After divorce with Shoaib Malik, Sania Mirza says ‘nothing is more difficult than being a single mom’: ‘I had a panic attack, was shivering’

Sania admitted that balancing motherhood, work, and studies has been overwhelming. Recalling one particularly difficult day, she said, “I don’t want to mention it on camera, but there was a moment that was one of the lowest moments when you showed up on my set and I had to go on a live show after that. If you had not come there… I was shivering. And if you would not have come there I wouldn’t have done that show, you told me, ‘No matter what, you are doing this show.’”

Remembering that moment, Farah added, “I got so scared. I never have seen you get a panic attack. I had to shoot that day, but I just left it and came there in my pyjamas and chappal.”

Sania on trying to give Izhaan a ‘normal childhood’

Sania told News 18 in an interview, “As parents, we’ve to protect him and try to normalise his life as much as possible. Having said that, I’ve to understand that I can’t fully normalise it. I’ve to accept that that the set-up he’s in isn’t normal. I can’t be in denial and say that he’s a normal child. He isn’t born into a normal family. If I’m in denial about it, parenting will become even more challenging,” she said.

She also said that she has impressed upon her son that it’s ok to lose or not follow his parents into sports. “I’ve already sat him down and spoken to him about the pressure that the world is going to impose on him. I’ve explained to him that it’s okay to lose and that it’s okay to not play a sport if he doesn’t want to.”

Farah Khan on coming from a broken home

Farah Khan has often spoken about the financial hardships her family faced after her father, filmmaker Kamran Khan’s movie failed at the box office, plunging them into sudden poverty. In a candid conversation with her friend and former tennis player Sania Mirza on her YouTube show Serving It Up with Sania, Farah opened up about how her father’s financial downfall led him to alcoholism and how those years deeply impacted her childhood.

Farah recalled, “I was 5–6 years old and I was a very spoiled, pampered child till then. But I saw the repercussions over the years. And I don’t blame the industry for it because it happens in every industry. If you are a failure, people won’t come to you. When people say Bollywood is very tough, no, life is only tough.”

Speaking about her father’s alcoholism, she continued, “Success sells. You have to make sure that you don’t get affected by failure or by success. Later, I understood why my dad took to alcohol. At that time as a child, I would get traumatised, and you cannot bring your friends home.”

Farah shared that her father eventually had to sell their family property to repay debts. “It was uncertain. We had a whole floor and then we started selling flats, and then finally we came to one hall and one bedroom. We came from 5 bedrooms to one hall and a room.”

She added that the only remaining hall in their home was rented out to card players in the afternoons, and the small amount they paid helped the family afford their daily groceries. “Those people would give us Rs 35 every day, and that would help us buy milk and vegetables for the next day. But when they didn’t come to play, we didn’t have money to buy milk for the next day.”

Recalling her father’s struggle with alcohol, Farah said that the smell of liquor still brings back painful childhood memories. “My dad is lovely, but to see him like that, and I can smell alcohol whenever I go somewhere. I know that smell so well, it triggers a childhood memory for me. I used to stay in college till 6:30 pm so that I don’t have to come home.” She added, “We couldn’t call our friends home or even say that my parents are separated in school because it was a big taboo.”

From the homepage

In Bihar poll results tomorrow, 3 pillars of NDA’s hopes: Nitish, Mahila vote, social arithmetic edge

Mahagathbandhan’s calculation: Caste maths, with Tejashwi as a plus

How Japan shrugged off its Rare Earths dependency on China