Anshula Kapoor gets real and unfiltered on the next episode of the Tell Me All podcast.
In this conversation, with The Quint she opens up about her brother Arjun Kapoor being her support system, blaming herself for her parents’ separation, dealing with her mother’s loss, being bullied as a child, and finding her way through grief and insecurities.
She also shares why she reached out to Janhvi and Khushi Kapoor after they lost their mother (Sridevi), and what holding space for each other as a family means to her.
"Bhaiya (Arjun) and I didn't want them (Janhvi and Khushi) to navigate this alone, because they were also much younger than we were. When mom died, bhaiya was 25, I was 21. They had to go through the same beats at 17 and 20 - that’s young."
We reached out to them to be able to do that support for them from this point of view. Also, bhaiya wanted to be there for dad in every way that he possibly could as a son.Anshul Kapoor
Talking about her childhood, she recalls how her parents’ divorce deeply affected her sense of self, "under confidence is something I think I’ve battled since the age of five or six, perhaps it seeped into my being once my parents separated.”
She says, she doesn't remember a single moment, even as a child, when she didn't have to be resilient, "as a child navigating the separation of your parents where nobody was understanding exactly what was going on, plus having to deal with all of those aunties giving you those side-eyes and like those judgy looks and people not wanting to talk to you - suddenly people are silent when you’re entering a group. It does make you resilient. It does make you a little bit more thick-skinned. It also makes you a lot more isolated."
I, for the longest time, thought that my parents’ relationship didn’t work out because I did something — I was the root cause of it.Anshula Kapoor
“For a six year old to carry that weight is a lot. My mother helped me understand that relationships are between two people, and they start and end because of things that happen with those two people and you as a child have no bearing in that," she adds.
She lost her mother at the age of 21. Remembering her, Anshula said, "she was the wind beneath my wings. She was my spinal cord. She was my confidence booster. I had no self-confidence, I had no self-esteem — I had none of that. If I didn’t have her, giving me the positive reinforcement that I needed for my own mental health and for my own sanity, I don’t think I would ever have been able to lead a normal life."
After her mother passed, Anshula took a job in Delhi with Google, and felt she did that because she was running away from dealing with her grief.
"I felt like I had to own up to a lot more responsibility and to a great extent, by taking a job that was based in Delhi I was running away. I didn’t want to grieve therefore I didn’t want to be in the same house that I had lived with her in."
Within a year, she realised she needed to get her life in order, "and that could only have happened had I first come back home and actually tried to remake the feeling of home in the house that I lived in with her and bhaiya.”
Speaking of how Arjun took care of her and never once let her feel like a burden, she said, "he was taking care of me financially while he was still in his 20s. So he technically was taking care of me like he would have to take care of a child. It was a lot for him also."
So when he says that I took a step back in my life, I don’t think it’s completely true because he doesn’t realise how much of himself he gave to me without which I would not have been able to do half of anything that I did at that time.Anshula Kapoor
Having to grow up too quickly and take on responsibilities at a young age, Anshula reflects on what makes her proud, “I’m proud of not giving up. I’m proud of taking each day as it comes and just going on. Because there were lots of days and lots of moments where I didn’t want to live."