‘If you talk about uncomfortable  and bad aspects, they get better’

‘If you talk about uncomfortable  and bad aspects, they get better’

She comes from a family of successful people. Her father Mahesh Bhatt is a veteran filmmaker, mother Soni Razdan is an established actress, her elder sister Pooja is well-known actor-director and younger sister, Alia is the current superstar of Bollywood. Not much was known about Shaheen Bhatt, the elder daughter of Mahesh and Soni, until she shared about her battle with depression on her social media handle.
 
The screenwriter and author says that it all started with the Instagram post in 2016. “After that post, I wrote a few articles. It made me realise that lot of people were going through this. Penguin approached me to write the book after those posts and I jumped at it, because in my head I was thinking, ‘If a post and articles could make so much of difference, a full length book will go much longer and far’,” she says. 

It was a logical thing for Shaheen to do because she is a huge believer in sharing. “I believe that if you talk about uncomfortable and bad aspects, they get better. It’s something  you should do. I will not preach, if I cannot do it,” she adds. 

Writing the book — I’ve Never Been (Un)Happier — must have made her relive those moments and Shaheen agrees and says, “It wasn’t a pleasant thing to go back and face things you don’t want to. It’s not a very positive experience in that sense. But I think, in the end, having to go back and write the book helped me understand myself a lot better. I got to learn so many things about myself because you really look for the lessons as you are trying your best to get through it. I had to look for the positives because I had to write this. The process has been rewarding and I made some profound connections with people. I had some real moments with people.” 

Shaheen, who has been dealing with depression from the age of 13, says it’s quite chronic. It comes and goes but the acceptance of the situation made things much simpler for her. “I am OK now but I might feel bad next week. The moment, I stopped running from the fact that this is something which is a part of my life, when I stopped constantly trying to pretend to be ok, that was when I could focus my energy on looking after myself. Otherwise all my energy was spent on telling myself and others that ‘I am fine and trying to be happy’. Self acceptance is something my father also taught me. He always says, ‘Stop feeling bad about feeling bad’.”  
 
Ask her what has been her support system apart from her family and she says, “I have my cats, they make me very happy and they are very therapeutic. I love animals and I find being with them extremely curative. I also have journal entries, which made me feel like I had someone to talk to, because I couldn’t talk to people.” 

She adds that when someone is going through depression, they lose interest in things they love. “But I feel consciously spending time and doing things you love helps massively,” says Shaheen. 
   
The screenwriter also believes that talking about depression will help people going through that phase. “For some reason, people don’t talk about it. It can start a chain kind of thing, one person talks it, the second does and more come forward. It will move to a point when depression will become a conversation that people will have,” she says, adding, “I feel very strongly that there should be awareness about mental health in schools as well. If I would have known about this in school, I would have known what was happening to me a lot sooner. For most people, mental illness starts when one is under the age of 10. It’s, therefore, very important for parents to talk about this issue with their children. Mental illness is equivalent to being physical ill.” 

Did the fact that she came from a family whom everyone knew as compared to her, play on her mind, the brave writer says, “When I was younger, yes it was so. It’s a natural thing because you want to sort of match up and want to be part of something that the whole family is doing. As I got older, I realised that I wanted to be a part of film industry in my own way. If I want to be a screenwriter, I will become one as and when I feel the need to do it. After a certain point, it never bothered me.” 

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