'Bombaywaali - celebration of Mumbai, past, present and future', covered by Janaki Nagaraj

Kiran Manral and Tisca Chopra having a meaningful conversation

Bombaywaali is the celebration of Mumbai past, present, and the future. Alive with new ideas, wit, inspirations, design and successes, ShethepeopleTV brings you engaging conversations with women who observe and storify this city. And true to their word the session was witty, fun and insightful.

The event took place at Title Waves and Kiran Manral was in conversation with the actor Tisca Chopra.

Kiran started off the talk by asking Tisca,"who is the real Tisca?" Tisca's answer to that was apt as she said - I have no definite answer for that because you try to understand about yourself from what people say about you, about the work I do. I am all that every other woman is but I really don't know."

She shared about her experience as a Paying Guest, her relationship with the lady who owned the PG, the little anecdotes relating to that. When asked about her transition to theatre from the movies - "The 90's were a very bad phase in the Hindi film industry for women. The first movie, I acted in, I just had to say Raju in two variations that's all but I had four songs to my credit. And the film flopped. The make up was used extensively that if you removed the person from the make-up, the make up could act."

Theatre gave her more perspective, more satisfaction as she had the opportunity to work in some international projects.

The short movie she wrote and produced, named "Chutney" has more than 78 million views on YouTube and has won a couple of awards. She talked about her experience of writing the script and of bringing it to fruition.

On her moving to writing - " I come from a family of writers. My father being an educationist has written books and so has my uncles. So writing was always there. You know acting was like the boyfriend whom I chased, and writing was like a husband who was there. Now I have realised the importance of the "husband" and will give more attention to him." She also added that writing fiction is much more difficult than writing a non-fiction.

On success, she said, "Success is very personal. It defines when and how you feel you are successful, not just when it translates into money. A creative person is also an entrepreneur because you have to "Sell" it to the people. Every person has a mountain in them, a tsunami in them and an Universe in them. Instead of waiting for things to happen, go out there and do it. Universe will then conspire and make it happen."