Nobel Peace Prize winner and activist, Malala Yousafzai, who also recently graduated from Oxford University; participated in a virtual interview with former Bollywood actor Twinkle Khanna. Screenshots from their virtual meet circulated on social media. The conversation was part of a virtual Tweak India Summit that was organised to mark the actor-turned-author’s initiatives’ first anniversary.
The one-day summit featured women from various fields including Vidya Balan, Tahira Kashyap, Chetna Singh Gala, Sudha Murty and Revathi Roy among others. Malala Yousafzai, who juggles multiple roles of an activist, student, and manages her own organisation, the Malala Fund, shared her empowering story and discussed what kept her motivated despite the criticism she very often receives.
Now, post interview, Twinkle Khanna has said that interacting with Malala left her teary-eyed. Twinkle interviewed Malala, the youngest Nobel Prize laureate and Pakistani activist, for her digital content platform Tweak.
“The interview with Malala was meant to be just audio. Just as I set it up, it shifted to video. I hurriedly pushed back my hair and managed to stab my eye with a kohl pencil in a hurry to look vaguely human. In the end, it didn’t matter because listening to her story made me all teary-eyed and everything smudged,” the Mela star told an Indian entertainment portal, IANS.
During the interview, Malala Yousafzai also recalled the time she’d write blogs for the BBC, anonymously highlighting the situation. But why would she take that risk despite the death threats? “I never thought that I was taking a risk because we were already living in risk, in a conflict. Every night I’d sleep in the fear of the Taliban because they could just knock on your door and kill anyone,” she remarked.
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Throughout the interview, Twinkle Khanna was left bewildered and continued to reinstate how coming to that realisation, for an 11-year-old, had to be a quantum leap. “So there must’ve been someone in your life who guided you towards that space,” she asked. “My father was my inspiration,” responded Malala.
