Shaheen Bhatt spoke about her battle with depression at length during an interview with an eminent journalist and also revealed that she was once asked to step aside during a photoshoot with her sisters Alia Bhatt and Pooja Bhatt, owing to her skin colour and weight. In 2018, Shaheen launched her book, I’ve Never Been (Un)Happier, in which she detailed her struggle with depression as a teenager.

Shaheen, in her book, has mentioned the incident as she wrote that she once accompanied Alia and Pooja for a photoshoot, and during it, the photographer asked her to “leave the picture”. The reason, as stated, was that Alia and Pooja were “fair and cute” while Shaheen was “dark having spent too much time in the sun” and also a “little overweight.”

Speaking about the incident during the interview, Shaheen said, "It’s making me unconformable right now as you are talking about it. You know, women, in general, suffer a lot….Shame I think is the core of depression and it could be any form of shame, and with women, I think body image also tends to be one of the causes for shame.”

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Moreover, Shaheen also said that shame also escalates negativity and depression, adding that there is a constant feeling of rejection associated with it as well.

“Shame is central and I wish I could make people understand that shame is central to any kind of negative feelings, depression and sadness. It stops you from being vulnerable and you constantly fear that if you will show yourself as you are, you will be rejected by society. And my self-worth was definitely affected because I was at an age where the seeds of that were sown in me,” Shaheen added.

Shaheen and Alia are filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt’s children with wife Soni Razdan. Pooja Bhatt is his daughter from his former wife Kiran Bhatt.

Source: Rajeev Masand