“Mihir badal sakta hai, par Tulsi nahi,” said Smriti Irani at the negotiating table with the makers of Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, asking for more money. The show which thrust her into fame, was also Irani’s first tryst with playing a lead. She recounted her olden days, while trying to explain why women need to be better at negotiations. “When I started the show, I used to get ₹1,800. The guy who played Mihir got ten times more. When I came in, I had no job. My previous job at India’s first McDonalds paid me ₹1,500 for cleaning and sweeping, so the extra 300 meant a lot to me. But, one year later I sat down again at the negotiating table and said I wanted X amount of money. They asked how dare I, and I answered that I’d proved myself.”
Smriti Irani, Union Minister of Women & Child Development, Minority Affairs, Govt. of India, was the chief guest at HerZindagi Womenpreneur Awards 2023. In its first edition, the platform honoured and recognised women entrepreneurs in 15 different categories. In the fireside chat, she spoke to Bharat Gupta, CEO of Jagran New Media.
A phenomenal and highly successful woman, who’s conquered two wholly different professions, one automatically expected a highly charged session from Irani. Given that it was an entrepreneurship event, the expectation was chats around tech, finance, gender, starting up and more, and while those did find their place in the talk, what won over audiences and drew the loudest claps, was how she candidly merged personal anecdotes, lived experiences, and intimate stories into these conversations. Given her position and stature, for about an hour on a Thursday evening, for everyone in the Ballroom at The Oberoi, we forgot her post and designation, and felt for her as a woman we could all relate to. We listened to her with rapt attention, because she felt like one of us.
You can watch the full show here:
“I Thank Me”
Irani harped on how she’s not speaking to us as a cabinet minister, but as someone who grew up in a small house in Delhi’s Munirka.
“When I was born, my parents had only ₹150. Their friend gave them a small room in Munirka. My mom used to work as a housekeeper in the hotel Taj Mansingh. After her night duties, she wouldn’t have time to cook for her three daughters, so the chef of Machan (restaurant at Taj) would send the leftovers of club sandwiches for our school tiffins,” she recounted. “That’s where I come from.”
She goes on to say that she never asked men or anyone for respect. “I have one life, I will live it on my own terms, I will sometimes mess up, but when I win, it is my victory alone,” she said.
Women are quintessentially expected to be warm, polite, and give space to many people in their hearts. Making a Snoop Dogg reference and sending the audience into splits, she said we need to get to a point where women start saying “I thank me” for all that they’ve achieved, without associating all her worth and wins with her relationships and people around. “We need to inculcate that ‘I define me’.”
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Women Don’t Need Advice, Men Do
Cutting short a question on what advice women need, she says that women in the room don’t really need advice, and points to the fact that somehow men never ask other men to give them advice. “Men need advice, I think,” she quipped. She went on to explain that power dynamics and power shifts within families and relationships often present us with dichotomies. Are men okay with their partner earning more? Trailing that thought, she expressed that women need to be able to negotiate better.
“The problem is, when a woman is in her twenties, she’s told she’s inexperienced. When a woman is in her thirties, she’s told arre bachha hone wala hai. When she’s in her forties, she’s told to teach the 20-year-olds, as they need advice. When she’s in her fifties, she’s told to mentor the 30-year-olds, as she’s gotten everything she’d set out to get. When she’s in her sixties, she’s dead, professionally!” she noted. “This doesn’t happen to men.”
Her words echoed with most, given it was a hall filled with a majority of women.
“We now have to balance the power-dynamics personally and professionally. That’s when good partnerships will happen between genders,” she explains. She went on to touch upon topics like a woman earning more, the roles she’s appointed in and the power she’s given, as areas that men need advice and reorientation on.
No Ambitions Left, Led a Full Life
Answering an audience question on what her five year goals are, she said that she has none.
“I have no ambition left, which is spiritually the best place to be,” she said. “I have a man I absolutely adore. I have kids who are smart, hardworking, and honest. I’ve had two successful careers, I have made history in two fields. I work for one of the most historic PM’s offices the country has ever seen. I beat the sitting president of the INC, that’s never happened before. I have no desire left in me.”
Irani’s journey, indeed, is an eye opening, fascinating one. Without a hint of sounding didactic, she narrated her story which ended in thundering applause.
During the chat, while speaking on technology, she emphasised on how technology does not have any emotion. She said that the focus on who controls that technology, the one with the emotional quotient, is what we need to look at. While the emotional factor holds very true for technology, what her chat proved was how it also holds utmost importance for human beings at large, who stayed glued to their seats during her session, simply because it was honest, raw and so heartfelt.
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