On this episode of Outlook bibliofile, actor-model Lisa Ray discusses her memoir, "Close to the Bone", her experience working in Bollywood and Hollywood, and how emerged a survivor in the battle against cancer.
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00:00 You said that I'm glad that I experienced the 90s.
00:02 For whatever reason, I was always aligned with my Indian side.
00:05 The book basically ends at my marriage.
00:07 I've never even seen a Bond film.
00:09 It's a question of complex answers.
00:10 I wanted to be a writer since I can remember.
00:12 I want people to read the book!
00:14 Hello and welcome to Outlook Bibliophile.
00:23 Today we have with us India's first supermodel,
00:26 an actor, a cancer survivor,
00:27 and a mother of twin daughters through surrogacy.
00:30 She's just written her memoir called Close to the Bone,
00:33 published by HarperCollins.
00:34 Lisa Ranire, thank you so much for speaking to Outlook India.
00:38 My first question stems from this very interesting episode from 2007-08
00:42 when you almost became a leading lady in one of the Bond films.
00:45 Tell our audience a little bit about that.
00:48 Funny that that's the one thing that you should pick out of the book first.
00:52 There's a lot that came before it and a lot that comes after.
00:56 But yeah, so I want to preface it with saying
01:00 that there's this one interesting word that I emphasize in the book
01:03 called serendipity.
01:04 And serendipity is when wonderful things happen
01:07 more or less by chance or accident.
01:09 And pretty much most of my life has been ruled by serendipity.
01:12 And so having said that,
01:15 serendipity suddenly threw me into this situation
01:18 where I was, you know, one of the last three actresses
01:23 being auditioned for one of the Bond films.
01:27 And believe me, I'd never even seen a Bond film.
01:30 And that's what I actually told the studio heads
01:33 when they called me in to talk about it.
01:36 And I mean, of course I'd heard of it.
01:38 Of course, you know, I knew it was a great opportunity,
01:40 but it was kind of surreal when you feel like you stepped
01:43 into somebody else's dream or somebody else's life, you know.
01:47 And I've tried to write about that entire experience candidly,
01:52 but also with hopefully my trademark humor.
01:57 And also a sense of awareness about, you know,
02:01 the entire situation that I found myself in.
02:04 Even at the end when I obviously didn't get it,
02:07 the sense that I knew that this path wasn't quite for me,
02:10 so it was OK, but it was kind of, I don't know, you've read it.
02:13 Do you think it's kind of like a funny story as well?
02:15 It is, it is. Particularly, particularly the fact that you appreciated
02:19 or rather went on to appreciate Daniel Craig's shoes.
02:21 I know.
02:22 Please shed some more light on that.
02:24 No, I want people to read the book.
02:27 Don't give away the punchline, yaar.
02:30 Let's just say it's a very, very cool little insight, I think.
02:34 And also into the entire process of, you know,
02:39 being shortlisted for a Bond film.
02:40 Yeah. And alongside Lisa was Gal Gadot, the future Wonder Woman.
02:46 Yeah, I didn't know it at the time.
02:49 All right. My next question, of course, is about the fact that
02:52 you have dedicated just about 40 pages to you surviving cancer.
02:56 And it relapsed as well. This was after you got married.
03:01 One perhaps serious question out of everything that I have read.
03:06 Were there occasions when you felt that, you know,
03:08 everything that you had built over the past two decades,
03:11 your career, your loved ones, your family, your parents that
03:15 you are very close to and now your husband, of course,
03:18 all this could just come to a halt at the snap of a finger?
03:21 Were there occasions when you felt so low?
03:23 So I have to emphasize that, of course, what I've written about
03:26 in Close to the Bone is my initial diagnosis, not my relapse.
03:31 So the book basically ends at my marriage.
03:34 So my husband wasn't, you know, part of my,
03:38 the first phase of my cancer journey.
03:41 Now, this is, you know, this is a complex answer.
03:45 It's a complex question, a complex answer,
03:48 because I don't have a simple, straightforward way of explaining
03:52 how I got through my cancer diagnosis with, you know,
03:56 a relatively serious disease and even why I decided to go public,
04:01 which is why I wrote the book.
04:02 I do think that I go into a fair amount of detail and frankness
04:06 and truthfulness about my entire experience and some humor as well
04:11 sprinkled in.
04:12 But one thing I do want to say is that one of the reasons why I wrote
04:16 the book also is because I realized that I cannot write about my disease
04:20 in isolation from the rest of my life,
04:23 that everything is connected to what came before.
04:26 I did not feel, I want to also say that because I have also,
04:32 I mean, my spiritual questing has been a very integral part of my life,
04:37 or let's just say asking questions about maybe the deeper,
04:40 the bigger question, the bigger issues of life,
04:43 is, has always been important to me.
04:46 And because of that, I've come across some really interesting teachers
04:49 and mentors and spiritual teachers.
04:53 And perhaps they infused me with something
04:55 that gave me a certain resilience, that gave me
04:58 a certain amount of objectivity, the ability to be in my treatment
05:02 and yet almost be outside of it and watch it.
05:06 That's the best way I have of describing it now.
05:08 But, you know, to get the full report and to get the full story,
05:13 you're going to have to read the book close to the book.
05:16 Certainly, most certainly.
05:17 Alisa, going back to your childhood days,
05:19 you know, one of the major reasons perhaps,
05:21 referring to your previous interviews, I realized that, you know,
05:24 one of the major reasons why you don't want this to be a cancer memoir
05:28 is because your relationship with books dates back to your childhood days.
05:32 You know, you were maintaining your journals at a very young age.
05:35 Tell us a little bit about your experience back then.
05:38 You know, were you at that point in time aware of the fact
05:41 that there was a writer in you or, you know, this particular disease
05:46 basically triggered the writer in you?
05:47 No, no. I think I have always aspired to be a writer.
05:52 That was it.
05:53 If you asked me at six, at 10, at 16, even at 26,
06:00 even up until recently, what do you actually want to do?
06:03 What is your real calling? I would have said writer.
06:06 Aside from, of course, my experiments with spirituality and with truth
06:12 and with understanding life deeper,
06:13 these are probably the two driving forces in my life.
06:16 And perhaps they both kind of complement each other.
06:19 So I wanted to be a writer since I can remember.
06:22 But before that, I was also a reader, and I was a really relentless reader.
06:25 I would just devour books.
06:27 And even today, I devour words and sentences, and they're just so yummy.
06:31 And I keep lists of words that I come across that please me
06:35 and that I don't quite know the meaning to,
06:38 but I figure I'll use them in a sentence one day or in a book.
06:41 So I've always had that maybe, that intention in the back of my head
06:45 that one day I'll write a book because I've always kept journals and notes.
06:48 But that's also the way that I've processed my life.
06:50 My life is a bit surreal and bizarre.
06:53 For sure it is.
06:54 So writing has always helped me to understand it,
06:56 to maybe also gain that observer's objectivity about the strange things
07:02 that I've lived through and the experiences,
07:04 and to really digest them as well.
07:07 So I always felt that I would be a writer.
07:09 I've been preparing for this moment for 30 years of my life,
07:13 and finally it's come true.
07:15 Never wanted to be an actress, never wanted to be in front of the camera.
07:18 That was all an accident.
07:21 All right.
07:21 You call it an accident.
07:22 Interesting.
07:23 Because you ventured into the fashion industry at a very young age.
07:26 You were perhaps 16 or 17.
07:28 Your career spans almost three decades now.
07:32 I want to understand from Lisa how things have changed in India
07:36 because you've been a frequent visitor.
07:38 This is one country that is perhaps the closest to your heart.
07:42 I mean, at least the sense that I derived after reading the portion of the book.
07:45 I got it that you've been a frequent visitor.
07:47 You're always inclined a little bit towards your father
07:50 more than your mother's side.
07:52 Lisa's mother, by the way, is from Poland and father from West Bengal.
07:56 But of course, they got married and they got settled in Canada.
08:01 So shed some more light on the fact on how
08:05 you have seen India change over the past three decades
08:08 because you entered the industry at 16, 17,
08:11 and today we are discussing your memoir.
08:14 Exactly.
08:15 That's a great question.
08:16 But also let me say, that's again why I wrote the book.
08:21 I think that you'll have to read the book to get, again,
08:23 the full kind of depth that I've--
08:27 or to get the immersive experience.
08:29 Certainly.
08:29 But yes, of course.
08:31 I mean, when I-- really, my career started in 1991
08:34 along with the economy opening up.
08:36 It was kind of like--
08:38 blossomed simultaneously, you can say.
08:41 When I came, it was still a socialist economy.
08:44 There were no credit cards.
08:46 There was no mortgages.
08:47 There was-- I got paid in bags of cash.
08:50 And then I would be calling up my friends and saying,
08:53 what do I do with this cash?
08:54 Where do I put it?
08:55 And people were stuffing cash under their mattresses
08:57 and then getting raided.
09:00 It was such a different dynamic.
09:02 But the industry, of course, was--
09:06 well, fashion was still at its infancy.
09:09 So I do feel a sense of pride of having
09:12 been part of at least the core group of people
09:16 who were kind of establishing the foundation for the fashion
09:19 industry in India.
09:20 But it was an extraordinarily creative time.
09:23 We didn't have managers.
09:25 We didn't have PR.
09:27 We were our own managers, our own lawyers,
09:29 negotiated our own contracts, and travel as well,
09:33 which is a nightmare sometimes.
09:36 But we had a very sort of family kind of a connection and bond.
09:41 It wasn't as cut and dry transactional business
09:45 as it is today.
09:46 Now, there's a good and bad aspect to both things.
09:48 Look, I love my team today.
09:50 And I would not change that for the world, because of course,
09:53 it's released me of the burden of having
09:55 to deal with all the admin and be a creative person, which
09:59 was--
09:59 there was just so much going on.
10:02 I still remember also when I was shooting "Kasur,"
10:05 my dialogues were being scribbled
10:07 in a corner of the studio.
10:08 I forget "Vanity Fan."
10:10 I only had this really stinky green room.
10:12 So it was so much of the kind of the trappings
10:19 that we have today were just not there.
10:21 But we didn't think about it, because we just
10:23 got down to it and worked.
10:25 But it was an extraordinarily creative time in fashion
10:29 and in ads in the '90s, not so much for film.
10:33 Today, of course, the tables have turned.
10:35 I think that from what I see, the advertising industry
10:39 is really a little bit stale.
10:41 You can't even remember an ad that you saw yesterday.
10:43 But all the talent and all the vision
10:45 has now been funneled into films.
10:48 And I would venture to say into digital content.
10:51 I think digital content is really
10:53 leading the charge in terms of the revolution today.
10:56 So it's a really interesting time in India, really good
11:00 and bad aspects of both.
11:02 But having said that, I'm glad that I experienced the '90s,
11:05 because I think it was a very special time.
11:06 We'll never go back to that period of innocence.
11:09 You can never unlearn certain things.
11:12 And there was a kind of a magic.
11:13 And those friends that I made are still my close friends
11:16 today, because they were very, very real bonds.
11:19 It wasn't like, hey, let's get together for dinner,
11:23 and you don't really mean it.
11:24 I mean, we really grew together as human beings.
11:27 And we really had each other's back.
11:29 What about the status of women in the industry now?
11:34 It's always been a subject of discussion, debate,
11:37 that women have not been paid equally.
11:40 They've not really had the say as far
11:41 as characters are concerned.
11:44 Because you've seen it all, we wish
11:45 to understand a little bit from you, just a little bit.
11:50 There's been a lot of advances.
11:52 Having said that, I also think I've
11:53 written about it, my perspective on it, in "Close to the Bone,"
11:58 how even in the '90s, when, let's say,
12:03 the misogyny and the patriarchy was still
12:07 exerting a very dominating influence on films
12:12 in the film arena, there was still
12:15 a way that-- I believe that Indian women are
12:17 extraordinarily strong and extraordinarily capable
12:20 and very dynamic and very smart.
12:23 So even then, women were still somehow getting their way.
12:26 But you had to be extraordinarily strong
12:28 to deal with and develop a thick skin.
12:31 Today, I think we have more of a tribe in a community.
12:33 We have a lot more of a support system.
12:35 And social media has definitely helped that.
12:39 The fact that we're talking about the status of women,
12:41 the fact that we're speaking very openly about pay parity
12:45 or the Me Too movement, I think, is a really, really
12:47 positive thing.
12:49 The point is to bring all of these issues out of the shadows
12:51 and just have a dialogue about it.
12:54 I believe in India.
12:55 I believe, ultimately, that things
12:57 are going to move forward in a positive direction,
13:02 despite what anyone might say or think.
13:05 I'm maybe a delusional optimist.
13:07 But it's going to take a lot of work.
13:10 And it's going to be ongoing work.
13:12 And it's going to take a lot of dialogue and discussion
13:15 and sometimes people saying no and standing your ground
13:18 and being uncompromising sometimes,
13:23 even when it affects you negatively.
13:25 That's the toughest thing, to be an activist
13:28 in any sort of way.
13:29 That's not easy to do, to say, because of my sense
13:33 of integrity, I'm going to say no to this project
13:35 and then someone else slips into it.
13:37 But you have to be truthful to yourself, ultimately.
13:40 In Close to the Bone, going back to your family now,
13:42 in Close to the Bone, you start off
13:44 with how your mom and dad got together.
13:47 Do you want to just talk a little bit about that?
13:50 It's a very sweet--
13:50 Very, very beautiful story.
13:52 I think it is.
13:53 I think they were incredibly rebellious and also incredibly
13:57 in love.
13:58 And that combination was quite combustible,
14:03 because they defied both of their cultural backgrounds
14:06 to come together and build a life on their own terms.
14:08 Like, my father was basically sort of excommunicated
14:11 from his family for a certain period of time.
14:13 And even my mother's family was very
14:14 suspicious of this brown-skinned boy
14:17 who was wooing their daughter.
14:18 My mother was an only child.
14:21 It's very beautiful.
14:23 But I also realized that they passed on this rebellious
14:25 spirit to me.
14:26 And we don't always see our parents in those terms.
14:28 I did not initially--
14:29 My next question was going to be that.
14:31 Yeah, we don't see our parents in those terms.
14:33 So that was a revelation in reframing my parents
14:38 as individuals, not just as mommy and daddy,
14:40 and seeing how brave and how strong and also
14:43 how graceful they were, how quietly courageous they were.
14:47 That was beautiful to rediscover my parents in this new way.
14:51 I think they deserve their own book, to be honest,
14:53 for everything that they've been through and the life
14:55 that they built. But I think that also--
15:00 The other thing, of course, is that for an interracial
15:03 marriage was a very brave thing at that point of time.
15:05 There were just not that many.
15:06 Fortunately, the world has changed today.
15:07 And there's a lot more creatures like me.
15:10 But that was a double-edged sword,
15:12 because I did not really have any other reference points.
15:15 There were very few other half-Polish-Bengali kids
15:19 around.
15:19 And actually, to be honest, there are still very few
15:21 half-Polish-Bengali kids around.
15:23 But I just didn't know where I fit in the world.
15:26 And it led to a lot of identity issues.
15:28 But for whatever reason, I was always
15:30 aligned with my Indian side.
15:32 But never fully being embraced as an Indian
15:36 and when I'm outside India, I'm definitely
15:39 not identified as white or Polish or even
15:42 Canadian or anything.
15:43 So where do I fit in the world?
15:44 I've now become very comfortable with fitting everywhere
15:47 and nowhere.
15:48 Is that because you say that you don't
15:49 like permanent addresses?
15:52 Maybe.
15:52 I mean, I haven't helped it, for sure not.
15:54 I haven't helped the matters, yes.
15:57 All right.
15:58 Probably my last question.
16:00 I just want to understand, because you've
16:02 said repeatedly that you don't want this
16:03 to be known as a cancer memoir.
16:05 And you've also said that probably you're
16:07 going to write another book on that journey.
16:11 And a few other books after that.
16:13 Most certainly.
16:13 We wish you all the luck.
16:14 And we need more writers who talk about these things
16:17 in open.
16:18 Just want to understand if that book will be called The Cancer
16:22 or I Had Cancer.
16:23 And you know the reason why I'm asking.
16:25 Ah, yes.
16:25 Yes, I do.
16:27 That's cute.
16:27 That's sweet.
16:29 I don't know.
16:30 The title is going to have to come last.
16:31 I mean, I wrote this entire book and then realized,
16:34 oh, I don't have a title.
16:35 So the title will have to probably come out
16:38 of the narrative.
16:38 Why don't you tell our audience quickly,
16:40 why did I mention The Cancer?
16:43 Why don't you tell them?
16:44 I don't want to tell them.
16:45 I want you to--
16:46 No, why don't we tell them to buy the book?
16:48 Absolutely.
16:48 And then you enjoy the book and you
16:50 think it's well-written and that I should write more books.
16:53 Absolutely.
16:53 Come on, you tell them.
16:54 I can actually tell.
16:56 You know, I've read a fair bit of this.
16:58 And it makes for a riveting read.
16:59 I'm going to finish it, of course.
17:01 I'm not going to claim that I've read the entire book.
17:03 But Lizare, absolutely fascinating talking to you.
17:06 Thank you so much.
17:07 Thank you so much.
17:07 Thank you for this platform.
17:08 And I really appreciate it.
17:09 Thank you so much.
17:10 And next week, hopefully, a new writer and a new book.
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