6 things we bet you didn't know about Nabila
Nabila is a force of nature in Pakistan's style industry yet people know so little about her.
That changes with her latest interview on Samina Peerzada's Speak Your Heart, in which she opens up about her childhood, experiencing motherhood, remarrying at 40 and her personal habits and quirks.
Here are some choice excerpts from the interview:
1) Nabila was a pro hair-cutter at the mere age of 11
During the interview she revealed that though she never knew she'd go into hair and makeup professionally, she "would cut my own hair and at the age of 11. I actually started cutting other people's hair because I'd do a damn good job."
2) She was a rebel child
Nabila recalls an incident when she wore men's boots in defiance under her satin dress and calls her childhood self a "namoona".
"I remember my sister got married and my mother made me an expensive satin maxi dress and I wore men's boots under it saying, 'No, I don't want to be a girl.'"
If someone complimented her hair, she'd cut it.
3) She sought therapy to help her cope with motherhood
Nabila admitted that in her 30s when she was an "empty nester", she missed her two sons immensely and "craved" to spend time with them.
Living with the guilt of not having been able to give them the extra few minutes during bedtime, she sought therapy to help her cope. "That's when I very religiously started to see a shrink, a psychotherapist. We don't invest anything into our mind. At that time I needed mind coaching to help bring me out of this thinking, which is giving me guilt. So I went through a lot of therapy to understand what I was doing" to help her move forward.
4) She is a firm believer in 'age is just a number'
When she made the decision to remarry at 40, she was met with some resistance in her family.
"My younger son is very cool, so he didn't mind," Nabila said, but "My elder one felt like 'Why do you need to have a man in your life' And I was like ' Why not?' My mother was like 'Ab tum 40 saal ki hogai ho. Life is over.' And I said 'No, it's not. What if I live till 80?'"
5) She likes it quiet.
"When my mother comes to my house, she feels 'it's a house of deaf/mute people' because no one really talks a lot... For me, being quiet or silence is the most important sound. If we don't shut our mouths, how will we have any original thoughts? We just don't keep quiet."
6) She doesn't believe in 'fearing the gora'.
Nabila shared that when she travelled to Los Angeles to branch out her makeup's retail business, her brother gave her some advice: Don't fear the gora.
Sharing how she let go of the inferiority complex that plagues Pakistan, she said, "My brother said to me, 'You need to be self-confident. And do the right thing: invest in your skillset, your knowledge base, work on your product's research and development, spend time in the lab. There's no need to fear anyone.'
"So geography doesn't even figure in my thoughts. I don't consider where I am in the world or who I'm talking to. I have a lot of confidence in myself. I look inward rather than outward and it seems to be working."
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