In her new book, The 12 Commandments of Being a Woman, Tahira Kashyap opens up about her teenage years growing up in Chandigarh where she met her future husband and Bollywood actor Ayushmann Khurrana, her complicated relationship with her own body and the complexities of womanhood.
Here's an excerpt.
'The 12 Commandments of Being a Woman' by Tahira Kashyap Khurrana
"The foundation of our relationship was rock solid. Amid all the chaos I knew he wasn’t a bad boy, and amid all the confusion I was creating for him he knew I wasn’t a malicious person. And so we moved on.
But all my fears came back with his next film, Nautanki Saala!, where sir participated in one of the longest kisses in the history of Indian cinema, at least that’s what the articles said.
I was burning with jealousy. My anger and insecurity crossed Virat Kohli’s runs.
I never went to my boy’s sets. He was too conscious; that’s how he has always been. I knew this but my insecurities were getting the better of me, and I blamed him for hiding things from me. So one day, to put my fears to rest, he invited me to come with him.
Sets are boring when you have nothing to contribute to the process of film-making. After seeing him sway his pelvis for forty-five minutes for one song sequence, I lost my patience and really didn’t care if he made out after. I had had enough of the boring shoot and left the venue.
My boy kept trying to soothe my fears as best he could and asked me to come with him on his promotional tour. As I was driving with him and the director in the car, the latter was talking about how people were loving the kissing scene, how it was hilarious, kiss . . . something . . . kiss . . . something something . . . kiss . . . kiss. All I heard was the one word I didn’t want to.
I saw that my boy was feeling uncomfortable. I could also sense that his discomfort was not about the kiss itself but for me having to hear of it. Our past, as I said, helped us sail through these tricky moments, but we never really resolved our issues.
His next film was Dum Laga Ke Haisha. A smalltown flashback: once at university some of us girls were soaking in the winter sun and chatting on the lush green lawns in between lectures.
We played a game about who would get married first, and then came to the big question – what did we want our first night to be like?
Now this is the influence of films on our lives. At least five out of the eight girls dreamt of their husbands sweeping them off their feet and carrying them in their strong, muscular arms to bed.
I glanced at my skinny boy who was throwing peanuts in the air and catching them in his mouth. At that time there was a difference of exactly ten kilos in our weights – I was sixty-eight kilos and he weighed fifty-eight.
So when it was my turn to reveal my deepest desires, I started with us walking towards the bed. I think the girls all knew how unlikely their fantasy would be for me.
After all those years, that winter day’s conversation still lingered in my head. Since I had lost weight, one day after the wedding I asked him to carry me to the bed to prove a point. I was a dainty girl now and was ready to be swept off my feet. This was way out of character for me, something my boy hadn’t signed up for.
He asked if something was wrong with me. But I didn’t want to hear another word and insisted that he pick me up and take me to the bed. The mood had changed between us from playfulness to disbelief to irritation. Eventually, with much reluctance, he did fulfil my request.
I would be lying if I say his arms didn’t shake, but somehow I reached the bed. I tried to stay as still as possible and to make it as easy for him as I could, but the whole exercise was pointless and uncomfortable. By the time we got to the bed, both of us were sweating and the mood was tense. Needless to say, this grand gesture did not result in any consequential act. But at least we got a good workout.
So when Dum Laga Ke Haisha happened, I was annoyed. Here he was, willingly carrying a girl who weighed twenty kilos more than him.
I would say passive-aggressive things like, ‘Where there is a will there is a way. You never wanted to pick me up, I guess. How could you pick her up so easily?’ He would get frustrated and reply that he had been practising for months. He had to carry his gym trainer on his back to prepare for the film.
I wanted to yell back that if he had practised with me all these years, he wouldn’t have needed his trainer. Instead, I sulked. I told him it was clear that for films he ‘happily’ did the very things which seemed like forced errands to him at home. He lost his patience and said, ‘What do you want?’ I didn’t know what I wanted, as being picked up and taken to the bed had never been on my agenda. But by then we were too deep into our fight and I needed to save face. So I said, ‘I want to be picked up, too.’ He threw his hands up in the air and said, ‘Fine’.
I was ready to be carried like a baby, but instead he picked me up and tossed me on his back like a gunny bag and stomped around the house, as if we were at a sabzi mandi.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ I asked. He put me down and said, ‘This is the only way I have trained.’ I rolled my eyes and kept quiet. So, you see, I still hadn’t made friends with his career.
Thankfully, in the middle of this crazy, unreasonable behaviour came Buddhism. I have described it as the great saviour in life because that’s how it felt for me. When I started chanting, all the knots in my head which had filled my brain like tangled balls of wool began to slowly unravel. Chanting touched on every problem I was facing – depression, weight, health, jealousy; they were all connected and self created. It changed my outlook, generated feelings of positivity and helped me become aware of the issues I was facing, giving me the strength and wisdom to deal with them. I didn’t even notice these changes in myself.
A few years later, I was sitting with my boy in Sriram Raghavan’s office and we were watching the edit of Andhadhun.
I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. As I stepped out, the team asked me for my feedback. One of the points I made really surprised my boy. I said, ‘Their (Radhika Apte and my boy’s) makeout scene ends abruptly. I think we are jumping to the next scene too quickly. I want to be with the characters a little longer.’
Excerpted with permission from Juggernaut.
The 12 Commandments of Being a Woman by Tahira Kashyap Khurrana
Pages: 200
Price: INR 299
Published by Juggernaut Books.
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)