The Hindu Lit Fest 2024 | Fifty-plus is just the beginning, say ‘Not Your Aunty’ podcast hosts Kiran Manral and Shunali Shroff

Authors and journalists Kiran Manral and Shunali Shroff reclaim their space as women in an increasingly youth-obsessed world through their podcast, Not Your Aunty.

Authors and journalists Kiran Manral and Shunali Shroff are not your average 50-year-olds, and are definitely not ready to hang up their boots. In their podcast, Not Your Aunty, they discuss everything from the Ozempic craze to climate change to Bollywood’s bestie, Orry. Ahead of The Hindu Lit Fest 2024, where both are speakers, the podcast hosts talk about the need to reclaim their space as women in an increasingly youth-obsessed world. Edited excerpts:

Shunali Shroff: One day, Kiran and I were catching up over coffee and lamenting about middle-age and the state of the world and hot flashes and how motherhood is overrated. And then we said, let’s do a podcast and see if people will be interested in it.

Kiran Manral: We did wonder if anyone would really want to listen to two middle-aged women talking about these things. But surprise, surprise — people are listening. That’s been a pleasant shock to both of us.

KM: We thought it would be women in our demographic, but you know, it’s also young women. I was at a literature festival in early December, and there were young girls coming up to me and saying that they love the podcast. I was in shock. How is this podcast resonating with that demographic? But no complaints, of course!

SS: You know, there’s a devoted listener who is a friend of mine. Very cerebral, very bright — he’s a very senior art consultant and runs an ad agency. He says to me the other day, when I told him that it had been a year since we spoke, that he feels like he talks to us every week! Because he listens to the podcast. He said, ‘Doesn’t it drop every Thursday?’ I was baffled, because he’s 37, and I thought, my god, a 37-year-old is hooked to our podcast. So I asked him why, and he said, the chemistry works for him because we are both such different people. The other thing he said was that we say a lot of things in the podcast that many people are thinking but not saying.

SS: There’s no better country to feel middle-aged in than India because it happens so swiftly. We have no problem with growing older, but I think that when you reach a certain age you realise that the time you have between now and when you become completely invisible, there’s very little of it left. And that is a complaint most women have.

It’s a reminder that though you feel young, and you are not ageing that quickly mentally either, from a marketing point-of-view, you are no longer relevant. The TG is now 20- to 32-year-olds. The whole world is focused only on this critical mass of really young people.