Anurag Kashyap reveals what child psychologist told him to ‘improve’ relationship with daughter Aaliyah: ‘We are migrants in the world of millennials, Gen Z’

Anurag Kashyap said that he had to seek professional help to improve his relationship with his daughter Aaliyah.

Mumbai | March 9, 2024 10:20 AM IST

3 min read

Anurag Kashyap- daughter- Aaliyah Kashyap

Anurag Kashyap with his daughter Aaliyah. (Photo: Anurag Kashyap/Instagram)

Filmmaker Anurag Kashyap recently opened up about his daughter Aaliyah, and said that he had to seek professional help to “improve” their relationship, because he didn’t spend enough time with her when she was a child. Citing his passion for cinema as the reason for not being able to be around Aaliah, he said that he later came to understand the value of spending time with family and friends.

“I came to understand after a very long time that if you live in your past, you’ll experience trauma, and if you keep thinking about the future then you’ll feel anxiety, so live in the present,” Anurag said at an event in Kolkata.

When asked about his relationship with his daughter Aaliyah, he said, “It is very difficult and very easy. I have not spent as much time with my daughter as I should have, because at the time, my entire focus was on cinema. I was very passionate. The more you grow in life, you realise that the most valuable thing is to spend time with family, keep your good friends close, learn to be happy. And I have reached that point in life… Today when my daughter works on the internet, I don’t understand what she’s doing.”

Anurag then revealed what the psychologist explained to him about the generational divide. He said, “I went to a child psychologist because I wanted to improve my relationship with my daughter. We didn’t fight, but we were trying to understand each other better. They told me that the world has changed. They explained to me very simply, asked me what I think millennials, gen Z, gen X actually are… Whoever is born after 9/11 (World Trade Centre terror attacks in USA), they have always seen security at the airport, but those who were born in the 1970s would remember that they used to be able to walk up to the plane. How do you explain that to those who were born after 9/11? They’ll not believe it! Calling on the landline… If I tell my daughter that when I was young, I had to get on to a line to call her mother, she won’t understand that.”

Also read | ‘Imtiaz Ali has spent more time with my daughter than I have’: Anurag Kashyap on life’s biggest regret, says ‘it’s too late to apologise’

“People who were born after all the events which have left a larger impact on the world, it is a new generation then. So people who are from today’s generation would know better how to deal with the world because it is their world, they are natives to it. They are born in this world. We are the migrants in their world,” he added.

Anurag’s daughter Aaliyah tied the knot with her longtime boyfriend Shane Gregoire last year. Aaliyah is Anurag’s daughter from his marriage with his first wife Aarti Bajaj, who is a film editor. He was then married to actor Kalki Koechlin, but their marriage ended in divorce in 2015.

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