When Survival Becomes a Story the World Needs to Hear | Teenaa Kaur Pasricha

What happens after survival?

We often celebrate the moment someone “beats cancer.” We applaud, we sigh with relief, we say, “You’re so strong.”

But what if the bigger story isn’t the treatment; it’s everything that comes after? The emotional rebuilding. The identity that shifts. The quiet conversations no one knows how to have.

In this powerful episode of “Sexuality and Identity”, host Shireen Ashton sits down with acclaimed filmmaker Teenaa Kaur Pasricha to journey through the terrain that exists beyond recovery. Teenaa’s independently produced documentary, What If I Tell You?, explores a deeply personal question: What does life really look like after breast cancer, and why are we so afraid to talk about it?

Teenaa’s film is not a medical documentary. It is not filled with statistics or clinical procedures. Instead, it bravely examines the emotional, psychosomatic, and often invisible journey of piecing one’s life back together after an experience that changes everything. The film was born out of Teenaa’s own battle with breast cancer, but what makes it extraordinary is the honesty with which she turns the lens back on herself, her family, and the cultural silences that shape South Asian conversations around women’s bodies.

She talks candidly about the cultural stigma that often surrounds breast cancer in India and many South Asian communities, where a woman’s body still carries layers of shame, silence, and unspoken expectations. In such environments, illness becomes not just a physical ordeal, but a deeply political and emotional one.

Her film reveals the struggle for normalcy, the quiet fears, and the emotional recalibration survivors often wrestle with. Teenaa speaks about how cancer changes one’s understanding of life and death, and how confronting her own mortality forced her to rethink what it means to live with intention, grace, and acceptance.

For her film to exist, she had to push those boundaries, ask uncomfortable questions, and let the camera witness real-time vulnerability.

Teenaa also reflects on the emotional and financial challenges of making such a personal documentary over three years, traveling across India, filming in the Himalayas, navigating family dynamics, and continuously revisiting painful memories. She describes the process as both creatively challenging and deeply healing. For her, the film became not just an artistic endeavour, but a responsibility, a way to give voice to thousands of women who never get a chance to articulate their own stories of survival, fear, and courage.

This conversation is not simply an interview; it is a reminder of why storytelling matters, why silence is dangerous. And why women’s experiences, especially those involving the body, deserve to be spoken out loud, without shame, without hesitation, and without euphemisms.

If you’ve ever known someone affected by cancer, or if you care about women’s rights, mental health, or identity, this is a conversation you cannot afford to miss.

*Disclaimer: The perspectives expressed by the guest are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of our platform. This discussion is intended solely for knowledge-sharing and should not be interpreted as endorsement.

Produced by Global Indian Series for the Global Indian Network.

Script by Rajan Nazran
original idea: Rajan Nazran
Podcast Host: Shireen Ashton

Introduction music: (Sound Title) – by Steven F Allen
https://freesound.org/people/audiomirage/
https://soundclick.com/AuDioChosisStevenFAllenAuDioMiRage