In a deeply personal and emotional revelation, filmmaker and choreographer Farah Khan Kunder shared painful memories from her childhood during a candid chat with Sania Mirza on the podcast Serving It Up with Sania. The Main Hoon Na director spoke about her late father Kamran Khan, a once-successful producer who, after facing financial ruin, “took to the bottle.”
Farah recounted how her family went from comfort to desperation — to the extent that her mother had to rent out rooms to gamblers just to afford daily essentials. “Those men would each put ₹5 into a kitty. That ₹30–₹35 was what bought our groceries and my father’s drink for the day,” she revealed. “If they didn’t come, there was no milk the next morning.”
A life built from struggle
By her mid-teens, Farah was already working to support the family. “We had to start working at 15. Even the money for my father’s funeral was borrowed,” she said. The years of scarcity, she added, left her with lasting insecurities about finances. “Till now, I’m insecure about money. I understand now why my dad took to alcohol — it was his way of coping.”
The 59-year-old filmmaker admitted that certain triggers, like the smell of alcohol, still take her back to those difficult times. “I can smell alcohol so well whenever I travel; it triggers a childhood memory. I used to stay in college till 7 p.m. so I didn’t have to go home,” she shared.
The psychology of childhood trauma
Licensed psychotherapist and rehabilitation counselor Sonal Khangarot explained how children who grow up amid financial instability and addiction often internalize insecurity and chaos as normal.
“Chronic financial stress and parental addiction shape a child’s relationship with safety, trust, and self-worth,” Khangarot said. “They often equate money with control or self-value, which can result in lifelong anxiety or guilt around spending.”
The expert cited research published in the Journal of Family Psychology (Conger et al., 2010) linking childhood financial insecurity to adult anxiety and low self-esteem.
When trauma lives in the body
Khangarot also described how sensory triggers, like a smell or sound, can reactivate emotional pain from the past. “When someone experiences trauma, the brain connects those emotions to sensory memories — such as the smell of alcohol in Farah’s case. The body remembers even when the mind wants to forget.”
Therapeutic approaches like somatic experiencing, grounding exercises, and trauma-focused psychotherapy, she added, help individuals reconnect with safety in the present moment and separate past pain from current experience.
Overcoming the past
Farah’s resilience, seen through her rise from a struggling background to one of Bollywood’s most respected filmmakers, reflects a journey of strength and self-awareness. While she admits the scars remain, her story stands as a testament to confronting emotional wounds rather than concealing them.
