Shark Tank India 4: From being called 'the moustache girl' to fighting body image issues; Namita Thapar gets candid about overcoming difficult childhood

The audience recognises Namita Thapar as the 'Isme meri expertise nahi hai' shark from Shark Tank India. Little is known about the entrepreneur's terrible childhood, during which she 'wasted 21 years of her life criticising herself and sobbing all the time'. Why? Namita Thapar spoke on author Chetan Bhagat's podcast about dealing with body image concerns, suffering from an emotional eating disorder for 40 years, and other topics. Excerpts from the discussion.

I am from an extremely strict and traditional Gujarati family. I had a strong urge to travel overseas and become a 'foreign return'. I wanted to live by myself. Imagine being the eldest in a family and living overseas without marriage! Many of my relatives advised my parents against sending me. I attended really high universities. But I'm grateful my parents didn't listen to the 'well-meaning' relatives and instead sent me on shaadi se pehle to see the globe, which altered me as a person.

I was very overweight. I had a lot of facial hair and acne. I was body shamed a lot as a teenager. I can’t share how much I weighed, it was a lot. No guy looked at me. When you are body shamed to that extent as a teenager, it leaves a lot of scars.

I come from a joint family where everyone is noisy. Even I am noisy. I had no idea what to do on my own when I moved abroad. I learnt everything the hard way. I would become really depressed at times. When I returned home from university, I would switch on the television to hear some noise. I was miserable and lonely, and every evening I would eat only one pint of ice cream. I had gained 20 kilograms. I suffered from emotional eating. I've been doing nothing for the past 4-5 years. For 40 years, I've been an emotional eater. I've always seen eating, particularly sweets, as a method to make myself feel better.

I had facial hair on my upper lip. A lot of girls have. A guy in my class would call me, ‘Mishi wali porgi’. ‘Mishi’ means moustache and ‘porgi’ means girl. So I would be called ‘The girl with a moustache’, ‘moti’. Like everything else, I have worked hard on myself. I used to feel extremely ugly and had a very low self-esteem.

When I was 21, I became a chartered accountant, and that was the first time I felt truly confident in myself. For 21 years of my life, I disliked myself. We have nine grandchildren, and eight of them would come first. I would finish second, which was amazing, but they would never congratulate me. They looked at me as if someone had died in the house. They would scrutinise my performance and grades. I would continuously assess myself based on my appearance and academic performance. I spent 21 years of my life sobbing. I'd lock myself in the bathroom and scream for hours.

I assumed my father disliked me because he refused to spend time with me. I had no idea what life is like for an entrepreneur. I believed the problem was within me. I had manufactured all of my own inner monsters. There were no counsellors back then. I did not have any friends. I didn't have someone to talk to and had bottled up all of my emotions. I just continued studying.

30 years ago, discussing mental health was considered taboo. It was frowned upon, and people would label you as 'mad'. I would characterise myself as a label. I began to love myself once I cracked CA. I got the label. I had this preoccupation that if I topped the 10th and 12th grades, my portrait will appear and my parents would adore me much more. I was so nervous that I missed the 10th and 12th by two marks. This damaged my self-esteem even further.

I refuse to let labels or individuals define who I am. I'm 45 now, and age brings you a lot more experience. I didn't do Shark Tank India to earn more Instagram followers or to make people appreciate me. Shark Tank India required 14 hours of shooting, which was a lot of effort. We weren't used to carrying 14 cameras with us. We had no idea it would be a smash. I watched the challenges that others were going through, just like my father had. We wanted to aid those deserving founders and be a part of their adventures.