“I called my mom. She said no,” Bhagyashri Borse recalled. “I called my dad. He said mom is saying no. I called my sister. I thought at least she would support me. She said they are saying no. Everyone said no.” She was quick to clarify that the resistance did not come from a bad place. Her parents, like most families outside the industry, were scared of what the world of cinema might do to their daughter. “You will only understand when you become a parent. That fear is there, and you can’t help it,” she said. “They feel, my little baby is going out there in the world. The world is so huge. There will be devils, there will be evil people.”

But Bhagyashri Borse said she had one thought that overpowered everything else. “I just had this one thing inside me. I don’t want to be 80 and be like, what if. I don’t like regrets. None of us should have regrets in life. It pulls us back. Whatever you want to do, just do it,” she said.

Also Read: Bhagyashri Borse was bullied in Nigeria for not knowing English: ‘Transition was brutal’

So she started giving auditions. And the fallout at home was immediate. “My mom blocked me on WhatsApp. Six months she didn’t talk to me,” Bhagyashri Borse said. “I might be smiling and saying it right now, but it was a very difficult time.”

She kept going, she said, because she believed the work would eventually speak for itself. “I had only one thing in my head. She will be proud of me,” she said. “For an independent girl, how you decide your life is going to be in your hands. What your path is going to be is in your hands.”

What she wanted, she explained, was simple. “People should not go and ask my parents, what is your daughter doing. They should say, what did your daughter do, wow. That’s what I wanted my parents to feel. I wanted them to feel proud. And that’s been my effort.”

Also Read: ‘Please give me a job. I have 2 daughters’: Bhagyashri Borse on her father begging for work

The conversation then turned to money, and Bhagyashri Borse traced her relationship with financial independence back to a single childhood memory on Linking Road in Bandra, Mumbai. “I was going with my father, and there was this one small chappal, Rs 200. I still remember it very clearly,” she said. “I told him I want this. He said no, and he walked off. My heart broke. I was like, Rs 200, you couldn’t buy me the chappal?”

That moment, she said, taught her two lessons she has carried ever since. “After that, I decided two things. Always bargain, firstly,” she said, drawing laughs from the audience. “Secondly, never ask anyone for money. I think that was a huge lesson my dad taught me.”

She expanded on the point, speaking directly to the young women in the room. “You should be so independent on your own that you should be able to buy what you want for yourself. It could be as simple as a chappal. Or what you want to buy for your parents,” Bhagyashri Borse said. “Even if we get married to a good guy, even if anything happens, we should always have a house of our own. We should always have a bank account of our own. It makes you feel very empowered. Most importantly, it makes you feel independent.”

When asked what she did with her first big paycheck, Bhagyashri Borse did not hesitate. “I got something for my parents, definitely. My mindset always goes like, I need to get something for my parents first,” she said. “It’s actually a lot of effort to buy something for myself. When I have to spend on someone else, like my mother, how much ever you want, I will spend. When it comes to me, I’m like, no.”

She paused and looked at the audience. “I think a lot of us girls are like that. We think before spending on ourselves. That’s why a girl child is special,” she said.