Self-aware, sharp and gently irreverent, she moves between insight and humour without missing a beat. This World Book Day (April 23), author-filmmaker Twinkle Khanna offers Medha Shri Dahiya a glimpse into the perceptive lens through which she sees the world.
Twinkle is known for writing Mrs Funnybones (2015), The Legend of Lakshmi Prasad (2016), Pyjamas Are Forgiving (2018), and Welcome to Paradise (2023). Excerpts:
You are known to put your views bluntly. If your next book offended everyone a little, would you consider that success?
I have a feeling that it will offend quite a few people, but my job is not to go around offending people. My job is to make people reflect on the things that are visible. But our own conditioning blinds us to those factors. It might make people uncomfortable and they might call it offensive… (But) I think about how I will unravel the layers of conditioning, not just around them but also around me because I also find my way through life as I write.
What is the most uncomfortable truth that you’ve written that has made people squirm or has caused you some relationships?
(Laughs) You keep saying it about me like it is a point I make to make people uncomfortable or squirm. It’s not like I’m running around with a can of Hit in my hand and spraying it on all the roaches in the world.
Absolutely not! But that’s the thing about a lot of successful writers, right?
Ha ha ha
So, what is the most uncomfortable truth you’ve written that made people squirm or has made you rethink your stance?
Once in an interview in the United Kingdom, I said sanitary pads were taxed and Viagra was tax-free because policies were made by 65-year-old men. I was really talking about UK because in India Viagra was also taxed. But, when I came back to India, a few politicians did not come for the premiere of Pad Man (2018 film produced by Khanna) because they felt it was targeting them because, unfortunately, they were also 65.
You were an actor and now you are a celebrated author. What have the books given you that cinema didn’t?
I don’t think either of them have given me anything. It is what I was able to give that medium, and books have always been my life and… actually so has cinema. Both of them have very important places in my life. So much of what I write has been because of the experiences that I also had as a young actor, whether it was seeing the basic inequalities between men and women, which I only realised much later in life.
I feel that my skill set is more suited to the world of books because, I love the poetry, words, and I love language. It comes a little bit from, perhaps, my father (late veteran actor Rajesh Khanna), because I have a distinct memory when I was very young and I said, ‘Will you pick me up from school?’ And he said, ‘Are you a pickup? I will fetch you from school.’ That kind of just set my parameters of what language can do.
And I grew up in a family of readers. My sister (Rinke Khanna) reads more than I do.
My late uncle read science fiction extensively, and science fiction has shaped my entire perception of life. So when people talk about religion or ideology or borders or race, I’m thinking in my head, I live in a galaxy where there are tentacled creatures who are breathing methane… These little diversities don’t seem to matter.
Speaking of family, does your husband, actor Akshay Kumar, give suggestions?
This morning, I was discussing the topics I plan to touch upon in my next column, and he told me, ‘Mat karna… do not get into this issue’. Mat karna is basically his only and biggest contribution to my writing career (laughs).
You also mentioned how writing is such a solitary pursuit. After you became a writer, did it alienate you from showbiz because that’s such a social industry?
No, I don’t think. I was pretty much a loner from the beginning. Again, I don’t think of people in binaries, and I don’t want to put myself in a binary either. There is an aspect of me that enjoys books and I’m constantly studying something, like, I’m now pursuing an online course in philosophy because I want to understand a lot more than I do.
But there’s another aspect of me that completely enjoys talking to my friends about frivolous things like handbags and Mahjong, knowing that they’re frivolous, but it gives me a connection and a sense of joy with certain people.
So both these aspects belong to me.
And now I’m at a stage in my life where earlier maybe I would shun away this frivolous side and concentrate on the more academic side of my personality. Now I don’t want to do that.
I want to embrace both because they’re both part of me, and I don’t have anything to prove to anyone that I’m only this one sort of person, because I don’t believe one sort of person exists. None of the characters I write have one facet, they cannot have one dimension… They will be completely paper thin if they did. So, why am I putting that onus on myself?
You write about things, but what’s the most bizarre thing that you’ve read about yourself?
The most bizarre thing that I read was that I had some eye operation. I don’t know why it was on some Wikipedia page for the longest time, and I’ve never had an eye operation. Bizarre.
If Twinkle Khanna the author could meet Twinkle Khanna the 20-year-old what would she say to her?
I would say it all works out in the end! Just keep doing what you’re doing and finish the book you started when you were 18. I’m 52, and that one book I haven’t been able to finish yet.
Are you planning to finish it?
I’ve tried three times in my life, I’m just unable to write that particular book. Maybe it’s too close to home so my emotions get in the way of transferring that onto the page.
Any books you’d give 20-year-old Twinkle to read?
Oh! She was reading much more than I do now.
Will you come back to acting?
I don’t think I will. The camera actually has always terrified me. I am not really happy in the spotlight. It gives me a bit of a sunstroke, let’s put it that way.