In this forthright and informative episode of The Pooja Bhatt Show, Pooja sits down with Meet Ashar - lawyer, animal rights advocate, Legal Advisor & Director of Cruelty Response at PETA India. Ashar reminds us of something very basic: life matters. Not just human life - all life.

He emphasisies that animals are not problems to be managed, but lives to be protected, and why the manner in which we treat animals is the clearest mirror of who we are.

Ashar breaks down the ramifications of the honourable Supreme Court's orders and reinstates why sterilisation, vaccination, and adoption - not removal - are the only humane solutions going forward.

Pooja and Meet highlight the undeniable link between animal abuse and human violence, and how cruelty rarely stays contained.

This conversation is not only about animals.

It is about justice. About responsibility.

It is about who we have been.
And who, we still have a chance to become.

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Human suffering is the womb of great art.
And sometimes, grace arrives disguised as grief.

This conversation between Pooja Bhatt and award-winning filmmaker Faraz Arif Ansari is not assembled for comfort. Not shaped to soothe. But to awaken.

What unfolds on this episode of The Pooja Bhatt Show is not grief revisited, but life awakened—a meeting where pain has already done its work. Where loss no longer numbs, but sharpens perception. Where silence is allowed to speak before language intervenes.

There is love here without possession.
Faith without certainty.
Identity without defence.
Art not as expression, but as responsibility.

Faraz believes that stories change the world—not loudly, not instantly, but by altering the inner weather of those who listen. By making us more available to truth.

Every pause carries weight.
Every word knows where it comes from.

This conversation understands something essential: suffering is not an interruption to life—it is the moment life becomes conscious of itself. Empathy is not softness, but courage. To stay awake in a fractured world is itself an ethical act.

Nothing is resolved.
Nothing is softened.

And yet, something opens.

Don’t listen to this episode to feel better.
Listen to feel truer.

Some conversations don’t offer answers.
They alter your posture toward living.
This is one of them.

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Some conversations don’t leave you impressed. They leave you nourished.

This episode of 'The Pooja Bhatt Show' feels like coming home — to a warm meal, familiar aromas, and stories that sit gently with you long after they’re told. Pooja sits down with Chef Vicky Ratnani — chef, author, television personality — not to dazzle, but to listen, remember, and reflect.

The journey begins in a Sindhi home in Shivaji Park, with the comforting tang of Sindhi Kadhi — food as memory, as belonging. From there, it travels quietly to the decks of the Queen Elizabeth 2, where Vicky once cooked for Nelson Mandela — a moment held not as spectacle, but as gratitude.

They talk about the unseen heart of food: service as care, kitchens as communities, and why simplicity often carries the deepest flavour. Vicky speaks with honesty about choosing sobriety, about clarity and discipline, and how that inner alignment reshaped his work and life. There is space too for the harder truths — the toll the hospitality world takes on bodies, relationships, and time.

The conversation widens to the evolution of Indian cuisine on the global stage, the responsibility that comes with representation, and the quiet worry of traditions slipping away under the weight of trends. And, as all meaningful conversations do, it circles back home — to nostalgia, to memory, to the food that shapes who we are.

Like the best meals, this conversation doesn’t try to impress — it simply stays with you.

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In this intimate conversation, Pooja Bhatt sits down with producer Marijke Desouza to explore a career shaped as much by mentorship as by quiet perseverance. What emerges is the portrait of a filmmaker who learned her craft from the ground up—by observing, absorbing, and carrying forward knowledge passed down through experience rather than formal instruction.

Marijke reflects on her journey from prop shopping as a production design assistant and being production manager on films with tight budgets to producing large-scale films like Brahmastra, offering insight into how guidance, trust, and responsibility move organically across film sets. The conversation sheds light on the industry’s most unseen labour: the delicate balance between creative ambition and financial reality, the changing scale of crews, and why production—often mistaken for mere logistics—is, in fact, central to bringing stories to life.

Alongside these professional reflections are moments of personal vulnerability—navigating grief, learning from loss, and understanding when to lead, when to lean on others, and when to step back. It becomes a conversation about staying aligned with one’s inner compass while quietly supporting those around you—reminding us that mentorship is rarely announced; it is practiced.
The episode is less about spectacle and more about substance—a thoughtful reflection on growth, resilience, and the quiet grace of those who hold the framework steady, allowing others the freedom to dream.

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In this episode, Pooja sits down with actor and voice artist Mohan Kapur, a performer who has mastered his craft by simply living life.

The episode sees the two friends trace Mohan’s journey: from being paid ₹500 an episode on Saanp Seedi - money he jokingly refers to as for “cigarettes and booze” - to finding himself inside the Marvel universe. He laughs about being “a man everyone loved to hate,” recalls the time a co-actor on the sets of Angaaray got so carried away that he hurled real rocks at Mohan and Pooja ended up getting punched, and the time Samuel L Jackson complained to him about being scratched by a cat named Thor.

The conversation moves fluidly between humour and heartbreak. Mohan opens up about losing both parents, caring for his mother through her final months, and refusing to enter his home after the death of his beloved cat, Ladoo Singh.

Mohan also reflects on the question of nepotism in the industry, and of film casting being dictated by social media following.

This is an intimate, funny, often disarming exchange between two friends who have unknowingly shaped each other’s lives.

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In this episode, Pooja meets Abbas Ali Moghul, the award-winning action director behind more than 300 films and shows, and the son of actor Habib, who fled Iran at seventeen to chase his dream of working in Hindi cinema.

Habib went on to appear in more than 150 films, yet passed away with little recognition. Abbas carries that legacy forward with quiet pride, and has become one of India’s most respected action directors, known for crafting iconic sequences in films like Ghulam, Josh and Agneepath.

In this conversation, Abbas reflects on performing death-defying stunts long before VFX and modern safety gear. He shares what it means to stand in for stars when things turn dangerous: jumping off an eleven-storey building without ropes, crashing through glass walls, even setting himself ablaze.

Abbas takes Pooja behind the scenes of some of Bollywood’s most unforgettable moments: Aamir Khan’s legendary train stunt in Ghulam, Akshay Kumar’s daring leap onto an aircraft’s wings, and the thoughtful lesson Hrithik Roshan once offered his son, Arbaaz.

The discussion traces Abbas’s extraordinary arc—from acting in Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi to witnessing his father’s struggles and isolation within the industry.

This episode shines a light on the grit behind the glamour: the underpaid stunt performers who risk everything, the moments Abbas worked while wheelchair-bound, and the sleepless nights that still precede every dangerous shoot, even after forty years in the business. It’s a heartfelt reminder of the invisible backbone of cinema, and the passion that keeps it alive.

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In this moving conversation, Pooja meets Amruta Subhash, a National Award-winning actor and theatre director. This conversation is one between soulmates: it starts with tears, ends with tears and wanders through many worlds that have shaped Amruta’s life.

Amruta speaks with candour and vulnerability: about directing and acting in her brilliant play, Asen Me Nasen Me — a gift from her husband and playwright Sandesh Kulkarni, based on her father’s descent into Alzheimer’s — and about grappling with her grandmother’s death and the guilt and desperation that followed.

Amruta recounts the time theatre legend Satyadev Dubey threatened to slap her, even as Pooja likens her to a dragon unleashed when the camera rolls.

Beyond this, the conversation is also a meditation in resilience and healing. Amruta talks about her transformation--being confined to a wheelchair at 23 to rebuilding her life piece by piece; about finding an unexpected father figure in playwright Vijay Tendulkar, who quietly nudged her toward therapy and healing. The two look back at Amruta’s acting journey, and how she grew up seeing her mother Jyoti Subhash transform from a bhakri-cooking homemaker to a force on stage — a metamorphosis that left her spellbound.

Along the way, Amruta laughs about receiving a postcard from Aamir Khan that convinced her, as a young girl, she was meant to marry him; and how her first words weren’t speech at all, but song.

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