's not bad. Yeah. So those conversations are ongoing conversations.
#
We need to sit with them and talk to them and listen to them and meet them where they are,
#
you know, what they are bringing in and try not to, you know, again, knowledge.
#
But they have to go back and I often just say, you'll figure it out. And if you don't,
#
you can come talk to me and we'll figure something out together then. So conversations and connection
#
and really kind of making a sense, you know, creating a sense of safety. And of course,
#
asking for help when you're stuck. It's okay to have a friend talk to your child. It's okay to
#
have your parents talk to your child, your children. It's okay to look for professional
#
mental health help if you need. It's okay to go and ask, you know, teachers for help if your
#
child is struggling at school. Again, we try to do everything by ourselves and control and we try and
#
fix our child or we fix ourselves or fix our, you know, ways of being around our children. But all
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of it is happening in a bigger context. Who's going to fix that? Who's going to ask questions
#
there? Who's going to say, why are kids, you know, why do kids have to be in school at 7.40? I mean,
#
parents have to get them there. Why do we have to wake up at 5.30 or six and make tiffins? Why are
#
we still doing that? That's a kind of question I have. Somebody might have another kind of a
#
question. Who do we ask these things? So I am now trying to figure out spaces where I can start
#
asking these questions and if that brings about, I don't know, change takes forever. So, I mean,
#
let's start with the questions. We'll see when the change comes. I'm going to rant a lot about
#
schools and I'm sure you guys will join me after the break. But before it, can you think of a
#
concrete example of a time, either of you, when you did some Gyan Baji with your kids and you had
#
your bubble burst by them? Or when they did some Gyan Baji and they were spot on? All the time.
#
So, Ishaan started this whole thing of writing letters. Gaurav would write to him every night
#
and he would have a response. And it's usually, you know, the very thing about, you know, this is
#
the certain way we need to be and be a good person, this, that. And I remember, there's a,
#
you know, we were both parents, like, you know, talking a lot. And more than hearing ourselves,
#
we like, you know, someone, a captive audience that are our children when, you know, when
#
admonishing is required. And I remember he wrote a letter and this is after, you know,
#
I think he had done something naughty or something, you know. I don't remember what the incident was,
#
but he wrote to Gaurav and said, you know, I think Gaurav had also said that, you know,
#
I feel very bad about all these things and the fact that we scolded you because I think
#
we apologize to our kids a lot, a lot. It's like every time we, you know, lose our cool,
#
then we'll go by ourselves, so sorry about this. And they're kind of used to it. And then in the
#
letter, he said that, you know, it's all right for people to make mistakes. That's what makes
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us human. Otherwise, we would be robots, you know. Robots are the ones who are not supposed
#
to make mistakes and things. And we're like, yeah, it's okay. And he was so clear and it was written
#
so sweetly and simply for, you know, his dad and I to understand that it's all the mistakes that
#
we make that make us human. And both of us were like, oh, yeah, maybe we should just like.
#
And it took the pressure off us. And if he's thinking like that, then he's, you know, obviously
#
all right. But I know that he struggles with guilt and all of those things as well. And we all have
#
those internal struggles. But children have sometimes the most beautiful and most simple
#
way of doing things. And I remember one of the teachers in his school saying, because we are
#
always a parent, you know, if something goes wrong, there should be a consequence. You know,
#
there should be, you should have accountability and ownership to mistakes made. And we don't want
#
to seem like the pushovers and things like that. And then his teacher told me that, you know,
#
when a child makes a mistake, the own that child needs a lot more love and a lot more
#
understanding. And they don't need punishments and they don't need any of that. So, you know,
#
especially when it's a slightly bigger thing, you know, that they will be so that the guilt doesn't
#
stay. Because when you when you get the consequences and all, then you're making sense
#
of what has happened and you're getting that that reaction and then you've got the punishment
#
and all of that. And then when you just flip that around and give them more understanding and more
#
love and more space to unpack all that has happened, then they are able to grow in a way
#
that's very unexpected. Because then they're dealing with all of these things on their own.
#
And you'll see how wonderfully clear it is for them because you haven't waited.
#
You know, I know all mothers like to think that their kid is the smartest and the most talented
#
because actually he is. On that note, let's take a quick break.
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Welcome back to The Scene in the Unseen. I'm chatting with Priya and Gunjan.
#
Before the break, you guys were sort of talking about shame and guilt and so on and so forth.
#
That's been one of the themes that you've also spoken about in your podcast episodes and all
#
that. I also want to ask about that because it seems to me that one, it's really a setup.
#
There are such crazy expectations around being a mother. There's no freaking way that you're going
#
to satisfy either yourself or the people around you. I think of it a little bit like being a
#
cricket wicket keeper. I'm sorry if that offends you because you only notice a cricket wicket
#
keeper when they make a mistake. You know, you could do everything perfectly the whole damn day,
#
but you drop one difficult catch and they're like, oh, you know, team Senikalo, which of course is
#
not possible with you guys. So tell me a little bit about this because you go into it with a
#
not wanting to let yourself down and you have all of these expectations and b, then you don't want
#
to let others down around you for whatever expectations that they might have. And there's
#
this beautiful sentence which Bakul said in one of these podcasts where she said, guilt is cut from
#
the same stretched canvas where self-reflection, accountability, self-fitnessing lie, it's the same
#
cloth. And when I heard that, I almost fell off my chair though I was on a flight because such a
#
beautiful sentence. But tell me a little bit kind of about that because the point that she's getting
#
at there, which I think is so profound is that it's actually coming out of all the things that
#
make us good, right? And it's coming out of that and it must be so bloody difficult to deal with.
#
Yeah, all of it is that goes without saying. But what I think Bakul was saying it in the context
#
of, yes, talking about, you know, how in that invisibilizing task of a wicket keeper who only
#
is seen when mistakes are made, over the last few years as my children are growing,
#
I am learning to be more forgiving of myself and the mistakes that I make or my kids make
#
because nobody else will do it. Yeah, people are not going to forgive me or they're going to keep,
#
you know, even now when I walked out to take a break, there were like 20 messages from parents
#
today itself who've copied this work in our notebook and this is what was missed and this
#
child needs to do this. There is always going to be external pressure. There's always going to be
#
people telling us what to do, how to do it. Some of it will be useful. Most of it will not be.
#
And guilt will come in. Shame will come in. And then through that discomfort of sitting with it
#
and questioning it and like what's going on for me or what is it or talking about it to someone
#
and figuring out what's really happening here. What that, that residue of that for me was,
#
you know, I need to be a little less hectic on myself. I need to, this is a long race.
#
As a mother, I have to, you know, always be mothering. So I need to take this slow
#
and really know how if I make mistakes, how can I forgive myself? What can I give myself
#
when I've fumbled or I've made a mistake or I've done something wrong or I've yelled at my children,
#
I don't like what I've done. What can I give myself at that time? So I have taken guilt and shame as
#
when they come in as indicators or as spaces which require stepping away a little while,
#
for a little while from the hectic work you're doing and sitting with that discomfort.
#
And it strikes me that, you know, at one level there are errors of commission,
#
like you shout at her or you don't pay attention to her when she needs to be fared or whatever.
#
And that's one kind of error. But there are also errors of permission, which are actually,
#
in a sense, inevitable. We set ourselves up from there, like Kask has these great lines in her book.
#
I know you love her so much, so I don't mind quoting her again because it's such a lovely book
#
where she writes, quote, to be a mother, I must leave the telephone unanswered, work undone,
#
arrangements unmet. To be myself, I must let the baby cry, must forestall her hunger,
#
or leave her for evenings out, must forget her in order to think about other things.
#
To succeed in being one means to fail at being the other, stop quote. And I would imagine that
#
if you try to balance both of them, in a sense, you could convince yourself that you're failing
#
at both, right? And I think one of you also quoted Donald Winnicott's thing about how,
#
as a mother, you don't have to be a perfect mother, you just have to be good enough, right?
#
So tell me a little bit about that sort of journey, because at one level, there must be
#
this terrible sense of loss for the you that you left behind when the baby came into your life,
#
and you want to reclaim that, and you want to relive that person's life in some small ways.
#
But every time you do that, you're doing it at the cost of something else, you know? So how does one
#
then kind of reconcile that, make peace with it? What is sort of, and you know, like Priya, you're
#
a stay at home mom, for example, you decided to kind of devote yourself to the project and Gunjan,
#
you continue with your career and you're doing all of those. So take me through your respective
#
thought processes to sort of thinking about this, about, you know, how you find how you handle this
#
trade off. I think for us, it goes to the fact that these humans that we choose to have,
#
have come from our body. And I remember when I did the episode with Hamsa Ananthi,
#
she said, you know, I don't, she's an adoptive mother. And she said, maybe, you know, I don't
#
feel that guilt, I feel empowered. And I feel, you know, this rush of exhilaration when I'm at work.
#
And, and sometimes, because she heard the episode, and she said that, you know, I don't feel that
#
guilt. And maybe it is from having these people have been born of your body. And with it, maybe
#
there is something that, you know, it's hard to let go and it's hard to let them have be individuals
#
and be humans for themselves, because you're also then ending a chapter that has changed your life
#
forever. And, you know, there is so much quiet desperation and yearning and longing for all that
#
we haven't done. And now I don't know if we still want to do that. A lot of people say that, do you
#
want it back? When I think about that, I feel like I don't want it back. But I haven't figured out
#
what is the version of myself that will make me completely peaceful, and make me completely,
#
you know, put me completely at ease, where, you know, I've achieved that Zen state. And I remember
#
when we first talked about the podcast, I had said that, you know, for me, it's that, you know,
#
thing of going from the zombie mommy of early days to Zen mommy. And both of them said, I don't think
#
that ever happens. You know, I don't think you ever get to that point where you'll be the Zen
#
mother, the all-knowing kind of. And then I said, oh, yeah, then we can't call it from zombie to Zen
#
mommy, you know, because maybe we'll never get there. Maybe it's just about the journey. So there's
#
so much of self-reflection by omission also, purely because we're letting go of who we were,
#
but we haven't figured out what it is we truly love. So I think a lot of guilt comes
#
in when we're trying on that pursuit of finding new stuff, because that takes time,
#
and that takes self-love, and that takes giving yourself the permission to be away from your kids
#
and do something like this. Like today, I left my crying child at my mother's house,
#
but I chose to be deaf. I didn't ring the doorbell, even though I could hear her cry,
#
because I had a podcast to do. And then I could have sat in the car and cried myself for being
#
awful and selfish and things. But I think that, yeah, I've left her with somebody like my mother
#
who will handle it. And there is resignation and acceptance, and just taking it and saying,
#
okay, this is what it is. I am not doing something so terrible to her that she's going to live with
#
the scar of being left at my mother's door, and this is okay. And I think that bit, and Gunjan has
#
mentioned this in the podcast also, is that women find it very hard to give themselves permission.
#
They'll keep telling their friends. And I remember, you know, when women give each other advice,
#
it's always this very empowering, you're doing such a good job, and, you know, don't worry.
#
But the conversations that we have with ourselves are largely self-deprecating and largely full of
#
doubt and whether what we're doing will have these long-lasting impacts on our children and
#
things like that. And I think that's where men and women differ, because for men, it's a slightly
#
easier kind of, yeah, okay, we're just doing this. And today, I have to go away, and today,
#
I have work to do, or I have, you know, something I have a gig to go for, or I have to go for a swim,
#
I have to take care of myself. God have always said that, you know, put your mask on first,
#
be good for yourself, and all of that. But I find that very hard to do.
#
And don't we see so many women who are not even mothers? That's how we talk to ourselves as women,
#
I think, because I think this takes us to a conversation which is a little bit a zoom out
#
of a conversation, because, you know, how do we talk to ourselves as women? What are the conversations
#
we have with ourselves? We really put ourselves down. We'd say, okay, I didn't make that one
#
happy, or I'm jealous of that one. Sometimes they're not so articulate conversations.
#
Sometimes they hate that, or I hate this, or I don't like this about myself. I'm judging myself
#
in the mirror. I, you know, I'm not as good as this one. I'm not as good as that one. There's
#
often a lot of put down, because that's what we hear. Also, there's also a lot of criticism
#
we hear. There's a lot of be a good girl. Good girls are like this, and good girls sit like this,
#
and good girls do this in their life. They get married, they have children. All of this messaging
#
we are told, and I think it continues into our parenting and our motherhood journey as well.
#
There are, you know, there are audiences, and we have to cater to those audiences. It's like that.
#
You know, it has to make sense for other people as well, what I'm doing in my mothering.
#
It is very difficult to deal with something like that. Like, I remember early on when,
#
you know, when my babies would cry a lot, and I would find it very hard to
#
not do something about it. I needed to either pick them up or do something. I couldn't deal
#
with the crying, and I was over investing in things. I was just always there, always taking
#
care of them, questioning the ones who are doing, and I depleted my energies very quickly.
#
It didn't help me. I am often very tired and exhausted now, and that's when it was,
#
it was like a wake-up call. I started having illnesses, I started having sleep problems,
#
a lot of palpitations, anxiety. Those were all signs my body was giving. Take rest,
#
slow down. You have to be around for longer, and that's when you realize that this is, you know,
#
this is a long race. It's a marathon. It's something that you need to do over a long time,
#
so do it slowly and take time off. So that's when I, you know, I wouldn't feel that guilty
#
taking time off. I would actually want to just, you know, I would mostly just sleep when I wouldn't
#
be with my babies. So I don't remember feeling very guilty about so many things. I would just
#
somehow keep going back. I also, again, the idea of going back, or what have I lost, or
#
because everything changes. This idea of going back also, I didn't know what was I, what was,
#
what was it that I go back to. It was not one thing in a box. I was so many things. I've always
#
been so many things. My identity is fluid. I'm not just this one thing that I needed to get back to
#
and motherhood has taken that away from me. It didn't feel like that, particularly. It did
#
feel like everything has changed and I don't recognize what I have become. I don't recognize
#
the self. It's a very, how do I explain it better? I don't know if I can, but people who know would
#
know this. It's sort of a dissociative, like you're seeing yourself from a little far and
#
you're wondering what just happened. Oh wow, is that me? Is that my hand? Is that my belly?
#
Oh wow, is that my hair? Oh, I didn't see that. Then you start to say, hey, that's my graying hair
#
and those are my wrinkles and that's my big belly. That's when you start seeing all of those things
#
and that's me feeling scared. I feel scared because I'm worried about my children. I love them a lot
#
and that's when a little bit of your own, and I think it's been liberating for me. I think my
#
children gave me the, I was honored. I'm honored by their presence to give me that possibility
#
of being kind to myself. I don't think I was kind to myself even before, as an individual, as a, you
#
know, this woman who's living her life. She's doing exactly what she wants to do and she's doing,
#
going wherever she wants to do. She's made her choices, but I don't think I was kind to myself
#
or I've seen many women who are kind to themselves, but now I am a lot more. So while there is guilt
#
sometimes coming in or there is, you know, self-deprecating thoughts, along with that,
#
there's also this, you know, that's okay. This is you. You do this. You made a mistake. Go apologize
#
to your kid and then you sort of make sense of it like that, I feel. You know that strange sense of
#
being disassociated from your own body as it were. There's a beautiful passage by Cusk. Again,
#
this is turning out to be the Cusk tribute show where she writes, it is only when I walk through
#
the front door to my house that I realize things have changed. It is as if I have come to the house
#
of someone who has just died, someone I loved, someone I can't believe has gone. The rooms,
#
the furniture, the pictures and possessions all were an unbearable patina of familiarity.
#
Standing there, I feel bludgeoned by tragedy as though I was standing in the irretrievable past.
#
Minutes later, the same rooms, the same possessions arouse in me a terrible panic,
#
the panic of confinement. Right? What a writer. And you know, just taking off from what you were
#
saying and thinking aloud again about how women always tend to be harsh on themselves, even if
#
they give supporting words for each other. And I'm wondering if what is happening is that in
#
approximate sense, they could be gaslighting themselves, but in an ultimate sense, it is
#
really society that has gaslighted them by placing these crazy expectations on them. And then what
#
becomes key, like you said, is that act of being kind to yourself. Like you use a phrase in one of
#
these, one of your great podcast episodes, permission to be human. Right? And I want to ask
#
about this act of learning to be kind to yourself. Like Priya, you spoke about how Gaurav once told,
#
you know, reminded you of that aeroplane message that before you put the mask on the other person,
#
if there's a drop in oxygen, you put your own mask. So tell me a little bit about this process of
#
learning to be kind to yourself, you know, which act, the way we are conditioned at first,
#
it must seem like such a terribly selfish act because, you know, that's how you're sort of
#
conditioned. And what role does community play in that? Other women who are sort of, you know,
#
mothers or not mothers or whatever, just that extended community.
#
I think the thing that spurred me on also to kind of write to Bakul and Gunjan about starting the
#
podcast itself was the, I think I make resolutions with Gaurav every year saying, you know,
#
I'm going to do this. And while being a mother was the one thing, the lifelong dream that I had,
#
I felt like there is a lot more to my personality and to my journey that I'm kind of ignoring.
#
So I said, okay, I'm going to, and I had been Insta-stalking them a little bit. And, you know,
#
and I was like, you know, I've never really told them how amazing they are and what an impact they
#
have on my life. And the fact that these are two people who, like Gunjan, we meet socially every
#
now and then and Bakul, I hadn't met Bakul since college. And, but then, you know, we had gotten
#
in touch during COVID and things like that. And I realized that there are so many women who are
#
doing that. And this was exactly the feedback that we got after our first episode. And there
#
were so many women, like lots of women from my class since Stevens and who wrote back saying,
#
oh my God, we do the same thing. We do that. We're like observing your lives and for people
#
who are writing and Gunjan would write these wonderful posts that, that was so disarming.
#
And I'd always be like, you know, I wish we could just talk about this. And all it took was one email
#
saying, this is what I'm doing for my 30th birthday gift to myself. So will you guys. And they have
#
been amazing to kind of let me go along with this. I said, okay, I have all the infrastructure
#
and they are amazing. They've found such goodness in their hearts to, you know, align schedules and
#
amongst like birthing babies and we have toddlers, we have seven year olds, we have twins. So it's
#
like the entire medium can be kind of seen just amongst the three of us. And I think it's just
#
that, that there is so much more to each of us and to our journeys and to what our dreams are
#
that we cannot be boxed in. And it's, it's doing yourself a disservice. It's doing,
#
it's doing motherhood a disservice. If you don't talk about it, if you don't
#
change the narrative a little, because what you usually get to see are those,
#
it's either the kitty party mommies who are there, you know, at 10am doing their thing and
#
all power to them. Community is everything, whatever, like whatever it looks like for you.
#
But for me, it was giving the other side that it doesn't need to be a kitty party. It doesn't need
#
to be a husband or mother-in-law bashing or anything that should give us pleasure. Maybe it's
#
just that shared space and that shared experience and going like, this is something that we have
#
experienced while being separate, there is a togetherness within it. And so many of us
#
just on the go are solving issues and doing things every single day. Like my, one of my closest
#
friends actually started a company so that she could have her husband do something with his life,
#
you know, and because she's, she saw that, okay, it was ending up being a problem for her and her
#
family and for her to be able to go back to work without guilt. She's like, I need him to go
#
somewhere. I need him to do something. So she actually started like a clothing company for him
#
and bought him a shop and, you know, things like that. So people go through to such crazy extents
#
to do something. And yes, she had the capacity to do all of this, but this is coming out of
#
wanting to reclaim her life, saying, I will do whatever it takes to feel more like
#
what I should be for myself. And sometimes it takes figuring out stuff for your partner.
#
Sometimes it takes figuring out help, figuring out, you know, how much help you need, paid help,
#
or whether it's moving in with family. It comes in various forms, but that's what women are good at.
#
Yeah, I mean, this is the way you're talking about it makes what I was going to say was that
#
this idea around kindness is a borrowed idea. It's not, you know, it's a very Instagrammy idea.
#
The first time I saw like these, you know, coats and all of that, you know, being kind to your
#
self. And out of that curiosity, you know, this idea, I started to wonder and think about and talk to
#
people about and a lot of people who consult me and I in conversation like how would you talk to
#
yourself and what kind of do you use kind words to talk about yourself to yourself.
#
And through that inquiry and through that curiosity, I'm still building this understanding
#
of what could kindness look like to myself. Like you said, it can, it is terribly selfish
#
and so be it. We are, we might need to be a little selfish about certain things to reclaim
#
our identities, to create space for ourselves, to be, to visible the hard work we do and the
#
efforts we put. So like Priya said, it can look very different for different people.
#
For some of us, it could be doing something for our partners. For some of us, it could be
#
figuring out a way to take an hour off every week. For some of us, it could be sleeping a lot like
#
me. So it can look very different. How does that fit into a community or a collective,
#
you know, I think it is in, so how are we kind to ourself is through the validation we get from
#
other people. We wait for that, right? What if we don't wait for that validation from the other
#
person and we start to validate ourselves or we start to validate and by that, I don't again mean
#
create boundaries and say, I'm doing so nicely and, you know, don't look at feedback or don't
#
have your kids tell you, you're actually terrible. You yell at me all the time. Not that. I'm not
#
saying build walls to not listen or not be a part because that can also seem like a way to be kind.
#
If you talk to a person who's not from our culture, who's again a very, it's a very American,
#
European idea that I'm going to take this time off and it's for me. It's a very self-driven
#
and self-centered process. Now, being kind can happen through a community by gathering together,
#
having conversations or writing to each other or showing support on an online community or,
#
you know, helping troubleshoot something. Could be so many different ways in which
#
it can show up, but first it starts with the self. So it is a self-based idea. It is again,
#
like I said, borrowed and I want to try it on myself and see what that feels like.
#
And would it be the case that the fact that you're being kind to yourself means that you've
#
acknowledged that something that you had normalized is actually a problem and therefore you need to
#
be kind to yourself. And the moment you acknowledge that you are noticing that others are in that same
#
position and therefore an extension of being kind to yourself is being kind to them. Like I think
#
Bakul mentioned that you and your kid sent her a bunch of books and she said, I felt seen,
#
right? And Gunjan, you said, you said, I think in that same episode or some other episode that
#
when people would read your articles and write to you, you would feel seen. And that's a big theme I
#
come across when I speak to women, the need to be seen, you know, whether it is articulated or not.
#
And therefore an essential part of the kindness, I guess, is just seeing others. And I guess this is
#
not something men or brotherhoods would ever even understand because it's just, it's just not there,
#
right? Okay. Because I think that comes from years of seeing our mothers handle everything.
#
Like dads went out to work and then they worked and it was that and then they came home and they
#
were jolly good if they, you know, spent a few half an hour or so with the kids or brought something
#
home. And the expectation was so little, like kids expected so little off there. But the expectation
#
for our, we've grown up with that, that expectations were there for our mothers. Like my dad, the first
#
baby he was actually there for, this is after having three children and then grandchildren, the
#
first baby he was actually present for was Aisha because he happened to be there. And, and then I
#
realized that my mother had three caesarean sections on her own, alone, not alone, but like
#
with her family and things like that. And that was just so normal. And I don't think she ever
#
complained or even she knew that she could complain or that she, she could voice this, that, you know,
#
I need my partner there. It was just like, okay, you've gone back to your mom's place and you have
#
your whatever support system. Some had it, some didn't, but a lot of what we did as women
#
was just taken for granted. Like this is how it is. And regardless of how we lived our lives prior
#
to being mothers, we've also kind of fallen into that same thing that there's a lot of stuff that's
#
just taken for granted. There's a lot of pain, your threshold for pain is much higher.
#
And that's something that's not, that goes across the board. Like in all cultures,
#
you'll have women who are giving birth and then just handling everything. And
#
it ends up being either you'll have very subjugated women or you'll have immensely
#
fierce women. And I remember saying that, you know, telling Gaurav's director in his
#
institute saying that, you know, it's very interesting how Aisha is so different and she's
#
so, you can already see this far. And she's like, you know, it's the years of subjugation. Now it's
#
just in, it's now become genetic that they have to be fighters. They have to be, and then, you know,
#
I looked back and noticed that, yes, almost all the little girls that I know, like seven, eight,
#
nine, you know, and younger, they're all fierce. I have not met a subjugated female child who's
#
okay with, they're all speaking up. So maybe like it's gone to a point where that is now
#
evolutionary. Like it has to change from there. And that's the thought process. That's what mothers
#
are actually raising their daughters with, because that's what we're thinking when we're
#
having our daughters. So I think it's so deep rooted that our parents gave us whatever we needed.
#
And now that's the logical progression that maybe our daughters will say, no, I'm not going to have
#
babies. You know, I'm just not going to do it. Maybe the daughters will be fine, but what are
#
we going to do about the sons? No more babies. Climate change will take over. Don't have babies.
#
You know, earlier we were talking about how parenting has changed in the modern world and
#
not even the modern world. People were always planning. I remember, you know, I did an episode
#
in the 1991 liberalization and Shruti Raj Gopal and one of my guests was talking about how things
#
used to be in pre-liberalization India, where whenever a child was born, whenever a girl was
#
born, you would book a scooter for her wedding because that's how long it would take to arrive.
#
Right. So Cusk in her book writes about how, you know, women who are just pregnant, the baby isn't
#
out yet, but they're already planning all the schools and all of that. And I want to sort of
#
not talk about planning and engineering because we've already done that. We've decided that
#
children are basically plants and you shouldn't water them too much. But I want to talk about
#
schools because in a larger sense, I think modern schooling is a completely ridiculous artifact.
#
Right. Our schooling system was designed in the early 19th century where, you know, kids of the
#
same age study together. They study the same bunch of subjects. You're churning out workers for the
#
industrial revolution and later babus for the bureaucracy if it's India. And you are, if you
#
are, you know, testing a monkey on how to climb a tree, you're also testing a fish on how to climb
#
a tree and none of it makes any sense. And if your kid is a fish, then the burden on you as a parent
#
and the kind of stress you go through is insane. So, you know, and there's so much part dependence
#
on all this little decisions that you take at any given point in time where you send your kid to
#
school, how you choose to validate their efforts and so on can change the rest of their lives.
#
Everything can become hugely consequential. So, and both of you have had experiences with schools
#
and I know have strong thoughts about schooling and all of that. And I know it's something that
#
parents often think about, but they don't really have much of a choice in the matter because
#
at one level they have to get on with their lives and schools are basically daycare centers as well.
#
And that's an invaluable role that they perform. So tell me a little bit about, you know, your
#
thoughts on this in your experiences. Very interestingly, just yesterday, I recorded
#
a episode that's going to come out for the Mummy Mixtape with Samina Mishra,
#
who is a children's book author and a filmmaker. And one of her films was on the happiness curriculum
#
and it's called The Happiness Class. And it's on the happiness curriculum that has been
#
introduced under the Delhi government and things like that. But interestingly, in that film, and
#
it's all, you know, quite nice about how mindfulness and all these practices are being
#
inculcated at a very young age and how children across the government schools in India,
#
taking the Delhi model and then it's something that other states also want to move forward with.
#
But the right to education has also brought up something very, very disconcerting, especially,
#
I don't know if it is for the rest of India as well. But in Delhi, what happens is that two
#
curriculums within those classrooms. So there's something called Nishtha and something called
#
Pratibha. So Nishtha is for the weaker children, where they just do like what is, I think, about
#
40% of the regular curriculum. And then the children who do Pratibha are doing the entire thing.
#
And in the film, you see these children who are saying that, okay, we are weak, our sir says that
#
we are weak in studies and things. And there's this division within the classroom,
#
because they have to see that nobody fails till class eight and all of that. And because of this
#
segregation, there is othering coming right from the grassroot level. You're starting with that.
#
And then you're telling all these kids to be happy and do all of this. So if this is the state
#
of how things are in this, in Delhi, where education is like one of their big wins,
#
what they've done with the government schools. And it was, I was so stunned. And I asked Amina,
#
I said that, did you know about this? And she said, no, it's not until I made the film. And
#
you can see the children's faces fall saying that, you know, our sir tells us that doing this
#
curriculum will encourage the ones who are weak by looking at the ones who are better in studies
#
and how far they are going. And somehow we'll be encouraged to wanting that for ourselves. And so
#
we'll work harder, but that's not the reality. And this is the regular government school that
#
is lauded now for great results and things like that. What we have as the privileged lot is again,
#
this completely, absolutely crazy situation where none of what the school's claim actually is
#
translated into the reality of what the classroom is. Like, I think there's so much glossing over
#
of what things really are for the children studying in schools. And again, we've done
#
an entire episode on that. And it's really, what comes across is that we're all in this really
#
unfortunate boat just trudging along because there's no other option. And the other options
#
are very radical and only possible for people who have a lot of time on their hands, have a lot of
#
resources, are able to dive very deep into friend circles and people who are willing to
#
come on as stakeholders. And that's not a reality for every family. And after that episode, I also
#
thought that, wow, I sit right on top of that privilege mound because I'm able to say, oh yeah,
#
I'll take my kid out of school and I'll homeschool him. But even Gunjan sitting next to me cannot say
#
that. You know, my experience with school has been, I think I've just been a part of a school
#
system in so many different ways. First as a student myself, then I also did higher education,
#
I did MPhil. I was only just a student all the time. And then I went ahead and worked in schools
#
and now my kids go to school. For two years before sending them to this mainstream school,
#
Romit and I were homeschooling the kids and it didn't work out for us. We felt very, again,
#
cut out from everybody else. If you would take them for a class, there won't be other kids there
#
because they were all in school, the parks would be empty. So we realized that this is not going
#
to work for us. This is not how we want to do it. The kids need to have other kids around.
#
And so we send them to school. And I feel that no matter what schools would do,
#
it's going to just be like this one way or the other because there have been changes in curriculum
#
and now schools have different boards and there's a Cambridge University board and there is this
#
board and that board. And teachers work hard, they're underpaid. I don't see an answer or a
#
solution where something will be fixed to be perfect. We have to see it as a space which
#
is a reflection of what's happening in the larger world, what is going on in the larger world. So if
#
there is intolerance, if there is discrimination, kids bring it in the school, the teachers bring
#
it in the school, everybody who's a part of the school, the parents send it to the school. So
#
if the school is a mirror of the society, then that's how it is. Then I'm
#
figuring out how can I help my kids navigate this. It becomes a very personal journey and a very big
#
personal struggle and it doesn't have to be like this. It doesn't have to be so hard for anybody.
#
I think small changes can also help. It doesn't always have to be radical. If you take these small
#
steps, if there's some kind of kindness in the teacher or some kind of empathy, sensitivity,
#
but how? I've also been in a classroom with 40 kids. If everybody's shouting and talking loudly,
#
where will I generate empathy for anybody? Maybe I can think of an interesting activity to do to get
#
their attention and get them going in and understanding the intention and ethics I'm
#
coming with. So schooling is very questionable. I'm very confused right now. I don't know what
#
I'm giving my kids. They go to school some days, they're crying, but they're also bringing back
#
instances that I feel they would experience wherever they go. Like this person, this other
#
kid spoke to me like this, or this one said like that to me. What do I do? Or this felt bad,
#
or this didn't feel nice, or this teacher told me, you don't write, you're useless. And then
#
how is that child taking that? How is my child taking that? And I was like, then what do you
#
think and what did you say? So I am seeing this struggle and this difficulty as a teaching moment
#
where I'm figuring things out. And I don't think there is a simple answer to this.
#
I do, however, know that the system, no matter what it does, it just continues to be
#
in terms of curriculum and assessments, just one size that fits all, no matter what you do.
#
And I don't know how long that will serve us.
#
You know, what you said, Priya, about that Nishta and that Pratibha, it just is staggeringly cruel
#
to label people like that. Like I can imagine if that had happened to me and
#
you know, there is a certain part dependence that can happen there. So that's quite sort of
#
mind blowing. And I'm just, you know, 16, 17 years ago, I wrote this column about how you go to a
#
supermarket, you'll find 40 types of potato chips, 60 types of ketchup, but you have one type of
#
education, one size fits all, there's nothing you can do. And it just seems that there
#
sort of needs to be like a paradigm shift in just the way we think about how kids grow up,
#
you know, and they learn. And I think the big sort of difficulties towards that is number one,
#
of course, schools are very useful, daycare centers, you can't do away with that.
#
And secondly, what you said, Gunjan, about socialization, that you need kids to be around
#
other kids and to experience society and to experience the world and so on and so forth.
#
Now, since both of you have thought a lot about this, you experimented with
#
unschooling or homeschooling, or at least, you know, given it serious thought.
#
What is your sense of possible ways forward? Or are we just condemned to this 19th century
#
artifact continuing to destroy lives? In India? Well, that is going to be a really
#
hard one until, you know, like parents get together or, you know, there are groups of
#
people who very, I know there are, but it's not widespread enough. There are groups of
#
concerned parents who want to change things. But there's just too much that goes on in our
#
everyday life. We're still not there. Like you can see homeschooling and like a freer structure,
#
more unstructured learning happen in other countries more easily and, you know, and the
#
way they kind of look at it. But it's also to do with what is their reality. And the Indian
#
context is so much about struggle. And some parents think that, yeah, but this is part of
#
life. And this is also a form of learning. It is also a form of how you will make your way through
#
systems that don't work for you, how you will make your way through, you know,
#
places that have no acknowledgement of diversity, whether it is as in terms of social structures,
#
or just as the individual. Like there is no concept of any understanding for neurodiversity
#
in our schools. And that's very problematic because you're looking at children as everyone's
#
in the middle. That's not true. And I've learned the hard way and been like, okay, I'm going to
#
make these decisions because now currently this situation is not working. And my kids go to a
#
free progress school. That was amazing. And we were cheerleaders of this alternative structure.
#
And this year, I've realized that even that free structure cannot survive if it moves so far away
#
from what its tenants actually are. And it was very interesting. So we've been struggling a lot
#
with school and Ishan wrote this six page essay on whether his school really is free progress or
#
not. And it was so poignant because this is him thinking that and it starts with I was so happy
#
in school until now and how things have changed for him and how nobody understands what free
#
progress learning and actually letting the self learner move forward with what they want to learn
#
because like one of the principles that his school is based on is that nothing can be taught
#
and the mind needs to be consulted in what it wants to learn. And these are great concepts,
#
but it's very hard to put in practice. It's very, very hard and all it takes. And I remember
#
messaging Gunjan and saying the same thing that all it takes is one bad teacher and one bully and
#
the entire this precariously positioned little perfect world comes crashing down. And then you
#
realize that this is the reality for all these kids. Like how did we survive in mainstream schools?
#
We survived through our own resourcefulness and having some sense of self as young children and
#
being like, no, I'll be all right. And I had a teacher who before the Hindi board exam was like,
#
she went down the class doing that. And that's the reality. That's what our kids are faced with.
#
You got 36 in math in the 10th standard.
#
But I passed and you should have seen how happy my parents were and you know how I passed. So I
#
had cracked the system. I knew that all I needed to do to pass was learn the geometry that comes
#
from the textbook every year. It never doesn't come from the textbook. So I knew I have a
#
photographic memory. So I knew every sum and I was done with my math exam in half an hour.
#
And then I attempted one more question just for fun. And I came out and my parents were like,
#
are you done? I said, yeah, I'm sure to pass. So that's good. And like there's some kids who
#
will crack the system and be okay with this. But the reality is that how many children are in my
#
in my son's school, it's 122. That's the normal strength of one class or one section in any other
#
school. And this is the entire school. So we are just a deviation. And then within that,
#
there are problems. Then you have and then it goes to how our kids are being socialized.
#
And the scariest thing is there's this book called hold on to your kids. It's by Gordon Newfield.
#
And it's about peer orientation and how nowadays, parents are just losing losing control is not
#
even they're just they're being substituted in their children's lives. Because of you know,
#
how our lives are as parents and most parents don't have much time to spend with their kids.
#
So the role of the parent is now being substituted by peers and taken on by non adults.
#
And that is more frightening. And I see that every day with the kids in my son's in my son's
#
school. And this is, you know, again, quite the perfect, perfect world. But more and more,
#
that is what is happening. Because as the amount of time parents have to spend with their kids,
#
they also understand hierarchies and power structures very early, because they have been
#
raised by help. And they know that, okay, this is not a parent, no matter how much you want to say
#
that this person is part of your family, they know. And that is what's more frightening. And that
#
really, I remember my son saying something like, you know, there's this one particular child who is
#
a big bully, and things like that. And he said, you know, it's because she goes home, and she
#
doesn't feel at home. But when she comes to school, she feels like she owns the place.
#
And it was just that's a nine year olds way of saying that at home, she's neglected. But in school,
#
she gets to be everything she is. And so she's so it is like that. And I said that, you know,
#
if a nine year old is able to see it so clearly, then everyone else is in denial. And there's
#
nothing we can do about it. You mentioned somewhere that Ishan learned to read because of lyrics on
#
Spotify. And that is so mind blowing. And I want to ask both of you that from seeing your kids grow
#
up and helping them grow up, what have you learned about learning? This seems I would never have
#
thought someone could learn to read by reading lyrics on Spotify. But the moment I heard you
#
say that on that episode, it suddenly made sense to me. Yes, of course, what an amazing fun way to
#
learn. Right. And so just a question from experience, what have you learned about learning and
#
in your case, Gunjan, not just from experience, because you have studied the human mind, the
#
human brain, whatever. So, you know, what have you learned? Question for both of you?
#
Yeah, that's a very important question. Also, I what I wanted to say earlier were two things that
#
when you say how does that, you know, how are we seeing this the potential from here? I had two
#
thoughts. And I thought that that would also fit in with the question you now have. And that is that
#
I think things could change. How do how does change happen when people in authority,
#
people who are the dominant decision makers do something about about changing something,
#
right? They need to say this is not OK. And then we change it. We need to reach there.
#
We need to reach the dominant authority. And it has to be top down policies, you know, curriculum,
#
evaluation, because many times like a primary school would do many things that would, you know,
#
that would be play, for example, or that would fit the child's development and is developmentally
#
more appropriate. They've tweaked it around. But the child will be thrown into the syllabus
#
right. So the change has to come from top. If there are only 10 seats in IIT and if there are
#
only 10 seats in like whatever hotel management, then 15,000 children will have to go through an
#
insanely rigorous, useless one size fits all process. And now even more, we have common
#
entrances for universities right now. Right. So I'm not sure what people in authority are thinking.
#
How are they thinking? I do not know. And the other is an interesting change that is happening
#
is the shifts in the early childhood education scene. There's a lot going on there. In 1980s,
#
I think the Montessori system came into India. And since then, schools or pre-primary schools,
#
the idea of that started. I never went to a pre-primary school. We were put into a nursery
#
KG and all of that. But now there's a lot of emphasis on starting early, early intervention,
#
play way early intervention and child centered early intervention. I think that's very exciting
#
because that's where we can start to pay attention to and notice how children learn. How do we all
#
learn? You know, I basically rote learned throughout school and then I found psychology and I loved
#
studying psychology. And then I just wanted to continue being a student. I didn't want,
#
I wasn't sure if I wanted to do clinical psychology or a PhD in it. So I did social
#
psychology of education, my MPhil in social psychology of education. And the more I read,
#
researched and understood about learning that sitting in a room is not the place where we are
#
learning. There we are figuring out how to take instructions, how to navigate spatially navigate
#
this, you know, small classroom area, who's knocking, what smell is coming, who's pulling
#
my shirt and who's taken my bag and thrown it around. We are learning all of that right now.
#
We have, I mean, we are figuring it's not learning, but I think learning happens elsewhere.
#
Learning, a lot of times my, like Tosh would say that why do I have to go to school when I'm
#
learning everything outside school? And so a conversation like, you know, what are you
#
learning? What did you learn today? Many times I remind myself that my kids are in school for
#
five hours and that's where it needs to end. I'm not putting emphasis or overemphasis on them
#
cracking the system or to impress the teacher or be a good student. It's not important.
#
To which my son very recently said, so you basically want us out of your house for some
#
hours, mama. You know, that's what you want. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, just go make friends or run
#
around or figure out how to be around people when mama and baba are not there. And it's our little
#
established agreement sort of a thing. But for such, I can also imagine for different families,
#
it could be different. I'm thinking of families where a first generation, a school goer is,
#
you know, the ambition is and the aspiration is really somewhere else. It's about getting that
#
job and getting the parents out of this caste class, you know, framework and upliftment
#
and aspirations. But from where I am learning, I can explore learning beyond the school boundaries
#
in a cafe while reading a book and enjoying a coffee or, you know, or going for a walk
#
with my kids in the park. Every bit is learning. So like in the pandemic, when the pandemic,
#
the lockdown started going back to that. Why I said that it broke me was because I just almost
#
just established a very, you know, a system that was working for me, a school where I could take
#
my kids, how I was going to take them, they were going to be away and very safe, very happy
#
environment. And I was going to start on with things for myself. Again, go back to life was
#
really, it was absolutely in the forefront of my mind. And then the pandemic happened as like,
#
oh, God, all of this is taken away from me. Yeah. So when you have a process that's set for you,
#
in your learning or in your in your way of being, then you need something to support that larger
#
context to support that. But if everything is poking and everything is, you know, it feels like
#
something is, this carpet is just snatched from under your feet. That I hope we don't have to
#
experience. And I, and I try and protect myself from that. So I, I'd rather say,
#
school jaakar mat pado yaar, bas chale jao, school friends banao, maze me tiffin khao or aajao.
#
For some hours, your mama won't be yelling at you. Just imagine it to be like that. Of course,
#
they say then the teachers are yelling mama, it's better you yell than the teachers. And there's a
#
lot of conversation around it. Some days we just sit and cry together that, oh God, it's so hard.
#
The reality of schools is there's so much going on. It's not just about studies and curriculum,
#
like the bathrooms could be dirty. Like they're not allowed to share tiffins anymore. Like they
#
cannot go out to play in the field because there's pollution. So I don't know if they can be the
#
center of learning and center of our emphasis. Or even if I want to create any change through
#
the schools anymore, they can just exist maybe. And, and lastly, I want to say that if the only
#
possible sense I'm making out of this is that if our teacher training systems and teacher training
#
processes change a little bit, because it is, you know, it is still a lot of women coming into the,
#
into the field who think it is better than other professions. You know, I will get summer holidays,
#
I will, and there is okay to want that. But that cannot be the reason why you take on a career or,
#
or take on a position of responsibility that I will do this. And, and when the teachers are in
#
the space and in the school, they realize it's not so simple. They have to fill report cards,
#
they have to do so much paperwork, so much admin work. It is not easy, and they are not paid.
#
Teachers are not paid enough. So if there is, if there is something that I feel needs to now be
#
our focus, it's the teacher training processes. And if that is something that
#
more and more people can, you know, talk about and figure out how to do that.
#
So it's almost like a chicken and the egg thing that how do you create that bottom-up
#
demand? It can't just be a bunch of elite parents who feel a particular way, if most parents are
#
just apathetic towards whatever is happening. But I think that also when you're looking up,
#
looking at a bottom-up framework, just looking at Delhi, and you know, they've been lauded for the,
#
for the wins in the field of education. And then you, if you look carefully, it's so problematic.
#
But they've made these, the government schools have fantastic buildings and fantastic things.
#
And you know, as a lay person, I was like, you know, Aatish, she, you know, we used to use her
#
tutorials in college also. And she was amazing. And I knew. And then when you look in, you realize
#
that it's actually a lot of glass. It's just a whole lot of glass. And they want to get an entire
#
generation just through that system of education. And for most people, they just think that,
#
oh yeah, but at least this is so much better than it was. Right. So you have to look at,
#
how will the paradigm shift happen? Because these guys are just moving, you know, at this glacial
#
pace. And they think that, oh, it's better than it was for us, at least their bathrooms now.
#
At least they're on, you know, like nice desks and there's a happiness class and they're taking
#
these, you know, that they're taking these things into account. But how much of it actually changes
#
the system at large? We'll get to know in maybe five or 10 years or see when, you know, you have
#
the first set of people. I think again, teacher training and emphasis on
#
kids finding what they like to do and just following that. And for it to be okay,
#
you know, to focus on something you like and then weed out the rest and not having to.
#
Why do you get to choose your stream only in class 10? Maybe it can be done earlier.
#
Maybe I can. Yeah. Now in some curriculums you can. Right. And that, of course, you know,
#
that is one aspect. And what also coming to my mind is, you know, why, if you listen to parents,
#
a lot of times parents would say that we send our kids to school because we can't do this.
#
I am not a teacher. That's the teacher's job. I am going to go to office and I'm going to run a
#
house and I'm going to take care of a smaller sibling and an older mother-in-law. That is the
#
teacher's job. So a lot of our understanding of things is from an understanding of how to
#
compartmentalize stuff, how to categorize and say, this is your bit. You do, the school will do this
#
bit. The parents will do this bit. The man will do this bit for the house. And the bahu of the
#
house will do this bit. And everything then breaks down into segments. And if, even if it stays like
#
that, then everybody in these categories have to really pull up their socks and in some way, like,
#
you know, really figure out what is their responsibility here. That I don't think the
#
schools understand that maybe. Like I overheard a conversation at a birthday party the other day.
#
And there's a father who was interacting and they were playing, I think, football or something like
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that while everybody else, the kids were hanging. And I could see that for these fathers, it was
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very exciting. There's like a good idea. You have a birthday party today because what is life?
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We go at 8 a.m. in the morning. We come at 8 p.m. at night. We watch TV until 9 p.m. and then we get tired.
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That is the everyday life of people. Now, in that, when they come back and they have had their
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dinner at 9 o'clock, now they're doing homework with their child because so much of so-called
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pressure has been put on schools to change. But that's not the kind of change we're looking for,
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where the kids have to come home with endless homework and worksheets. But that is the kind
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of change that has been seen as, as this is our job. Now, we will give you homework. Now,
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do it with your kids at home. You have to participate in that education. But all of it
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makes no sense to me sometimes. I think Gaurav does a very interesting thing with Ishaan.
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I used to always find it out. They would go out and he would say, okay, now you go to a restaurant,
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you do all the ordering. And then when the bill comes, you will check the bill and see if
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everything. And he doesn't know math. He hasn't been taught that well in school and they have a
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very different way of teaching math and things. But he's so fast because it's something he enjoys
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doing. And when it comes to, and they're always talking in mathematical terms just at home,
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whether it's the bills at a restaurant or it's measuring stuff like 1.5 grams of cinnamon for
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you know, so that's where something like that would come in. And then what I get a lot from
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parents who say that, oh, it's very well for you guys to consider homeschooling because you're
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educators, you know, you come from academic families. There's no one who can like think out
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of the box and largely you'll see, you'll see the people who are homeschooling their kids are in the
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field of education, either, you know, at a university level or something, they do have
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something to do with the field in some form. And that's so unfortunate because life is such
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a great teacher. And if you look, and I keep saying that I'd rather send my kid, you know,
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traveling around the world and he'll probably end up learning a lot more than if he goes to school.
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And the other thing is children come back so exhausted and spent after a day at school,
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because it's emotionally draining. It's physically draining. If you're carrying like my kids don't
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carry a school bag or anything, but like other other schools, they'll send kids with these huge
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school bags and all of that. So what are you expecting from these little people who are coming
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back home? They just want to chill and they just want to watch mindless television. And that's,
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and that's also okay. You can't demonize everything in their lives because then they'll
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just be completely, they'll feel so trapped. And I think that's all it's give them 10 classes after
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school because you have to fill in the gaps. What are we doing? Really?
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I think the way I think about schools is that I don't have much hope for the conventional school
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system to be reformed. I just want them to do as little damage as possible. I think that most
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learning happens outside the school in an innovative ways, like Spotify lyrics, which is such an sort
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of unintended consequence of that particular service. And I think there's a great opportunity
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here for innovators and entrepreneurs to kind of think about how to solve this problem at scale.
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We have like, I think 12 minutes left before you guys have to get to your kids. So three final
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quick questions. One of them, you know, has to do with perhaps my favorite quote of all time.
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Annie Dillard once said, how we live our days is how we live our lives. Right. And I'm just guessing
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that for me, I have the luxury and the privilege to be able to conceptualize how I would like to
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live an ideal day and think about that being the rest of my life. And I can, you know, at least
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in my head, I can play that out for you guys, how you lived your days before you became mothers was
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completely different to see change from how it has been since. And perhaps you have kind of,
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you know, found and that that has been modified over time. But if I am to therefore, you know,
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ask this question that and this phase of motherhood where your kids are young and all that will
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obviously not last forever. So what is, what is that? How do you want to live your days?
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Now, as a parent, as a mother, let's say, let's say 10 years from now, when your kids are escaping
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the late teens or whatever, they're out in the world. The plant has become a tree and gone away,
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which is a bizarre metaphor. But Wow, I can't think. I can't think beyond like I have to go back
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and give them dinner and stuff like that. When you're parenting, what it also takes away from you,
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I think, is the possibility of 10 years from now. I don't have that. I don't think 10 years from now.
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But if I'm thinking of how do I spend my day, I've definitely started to make more space for rest.
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I think I've worked very hard in the last few years. And I'd like to spend time resting. I'd
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like to spend time with my husband, my partner, maybe go away and just be in a really slow,
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chilled out space. Read a lot. Walk a lot. Sleep a lot. That kind of stuff. Yeah. Leisure, ease,
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slowness, rest. I think for me, it's just, it's me wanting to shut people up. And I don't want
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the questions anymore. I don't want the what do you do. And I don't want that to be, I don't want
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my kids to answer the same questions. I don't want those questions, like accept me for who I am,
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and accept them for who they are. There's this very nice quote by Peggy Omara that says that
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the way you talk to your children become their inner voices. And the way you talk about them
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become their life stories. And when I think about that, I feel like the I feel the pressure of that
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is something I've held on to my entire life. I was the naughty kid. I was the, you know,
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the one who never did homework, who got 36 in the board exam. I was the one. And then
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motherhood was my redemption because now I'm the good mother and I'm doing it right. And I just
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don't want the same questions to come to my children. I don't want them to, their life
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stories are not that, their life stories are not what other people say. Their life is the tapestry
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that they are going to create and let them have that freedom to do it. And the only way they will
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have the agency to do that is if I do it for myself. Because otherwise, they are going to
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hear the voice of guilt all the time. I remember Ishan told me that, you know, mama, guilt is like
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an alarm clock where the mute button has broken. And he's like, you can't switch it off. Like you
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will tell me that it's okay. But until I have resolved it for myself, that alarm clock will
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keep going on because the alarm clock is in my head and not yours. And I don't want, I just want
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their life stories to be just about their life experience and not have, I know it's,
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you know, all very well to have these hopes. But yeah, we all live with that, right? That's
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what keeps us going. Beautifully said, so inspiring. And my penultimate question to both of you is,
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can you talk about books, music or films that have been useful to you on this journey that
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you're on, that mean a lot to you that you want to share with others?
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Okay, so book would definitely be Rachel Kusk's Life's Work. I think it's one of the most beautiful
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accounts of what, and it's a very real account of what motherhood really is. There is a show
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called The Breeders that is on, what was it? Hot, I think it comes on Hotstar. But it is one,
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it's something that both Gaurav and I watch as a couple. And it's so absolutely,
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it's almost scary how real it is. And it's done beautifully. It's a British TV show. That's
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something that I really look to for comfort and almost be like, you know, if they've got it in a
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show means that this is okay, because it's so much about dysregulation for parents and how hard the
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entire experience really is. So that's the, that's one that I would definitely say.
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Dysregulation of the nervous system was a phrase I learned from Gunjan
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by listening to your podcast. So I had to Google it to read more about it. And I would say Natasha's
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My Daughter's Mom. Yeah, I think I love, I love that book. Have you heard an episode with me? Yes.
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I consider it one of my favorite episodes. Absolutely. I love that book. It's just so
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beautifully written. And it draws so much from personal experience that it gives us all hope.
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And so that and music. So there's a song that it's called I Will by the Beatles. And it's one of
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their lesser known songs. But who knows how long I've loved it. How is it lesser known? It's a
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classic anyway. No, but Gaurav didn't know it. Do you know that? Nonsense. He had no clue. And it
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was recorded. This is totally going to be edited. This is not going to be edited. So I picked it out
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for, I picked it out for Ishaan. And I said that, you know, this would be perfect. And Gaurav was
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like, Oh, my God. So I think that that's a really, really beautiful song. So those are my picks.
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I can't think of any books other than so I don't find books written on parenting very helpful.
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But any books at all? Yeah, okay. So of course, Natasha Badwar's work, all kind of books,
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all articles, her sub stack, everything, everything she writes, I love it. Shailja Sen,
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he also now writes a column in the Indian Express. I love what she writes.
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I think Deny Neglect was her phrase, if I remember. Okay, she has a book also called,
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I think it's All You Need Is Love. All You Need Is Love. Yeah, that's also on parenting. And it's one
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of those, the better parenting books that you can. And another Beatles reference coming in there.
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Yeah, and I also follow some, you know, spaces online. So Dan Siegel's work, and I'm trying to
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remember. No, I can't remember them. So yeah, anyway, apart from that books, apart from this,
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I can't think of anything. Series or movies, films. What's the last film that made you cry?
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I don't cry very easily. That's a bit of a problem. But what was the last film that made
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me cry? What is this? Andrea? What was that? Ha? And the one who made the Barbie film?
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Greta Gerwig. Yeah. What was the? Lady Bird. Francis Ha. Francis Ha. Yeah, isn't that beautiful?
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That was the last film. I think I didn't cry. But I love that film. And The Lost Daughter. That's the
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film that I really like. Music. My music is borrowed from what people hear around me.
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So I don't think I have any suggestions or just listen to a I love listening to silly songs with
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my kids. So like, a lot of raffy and a lot of like, brush your teeth and all those silly things. And
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now my daughter listens to K-pop. So that's what we do together. May I give some children's books?
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So there's this beautiful book called How to Apologize. And it's this wonderful picture book
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on it's called How to Apologize. And it is so brilliant. And I really believe like,
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more adults should read children's books. And we, my son and I did this whole thing of
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a book here. So where he read 365 books. And in that process, we found such gems as a result. And
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we keep sharing it on our Instagram. There is another one about a stuttering child called I
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Talk Like a River. There is another that's one more than there is another one on loss called
#
Cry Heart But Never Break. These are all to do with death and how to speak about death to children.
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And this was very relevant, especially during COVID. A Stone for Sasha. The Journey Trilogy
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by Aaron Becker. These are absolutely beautiful books. Then there is one that I love,
#
which is called How War Changed Rondo. And it is the most amazing book on, you know,
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conflict and how and its impact in in our lives and the lives of children. And then there's another
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book called The Wanderer. Then all of Sean Tan's work. I don't know if any of you have seen his
#
work. There is this most amazing illustrator and writer called Sean Tan. And he has a book called
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Sikada and The Arrival. And these are a lot of wordless picture books. And believe me as adults,
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you will take so much more from it. And yeah, I could go on and on about children's books, but
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yeah. Well, I mean, this is great. And before we end the final question, quick and snappy,
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I will, of course, link your podcast from the show notes and I'd urge everyone to go and
#
listen to them. And it's not terribly difficult now because six episodes so far, maybe seven by
#
the time this comes out. But what you also spoke and that intrigued me and what you also spoken
#
about in the podcast is how you want to build a community of people, how you want to build a
#
conversation around all of these things and how you in fact, you know, solicit contributions,
#
feedback, so on and so forth. So what would you like to say about your podcast? Where can people
#
write to you, et cetera, et cetera? So as of now, we have an Instagram page that's also called the
#
mommy mixtape and you can write in over there or there's the mommy mixtape at gmail.com, which is,
#
but nobody uses email anymore. So I think DMs on Instagram and then personal messages from friends
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or friends or friends, that's what usually happens. But for us, I think what's most important is just
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broadening the circle. And, you know, it doesn't need to motherhood doesn't need to be
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an isolating experience. And while you are cooped up in a room, and it's very sad that most women
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breastfeed alone, even at parties and things like that. And it's very isolating, physically,
#
mentally and all of that. I think it's when you just knowing that there are other people,
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whether you're just stalking them online, or you actually reach out, I would always say that just,
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you know, DM even if it's a famous person, or even if it's like someone moderately, you know,
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important or who you would ordinarily think is difficult to approach, whether it's authors or
#
doctors, or any of it, I think the conversation has to be more inclusive for all sorts of mothers
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and and yeah, and maybe fathers get on board too. More power to you guys. Priya and Gunjan,
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thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you, Amit. This was lovely. Thank you.
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If you enjoyed listening to this episode, do share it with anyone you think might be interested.
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Check out the show notes, enter rabbit holes at will. Priya and Gunjan's social media handles
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are linked from there. You can follow me on Twitter at Amit Verma, A-M-I-T-V-A-R-M-A,
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and you can browse past episodes of The Scene and the Unseen at sceneunseen.in. Thank you for
#
listening. Did you enjoy this episode of The Scene and the Unseen? If so, would you like to support
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the production of the show? You can go over to sceneunseen.in slash support and contribute
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any amount you like to keep this podcast alive and kicking. Thank you.
