Boobs, blood and babies — nothing is off limits on the She Says She's Fine podcast

The term ‘miscarriage’ has always seemed odd. The ‘mis’ somehow implied that the ‘carrier’ did something wrong. We’ve seen movies depict them as dramatic episodes with women howling in pain as they bleed out, and that sticks in your mind. While I knew the former wasn’t true, listening to the ‘Miscarriages’ episode of She Says She’s Fine podcast, I realised just how wrong my idea was about something that could very easily happen to me or someone I know.

Pooja Jauhari (CEO of The Glitch) and Dr Riddhi Kapadia (Pathologist and Head of Diagnostics at Namaha Healthcare) speak freely with Dr Munjaal Kapadia, the host of the She Says She’s Fine podcast in this episode. The conversation got more personal than I had expected when I put on my headphones. “You feel empty. Even if it was just 3 months. I touched my stomach and there was nothing there. That reality hits you. There are no words to explain it,” said Jauhari, opening up about experiencing four miscarriages.

Dr Riddhi, who is also the wife of the host, was just 23-24 when she had surgery to remove a huge endometrial cyst. Endometriosis causes a drastic decrease in fertility, she explained in the podcast. For someone so young to be put on medication that causes artificial menopause was life-changing. And getting pregnant after all of this came as a surprise to the Kapadias. “I thought, you know what, let me just do a urine pregnancy test. I just wanted to pee on the stick because that’s what happens in the movies. Even if it wasn’t true.”

The pauses between their sentences. The hesitation in their words and the quiver of emotions in their voices. I felt it all., including a shiver in my ovaries when Riddhi talks about bleeding through both her pregnancies.

The conversations feel like well-informed chats between friends, unlike those stilted interactions with your local gynaec — when a doctor has their head between your legs and you hear that disapproving click of the tongue followed by, “Oh, you’re already sexually active… If you’re single, it stings a little, no matter how liberated you are. Married? You may not be entirely off the hook—difficult sex and painful periods can be attributed to your bad lifestyle choices (you smoke, Satan?)—or will magically disappear when you give birth. Wink, wink.

Kapadia, who hails from a family of gynaecologists and is one himself, sometimes feels people assume he’s like the sexpert version of Mel Gibson in What Women Want — especially when he’s ambushed by women at parties, asking for advice.

A culmination of his love of podcasts and his expertise, She Says She’s Fine is his attempt at addressing women’s concerns— a safe place where one can listen in solitude to issues they’ve gone through themselves, where they can relate, empathise or even just laugh, free from judgement (except perhaps from the rickshaw uncle watching as you cackle to yourself, with your headphones plugged in).

These are real people with real-life experiences you’re listening to, which is what makes the She Says She’s Fine podcast produced by Mae Mariyam Thomas and Shaun Fanthome so incredibly relatable, especially because pain, PCOS and the perils of motherhood don’t make it to our dinner table conversations. Kapadia engages with people through their experiences, without the medical jargon, scoldings you’d expect from a doctor or sermons of good womanly behaviour. It’s a fresh look at the female experience, that’s otherwise shrouded in more mystery than a Sherlock Holmes novel.

Styling: Divya Gursahani, Makeup: Riddhima Sharma, Hair: Krisann Figueiredo, Model: Archana Nair/ Inega. Dress, Kanelle