As she continues to dabble in fashion and films, Masaba Gupta has added another feather to her hat. She recently marked her podcast debut with a show titled How I Masaba on Luminary, a subscription-based podcasting and audio network that has set foot in India. In the first episode of the light-hearted and insightful business-meets-life podcast, Masaba got candidly chatty with tennis champion Sania Mirza, who opened up on her impending retirement, being the golden girl of tennis, her biggest matches and not-so-perfect behind-the-scenes moments that shaped her into the force and fierce athlete that she is today.
In the episode, Sania spoke about her iconic match against tennis legend Serena Williams when she was just 18. Sharing an interesting insight, she said, “We saw Serena, Venus (Williams; tennis star), these great champions. We never thought that we, as Indians, can ever compete against them. Then all of a sudden, they had this 18-year-old girl, who was competing against these champions”. Though she didn’t emerge the winner, she feels that the match proved to be a watershed moment in her life as she added, “The loss made me who I was. It changed the entire graph of my life.”
In January this year, Sania announced her retirement and said that the 2022 season will be her last. “To stop competing, stop walking into the centre of courts with the crowds cheering for you… it is a very, very big decision. I’ve had help, I’ve had therapy,” she told Masaba, and further stated that her love for tennis shines brighter than ever but so does her evolution.
The new episode also echoes the star athlete’s unreserved opinions about her priorities now. “To leave my son for 25-30 weeks a year, it’s just not something that I can think of doing. It is also my body. I’m 36. I’ve had a bunch of surgeries,” states Sania, who became mum to Izhaan Mirza Malik in 2018.
The episode also saw Masaba sharing some of her stories of how she wanted to become a tennis player. She called herself ‘a failed tennis player’ and talked about mental toughness and the fear of being judged as a sportsperson being the daughter of a legendary sports-star – retired cricketer Viv Richards. Both Sania and Masaba dove deep into several topics including performing under pressure, parental support and being a woman in the professional world.
On a related note, How I Masaba is a podcast where the designer, actor and entrepreneur sits down and gets up, close and real with her fellow multi-prong mavens and some of the successful women of all times – who have and continue to shatter glass ceilings and break barriers and boundaries – for conversations full of hard lessons, epiphanies and fun-filled nostalgic moments.
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