Author Poorna Bell on the power of withdrawing from one-sided friendships
We’re joined by award-winning journalist and author Poorna Bell to discuss the importance of letting go of one-sided friendships.
We discuss how it can feel daunting when friends’ lives splinter off in different directions, and how to become more selective with your friendships.
We also talk about the importance of writing South Asian stories into popular culture, the myth of finding “the one”, as well as Poorna’s debut novel, In Case of Emergency.
Catch Love Lives on Independent TV and YouTube, as well as all major social and podcast platforms.
Check out Poorna’s Substack, As I Was Saying, here.
We discuss how it can feel daunting when friends’ lives splinter off in different directions, and how to become more selective with your friendships.
We also talk about the importance of writing South Asian stories into popular culture, the myth of finding “the one”, as well as Poorna’s debut novel, In Case of Emergency.
Catch Love Lives on Independent TV and YouTube, as well as all major social and podcast platforms.
Check out Poorna’s Substack, As I Was Saying, here.
Transcript
00:00 To me, the idea of love has shifted so much from my 20s.
00:04 What I know it is now is about resonance.
00:08 It's about being seen and loved for who you are.
00:10 Like, literally, that's it.
00:12 - Hello, and welcome to Love Lives,
00:20 a podcast from The Independent
00:21 where I, Olivia Petter, will be talking to different guests
00:24 about the loves of their lives.
00:26 Today, I am thrilled to be joined
00:28 by award-winning journalist, author, and speaker, Pauna Bell.
00:32 Pauna has published three non-fiction books,
00:34 including the astonishing memoir, "Chase the Rainbow,"
00:37 and her debut novel, "In Case of Emergency,"
00:39 has just come out in paperback.
00:41 I am so excited to talk to her about her work today
00:44 and can't wait to discuss the loves of her life.
00:46 So, let's get started.
00:48 Hello, Pauna, how are you?
00:50 - Good, thank you.
00:51 - Good, thank you so much for joining me today.
00:54 So, as I mentioned, your debut novel
00:56 has just come out in paperback.
00:58 You've obviously done three non-fiction books
01:01 that have been hugely successful.
01:02 Your writing has mostly been in sort of journalism
01:05 and the non-fiction memoir space.
01:08 Talk to me a bit about what made you want to write fiction
01:11 and what that experience was like for you.
01:13 - I wanted to write fiction a really long time ago, actually.
01:18 So, this is probably when I was in my 20s,
01:20 but I was really, really bad at it.
01:22 And I wanted, you know,
01:25 so I was obsessed with magical realism.
01:27 And so I had these various manuscripts unfinished,
01:32 which were about, you know,
01:34 these terrible fantastical stories
01:36 that got rejected by a lot of different agents.
01:39 So, I kind of actually thought
01:40 maybe writing fiction is just not, you know, for me.
01:43 And non-fiction felt a lot more comfortable.
01:45 It felt like an extension of my journalism.
01:47 But then the pandemic hit
01:50 and then we had a lot of time to think
01:52 and one of the things I was doing around that time
01:55 was doing a fair amount of reading,
01:57 but I was also watching a lot of TV, right?
02:00 And I realised that sort of against, I would say,
02:05 the backdrop of a lot of other conversations
02:07 that were happening, so in particular,
02:09 like let's say the Black Lives Matter movement,
02:11 it then sort of prompted, you know,
02:14 this kind of like tidal wave that then,
02:16 in terms of like other cultures and other communities
02:19 where we were looking at our own kind of issues
02:22 and our representation and so on
02:23 and the stories that were being told.
02:26 And one of the things I noticed
02:27 from whether it was watching TV or reading books
02:31 was that there seemed to me that there really needed
02:34 to be more stories told with, let's say,
02:38 South Asian female protagonists
02:41 that weren't necessarily through like a lens
02:43 of trauma and oppression.
02:45 And a big catalyst for that for me
02:47 was watching Mindy Kaling's "Never Have I Ever,"
02:50 which is, you know, a rom-com.
02:52 And I think I really wanted to tell a story
02:56 of a female protagonist who was, you know,
02:59 I particularly picked her age for a reason, she's 36.
03:02 And I wanted to kind of tell her experience
03:07 of figuring life out and figuring dating out
03:10 and work and all of those other questions that we had,
03:13 but like told through her lens.
03:15 So it's not a book about, you know, being South Asian.
03:19 It's just that the protagonist happens to be
03:20 and happens to have a family who is.
03:23 And that was really important for me
03:25 in order to be able to just tell
03:28 what that experience is like.
03:29 Because definitely, you know, as a journalist coming up,
03:32 I definitely know that a lot of the lifestyle articles
03:35 that I would read and lifestyle's a space
03:37 that I've worked in for a really long time
03:39 did seem to be very predominantly told by white journalists.
03:42 And I was really interested,
03:44 not interested is probably the wrong word.
03:46 I felt it was very vital and necessary
03:48 to just talk about things
03:49 that I would talk about with my friends,
03:51 but to actually be able to give it a space
03:54 and a platform to be able to do that.
03:57 - I like what you say about the fact
03:59 that the character has no trauma as well,
04:00 and that being really important to the story.
04:02 'Cause I think that so often that is something
04:06 that potentially sort of old school publishers
04:09 would maybe ask and be like,
04:11 okay, but like, what's the actual, you know,
04:14 they need to make some sort of trauma
04:17 for a character who isn't white.
04:19 And that would have been like the sort of pull of the story.
04:21 And I feel like we are moving away from that,
04:24 but it's still, like you said,
04:25 it still feels somewhat like revolutionary in a way.
04:29 - Yeah, I mean, it is.
04:31 I mean, there's definitely, I would,
04:33 a great thing has been in the last couple of years,
04:36 there have been a lot more,
04:38 particularly I would say South Asian female authors
04:41 who are in the commercial space,
04:43 which has been, you know, incredible.
04:45 Like Deesha Bose just came out with a book
04:48 that ended up in the Irish Times bestseller list,
04:51 which is called "Dirty Laundry."
04:53 So you do have this,
04:54 I can definitely see that shift happening.
04:57 But, you know, the trauma and oppression narrative,
05:00 you know, these are tropes, for example,
05:01 especially on TV, that have underpinned my own experiences.
05:06 So these are questions that I get asked about my experience
05:11 without people actually asking me an open-ended question.
05:14 So that will be the assumption
05:15 that I must be getting an arranged marriage.
05:17 That will be the assumption
05:18 that my parents don't approve of my, you know,
05:20 my chosen career.
05:22 And while I understand that stereotypes exist,
05:25 I just think it's slightly lazy.
05:27 And I think that there's a way
05:28 of asking open-ended questions
05:30 where we don't necessarily use that shorthand
05:33 that we have come to use
05:34 just because we see the color of someone's skin,
05:37 or we see what they look like
05:38 and make an assumption based on that.
05:40 - And, but also it's just because, you know,
05:42 it was, I'm a creative.
05:44 I really wanted to see people like my family members,
05:48 like the friends that I have conversations with,
05:51 reflected in the mainstream,
05:52 because it was really important to be able to do that.
05:54 Not, you know, not just as like a, I don't know,
05:56 it's not meant to be an educational piece.
05:59 I didn't really, I wrote it
06:01 because I wanted the people that I know
06:03 and the wider community to feel reflected in that
06:06 and go, "Oh God, finally."
06:08 You know, great.
06:09 It's not about someone being oppressed
06:11 like as a corner shop owner's daughter, you know?
06:14 - Yeah, it's just so, it's lazy and ignorant,
06:17 I think, of the industry and sort of the wider culture
06:19 at large to kind of hold onto those stereotypes,
06:22 particularly now,
06:23 but it does obviously still happen a lot.
06:25 And in terms of the actual plot of "In Case of Emergency,"
06:29 so it starts with your main character, Belle.
06:32 She has a sort of near-death experience.
06:34 So tell us about the story
06:35 and how it kind of unfolded from that first point.
06:38 - So she has a really amazing career.
06:40 She's got a pretty high-flying job in London
06:43 and she's kind of like texting on her phone.
06:46 This isn't a spoiler 'cause it's on the jacket.
06:48 (laughing)
06:49 Just should say that. - Yeah.
06:51 - But she is texting on her phone
06:52 and she falls through like the open doors of a beer cellar,
06:56 a pub cellar, and wakes up in hospital
06:59 and she finds that her emergency contact has been called
07:01 and it's her ex-boyfriend from four years ago.
07:04 And she has like a really big like WTF moment
07:07 because she could not remember putting him down
07:10 as her contact, but also she has got a lot of time
07:13 to recuperate and as she's doing that,
07:15 she realizes that she doesn't know
07:17 who her person would be.
07:18 We all have hopefully a person that we know is in our phone
07:22 that we would immediately phone or contact
07:25 if something goes wrong and she just doesn't have that.
07:27 And more than realizing that she doesn't have that,
07:31 she's just thinking,
07:32 how did my life actually get to this point?
07:35 And it prompts this examination
07:37 of her entire friendship groups.
07:41 So she has a lot of brunch friends,
07:43 she has a lot of work colleagues,
07:45 but she doesn't, like none of those people,
07:46 when she actually needs them,
07:47 none of those people really show up for her.
07:50 And it's, they're from the sort of the school of
07:54 anything you need, let me know is what I call it,
07:57 which basically means I don't really want to do anything,
08:01 so I'm gonna put the like onus on you to have to tell me.
08:04 And of course, like very often people don't ask for help
08:07 or aren't able to articulate what they need.
08:10 So she revisits a lot of the,
08:13 sort of a very core friendship group
08:14 that she had when she was younger.
08:16 She also then revisits her relationship with her sister,
08:19 who she's got a fairly strained relationship with,
08:21 her older sister, who has a teenage daughter,
08:25 and her parents as well.
08:27 And with tied up in and around all of that,
08:30 which is about reconnection and,
08:33 and that redefining point in your life.
08:36 It does also look at the fact that,
08:38 she doesn't really think she wants kids.
08:41 She doesn't really know what's happening with her love life.
08:44 But it was also really important for me
08:45 to write that into the book
08:47 and for that not to be her defining characteristic,
08:50 because very often, particularly with these types of books,
08:53 particularly with commercial books,
08:55 I feel like there is a greater pressure
08:58 placed on female authors
08:59 to have to have a romantic resolution,
09:02 than there is on male authors.
09:04 And I just didn't, I wanted that to be incidental.
09:07 I wanted that to be something that she discusses, sure,
09:09 but it's not the most important thing
09:12 that her life pivots around.
09:13 And so the entire book is about her figuring that out.
09:17 So I would say it's got several layers to it.
09:19 And people tend to like, find what they,
09:23 what reflects most in them.
09:25 And you could come from like any background,
09:27 any walk of life, but you know,
09:29 you'll find something in there for you, I think.
09:31 - I think one of the things that really resonated with me
09:34 the most was the sort of friendship angle
09:37 and that kind of storyline,
09:38 because I think this is such a common experience
09:41 when you kind of come out of your early to mid-twenties,
09:45 you're the nature of your friendships
09:47 start to kind of drastically change.
09:49 And, you know, it's,
09:51 I've heard you describe friendships as tidal before,
09:53 and I think that's a really good way of describing it.
09:55 I think that kind of first big tide
09:57 comes after your sort of mid-twenties
09:59 when people start getting married,
10:01 people start having children or talking about children,
10:03 careers kind of step up
10:04 and become a more prominent pillar in your life.
10:07 And as a result,
10:08 those kinds of intimate everyday friendships
10:11 that you had with people
10:12 that maybe you went to school or university with change
10:15 and maybe fall away a bit, and also you change.
10:18 And so everything,
10:19 there's a big kind of shift in that moment.
10:21 And I think the idea of having this kind of
10:24 near-death experience and waking up
10:26 and not knowing who your person is
10:28 or who your kind of gang is,
10:30 is a really, really relatable one.
10:33 And obviously this is something we see Belle going through
10:37 as she finds herself in this position,
10:38 but what was it that made you want to examine that?
10:42 And, you know, obviously I'm talking about this
10:44 from the perspective of late twenties,
10:45 but she's in her mid-thirties.
10:47 And what do you think the difference is,
10:49 you know, if I'm feeling this now,
10:50 what's the difference between that experience
10:52 in your mid-thirties as well?
10:53 - It's such a,
10:55 it's such an enormous topic, right?
10:57 Because I think for me, there's like two things there.
10:59 So I think that no one really talks about
11:02 or prepares you for the first time
11:06 that that happens in your twenties,
11:07 when you realise that your friends
11:10 are kind of either moving off in different ways
11:13 or their lives are changing
11:14 and yours is maybe not changing in the same way
11:18 and how you navigate that.
11:19 And I remember in my twenties,
11:20 that being such a painful process.
11:23 And part of that pain was just not expecting it.
11:25 And I definitely think that while female friendship
11:27 is one of the most incredible things,
11:29 I for sure know that like from as early as I could remember,
11:34 the expectation is that you remain friends
11:37 until the day you die.
11:39 And if you don't, then that's a reflection on you.
11:43 And that says something about your character.
11:45 So for example, even now,
11:46 when if I was to tell someone that, you know,
11:48 I have friends that I don't speak to anymore,
11:51 I can see it in their eyes.
11:52 The look is what have you done as a person
11:55 to have created that?
11:57 And so I think that there is that expectation.
11:59 And so in your twenties,
12:00 if you haven't experienced that before,
12:03 it can be so painful because you feel like
12:05 this friendship should not be breaking up
12:08 or this friendship should not be changing
12:10 or becoming more distant, you know, in the same,
12:12 because especially when you're younger,
12:14 you also just have more time.
12:16 So you can be time intensive with your friendships
12:19 in a way that as you get older,
12:20 you just can't necessarily do that.
12:22 But I think when you go through it the first time,
12:26 for me, what I realized was that the thing
12:28 that was making it really painful
12:30 was expecting everything to remain exactly the same.
12:33 And if it didn't remain exactly the same,
12:35 that meant that we didn't care about each other
12:37 or that we didn't love each other.
12:39 And I have learned from now having gone through
12:41 at least about the three iterations of this,
12:44 you know, I'm in my early forties,
12:46 that that just isn't the case.
12:48 And also if a friendship doesn't work out
12:50 or if it drops off or if it's just someone
12:52 you haven't spoken to for a few years, it's okay.
12:56 Like, it's okay.
12:57 We're not meant to have everyone in our lives
12:59 that we have met since birth.
13:01 You know, that's just not how life works, right?
13:04 But also sometimes I don't know that,
13:09 I think that friendship has got such strong parallels
13:11 with romantic relationships.
13:14 Like when people go, oh, this friendship ended
13:16 and I have no idea why.
13:18 It's like when people go, this relationship ended
13:20 and I have no idea why.
13:21 It's like, I think you do probably know why.
13:24 It's just that it takes a lot of quite painful examination.
13:27 And very often it requires you to say
13:30 that it's not all about the other person.
13:32 I think in friendships, it can so become
13:34 about the good person and the bad person
13:36 and who was right and who was wrong.
13:37 And I just don't think that life is as black
13:40 and white as that.
13:41 And I think it is owning up to how you are as a friend
13:44 and what were you there for, what were you not there for?
13:48 That I think we don't necessarily examine enough
13:51 about our own behaviour within that.
13:53 - I think what's really interesting about Belle
13:55 is that she kind of, she seems to harbour
13:58 a bit of resentment towards some of the friends
13:59 who are like progressing in ways that she maybe hasn't,
14:02 like according to societal progressions
14:04 and the way that we are supposed to, as women,
14:07 follow this kind of very neat trajectory
14:08 of marriage, children and everything else.
14:11 I was reading this interview that you did
14:13 with Natasha Lund for Conversations in Love
14:15 and you spoke about how after the loss of your husband, Rob,
14:19 you found yourself kind of re-evaluating your friendships
14:22 and trying to work out, in your own way,
14:26 who was there for you.
14:27 And one of the quotes that I kind of really picked up on
14:31 was you said, "If I wasn't here,
14:33 "would anyone kind of notice?"
14:35 And you went travelling and then when you came back
14:38 from travelling, which you wrote about in your book,
14:40 In Search of Silence, which is brilliant
14:42 if anyone's listening and wants to read it.
14:44 And then when you came back, you said that one
14:45 of the most valuable realisations you had was that
14:48 it's no one else's responsibility
14:50 to make you feel loved and secure,
14:53 which I think is an important lesson for Belle as well,
14:56 you know, to kind of, to avoid that resentment
14:59 and to avoid those feelings of like,
15:02 my friends owe me this, you know,
15:04 like in sort of outsourcing your confidence
15:07 and your own self-love all the time,
15:08 which is so easy to do.
15:10 I think particularly now,
15:13 when we have all this kind of rhetoric around self-love
15:18 and self-acceptance, but there's not really
15:20 a kind of deeper sense of where to get that from yourself.
15:24 It's kind of the lazy option is,
15:25 oh, we just get it from our friends
15:26 and the people around us that love us
15:28 and looking for validation elsewhere.
15:29 But obviously if you rely on that,
15:31 you're gonna fall into quite tricky territory
15:33 when you realise that that's actually not
15:36 what your friends are for.
15:37 And if you lean too heavily on them for that,
15:40 it's gonna push people away.
15:42 So talk to me about how you came to that realisation
15:45 when you were travelling
15:46 and why it was such a game changer for you.
15:49 - Yeah, I mean, so I've found that
15:53 what actually causes like a lot of that pain
15:55 is when you're just trying to hold onto people
15:58 really tightly, or you're trying to sort of
16:01 extract something from them
16:03 to alleviate your own pain around something.
16:06 And I mean, I would venture to say,
16:08 'cause I'm a massive believer in personal evolution,
16:11 like even how I think about things has changed since I,
16:15 not radically, but it has changed a little bit
16:18 since I gave that interview to Natasha.
16:20 I think for me, a very, very big realisation
16:25 was the understanding that,
16:28 and particularly after Rob passed away,
16:30 and it wasn't anything to do with his passing,
16:32 it was more to do with,
16:35 I think understanding that
16:37 whatever void you have inside of you,
16:40 and I think everyone has their own little void,
16:45 however big or small that is,
16:46 it just can't be filled by someone else.
16:49 And if, for example, you're a people pleaser,
16:52 as I used to be, I think I'm a lot less these days,
16:55 but if you are, then sometimes that can be transactional,
17:00 in terms of like how much love
17:01 and how many obligations you fulfil
17:04 in order to be able to then receive that back.
17:08 And if you're then sometimes giving that to people
17:10 who don't show their love in that way,
17:11 or who just, some people just take
17:14 and they don't necessarily reciprocate,
17:16 that's a really, really hard place to be.
17:19 And I think that when I sort of, especially,
17:22 I think when I wrote my second book,
17:23 In Search of Silence, which was when I went travelling,
17:26 was I was just so angry at everything.
17:29 It wasn't at any one particular person,
17:31 but I was angry at everything.
17:33 And I was angry that I didn't wanna feel the way I felt,
17:36 and I didn't see an end point to it,
17:38 and I did not feel like I really fit in my life,
17:41 and that my friends and my family, as much as I loved them,
17:44 just couldn't understand the level of pain that I was in.
17:47 And I think, sort of subsequently from that,
17:50 it is the realisation that actually,
17:52 you can be loved by people,
17:53 and you can be supported by people.
17:55 And of course, there are days that I have
17:57 that are really difficult,
17:59 where I know if I talk to my best mate or my sister,
18:02 they will be able to make me laugh
18:04 or help me through that.
18:05 And so I'm not negating any of that.
18:08 I just don't think that you can necessarily rely
18:12 on another person's love and support
18:14 to get you through a tough time,
18:15 because they literally can't do the internal work for you.
18:18 And they can't, like, when you're waking up
18:20 in the middle of the night,
18:21 they're not gonna be the people
18:22 who are there to help you through that,
18:24 'cause it's just not practical, right?
18:27 And so I think it's about working on doing that internal work
18:32 and working on that stuff that does make you feel whole.
18:36 And to move it beyond,
18:37 'cause I think self-care has become such a buzzword,
18:40 but it is because it's not just about
18:43 the things that you're externally buying
18:45 or that you're doing or taking a day off
18:47 or any of that stuff.
18:48 It's a really hard, mucky work of looking at yourself,
18:52 like yourself as a person,
18:54 and realising what are the patterns that you get into?
18:57 What are the mistakes that you keep making?
18:59 What is the thing that you keep saying
19:01 that you're gonna change that you're not changing?
19:03 Like, what are the things that are holding you back
19:05 from making those changes?
19:06 And that's really hard work.
19:08 Like, people find it really tough to do that.
19:11 And the reason why I feel that that's so important,
19:13 I don't think you do all of this work on yourself
19:16 and then you can make friends with people,
19:18 or then you find love.
19:18 I think all of this stuff has to go alongside just living,
19:22 right?
19:23 But if you don't know, like,
19:25 what your internal sense of self is,
19:28 how do you then form a meaningful friendship?
19:31 Or how do you then form a meaningful relationship
19:35 with someone?
19:35 Because to me, the idea of love has shifted so much
19:39 from my 20s than it has to what I know it is now.
19:44 And what I know it is now is about resonance.
19:48 It's about being seen and loved for who you are.
19:51 Like, literally, that's it.
19:52 And being around people who can see you for who you are,
19:55 who you feel you can be yourself with,
19:58 rather than, like, a different version of yourself.
20:00 And I just don't think that you can get that kind of love
20:04 if you don't know who you are.
20:06 - You've said, I mean, you've kind of mentioned
20:08 that your view of love has changed a lot,
20:09 but something that you've said before about it
20:12 is that something you wish you'd known when you were younger
20:16 is that love is not something that is based
20:20 on stars aligning and fate and finding your person
20:23 and finding your lobster.
20:24 It is something that happens to you over and over again
20:27 in different forms.
20:29 Why do you think that is such an important thing
20:32 to learn as early as possible?
20:34 And why don't we have that learning when we're younger?
20:39 Why do we not have that view of love anyway?
20:42 - I mean, I think to answer that question
20:45 about why we don't have that view,
20:47 I think because, you know, if you're a woman,
20:51 I think in particular,
20:52 and I can only speak to my experience of it,
20:55 but I think we are so heavily socially conditioned
20:58 to believe that finding someone, finding our one,
21:03 our romantic partner is the most important thing
21:07 that you can do with your life.
21:08 And I think when you then layer on things
21:10 like social conditioning, which, you know,
21:14 maybe it's getting better,
21:16 but we have grown up, a lot of us in a world
21:19 where we have had a greater pressure around us
21:23 to achieve, quote marks, domestic success
21:26 in the same way that let's say for men,
21:27 it might be economic success.
21:30 And when you consider what domestic success is,
21:32 of course that includes finding a partner,
21:34 settling down, getting married, having kids,
21:36 all of that stuff, right?
21:38 I would say in terms of how it's changed
21:44 has been that the understanding that, you know,
21:48 love is something that happens to you over and over again,
21:51 I think has been really important for me
21:53 because it alleviates the pressure on a relationship.
21:57 So I got this really sweet DM from a lady who was 25
22:02 and she was going through her first breakup
22:05 and just was bereft because she thought
22:07 that that was her person and, you know,
22:10 and what could I say to make her feel better?
22:12 And I think when you're going through a breakup,
22:14 you know, there's not much I think that anyone can say
22:17 because you could say there's more fish in the sea,
22:20 all of that stuff,
22:21 but that's not what you wanna hear at that point in time
22:22 because just everything feels like it's on fire, right?
22:26 But for me, for sure,
22:28 the understanding that love is something that is incredible,
22:32 it's still the most incredible thing, I think,
22:35 but that even if you love someone and it ends,
22:41 there's a very high probability
22:43 that at some point in your lifetime,
22:44 you're going to experience that again,
22:47 if not more than that.
22:48 And what that understanding does
22:50 is it allows you to set your own boundaries.
22:54 It allows you to say what you want from a relationship
22:57 and to have standards, to be quite frank.
23:00 And like, we were discussing this earlier
23:02 in terms of, you know, the expectation and the barometer
23:05 for what if you're heterosexual, right?
23:08 What heterosexual women,
23:09 the barometer that is set for men,
23:13 and it's so low, it's so low,
23:18 is that what that understanding does
23:21 is it allows you to be okay with putting,
23:25 you know, to set a boundary down.
23:26 Or I'm not saying, look, don't get me wrong,
23:29 it can totally go the other way as well.
23:30 And I definitely, you know, I'm in an age group
23:33 where I see people shooting down relationships
23:36 or dates with people before it even gets started
23:38 because it doesn't meet some arbitrary list
23:40 of whatever they want, right?
23:42 And that is also not great.
23:45 But I definitely think that knowing
23:47 when to call time on something,
23:49 knowing when something is not working for you
23:52 is a measurable, and I think it's very, very closely tied
23:56 to the understanding that there's not one person for you.
23:59 Because if you believe that there's one person for you,
24:02 and it doesn't even necessarily mean that,
24:04 let's say you're in a relationship with someone
24:06 and this person, you know,
24:08 it's just maybe not a great partner.
24:10 They might just be quite thoughtless
24:11 or you end up having to do most of the housework
24:13 or whatever it is.
24:14 If you believe that that person is your one,
24:17 the amount of crap that you are gonna put up with
24:19 in that relationship to fulfill that narrative,
24:21 which by the way, you've set that for yourself.
24:24 Like no one else has told you,
24:25 you don't like collect a ticket stub,
24:27 which says, you know,
24:28 this person is gonna be yours forever after.
24:30 You know, there's, in my opinion,
24:32 I don't think there's something like where we're fated
24:35 to like have to be with this one person or whatever.
24:39 I think that we have multiple soulmates.
24:40 I don't think that there's only one soulmate.
24:42 Again, like, because who says that there's only one?
24:45 It's a belief.
24:46 Where did that belief come from?
24:47 It's not based on fact, it's not science.
24:49 So I think if you can kind of release some of that,
24:52 it just means that you have like a closer approximation
24:55 of what you want.
24:56 And I believe that we all have that sense,
25:00 like, so, okay, in certain ideologies,
25:03 we would call the serenity, right?
25:05 Where you have like a baseline level of when you know,
25:10 when something's messing with that.
25:12 Like if you're constantly feeling anxious or weird
25:15 or not yourself around someone,
25:18 that is the sign to get out of dodge
25:20 and to set yourself a boundary
25:22 or to talk to them about what's going on
25:24 to see whether they can change.
25:26 - So your first love is a place.
25:37 Why don't you tell us about that?
25:39 - So my first love is I've chosen India
25:42 because so my family background is we're Indian
25:47 from South India specifically.
25:50 And when I was seven, my parents made the decision,
25:55 well, they made the decision a bit earlier than that,
25:57 but we moved back to India.
26:01 And the idea was that they wanted to raise us
26:04 as Indian kids, they didn't want us to be,
26:06 you know, British, Asian kids.
26:09 So we stayed there for about five years
26:11 and my dad was like, I can't work here.
26:14 So we basically then moved back to the UK.
26:18 But that particular period in time,
26:21 I would say for both myself and my sister,
26:24 really was so formative.
26:28 And it has shaped so much about us as adults
26:32 and how we see things and how we view things.
26:35 And even though, you know, when we came back to England,
26:38 we grew up in Kent, so we grew up in a very,
26:42 what I did, in a very white dominated area.
26:45 So India was somewhere that we would go back to
26:49 fairly regularly, you know, I would say,
26:51 you know, the longest we ever went was like
26:54 maybe three years, so we'd go either every two years
26:56 or every one year.
26:57 And all of our cousins, you know,
26:59 most of them are still in India.
27:02 And I think what's really interesting to me
27:04 is the India that I know from my family being there
27:08 and, you know, and how we are there.
27:10 And also I worked in Mumbai for a little bit of time
27:13 in my twenties.
27:15 And then the version of India that you get told about
27:18 when you're in the UK.
27:19 And for me, that's split out into two things,
27:21 either like British Asians,
27:24 who we don't have the same experience or upbringing.
27:28 So they have a very different relationship to, you know,
27:32 their sort of country of their parents' origin
27:34 than my sister and I do.
27:36 Like we very much have a much stronger relationship,
27:39 I would say.
27:40 And at the same time, you also have a lot of people
27:43 who let's say are not British Asian,
27:47 but who visit India and then want to talk to you about India
27:50 and to tell you about their version of India.
27:52 And also like growing up, you know, in my twenties,
27:55 like it was a place where lots of like travel guides
27:59 were being written about.
28:00 It was this whole thing that you just sort of would go there
28:02 and do it as a big trip.
28:05 And so what has kind of happened out of it
28:10 is India gets caricaturized.
28:12 So it's like, oh my God, like, isn't it so busy
28:14 and it's this and it's that.
28:15 And it's like, okay, yeah.
28:18 I mean, yeah, it can be, but it's a huge country, you know.
28:22 So for me, it's always been a place
28:24 that I've just gotten so much out of
28:26 and I'm so inspired by
28:27 and that I feel reflects me as a person.
28:30 But one of the things I did in 2018
28:32 was I felt it was really important to see India in a way
28:37 that wasn't just about it being a busy place.
28:41 It has, you know, the majority of it as a country is rural.
28:45 And I think being able to just go to places
28:49 that were really quiet, really peaceful, you know,
28:51 where you've got sort of like water mass,
28:55 like, you know, masses of land and so on.
28:59 It was just something that really cemented something in me.
29:02 I went back to my ancestral homeland,
29:04 which is this like tiny, not so tiny anymore,
29:08 but it's like a, it's sort of along the coastline
29:11 along the west, southwest of India.
29:15 And it was, you know, the sand, like the sea,
29:18 all of that kind of coming together.
29:20 And I just thought, oh, I come from here.
29:21 Like my ancestors come from here.
29:23 And it was a sense of expansiveness.
29:26 It was just a really, really deep love of a place
29:30 that actually means something to me in a way
29:33 that I feel really rooted and connected to,
29:36 which I've been really grateful for,
29:40 because for most of my teens and my twenties,
29:42 I felt like I was stuck between two Indias,
29:46 the India that I knew and the India that I felt
29:49 I was being told about by other people who traveled there.
29:52 - It sounds like a very kind of deeply spiritual connection
29:55 that you have with it.
29:57 And I wonder, 'cause everything you're talking about,
29:59 it's kind of like this idea of home.
30:02 And I think that's such an important thing to establish.
30:06 Like, where is it that I feel like this reflects who I am,
30:10 where I feel most comfortable?
30:12 And it's not necessarily where you grew up.
30:13 It's not necessarily where you came from.
30:15 It's just a sense of total comfort
30:18 and I guess belonging, right?
30:20 Would you say that when you think of home,
30:23 you think of India?
30:24 - Yes and no, because I know that England is my home.
30:31 I mean, because there are parts of me
30:32 that are really British, you know?
30:35 And for example, in India,
30:37 they wouldn't consider me to be Indian.
30:39 So because, you know, I wasn't born there,
30:42 I don't speak the language, I don't have the accent.
30:46 So throughout my entire life, it's, you know,
30:49 Indians don't necessarily consider us to be Indian,
30:51 unless we do something that they're really proud of,
30:54 in which case we're definitely very Indian,
30:57 which I'm very happy for them to claim that, that's fine.
31:00 But I would say it's complicated,
31:03 because on the one hand, you know,
31:07 I've grown up in Britain,
31:09 or parts of which don't consider me to be British.
31:12 And I also come from India,
31:14 which doesn't necessarily consider me to be Indian.
31:16 So what I feel is it's more of a sense of,
31:19 so belonging is not just necessarily a place,
31:21 it's also a people.
31:23 And so for me, being part of, being in that country,
31:27 the landscape is like essential to that, sure.
31:30 But it's also about the people who make that up.
31:32 So one of the places that I went to
31:35 when I was kind of a travel journalist in the early noughties
31:38 was the Indian Himalayas, and I'd never been there before.
31:42 And it wasn't just about the landscape,
31:44 it was about the people,
31:45 like they were ridiculously friendly.
31:48 I learned about their lives
31:50 and the way that they conduct their lives
31:51 in a way that like, it's so different
31:53 to like how my own family are,
31:57 and the food that we eat and so on.
31:59 But I felt like I belonged there,
32:01 like there's still, we could be,
32:03 it's the seventh biggest country, I think, in the world.
32:06 So it's on one hand,
32:09 yes, there are parts of me that don't feel like I belong,
32:12 but I also know that I'm connected to
32:15 an enormous country and enormous people
32:17 that I could identify with, like with a click on my fingers.
32:20 - Yeah, it goes back to what we were saying before
32:22 about the connection, just like human connection.
32:24 That's like what I keep kind of returning to
32:26 over and over again.
32:27 And your second love is a person.
32:30 Tell us why you've chosen your sister.
32:31 - So I've chosen my older sister Priya,
32:34 because I would say,
32:39 she has shaped like so much about my life, really,
32:43 that I don't know,
32:46 she's always been someone that I've always looked up to.
32:49 - How much older is she?
32:50 - She's four years older,
32:51 but like she is ridiculously cool.
32:53 And the way she dresses,
32:56 like the way she decorates her home.
32:59 I mean, her background is science,
33:01 so she's a science journalist.
33:03 So we kind of have, again, we work in different industries,
33:07 but also we have overlaps, right?
33:09 The reason why I've chosen her
33:11 is because number one,
33:14 there was something that she did for me during the pandemic
33:17 that was incredible,
33:19 which was that I was, you know,
33:21 she lives in Spain, I was in the UK,
33:24 and I was doing lockdown on my own.
33:26 I also caught COVID really badly at the beginning.
33:29 And then I had long COVID for 10 months
33:31 where I just could not do anything.
33:34 And she has a kid, you know,
33:36 so it's not like she doesn't have like a lot going on,
33:38 but she checked in with me every day.
33:40 Like we then started voice noting each other every day.
33:42 We still do it.
33:43 She still checks in on me,
33:45 but not in a kind of as if I'm incapable.
33:48 It's just that I feel the presence of her there.
33:52 I feel that I have someone that I know supports me,
33:57 but also is really invested in finding out how I'm doing
34:00 and loves me and wants me to be well
34:01 in the most selfless way possible.
34:04 But I think she has also written a book.
34:06 So she's written her first nonfiction called "Motherland,"
34:09 which is about her identity as a parent.
34:11 And so we've been having a lot of conversations
34:13 about our childhood and our upbringing
34:16 because we had different childhoods.
34:18 She was sent away to live in India at a younger age.
34:20 So we were separated for a time when we were kids.
34:24 But we were talking about our childhood
34:27 and certain difficult parts of it when we were together.
34:29 And I don't think I'd realize
34:31 like how much she had looked after me
34:33 and how much she had shielded me from
34:35 because I literally just don't have memories
34:37 of certain things.
34:39 And it's like a debt that I can't repay.
34:42 You know, I don't, you know, usually that your older sibling
34:46 is like the person who gets like, you know,
34:49 the sort of, it has to be like the more responsible one
34:52 and so on, and there's more pressure on them.
34:54 But I don't think I realized how much.
34:57 And I think when I sort of take into account
34:59 like how incredible our relationship is as sisters,
35:05 but also she's my friend, she's not just my sister,
35:09 but she's also someone, because she is older than me,
35:12 particularly in my 40s as I struggle to figure out
35:16 like what my identity is as a woman in my 40s.
35:18 'Cause we don't really know what we're doing
35:21 because who our parents were,
35:22 who our mothers were in their 40s
35:24 is not what it's like for us now.
35:27 She is someone who I look to for that.
35:29 And, you know, and she reminds me to kind of be
35:32 more compassionate of people
35:33 and just whether it's about learning new things.
35:36 And what's really funny about this is in my paperback,
35:41 and I've literally just delivered a second manuscript,
35:43 which in my paperback, you know,
35:46 the core relationship in that is a sibling relationship,
35:49 our two sisters.
35:51 And in my second manuscript that I've just delivered,
35:53 it's not the core part of the book,
35:55 but there's definitely a dynamic with two sisters in that.
35:58 But they're nothing like the relationship
36:00 that I have with my sister,
36:01 because I think the way that I perhaps explore that
36:05 in my fiction is really what happens
36:09 if your relationship is not good.
36:11 Like if, you know, and the reason why I think
36:13 I'm really obsessed with that
36:15 is because when we were growing up, you know,
36:17 my sister and I were very much at the dynamic
36:19 was that she was looking after me
36:21 and I would just like, you know,
36:23 run around and be like a maniac.
36:26 And it got to the point where
36:28 when I then became a teenager,
36:30 I was just like, we don't have anything in common.
36:32 And I think it was when she sort of threatened
36:34 to tell my parents that she'd found a packet of cigarettes
36:36 in my handbag.
36:37 And I was like, you're such a snitch, like who does that?
36:41 And I think I decided that she wasn't gonna be,
36:43 you know, my ally in this or whatever,
36:45 'cause she basically was an extension of my parents.
36:47 And then we went on this holiday to India.
36:50 It was just me and her.
36:51 We'd never been on holiday anywhere, just the two of us.
36:55 And we got drunk on the plane
36:56 and then we just actually just started talking to each other
36:58 like we were human beings.
37:00 And that was such a pivotal moment.
37:02 And if that moment hadn't have happened,
37:05 I don't think we would have had the relationship
37:07 that we have today.
37:07 - Oh, that's so interesting.
37:08 - And it was, yeah, it was such a sliding doors moment.
37:10 And I think possibly that might be what I,
37:14 especially in a case of emergency,
37:15 it's like, what happens if that,
37:18 what would have happened to us
37:19 if we hadn't had that moment?
37:20 And if we were then having to have that moment
37:23 in our adult lives, you know?
37:25 - Yeah, 'cause it's interesting,
37:26 'cause obviously there's a, you know,
37:28 there's a friendship dynamic with your siblings,
37:31 but it's different.
37:33 It's not quite, it can't be as tidal as the relationships,
37:37 the romantic relationships you have
37:38 and the platonic relationships you have,
37:40 because you have that family pull to one another.
37:43 So it's almost like, I think in a way,
37:46 it can probably be easier sometimes to think,
37:48 well, I'm just gonna cut you out right now,
37:50 because you, because the pain of those kind of disagreements
37:55 or those conflicts,
37:56 I think are so much more deeply felt with a sibling
37:59 than with a friend, because they are your family.
38:02 So it's almost like maybe the response
38:06 can be more dramatic.
38:07 - Yeah, because the stuff that it triggers,
38:09 I mean, if you think about like
38:10 when you have arguments with your family,
38:12 it's not necessarily really about the thing
38:14 that you're arguing about in the present.
38:16 It's like arguments that have been dredged up
38:18 from years and years ago.
38:20 And the only way I think you really get through that
38:22 is by talking to each other
38:24 or by being honest with each other
38:26 about what upset you and why that upset you.
38:28 So, I mean, I don't mean,
38:31 my sister and I have definitely had to have
38:33 difficult talks about that or when we've upset the other
38:36 and why it's upset us and so on.
38:38 But the one thing I would say
38:39 is that we listen to each other.
38:41 And the thing that, the reason why I think,
38:44 she's honestly the person that I speak to the most
38:48 in any given day,
38:51 not necessarily in real time on the phone,
38:53 but the number of,
38:54 we've already exchanged like four voice notes
38:56 and it's like early afternoon.
38:58 (laughs)
38:59 But it's because also we both have A, very similar ethics
39:04 and B, it's the knowledge.
39:08 And I think both of us have been through therapy
39:10 and whatnot, but it's the knowledge that you evolve.
39:14 So, it's okay to change.
39:16 And in fact, it's necessary to change
39:18 and we can help each other change.
39:21 And we're very similar in that we're open to learning,
39:26 rather than, and actually, and I say that because
39:31 it sounds like such a like backhanded compliment
39:33 that I'm giving myself, but like very often
39:36 her reaction to something when we talk about something is,
39:38 "Oh, I didn't realise that, tell me more."
39:41 Whereas sometimes from some people in my life,
39:44 it will be this obstinacy of,
39:47 well, I don't wanna change how I am.
39:49 So I'm just gonna keep doing what I'm doing
39:50 or I'm still gonna believe in what I believe
39:52 because it's too much effort to learn something new
39:54 or to change who I am.
39:55 Do you know what I mean?
39:56 So she has like a whole growth mindset about her.
39:58 - Which a lot of people don't have
39:59 'cause they think for a lot of us,
40:00 the default is defensive.
40:02 - But the conversations that I'm having with people
40:05 is worrying because of the lack of empathy.
40:08 Like the sort of the refusal to like even think about
40:12 what it might be like for the other person
40:14 who is saying X, Y, and Z.
40:16 And when you're then having a conversation
40:18 with someone like that, I'm like,
40:20 I can't continue the conversation with you
40:22 because if we can't operate from a place of empathy
40:26 and you also don't want to take on any other points of view
40:31 to educate yourself or to learn or to try and understand,
40:35 all you're actually really seeking
40:37 is for me to confirm what you believe,
40:39 in which case you might as well just like talk to a mirror.
40:42 Like there's no point us having that conversation.
40:45 So now to be honest,
40:46 I just either shut those conversations down
40:49 or I just change the subject
40:50 or I just don't talk to those people as much.
40:52 - Yeah, I think that's a really good approach.
40:55 Okay, finally, your third love is an activity, a hobby.
41:00 I don't know how you would describe it,
41:02 but I'm so excited to talk to you about this.
41:03 Tell me about your third love.
41:05 - My third love is powerlifting,
41:07 which is competitive weightlifting
41:11 and the goal is to lift the heaviest weights
41:13 that you can possibly handle.
41:16 I fell into it by accident.
41:18 So basically I started to dabble around
41:21 in learning how to lift weights a few years ago
41:25 because I didn't really know,
41:26 I'd never sort of lifted a barbell.
41:28 I didn't really know what any of it was.
41:31 And I really enjoyed it.
41:33 I really enjoyed the fact
41:35 that I didn't realise how strong I was,
41:38 that I would very often like go into a gym session
41:40 and think I couldn't do something,
41:43 'cause if you're usually working to a programme,
41:45 you know what numbers you need to hit.
41:47 And I would kind of go,
41:48 "Nope, there's absolutely no way I'm doing that."
41:50 And then you'd do it and you'd go,
41:51 "Oh, like maybe there's other stuff
41:53 "that perhaps I've been self-defeating about
41:55 "that I wasn't aware of before."
41:59 Powerlifting specifically, however,
42:02 I started at the end of 2018 where I had a PT,
42:07 who's still my coach,
42:11 who was and is a professional powerlifter.
42:15 And it's one thing led to another
42:17 where I was training in this local commercial gym.
42:22 And my approach back then was that
42:26 I was still fairly new to it.
42:29 So the way I kind of handled myself
42:32 in the weight section of the gym
42:34 was by looking really unapproachable
42:35 and just having headphones on all the time.
42:38 But this guy sort of tapped me on the shoulder
42:39 and I was like, you know, snarled at him
42:42 and just was like, "What do you want?"
42:44 And he said, "Oh, there's this
42:45 "unofficial powerlifting competition.
42:47 "Do you wanna do it?"
42:48 And I just was like, "No, that sounds horrendous."
42:52 Because I also didn't know what powerlifting was.
42:54 And in my mind, when he explained it,
42:55 I could just imagine like big dudes
42:57 from like World's Strongest Man, right?
42:59 And I was like, "I don't think that that's me."
43:02 But then I spoke to my coach about it
43:03 and he was like, "Oh, by the way,
43:04 "I actually do this as a sport
43:06 "and I can help you with this if you want.
43:08 "And I think that you should try it."
43:10 And I said, "I think that you'd really like it."
43:13 And so I did the training for it.
43:14 And the training for it was,
43:16 it was unlike anything I'd ever done before
43:19 because basically your goal is to get as strong as you can
43:23 before your competition day.
43:24 Like literally that's it.
43:26 And so what ended up happening
43:27 was that I just had to humble myself
43:29 and learn a lot of things.
43:30 So for example, if you are the type of person
43:33 that does a lot of cardio,
43:34 or I used to do a lot of cardio,
43:36 and unfortunately we still live in a time, I think,
43:41 where weight loss and weight maintenance
43:44 has such a strong correlation with physical activity
43:48 rather than that being a separate thing.
43:51 So I would say that I would always try
43:56 and cheat the system, right?
43:57 So like you're trying to work out
43:58 or train with like the least amount of food
44:00 and you don't really think about
44:02 like how much you're sleeping or whatever.
44:03 But like when you're training
44:04 for like a weightlifting competition,
44:06 all of that stuff has to be in check.
44:09 And if you aren't prioritising your sleep,
44:11 if you're not fuelling, if you're not eating properly,
44:13 you literally can't lift the bar.
44:16 And what happens is, and I did that a couple of times,
44:20 is that when you realise
44:21 that you are literally sabotaging your own progress
44:24 for some like arbitrary marker in society
44:28 that tells you that you need to be your slimmest
44:30 or whatever, and you're like,
44:31 but that means that I can't lift this thing up,
44:33 which actually makes me feel really good within myself.
44:37 For me, it was like a no brainer.
44:38 So I just focused on that
44:40 and then had a tonne of fun at the competition.
44:43 People are super friendly,
44:44 so it reminds you that humanity isn't like dead.
44:47 And it kind of like affirms your belief in things,
44:51 I think a little bit.
44:52 And so, and the powerlifting is one of those things
44:55 where I don't think it's a coincidence
44:57 that a lot of people come to it
45:00 with some sort of like mental health story or journey.
45:03 And because I do think like what it does for you
45:07 mentally and psychologically,
45:08 and it is enormously positive.
45:12 But also if you are going into something
45:15 like lifting heavy weights,
45:16 and if you're being self-defeating about it,
45:18 if you go into there thinking that you can't do it,
45:21 you may have the physical strength to do it,
45:23 but if your mental side isn't sorted out,
45:25 you're not gonna be able to do it
45:27 because you're just gonna tell yourself
45:28 that you can't do it.
45:29 But it's been something that's changed my life.
45:32 It's introduced me, I've made friends through it
45:35 at a time in my life in my late 30s
45:36 where to be quite frank,
45:39 I didn't know it was possible to make new friends.
45:41 Like I just thought, oh my God, is this it?
45:43 Like basically I've lost like 50% of my friendship group
45:46 because they've got kids and I don't.
45:48 So it has changed everything.
45:51 But one of the biggest things that has changed
45:54 is definitely I think the realisation
45:57 that there's a lot of times when my brain will tell myself
46:00 something that actually isn't true.
46:02 It will tell me, I will tell myself
46:05 that I can't do something and that's not the case.
46:09 But also it gives me an enormous sense of,
46:12 I think, confidence,
46:13 particularly when I am moving in male-dominated spaces
46:18 and especially when things like sitting on a plane
46:22 and someone spreading out or on a bus,
46:24 it's like that is not happening around me.
46:26 I'm not giving my space up for anyone.
46:28 - Yeah.
46:29 That is it for today.
46:30 Thank you so much for joining us.
46:32 You can listen to Love Lives on all major podcast platforms
46:35 and you can also watch us on independent TV,
46:38 all major connected devices and all social media platforms.
46:42 I will see you next time.
46:43 Bye.
46:44 (upbeat music)
46:47 (upbeat music)
46:49 (upbeat music)