Love Lives - Author Poorna Bell on the power of withdrawing from one-sided friendships

Episode Date: September 14, 2023

This week, 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 why it's okay to be selective with your friendships.We also talk about the myth of finding “the one”, the importance of writing South Asian stories into popular culture, as well as Poorna’s debut novel, In Case of Emergency.You can also read Poorna's writing at her recently launched Substack, It's As I Was Saying with Poorna Bell https://poornabell.substack.com/Catch Love Lives on Independent TV and YouTube, as well as all major social and podcast platforms.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/millenniallove. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Acast powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. will not die hosting the Hills after show. I get thirsty for the hot wiggle. I didn't even know a thirsty man until there was all these headlines. And I get schooled by a tween. Facebook is like, and now that's what my grandma's on. Thank God phone a friend with Jesse Crookshank is not available on Facebook. It's out now wherever you get your podcasts. Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com To me, the idea of love has shifted so much from my 20s.

What I know it is now is about resonance. It's about being seen and loved for who you are. Like, literally, that's it. Hello and welcome to Love Lives, a podcast from The Independent where I, Olivia Petter, will be talking to different guests about the loves of their lives. Today I am thrilled to be joined by award-winning journalist, author and speaker, Pauna Bell. Pauna has published three non-fiction books including the astonishing memoir, Chase the Rainbow, and her debut novel, In Case of Emergency, has just come out in paperback. I am so excited to talk to her about her work today and can't wait to discuss the loves of her

life. So let's get started. Hello Pauna, how are you? Good thank you. Good, thank you so much for joining me today. So as I mentioned your debut novel has just come out in paperback. You've obviously done three non-fiction books that have been hugely successful. Your writing has mostly been in sort of journalism, the non-fiction memoir space. Talk to me a bit about what made you want to write fiction and what that experience was like for you. ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, ysbytio, obsessed with magical realism and so I had these various manuscripts unfinished which were about you know these terrible fantastical stories that got rejected by a lot of different agents. So I kind of actually thought maybe writing fiction is just not you know for me and non-fiction felt a lot more comfortable it felt like an extension of my journalism. But then the pandemic hit and then we had a lot of time to

think and one of the things I was doing around that time was doing a fair amount of reading, but I was also watching a lot of TV, right? And I realised that sort of against, I would say, the backdrop of a lot of other conversations that were happening, so in particular, like, let's say the Black Lives Matter movement, it then sort of prompted, you know, this kind of like tidal wave that then in terms of like other cultures and other communities where we were looking at our own kind of issues and our representation and so on and the stories that were being told. And one of the things I noticed from whether it was watching TV or reading books was that there seemed to me that there really needed to be more stories told with, let's say, South Asian female protagonists that weren't necessarily through like a lens of trauma and oppression. And a big catalyst for that for me was watching Mindy Kaling's Never Have I Ever, which is, you know,

a rom-com. And I think I really wanted to tell a story of a female protagonist who was, you know, I particularly picked her age for a reason, she's 36. And I wanted to kind of tell her experience of figuring life out and figuring dating out and work and all of those other questions that we had but like told through her lens so it's not a book about you know being South Asian it's just the protagonist happens to be and happens to have a family who is and that was really important for me in order to be able to just tell what that experience is like because definitely you know as a journalist coming up I definitely know that a lot of the lifestyle articles that I would read and lifestyles a space that I've worked in for a really long

time did seem to be very predominantly told by white journalists and I was really interested not interested is probably the wrong word I felt it was very vital and necessary to just talk about things I would talk about with my friends but to actually be able to give it a space and and a platform to be roedd yn ddifrifol iawn a'n angen i mi siarad am bethau y byddwn i'n siarad amdano gyda fy ffrindiau, ond i allu rhoi lle ac ymddygiad i'w wneud hynny. Rwy'n hoffi'r hyn rydych chi'n ei ddweud am y ffaith bod y cwreiddor ddim yn cael trawm hefyd, ac mae hynny'n bwysig iawn i'r stori, oherwydd rwy'n credu bod hynny'n rhywbeth sy'n gallu bod gan ddarparwyr o ddynion

oed-ddyfodol yn gofyn, is something that potentially sort of old school publishers would maybe ask and be like, OK, but like, what's the actual, you know, they need to make some sort of trauma for a character who isn't white. And that would have been like the sort of pull of the story. And I feel like we are moving away from that. But it's still like you said, it still feels somewhat like revolutionary in a way. feels somewhat like revolutionary in a way. Yeah I mean it is I mean there's definitely I would a great thing has been in the last couple of years there have been a lot more particularly I would say South Asian female authors who are in the commercial space which has been you know incredible like Deesha Bose just came out with a book that ended up in the Irish Times bestseller list, which is called Dirty Laundry. So you do have this, I can definitely see that shift happening. But, you know, the trauma and oppression narrative, you know, these are tropes, for example, especially on TV, that

have underpinned my own experiences. So these are questions that I get asked about my experience, without people actually asking me an open ended question. So that will these are questions that I get asked about my experience without people actually asking me an open-ended question so that will be the assumption that I must be getting an arranged marriage that will be the assumption that my parents don't approve of my you know my chosen career and while I understand that stereotypes exist I just think it's slightly lazy and I think that there's a way of asking open-ended questions where we don't necessarily use that shorthand that we have come to use just because we see the colour of someone's skin or we see what they look like and make an assumption based on that and but also it's just because you know it it was I'm a creative I really wanted to see people like

my family members like the friends that I have conversations with reflected in the mainstream because it was really important to be able to do that not you know not just as like a I don't know it's not meant to be an educational piece I didn't really I wrote it because I wanted the people that I know and the wider community to feel reflected in that and go oh god finally you know great like it's not about someone being oppressed like as a corner shop owner's like a dweud, o'r Dduw, yn y diwedd, mae'n wych, nid yw'n ymwneud â rhywun sy'n cael ei gyffredin, fel siop corno, gan ddwy ffyrdd. Ie, mae'n ddiddorol ac yn ddiddorol o ran y diwydiant a'r cymdeithas ymlaen i ddod at y stereotipau hynny, yn enwedig nawr, ond mae'n digwydd yn amlwg.

O ran y plot yma o Yn Cas Gwyr, mae'n dechrau gyda'ch gynhyrch yn Bell. Mae hi'n cael profiad o ddechrau'n ddiweddar. Felly, ddweud wrthym am y stori a sut mae hi wedi cyflawni o'r pwynt cyntaf. Mae hi'n gyrfa gwych iawn. Mae hi'n cael swydd hwyfain yn Lundain ac mae hi'n tecstio ar ei ffôn. Nid yw hyn yn spoiler oherwydd mae hi ar y jaquet. Dwi dweud hynny. Ie. this isn't a spoiler because it's on the jacket, just should say that, but she is

texting on her phone and she falls through like the open doors of a beer cellar, a pub cellar and wakes up in hospital and she finds that her emergency contact has been called and it's her ex-boyfriend from four years ago and she has like a really big like WTF moment because she could not remember putting him down as her contact but also she has got a lot of time to recuperate and as she's doing that she realizes that she doesn't know who her person would be you know we all have hopefully a person that we know is in our phone that we would immediately phone or contact if something goes wrong and she just doesn't have that and

more than realizing that she doesn't have that she's just thinking how did my life actually get to this point and it prompts this examination of you know her entire friendship groups so she has a lot of brunch friends she has a lot of work colleagues but she doesn't like none of those people when she actually needs them none of those people really show up for her and it's you know they're from the the sort of the school of anything you need let me know is is what I call it which basically means I don't really want to do anything so I'm going to put the like onus on you to have to tell me and of course like very often people don't ask for help

or don't aren't able to articulate what they need. So she revisits, you know, a lot of the sort of a very core friendship group that she had when she was younger. She also then revisits her relationship with her sister, who she's got a fairly strained relationship with, her older sister, who has a teenage daughter, and her parents as well. And with tied up in and around all of that which is about reconnection and you know and read that redefining point in your life it's it does also look at the fact that you know she doesn't really think she wants kids she doesn't really know what's happening with her love life but it was also

really important for me to write that into the book and for that not to be her defining characteristic because very often particularly with these types of books particularly with commercial books you know I feel like there is a greater pressure placed on female authors to have to have a romantic resolution you know than there is on male authors and I just didn't I wanted that to be incidental I wanted that to be something that she discusses sure but it's not the most important thing that her life pivots around and so the entire book is about her figuring that out so I would say it's got several layers to it and people tend to like find what they what reflects most in

them and you could come from like any background any walk of life but you know you'll find something in there for you I think I think one of the things that Fe allwch chi ddod o unrhyw ymddygiad, unrhyw ffordd o'r bywyd, ond fe fyddwch chi'n gweld rhywbeth yn yno i chi. Rwy'n credu mai un o'r pethau a fyddai'n cymeriadu gyda fi yn fwy yw'r ffordd o ffrindiau a'r stori lline. Mae'r profiad hyn yn arbennig iawn. Pan fyddwch chi'n dod allan o'ch 20au i'w bywyd cyntaf, mae'r naturiad o'ch ffrindiau yn dechrau newid drastig. the nature of your friendships start to kind of drastically change and you know it's I've heard you describe friendships as tidal before and I think that's a really good way of describing it I think that kind of first big tide comes after your sort of mid-20s when people start getting married people start having children or talking about children careers kind of step up and become a more prominent pillar in your life and as a result those kind of intimate everyday friendships pillar bwysig yn eich bywyd ac fel canlyniad, y ffrindiau ddysg ddysg ddysg yma gyda phobl rydych chi wedi mynd i'r ysgol neu'r brifysgol gyda'ch

bobl, a allai ffwrddio ychydig ac hefyd rydych chi'n newid. Felly mae popeth, mae ffyrdd mawr yn y foment hwn ac rwy'n credu bod y syniad o cael y profiad o ddiwedd ymlaen a chyflawni a ddim yn gwybod pwy yw'ch person neu pwy yw'ch gang up and not knowing who your person is or who your kind of gang is, is a really, really relatable one and obviously this is something we see Belle going through as she finds herself in this position but what was it that made you want to examine that and you know obviously I'm talking about this from the perspective of late 20s but she's in her mid-30s and what do you think the difference is, you know if I'm feeling this now, what's the difference between that experience in your mid-30s as well?

It's such an enormous topic, right? Because I think for me, there's like two things there. So I think that no one really talks about or prepares you for the first time that that happens in your 20s. When you realise that your friends are kind of either moving off in different ways or their lives are changing and yours is maybe not changing in the same way and how you navigate that. And I remember in my 20s that being such a painful process and part of that pain was just not expecting it. And I definitely think that while female friendship is one of the most incredible things the I for sure

know that like from as early as I could remember the expectation is that you remain friends until the day you die and if you don't then that's a reflection on you and and that says something about your character so for example even now when if I was to tell someone that you know I have friends that I don't speak to anymore I can see it in their eyes there that the look is what have I what have you done as a person to have created that and so I think that there is that expectation and so in your 20s if you haven't experienced that before it can be so painful because you feel like this should not this friendship should not be breaking up or this friendship should not be changing or becoming more distant you know in the same.

Because especially when you're younger, you also just have more time. So you can be time intensive with your friendships in a way that as you get older, you just can't necessarily do that. But I think when you go through it the first time, for me, what I realized was that the thing that was making it really painful was expecting everything to remain exactly the same. And if it didn't remain exactly the same, that meant that we didn't care about each other or that we didn't love each other. And I have learned from now having gone through at least about three iterations of this, you know, I'm in my early 40s, that that just isn't the case. And also, if a friendship doesn't work out or if it drops off or if it's just someone you haven't spoken to for a few years it's

okay like it's okay we're not meant to have everyone in our lives that we have met since birth you know it's that's just not how life works right but also sometimes I don't know that I think that friendship has got such strong parallels with romantic relationships. Like when people go, oh, this friendship ended and I have no idea why. It's like when people go, this relationship ended and I have no idea why.

It's like, I think you do probably know why. It's just that it takes a lot of quite painful examination. And very often it requires you to say that it's not all about the other person I think in friendships it can so become about the good person and the bad person and who was right and who was wrong and I just don't think that life is as black and white as that and I think it is owning up to how you are as a friend and and you know what were you there for what were you not there for that I think we don't necessarily examine enough about our own behavior within that. a'r hyn a oeddwch chi yno i, a'r hyn nad oeddech chi yno i, dwi'n credu nad ydym yn edrych yn llawer am ein hunain yn ymwneud â hynny.

Rwy'n credu bod hynny'n ddiddorol iawn am Belle, yw ei fod hi'n ymddangos i ddynnu rhywfaint o ddysgu ar rhai o'r ffrindiau sy'n symud mewn ffyrdd nad ydyn nhw, gan ymddiriedaethau cymdeithasol, a'r ffordd rydyn ni'n ei ddilyn fel dynion, yn ymddiriedaethau hynny ffermio, plant a phopeth arall. Roeddwn i'n darllen y cyflwyniad y gwnaethoch chi gyda Natasha Lun i'r sgwrs am ffyrdd a ffyrdd, ac fe wnaethoch chi siarad am sut, ar ôl golli eich gwartheg, Rob,

fe wnaethoch chi'ch troi at ei gilydd yn ymwybyddu eich ffrindiau a ceisio gweithio i'w gweithio, yn eich ffordd eich hun, pwy oedd yno i chi. Ac un o'r cyfraithiau a wnes i'u cyflwyno yn fawr oedd, fe wnaethoch chi ddweud, os nad oeddwn i yma, a fyddai unrhyw un yn gweld hynny? own way who was there for you and one of the quotes that I kind of really picked up on was you said you know if I wasn't here would anyone kind of notice and you went traveling and and then when you came back from traveling which you wrote about in your book In Search of Silence which is brilliant if anyone's listening and wants to read it and then when you came back you said that one of the most valuable realizations you had was that it's no one else's responsibility o'r ffurfion mwyaf gwerthfawr yr oeddech chi oedd nad oedd yn rhan arall o wneud i chi teimlo'n arbennig ac yn sicr, sy'n ddysgu pwysig i Bel hefyd, i fwyso'r ymddygiad hwnnw a chyfno'r teimladau o'r ffordd,

mae fy ffrindiau yn gwerthu'r peth hwn i mi, mewn ffordd o ddatblygu'ch cymhwysedd a'ch gwerthfawr eich hun bob amser, sy'n hawdd i'w wneud, yn enwedig nawr... ...pan mae gennym yr holl ffwrdd o rhwng ffurfio a chymhwyso'r unigol... ...ddim yna ddifrif o sut i gael hynny o'ch hun. Mae'n ddifrif o gael hynny o'n ffrindiau a phobl sy'n ein caru... ...a chyflawni arall. Os ydych yn ymddiriedol ar hynny, byddwch yn cael ymdrin yn anodd. just get it from our friends and the people around us that love us and looking for validation elsewhere but obviously if you rely on that you're going to fall into quite tricky territory when you realize that that's actually not what your friends are for and if you lean too heavily on them for

that it's going to push people away um so talk to me about how you came to that realization when you were traveling and and why it was such a game changer for you? Yeah, I mean, so I have found that what actually causes like a lot of that pain is when you're just trying to hold on to people really tightly or you're trying to sort of extract something from them to alleviate your own pain around something. And I mean, I would venture to say, because I'm a massive believer in personal evolution like even how I think about things has changed since I not not radically but it has changed a little bit since

I gave that interview to Natasha I think for me a very very big realization was the understanding that and particularly after Rob passed away and it wasn't anything to do with his passing, it was more to do with, I think, understanding that whatever void you have inside of you, and I think everyone has their own little, you know, void, however big or small that is, it just can't be filled by someone else. And if, for example example you're a people

pleaser as as I used to be I think I'm a lot less these days but if you are then sometimes that can be transactional you know in terms of like how much love and how many obligations you fulfill in order to be able to then receive that back and if you're then sometimes giving that to people who don't show their love in that way or who just you know sometimes giving that to people who don't show their love in that way or who just you know some people just take and they don't necessarily reciprocate that's a really really hard place to be and I think that when I sort of especially um I think when I wrote my second book in search of silences which was when I went traveling was I was just so angry at like everything it wasn't at any one particular person I just but I was just so angry at like everything. It wasn't at any one particular person.

I just, but I was angry at everything. And I was angry that like, I didn't want to feel the way I felt and I didn't see an end point to it. And I did not feel like I really fit in my life and that my friends and my family, as much as I love them, just couldn't understand the level of pain that I was in.

And I think sort of subsequently from that, it is the realization that actually, you know, you can be loved by people and you can be supported by people. And of course, like, you know, there are days that I have that are really difficult where I know if I talk to my best mate or my sister, like they will be able to like make me laugh or help me through that. And so I'm not negating, you know, any of that. I just don't think that you can necessarily rely on another person's love and support to get you through a tough time because they literally can't do the internal work for you and they can't like you know when you're sort of waking up in the middle of the night

they're not going to be the people who are there to help you through that because it's just not practical right and so I think it's about like working on on on doing that internal work and working on that stuff that does make you feel whole and you know to move it beyond like because I think self-care has become like such a sort of buzzword but it is because it's not just about the things that you're externally buying or that you're doing or you know taking a day off or any of that stuff it's like it's a really hard, mucky work of looking at yourself, like yourself as a person and realising like, what are the patterns that you get into?

What are the mistakes that you keep making? You know, what is the thing that you keep saying that you're going to change that you're not changing? Like, what are the things that are holding you back from making those changes? And that's really hard work. Like, people find it really tough to do that. And the reason why I feel that that's so important I don't think you do all of this work on yourself and then you

can make friends with people then you find love I think all of this stuff has to go alongside just living right but if you don't know like what your internal sense of self is how do you then like form a meaningful friendship or how do you then like form a meaningful friendship or how do you then form like a meaningful relationship with someone because to me like the idea of love has shifted so much from my 20s than it has to what I know it is now and what I what I know it is now is is about resonance it's about being seen and loved for who you are like literally that's it yw'n ymwneud â rhesynwad. Mae'n ymwneud â bod yn cael ei weld a'i caru am yr hyn rydych chi. Yn llythyr, dyna'r peth. Ac mae bod o amlwg â phobl sy'n gallu eich gweld chi am yr hyn rydych chi, rydych chi'n teimlo y gallwch chi fod eich hun gyda'ch hun yn hytrach na fersiwn gwahanol o eich hun.

Ac nid wyf yn meddwl y gallwch chi ddod â'r math hwn o fawr os nad ydych chi'n gwybod chi'n ymwneud â'r hyn rydych chi. Rydw i'n dweud, rydw i'n meddwl, bod eich syniad o fawr wedi newid llawer, ond rhywbeth rydych chi wedi'i ddweud yn ôl amdano yw rhywbeth rydych chi'n gobeithio y byddai'n dweud, dwi'n meddwl, bod eich syniad o ffurf wedi newid llawer, ond rhywbeth rydych chi wedi ddweud yn ôl amdano yw bod rhywbeth rydych chi'n gobeithio ei fod yn ei wybod pan oeddech chi'n ifanc yw nad yw ffurf yn rhywbeth sy'n seiliedig ar ystyr a'r ffwrdd a chyfarwyddo eich person a'ch lobster. Mae'n rhywbeth sy'n digwydd i chi drosodd ac ar ôl mewn ffyrdd gwahanol. i chi drosodd a throsodd eto mewn ffyrdd gwahanol. Pam mae'n bwysig i chi ddysgu hynny'n bwysig i'w ddysgu'n gyntaf? A pam nad ydym yn cael y dysgu hwnnw pan ydym yn ifanc? Pam nad ydym yn cael y gweld y cariad o'r ffordd byth?

Dwi'n credu, i ateb y cwestiwn am pam nad ydym yn cael y gweld y cariad, dwi'n credu, os ydych chi'n wneud hynny, dwi'n credu yn benodol, ac mi allaf siarad yn unig am fy mhrofiad, why we don't have that view. I think because, you know, if you're a woman I think in particular, and I can only speak to my experience of it, but I think we are so heavily socially conditioned to believe that finding someone, finding our one, our romantic partner, is the most important thing that you can do with your life. And I think when you then like layer on things like social conditioning which you know we maybe it's getting better but we have grown up a lot of us in a world where we have had a greater pressure around us to achieve quote marks domestic success in the same way that let's say for for men, it might be economic success. And when you consider what domestic success is,

of course that includes finding a partner, settling down, getting married, having kids, all of that stuff, right? I would say in terms of how it's changed has been that the understanding that, you know, love is something that happens to you over and over again I think has been really important for me because it alleviates the pressure on a relationship so I got I got this really sweet DM from a lady who was 25 and she was going through her first breakup and just was bereft because she thought that that was her person and you know and and what could I say

to make her feel better and I think when you're going through a breakup you know there's not much I think that anyone can say because you could say there's more fish in the sea all of that stuff but that's not what you want to hear at that point in time because just everything feels like it's on fire right but for me for sure the understanding that love is something that is incredible it's still the most incredible thing I think but that even if you love someone and it ends there's a very high probability that at some point in your lifetime you're going to experience that again if not more than that and what that understanding does is it allows you to set your own boundaries it allows you to say what you want from a relationship and to have standards to be

quite frank and like we were discussing this earlier in terms of you know the the expectation and the barometer for what if you're heterosexual right what heterosexual women um the barometer that's set foot for men and it's so low it's so low um is that what that understanding does is it allows you to be okay with with putting you know to set a boundary down or i'm not saying look don't get me wrong it can totally go the other way as well and i definitely you know i'm i'm in an age group where i see people shooting down relationships or dates with people before even get started because it doesn't meet some arbitrary list of whatever they want right and there is there is that is also not great but i definitely think that that knowing when to call time on something knowing when something is not working for you is is a measurable and I think it's very very

closely tied to the understanding that there's not one person for you because if you believe that there's one person for you and it doesn't even necessarily mean that let's say you're in a relationship with someone and this person you know it's just maybe not a great partner they might just be quite thoughtless or you end up having to do most of the housework or whatever it is if you believe that that person is your one the amount of crap that you are going to put up with in that relationship to fulfill that narrative which by the way you've set that for yourself like no one else has told you you don't like collect a ticket stub which says you know this person is going to be yours forever

after you know there's in my opinion i don't think i don't think there's something like where we're Don't collect a ticket stub which says, this person is going to be yours forever after. In my opinion, I don't think there's something where we're fated to have to be with this one person or whatever. I think that we have multiple soulmates. I don't think that there's only one soulmate. Again, because who says that there's only one? It's a belief. Where did that belief come from? It's not based on fact.

It's not science. So I think if you can kind of release some of that it just means that you have like a closer approximation of what you want and i believe that we all have that sense like so okay in certain um ideologies we would call the serenity right where um you have like a baseline level of of when you know when something's messing with that. If you're constantly feeling anxious or weird or not yourself around someone, that is the sign to get out of dodge and to set yourself a boundary or to talk to them about what's going on to see whether they can change. change. youth cope with cyber aggression, working to bridge the diversity gap in child psychology research. At UBC, our researchers are answering today's most pressing questions. To learn how we're moving the world forward, visit ubc.ca forward happens here. ACAST powers the world's

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Acast.com So your first love is a place. Why don't you tell us about that? So my first love is, I've chosen India because my family background is we're Indian from South India specifically and when I was seven my parents made the decision well they made the decision a bit earlier than that but we moved back to India and the idea was that they wanted to raise us as Indian kids they didn't want us to be you know British Asian kids so we stayed there for about five

years and my dad was like I can't work here so we all that we basically then moved back to the UK but that particular period in time I would say for both myself and my sister, really was so formative and it has shaped so much about us as adults and how we see things and how we view things. And even though, you know, when we came back to England, we grew up in Kent, so we grew up in a very, well I did, in a very white-dominated area. So India was somewhere that we would go back to fairly regularly. I would say the longest we ever went was maybe three years, so we'd go either every two years or every one year.

And all of our cousins, most of them are still in India. And I think what's really interesting to me is the India that I know from my family being there and you know and how we are there and also I worked in Mumbai for a little bit of time in my 20s and then the version of India that you get told about when you're in the UK and for me that's split out into two things either other like British Asians who we don't have the same experience or upbringing so they have a very different relationship to you know their sort of country of their parents origin than my sister and I do like we very much have a much stronger relationship I would say and at the same time you also have a lot of people who, let's say, are not British Asian,

but who visit India and then want to talk to you about India and to tell you about their version of India. And also like growing up, you know, in my 20s, like it was a place where lots of like travel guides were being written about. It was this whole thing that you just sort of would go there and do it as a big trip. whole thing that you just sort of would go there and do it as a big trip. And so it's what has kind of happened out of it is it gets caricaturised. So it's like, oh my God, like, isn't it so busy? And it's this and it's that. And it's like, okay, yeah, I mean, yeah, it can be, but it's a huge country, you know. So for me, it's always been a place that I've just gotten so much out of and I'm so inspired by and that I feel reflects me as a person but one of the things I did in 2018 was I felt it was really important to see

India in a way that wasn't just about it being a busy place it has you know the majority of it as a country is rural and um I think being able to just go to places that were really quiet really peaceful you know where you've got sort of like um like water mass like you know masses of land and so on it was it was just something that really cemented something in me I went back to my ancestral homeland which is this like tiny, not so tiny anymore, but it's like a it's sort of along the coastline along the west, southwest of India and it was it's you know the sand like the sea all of that kind of coming together and I just thought oh I come from here like my ancestors come from here and it was a sense of expansiveness, it was

just a really really deep love of a place that actually means something to me in a way that I feel really rooted and connected to which I've been really grateful for because for most of my teens and my 20s I felt like I was stuck between two Indias the India that I knew and the India that I felt I was being told about by other people who traveled there. It sounds like a very kind of deeply spiritual connection that you have with it and I wonder because everything you're talking about it's kind of like this idea of home and I think that's such an important thing to establish like where is it that I feel like this reflects who I am where I feel most comfortable and it's not necessarily where you grew up it's not necessarily where you came from

it's just a sense of of total comfort and I guess belonging right would you say that that when you think of home, you think of India? Yes and no, because I know that England is my home. I mean, because there are parts of me that are really British, you know. And, for example, in India, they wouldn't consider me to be Indian. So because, you know, I wasn't born there, I don't speak the language, I don't have the accent. So throughout my entire life, Indians don't necessarily consider us to be Indian, unless we do something that they're really proud of,

in which case we're definitely very Indian, which I'm very happy for them to claim that, that's fine. But I would say it's complicated, because on the one hand, But I would say it's complicated because on the one hand, you know, I've grown up in Britain, parts of which don't consider me to be British. And I also come from India, which doesn't necessarily consider me to be Indian. So what I feel is it's more of a sense of so belonging is not just necessarily a place. It's also a people. And and so for me being part of being in that country the landscape is like essential to that sure but it's also about the people who who make that up so one of the places that I went to when I was kind of a travel journalist in the early

noughties was the Indian Himalayas and I'd never been there before and it wasn't just about the landscape it was about the people like they were ridiculously friendly um i learned about their lives and the way that they conduct their lives in a way that like my it's so different to like how my own family um are and the food that we eat and so on but i felt like i belonged there like there's still we could be it's the seventh biggest country I think in the world so it's on one hand yes there are parts of me that don't feel like I belong but I also know that I'm connected to an enormous country and enormous people that I could identify with like with a click on my fingers yeah it goes back to what we were saying before about the connection

just like human connection that's like what I keep kind of returning to over and over again. And your second love is a person. Tell us why you've chosen your sister. So I've chosen my older sister, Priya, because I would say she has shaped like so much about my life, really, that I don't know. She's always been someone that I've always looked up to. How much older is she? She's four years older, but she is ridiculously cool. And the way she dresses, the way she decorates her home. I mean, her background is science,

so she's a science journalist. So we kind of have again we work in different industries but also we have overlaps right the reason why I've chosen her is because um number one there was something that she did for me during the pandemic that was incredible which was that I was you know she's she lives in Spain I was in the UK and I was doing lockdown on my own. I also caught COVID really badly at the beginning. And then I had long COVID for 10 months where I just could not do anything. And she has a kid, you know, so it's not like she doesn't have like a lot going on.

But she checked in with me every day. Like we then started voice noting each other every day. We still do it. She still checks in on me like but not in a kind of as if I'm incapable it's it's just that I I feel the presence of her there I feel that I have someone that I know supports me but also is really invested in finding out how I'm doing and loves me and wants me to be well in the most selfless way possible but I think she has also written a book so she's written her first non-fiction called Motherland which is about her identity as a parent

and so we've been having a lot of conversations about you know our childhood and our upbringing because we had different childhoods she was sent away to live in India at a younger age so we were separated for a time when we were kids but we were talking about our childhood and certain difficult parts of it when we were together and I don't think I'd realize like how much she had looked after me and how much she had shielded me from because I literally just don't have memories of certain things and it's like a debt that I can't repay you know I don't I you know usually that your older sibling is like the person who gets like you know the the sort of it has to be like the more responsible one and so on and there's more pressure on them but I didn't I don't think I realized how much and I think when

I sort of take into account like how incredible our relationship is as sisters um but also she's she's my friend she's not just my sister but she's also someone because she is older than me particularly in my 40s as I struggle to figure out like what my identity is as a woman in my 40s because we don't we don't really know what we're doing because who our parents were who our mothers were in their 40s is not what it's like for us now she is someone who I look to for that and you know and she reminds me to kind of be more compassionate of people and just whether it's about learning new things and what's really funny about this is in my paperback and I've literally just delivered a second manuscript which in my paperback you know the core relationship in that is a sibling relationship, our two sisters and in my second manuscript that I've just delivered it's not the core part of the book but there's

definitely a dynamic with two sisters in that but then nothing like the relationship that I have with my sister because I think the way that I perhaps explore that in my fiction is is really what happens if your relationship is not good like if you know and the reason why I think I'm really obsessed with that is because when we were growing up you know my sister and I were very much at the dynamic was that she was looking after me and I would just like you know run around and be like a maniac and it got to the point where when I then became a teenager I was just like we don't have anything in common and I think it was when she sort of threatened to tell my

parents that she'd found a packet of cigarettes in my handbag and I was like you're such a snitch like who does that and I think I decided that she wasn't gonna be you know my ally in this or whatever because she basically was an extension of my parents and then we went on this holiday to India it was just me and her we'd never been on holiday anywhere just the two of us and we got drunk on the plane and then we just actually just started talking to each other like we were human beings and that was such a pivotal moment and if that moment hadn't have happened I don't think we would have had the relationship that we have today. Oh, that's so interesting. And it was, yeah, it was such a sliding doors moment.

And I think possibly that might be what I, especially in case of emergency, it's like what happens if that, what would have happened to us if we hadn't had that moment and if we were then having to have that moment in our adult lives, you know? Yeah, because it's interesting because obviously there's a, moment and if we were then having to have that moment in our adult lives you know yeah because it's interesting because obviously there's a that you know there's a friendship dynamic with with your siblings but it's different it's not quite it can't be as tidal as as the relationships the

romantic relationships you have and the platonic relationships you have because you have that family pull to one another so it's almost like I think in a way it can probably be easier sometimes to think well I'm just gonna cut you out right now because you because the pain of those kind of disagreements or those conflicts I think are so much more deeply felt with a sibling than with a friend because because they are your family so it's almost like maybe the response can be more dramatic. Yeah, because the stuff that it triggers, I mean, if you think about when you have arguments with your family, it's not necessarily really about the thing

that you're arguing about in the present. It's like arguments that have been dredged up from years and years ago. And the only way I think you really get through that is by talking to each other or by being honest with each other about what upset you and why that upset you so you know I mean I don't mean you know my sister and I have definitely had to have like difficult talks about that or when we've upset the other and why it's upset us and so on but the one thing I would say is that we listen to each other and the thing that um the reason why I think you know she's um she's honestly the person that I

speak to the most in in any given day um not necessarily in real time on the phone but the the number of we've already exchanged like four voice notes and it's like early afternoon but um but it's because also we we both have a very similar ethics and b it's because also we both have, A, very similar ethics, and B, it's the knowledge. And I think both of us, you know, have been through therapy and whatnot, but it's the knowledge that you evolve. So it's okay to change, and in fact, it's necessary to change, and we can help each other change. And, you know, we're very similar in that we're open to learning you know rather than so

and actually and I say that because it sounds like such a like backhanded compliment that I'm giving myself but like very often her reaction to something when we talk about something is oh I didn't realize that tell me more whereas sometimes from some people in in my life it will be this obstinacy of what I don't want to change how I am so I'm just gonna keep doing what I'm doing or I'm still gonna believe in what I believe because it's too much effort to like learn something new or to change who I am do you know what I mean so she has like a whole growth mindset about which a lot of people don't have because I think a lot of a lot of us the default is defensive but the conversations that

I'm having with people is is worrying because of the lack of empathy like the the sort of the refusal to like even think about what it might be like for the other person who is saying x y and z and when you're then having a conversation with someone like that I'm like I can't continue the conversation with you because if you can't if we can't operate from a place of empathy and and you also don't want to take on any other points of view to educate yourself or to learn or to try and understand all you're actually really seeking is for me to confirm what you believe in which case you might as well just like talk to a mirror like there's no point us having that conversation so now to be honest I just either shut those conversations down or I just change the subject

or I just don't talk to those people as much yeah I think that's a really good approach um okay finally your third love is an activity a hobby I don't know how you would describe it but I'm so excited to talk to you about this tell Tell me about your third love. My third love is powerlifting, which is competitive weightlifting. And the goal is to lift the heaviest weights that you can possibly handle. I fell into it by accident. So basically, I started to dabble around in learning how to lift weights a few years ago because I didn't really know I'd never sort of lifted a barbell I didn't really know what any of it was and and I really enjoyed it I really enjoyed the the fact that I didn't realize how strong I was that I would very

often like go into a gym session and think I couldn't do something you know because you if you're usually working to a program you know what numbers you need to hit and I would kind of go nope there's absolutely no way I'm doing that and then you do it and you'd go oh like maybe there's other stuff that perhaps I've been self-defeating about that I you know um wasn't aware of before um powerlifting specifically however um I started into at the end of 2018 where I had a PT who's still my coach who was and is a professional powerlifter. And it's one thing led to another where I was training in this like, you know, local commercial gym. And my approach back then was that I was fairly still fairly new to it so I didn't the way I kind of handled myself in the weight section of the gym was by looking

really unapproachable and just having headphones on all the time but this guy sort of like tapped me on the shoulder and I was like you know snarled at him and just was like what do you want and he said oh there's this unofficial powerlifting competition. Do you want to do it? And I just was like, no, that sounds horrendous. Because I also didn't know what powerlifting was. And in my mind, when he explained it, I could just imagine like big dudes from like World's Strongest Man, right? And I was like, I don't think that that's me.

But then I spoke to my coach about it. And he was like, oh, by the way, I actually do this as a sport. and I can help you with this if you want and I think that you should try it and I said I think that you'd really like it and so I did the training for it and the training for it was it was unlike anything I'd ever done before because basically your goal is to get as strong as you can before your competition day like literally that's it and so what ended up happening was that I just had to humble myself and learn a lot of things so for example if you are the type of person that does a lot of cardio or I used to do a lot of cardio and um you know unfortunately we we still live in a time I think where weight loss and

weight maintenance is has such a strong correlation with physical activity rather than that being a separate thing. So I would say that I would always try and cheat the system. So you're trying to work out or train with the least amount of food and you don't really think about how much you're sleeping or whatever. But when you're training for a weightlifting competition like all of that stuff has to be in check and if you aren't prioritizing your sleep if you're not fueling if you're not eating properly you literally can't can't lift the bar and what happens is and i did that a couple of times is that when you realize that you are literally sabotaging your own progress for some arbitrary marker in society that tells you that you need to be your slimmest or whatever,

and you're like, but that means that I can't lift this thing up, which actually makes me feel really good within myself. For me, it was like a no-brainer. So I just focused on that and then had a tonne of fun at the competition. People are super friendly, so it reminds you that you know humanity isn't like dead and and it kind of like affirms your belief in in things I think a little bit and so and powerlifting is one of those things where I don't think it's a coincidence that a lot of people come to it with some sort of like mental health story or journey and because I do think like what it does for you mentally and psychologically and it is is enormous enormously positive but also if you are going into

something like lifting heavy weights and if you're being self-defeating about it if you go into there thinking that you can't do it you may have the physical strength to do it but if your mental side isn't sorted out you're not going to be able to do it because you're the physical strength to do it but if your mental side isn't sorted out you're not going to be able to do it because you're just going to tell yourself that you can't do it but it has been it's been something that's changed my life it's introduced me I've made friends through it at a time in my life in my late 30s where to be quite frank I didn't know it was possible to make new friends like I just thought oh my god is is this it like basically I'm just I've lost like 50 percent of my friendship group because they've got kids and I don't so it has changed everything but

biggest the one of the biggest things that has changed is is definitely I think the realization that there's a lot of times when my brain will tell myself something that actually isn't true um it will tell me I will tell myself that I can't do something and that's not the case. But also it gives me an enormous sense of, I think, confidence, particularly when I am moving in male-dominated spaces and especially when, you know, things like sitting on a plane and someone spreading out or on a bus,

it's like that is not happening around me. I'm not giving my space up for anyone. That is it for today. Thank you so much for joining us. You can listen to Love Lives on all major podcast platforms and you can also watch us on independent TV, all major connected devices and all social media platforms. I will see you next time. Bye.

This episode is brought to you by Google Pixel. I'm Jessi Cruikshank. I host the number one comedy podcast called Phone a Friend. I also have three kids. I need help making every day easier. So I switched to Google Pixel. It's a phone powered by Gemini, your personal AI assistant. Gemini can help you summarize your unread emails, suggest what to make with the food in your fridge, and it helped me achieve a family photo where

everyone is smiling at the camera. I didn't think it was possible, but it is with Google Pixel 9. Learn more at store.google.com.