“Our heart breaks and somehow we keep working. Lives are wrecked and people get back to building homes again. We lose hope and then we find a way to believe once more.” Ah! These words speaking to my very soul. Natasha Badhwar has a keen understanding of what a human being is, don’t you think?

“But how do you plan to understand me when all you know is that I wrote the book?” she asked and it struck a chord, and trust me while initially, her words were already a treasure I would hold on to, reading her novel was like adding a golden tint to our hour-long conversation, for her story is just not hers, it’s everyone’s you meet today – it is the never-ending search of ‘Who am I?”

Mother, wife, daughter – and somewhere excelling in her part of the live act, she is losing her identity. My Daughter’s Mum is a woman exploring those very roles, laying down her heart bare because this pursuit of self demands one to accept the truth, and Natasha is a striking example of how to navigate the way.

Filmmaker, entrepreneur, columnist and now you’re an author! How does it feel like?

I had not expected it and I am still not used to the idea that being an author is now a part of my identity.

Why don’t you tell me about the title of your book, “My Daughter’s Mum.” Any backstory?

I consider the book as a memoir which has grown from my column in Mint Lounge which in turn had been inspired by my blog which was originally titled, My Daughter’s Mum. What I was doing on the blog was me saying things that I was not sharing with anyone else at that time. That intimacy was absorbed by the title.

I have many identities as a woman, a television producer, a wife, a lover, a mother but when I stepped in the latter role, I started to feel that my thoughts were not getting validated. I wanted a space where my daughter’s mother would get stage and time to introduce her own voice.

Your safe zone, was it? You must have shared things that you never felt like saying.

I did but not just weaknesses and vulnerabilities, but also triumphs and happiness and love because all these things are equally hard to express in real life. Like if you have an extremely hard pregnancy, and then the baby is born and she is perfect. And you want to express your profound joy because you may as well have invented the world but you can’t.

Not just this, we’re not able to express any emotion freely. In this race of becoming tough, well-adjusted, strong adults, we leave little space in our life for feeling an emotion.

So the major motto of the novel is to share your innermost feelings?

Yes, and not just that. It has become an epidemic. Barring your emotions and if someone dares to question the senseless system, the answer is “Aisa he hota hai.” I was tired of hearing it and I knew, in my way, I have to fix this because if this generation doesn’t learn then they will pass this off to the next generation and so on. I articulated what I had been conditioned to hide and put it on the stage.

You used a very interesting descriptor in the book “Western-consumerist-culture-addicted-Anglophones” in depicting what you don’t want your family to be?

Yep, dinner time in most families is people eating with their faces stuffed in a phone. I don’t want that to be my family, so even though my career was in television production the first thing we removed from the house was the TV because mass media has a profound effect on adults and children.

The next thing we did was we moved out of Delhi into a suburb, a much quieter place. Also, the children had no electronic gadget till they were 12 of age. Obviously canceling out all the effects is impossible but at least we now have space to know each other.

The novel is primarily based on your experiences with your three daughters. Why don’t you tell me about your little angels?

My children are like all children – having said that, let me add that all children are extremely sensitive and extraordinarily smart, they pay a lot of attention to details.

Every child brings a very different and unique way of looking at things. Same goes for Naseem, Aliza, and Sahar.

So how are these three ladies a part of the book?

Firstly, the book is based on the foundation of my relationship with my daughters. The biggest contribution they’ve made is by reading what I write. They are always excited to know what my topic for the week for the column was, what I’ve written. They’re always excited to discover how I have portrayed their and my thoughts.

Your personal critiques, ha?

And the greatest teachers too! Children are very candid, you can learn a lot from them, learn a lot about who you are because they remind you yourself and help you in discovering forgotten traits. And I would say that all of my three daughters are my reflection.

You talk about self-love in your book. How have you embedded the same concept in your daughters?

You know what my biggest realization has been in this parenting journey? That we can’t teach a child anything! We can’t ‘make’ them a certain kind of person, not unless we are that person. If you want your child to be a bold, independent individual then be that individual yourself first. When children watch their adults, they learn from them. If you’re intimidated by something, they’ll learn to fear that thing.

I’ve been what I want them to be and voila! The task turned out to be not that tough.

Is that why you talk about pampering your inner child in the book?

Everybody forgets their inner child, bowing down to the pressure of society. A 2-year-old is told that he is too old to cry, a 3-year-old is expected to learn perfect dining manners. This suppresses the inner child while trying so hard to fit in the society.  

One has to find a balance between the two. If one lets his inner child out, it doesn’t mean losing every sense of responsibility. It just means that you know how to connect with what makes you truly happy.

Launch in Bengaluru

After the birth of your third daughter, you left your job for a work-from-home. Many suffer a loss of identity in such scenarios.

I quit my full-time job with NDTV after working there for 13 years, and when I left I was at the peak of my career. I was vice-president of the company. But that was the point, I had reached my saturation level there and I must say that if it weren’t for my children, I would never have mustered the guts to quit.

But yeah, for about 6 months it was hard. I had never freelanced before, for me it was like stepping into the unknown. But thankfully, my prior reputation led me to receive, almost immediately, many work offers including freelancing projects. This stopped the immediate collapse of confidence because you don’t have a job, a post, a salary.

How do you address the identity crisis that many women face at the time they have to ditch their steady jobs after motherhood. in your book?

We call being a mother an important role and then we go ahead and belittle that by saying “kya kaam krti ho bus bacche hai to palti ho.” And yet if she steps out, she doing a grave injustice to her family because then they say that you’re not taking care of your children. It just one of the injustices we’ve heaped on a woman, that’s classic patriarchy for you. And to add to her woes, she mostly suffers from lack of financial independence and has no power within the family

The role that was supposed to be your greatest in life makes you feel small and isolated. And another major aim of my book is about correcting that definition.

How do you prepare your daughters to deal with patriarchy?

They are certainly going to be affected by it because it exists. And the only way to raise daughters that won’t accept this inequality is by yourself questioning it. If they see me asking equal rights and wages, if they see their father fighting for gender equality then they’ll know that it is okay to raise your voice.

First published on Nov 20, 2017.