Tahira Kashyap Khurrana—author, filmmaker and the better half of actor Ayushmann Khurrana—is a woman with a message: that you do not need to let go of your individuality once you become a mother. Instead, you need to learn to celebrate yourself. On the face of it, this might seem like a cliché that one finds in a self-help book or a motivational talk. The difference is that, for Tahira, this has been a hard-learned lesson. That is why, when she writes of her guilt about her caesarean delivery or stopping breast-feeding at an early stage, it rings authentic.
“I haven’t stopped making mistakes,” she writes in The 7 Sins of Being a Mother. “From dropping the kids to school on a public holiday, to giving them the wrong dose of medicine, to putting on the baby’s diaper the wrong way, to wearing the wrong-coloured T-shirt on sports day and supporting the rival team instead, to missing Zoom birthday parties—my list of blunders is endless. Some things haven’t changed, but one thing has—today I am more forgiving of myself!”
Fortunately, the book does not come across as preachy or pedantic. Mostly because of two factors. One is her quirky writing. She does not take herself too seriously, and that is not an easy task when you are trying to communicate a strong message. Second, she has laid bare her soul in the book. Her life is her raw material. From forgetting her baby at a restaurant to having sex in an airplane and flirting with the idea of cheating on Ayushmann, she has not held anything back.
This is not new terrain for Tahira. In her past books, too, she has adopted this confessional style of writing. In The 12 Commandments of Being a Woman, for example, she wrote about being intensely jealous while Ayushmann was shooting the “longest kiss in the history of cinema” in Nautanki Saala (2013) and, in another place, about making out with him in the cinema theatre while watching Shah Rukh Khan films. Nothing, it seems, is off-limits for this plucky lady.
But honesty comes with a price. In this case, she had to face a less-than-enthusiastic reaction from her family. “My father refuses to read my books. Beyond a chapter he just cannot take it. I guess I can understand. You don’t really want to know about the details of your daughter’s sex life,” she told THE WEEK, adding that this does not negate the pride he feels when he hears how her books are impacting others.
Ayushmann had a more mixed reaction. “He went through all the chapters, laughed at some places, scrutinised others carefully and gasped at some bits. ‘You wrote this also,’ he exclaimed. ‘What is wrong with you?’” But, ultimately, she says he never tries to curtail her individuality and gives her the freedom to express herself in whatever way she chooses.
There are parts in the book that are more sensationalism than sense. Some of the scenes, for example, belong more in the bedroom than in the book. That said, it takes real skill to express your deepest vulnerabilities with the lightest of touches. However, Tahira herself is not so sure. What she writes, she says, can only come from two places—either that of courage or stupidity. “I don’t know which one is true for me,” she says with a laugh. “But the end result is an unfiltered version of me that I truly cherish now.”
The 7 Sins of Being a Mother
By Tahira Kashyap Khurrana
Published by: Juggernaut
Pages: 168 Price: Rs299