Aahana Kumra On Bad Breakups And Heartbreaks

Actor Aahana Kumra talks about stories on breakups and heartbreaks and how women deal with it adding some of her own experiences and encounters. From resetting life's button to dwelling over the past, different perspectives have different reaction but a common goal, to move on.

Aahana Kumra is an Indian actor who has been active in the acting business for over a decade now. The 37-year-old actor had made her presence known by her exceptional portrayal of some strong female roles in movies and web series like Lipstick Under My Burkha, Marzi, Sandwiched Forever and Betaal. She was also seen in Call my Agent Bollywood and was commended for her strong character and performance.

In Bawri Chhori, the actor starred as a woman dealing with a terrible heartbreak when her husband leaves her and embarks on a journey to find and kill him. She talks about how she dealt with her breakups and the relatable stories and ways of moving on.

Bad breakups and heartbreaks: How do women deal with that?

Post breakup is actually a period of a lot of adrenaline secretion. You are overflowing with emotions of anxiety, sadness, anger and loneliness and you know that you have to move on, if not immediately then after a week or a month. And since different minds think differently, all women have different coping mechanisms.

Some women get on a revenge journey in order to hurt their ex as much as they got hurt. From accusations, revelations and confrontations to burst outs, humiliation and hijacking their relations, they try to bring them sorrow. either because they want to give them a taste of their own medicine or they want them to realise their mistake.

This usually happens when the breakup happens without the consent of the woman, like in the case of the protagonist of Baawri Chhori. As Aahana describes her character, "For me the premise of the film was very interesting....its very sweet that she is not going to ask him to come back , she is going to go and tell him...what the hell and she's gonna kill him".

The other way of handling a bad breakup and heartbreak is when you get sad for a few days but realise that there is no point as it cannot be fixed. You start mending your life and heart by focusing on moving ahead and progress. Just like this Gujarati lady, Radhika, Aahana met while travelling in America who was really nice to her. She married a guy and had two daughters, they moved to America but soon she got to know he had an affair. He left her and took away her daughters. At that time she only knew Gujarati and Hindi and surviving in America was really difficult.

Radhika got a job in a library where she learnt English, she did a lot of odd jobs and eventually became a nanny where the owner helped in further English learning. Aahana Kumra says, "I couldn't believe what all had happened to her, as simple person who had resilience, who had the faith in herself. For me even Radhika's story was a very, as simple person's story but I feel like if you have resilience, if you have faith in yourself, you can really turn the world around you. What happens to most of us is that.......we just don't like to explore our life"

Actually sulking over a breakup is not got for yourself. You cannot bring the love or the person back and not moving forward hurt you even more. It is better to focus on your health, peace of mind and career other than crying forever on a single relation. You have a lot more things to focus on other than a person and by not moving on, you are cutting off any opportunity to meet new people and enjoy your life. Just like how Aahana Kumra with a bad breakup.

She felt sad and she too wanted to take the revenge route and become a different person but as she got busy with her life she realised it was not worth it. "Thankfully I started getting jobs immediately after that, I had no time to sit and mull over that nonsense of my life and I remember that when I started moving on, I was like, "What was I thinking! Like there is so much more to do in life". So I feel like you sometimes need that little jolt, you need to push yourself sometimes to just kind of find or explore life or figure out in the journey of life that there's so much more."

Just like Aahana Kumra, it is better to engage yourself with better activities and try to come out of that phase with lessons, possibilities, hope and belief that you deserve better.

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