Here\'s how Tahira Kashyap balanced mental health and fought depression

Mumbai: Mental Health is a topic people don’t discuss much in the open, but Ayushmann Khurranna’s ‘Dream Girl’- wife Tahira Kashyap is bold and beautiful. She was diagnosed with stage 0 breast cancer, but her sheer determination and the rock bottom support of her hubby made her a warrior. She fought the Big C with the utmost brave front.

Recently, in an interview with Mid-Day, she remembered the tough phase when she used to wail all night. “I never treated my body, mind, and soul as one entity. I always thought physical health was important, and mental toh kuch hota hi nahin hai. So, I exercised a lot. But I think [the cancer] was a manifestation of the negativity that I had been harbouring,”. Had I gone to a doctor, I would have been declared clinically depressed. But I chose to cry every night instead of visiting one. I was living a dual life. My husband was shooting; I would spend hours at night crying, and put up the front of a happy person in the morning so that I didn’t look like a loser before my children, who were aged two and four then,” she added.

Tahira underwent a double mastectomy after she was detected with the initial stage of breast cancer. She further told the publication that, “It was only after I practiced Buddhist chanting, and focused on my mental health that things changed. In a way, I'm glad that [I was diagnosed with cancer] at a time when I was strong enough to deal with it,".

Tahira and Ayushmann’s love story bloomed when they were in college. The duo have two children, son Virajveer and daughter Varushka.