# Pallavi Sharda - Where We Belong

An episode of [The Imperfects](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1476501557), 28 Apr 2024, 1 h 33 min.

Audio: https://enrichment.soundstack.com/4vjqq8/episode.flightcast.com/l5850qjjsg72ooeidcoiey95.mp3

What would you do if a teacher said you couldn’t achieve your dreams because your hair and skin colour weren’t acceptable? When this became Pallavi Sharda’s reality she moved to India by herself and became the first Australian women to lead a Bollywood movie In this episode we meet Pallavi Sharda, a powerhouse actress, who grew up in Taylors Lakes, a suburban area in Melbourne’s west, who went on to not only clock Bollywood, but see tremendous success on screens in Australia, the UK and the US. Pallavi is a VERY impressive person, but she grew up believing that she needed to be exceptional in order to have value in Australia. From living with racism as a second generation immigrant, to navigating Bollywood as a foreigner, Pallavi has been on a search for belonging, carving out a place in the world for herself & all future generations of ‘multi-hyphenated’ Australians. To listen to the Audible Original podcast, Sleep Sound with Pallavi Sharda**,** follow this link: *https://bit.ly/4bhkeNV* To watch Pallavi in 'Wedding Season' on Netflix, follow this link: https://bit.ly/3UBUdDh To watch Pallavi in the Australian series, 'The Twelve', follow this link: https://bit.ly/4dins5j To watch Pallavi in 'The One' on Netflix, follow this link: https://bit.ly/3UE4GhL See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:00] My name's Josh.
[0:01] I'm a co-host on The Imperfects and the son of Sri Lankan and English immigrants, and I call Australia home.
[0:06] I'd like to recognise the traditional peoples of this continent whose land was stolen nearly 250 years ago.
[0:11] In particular, we at The Imperfects would like to acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast was recorded, and we extend our respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
[0:22] I'm inspired by the world's oldest living culture, and we at The Imperfects
[0:31] We're all imperfect.
[0:32] And on this podcast, I'll be chatting with a variety of interesting people who are willing to make themselves vulnerable by sharing their own struggles and imperfections.
[0:41] I did ultimately make a choice about whether I wanted to be a woman in India or a brown woman in the world and which was the tougher of the two and which would be a better life for me.
[0:56] I'm Hugh Van Kylenberg from The Resilience Project.
[0:58] And I'm Ryan Shelton from My Mum.
[1:00] And I'm Josh from Hugh's Mum.
[1:03] And this is The Imperfects.
[1:07] Well, here we are, and we are back in the studio.
[1:11] Great.
[1:11] We'll definitely keep that in.
[1:14] Well, here we are, and we are back in the studio.
[1:16] It's true.
[1:17] We are back in the studio, and it's really nice.
[1:19] We've been on tour, and now we're back in the studio is my reference.
[1:22] Oh, yeah.
[1:23] True.
[1:23] That feels comfortable.
[1:25] Feels really nice.
[1:27] We get an incredible guest today.
[1:29] Pallavi Shada, who was in fact the first ever Australian woman to lead in a Bollywood film.
[1:36] Well, yeah, that's the thing.
[1:37] It's like we were sitting with Pallavi and in Bollywood terms, it was kind of like sitting with like Julia Roberts.
[1:44] There'd be a billion people around the world who would know.
[1:46] Yes, and who she is.
[1:48] Well, she started in Bollywood.
[1:49] She went on to star in a huge Hollywood rom-com wedding season.
[1:53] She was in the Netflix hit, The One.
[1:55] She starred in the amazing Australian series of 12 and recently has been cast in the Australian version of The Office, which is like extremely exciting.
[2:02] Can't wait to see that.
[2:04] She's an absolute superstar and we just had the best conversation with her.
[2:06] It was amazing.
[2:07] She was the best.
[2:09] Before we do that, before we chat with her, which is coming up very soon, I promise, I just found something the other day that I can't not share with you guys.
[2:17] Okay.
[2:18] I actually found the first ever notes that I took in the first ever meeting that Ryan and I ever had about this podcast.
[2:27] Oh, handwritten notes.
[2:28] Handwritten notes from our first ever meeting.
[2:30] Oh, and to talk about doing a podcast.
[2:32] Potentially.
[2:33] It was our first ever chat about what it might be.
[2:35] This is great.
[2:36] I mean, I'm kind of a bit nervous.
[2:37] It feels like this will be embarrassing.
[2:38] Well, it's mainly embarrassing for me, I would say.
[2:41] I think you come off quite fine.
[2:44] But also, my note-taking, I rarely ever take notes.
[2:47] I think I was just trying to impress you.
[2:48] I know.
[2:48] I've never seen you take notes ever.
[2:50] I think I want to impress you.
[2:53] I have written stuff that at some points, it's like, oh, yeah, that's something you should write.
[2:58] Other stuff...
[2:59] I don't... Like, I wrote it.
[3:00] There is no...
[3:01] If you'd asked me a minute after I wrote it what that was about, I'd say I don't know.
[3:05] I'm not sure.
[3:05] I think that's often the case when I write notes as well.
[3:08] Often I'm writing notes, never look at them again.
[3:10] I've never met a better note taker than Bridget, our producer.
[3:13] Yeah, true.
[3:14] She's like...
[3:15] like absolute maximum level note taker.
[3:18] She writes a stunning novel every single time she opens her book about what's just happened.
[3:22] Yeah, I feel like sometimes she's just talking and like she's having a conversation and then you look down and her hand's writing something down.
[3:28] It's just like constantly writing things down.
[3:30] And the next day it's a fully published book.
[3:32] Yeah, fully published, leather bound.
[3:35] It's very efficient.
[3:36] Okay, so let's hear the notes.
[3:38] I'm kind of terrified, but okay.
[3:40] So the heading is podcasts.
[3:44] Squirrel.
[3:46] Wow, aspirational.
[3:47] Now, underneath it writes, this is the theme we came up with early on.
[3:51] It said, what life is really like okay?
[3:54] I don't know why the okay is there.
[3:55] I'm not sure about it.
[3:56] I think it was like... Well, probably because we were trying to speak to the youth of Australia.
[4:00] what life is really like okay yeah maybe that's it or maybe i wrote that as in like what life is really like and then in my head i'm like come back to this is this okay yeah i put a pin in that okay yeah there's a lot of question marks on his notes i'll just give you guys a heads up okay so point one six episodes over 12 weeks
[4:18] Six episodes.
[4:18] Oh, yeah, that's pretty good.
[4:19] Which is what we did.
[4:20] So fortnightly release schedule.
[4:21] Yeah, and that's what we did for the first season.
[4:23] Did we?
[4:23] Yeah, we did six episodes.
[4:24] Oh, not over 12 weeks.
[4:25] Not over 12 weeks.
[4:25] No, definitely not over 12 weeks.
[4:26] For about 12 years, I think.
[4:27] Yeah.
[4:30] Now, so the next point.
[4:31] Approved by a psych.
[4:33] Now, good.
[4:34] That's good.
[4:34] The add-on is odd.
[4:36] Approved by a psych over lunch.
[4:39] What, so we'd catch up with the psych over lunch to approve the episodes?
[4:43] Maybe we thought it'd be fun to catch up with the psych and have lunch with them.
[4:45] Do you think that's probably because we couldn't pay them at that point to do it?
[4:48] Oh, yeah.
[4:49] Lunch should cover their expertise.
[4:51] Could be that.
[4:52] The next point.
[4:54] Probably don't need a producer, just a sound tech.
[4:58] God, how naive we were.
[5:03] Well, hence releasing six episodes over 10 months or whatever it was.
[5:07] Probably don't need a producer.
[5:08] Yeah.
[5:09] Probably do.
[5:10] Definitely do.
[5:11] Need many, it turns out.
[5:13] The next bit's incredible.
[5:14] The next bit is guests, potential guests that we listed down.
[5:17] Oh, we listed names.
[5:18] We listed names.
[5:19] And we've actually had four of these people on.
[5:21] So potential guests.
[5:23] Dustin Martin.
[5:25] Joe Ingalls of the Orlando Magic.
[5:27] Yeah.
[5:28] Katrina Bissett.
[5:29] Tick.
[5:29] Who we had on.
[5:30] Yeah.
[5:30] Steen.
[5:31] Yeah, Raskopolis.
[5:32] We had on.
[5:33] 360.
[5:34] Had on.
[5:34] Oh, really?
[5:35] We suggested 360 in the first meeting.
[5:37] The next bit is my favourite slash I've ever seen in my entire life.
[5:40] Something slash something.
[5:41] Oh, yeah.
[5:42] So the first one, Missy Higgins slash Michael Phelps.
[5:50] Because we can't have both.
[5:54] It would be ridiculous to have Missy Higgins and Michael Phelps in the same way.
[5:58] You can't have both.
[5:59] Choose one.
[6:01] That is a weird slashy.
[6:02] I was just like, yeah.
[6:04] The next point, fruit.
[6:08] We've just written fruit.
[6:09] It just says fruit.
[6:18] Can I say?
[6:19] Yeah.
[6:19] Fruit.
[6:20] Would that have been in your attempt to impress me by taking notes?
[6:25] Is that you just writing anything down?
[6:31] Schultz, can you hang on a sec?
[6:32] Just writing some notes down.
[6:34] Fruit.
[6:34] That is insanely possible.
[6:37] That is just fruit.
[6:40] Okay.
[6:41] Good to know.
[6:42] Amazing.
[6:42] Anyway.
[6:43] Wow.
[6:43] What a relic.
[6:44] Yeah.
[6:45] All right.
[6:46] Can you... We should get that to the Smithsonian.
[6:48] I feel like that's a... What's the Smithsonian?
[6:50] It's a historic museum in America where they put like, yeah, very historical things.
[6:55] It doesn't really work when you ask what the Smithsonian is.
[7:01] It's less funny.
[7:03] Well, should we get into the episode?
[7:05] Yeah, Pallavi.
[7:07] In this episode, Pallavi talks about growing up in suburban Australia.
[7:10] She's in Taylor's Lakes, traversing multicultural Australia as an Australian Indian girl.
[7:16] She then talks about trying to make it in Bollywood in that incredibly complex, must be terrifying world of Bollywood.
[7:24] I mean, I think it's said in the app, but a thousand people a day or more try to make it in Bollywood.
[7:29] Yeah.
[7:30] And India is a full on place for anyone who's been there.
[7:33] It's an intense place to be.
[7:35] Yeah.
[7:36] But also as she talks about in the episode, and it's certainly not our place right now to talk about her story, but like her as a woman going into that environment, it sounds like it's very intimidating and often can be quite scary.
[7:48] Yeah.
[7:49] And then also then that coming back to Australia and again, having to navigate her role as an Indian Australian woman, but now as a superstar.
[7:58] So it's a really fascinating interview.
[7:59] Yeah, I really, I mean, it's really interesting to hear how she talks about just a sense of belonging and struggling with finding a place to belong.
[8:08] And I guess just finding acceptance really in all of the places that she lived and worked.
[8:13] Yeah.
[8:14] She's so eloquent.
[8:16] It's a joy to listen to her speak.
[8:17] She's brilliant.
[8:18] Yeah.
[8:18] And I should also mention that Pallavi has a podcast coming out.
[8:22] It's an audible original podcast called Sleep Sound where Pallavi, with many other incredible people, but Pallavi in her case tells a story called The Tale of Princess Aubergine where she takes us on a journey to India for a sort of sleeping beauty story.
[8:37] Princess Eggplant.
[8:39] Aubergine.
[8:40] Yeah.
[8:40] Yeah, yeah.
[8:41] Princess Eggplant.
[8:42] Flexing my knowledge on fruit names.
[8:45] Vegetable names.
[8:46] Vegetables.
[8:46] Great synonym work, Hugh.
[8:50] Yeah, and you can find that at audible.com.au.
[8:52] Yep.
[8:57] I would say officially, and this is not to pick a fight with any of our former guests, but I would say maybe potentially my favourite pre-interview chat we've ever had.
[9:07] Oh, yeah.
[9:07] Whoa.
[9:09] Yeah, I agree.
[9:10] How do you feel about that?
[9:11] Yeah, I feel like it's extremely offensive to previous guests.
[9:15] But for this moment, it feels great to say it.
[9:17] Now my work is done.
[9:18] I'm just going to head out now.
[9:20] We should have recorded it.
[9:21] What a shame.
[9:22] Well, I feel like our guest, who you know who it is because we've already talked about it in the intro.
[9:27] But as far as a bio, Hugh, it almost seems like it would be quicker to run through the things she hasn't done in the world.
[9:37] But it's like, of course you're an actress, you've done so much, but just reading about you, the amount you've achieved before you were an actress is astonishing.
[9:46] Can we talk about how smart you are?
[9:48] Oh, thank you.
[9:48] We should talk about that.
[9:49] Yeah, I'm just going to send this to my parents and be like.
[9:52] Like an intellectual powerhouse.
[9:55] But this is very much like my child version of how smart you are, but you skipped two grades in primary school.
[10:01] Skipped one grade in high school.
[10:03] Okay.
[10:03] Yeah.
[10:05] Just start it early because my parents were like, childcare, what is that?
[10:08] Just put a ring around.
[10:09] Hugh was running through the things you haven't done.
[10:11] Oh, right.
[10:11] It'll take a while.
[10:16] Unfortunately, no one will hear that joke because I'm definitely editing that bit out.
[10:19] Damn it.
[10:20] I don't know when that happens.
[10:21] No, I'd read somewhere that you'd skip two year levels, but I mean still skipping one year level.
[10:26] Yeah, sorry to cut you off, but not good active listening on my part.
[10:30] Sorry.
[10:30] No, definitely cut me off.
[10:32] Sorry.
[10:32] Definitely cut me off.
[10:33] Okay.
[10:33] Can we edit that out?
[10:36] But my parents, they call it a double promotion.
[10:39] That's...
[10:40] Oh, a double promotion in terms of what's skipping?
[10:42] You go from eight to ten, so it's a double promotion, right?
[10:46] And so I think that's been slowly translated over time until I skipped two-year levels.
[10:53] These are the kind of faux pas, cultural faux pas, that I have to deal with in my life.
[10:57] I love it.
[10:58] So, yeah, when it happened, all the aunties and the uncles at the cultural functions that we'd go to for all our cultural preservation every Saturday evening,
[11:08] would be like, you had a double promotion, and I had no idea what they were talking about.
[11:11] So anyway, this is just for... That's a great term.
[11:14] It's cool to get a double promotion.
[11:17] So what year level did you skip?
[11:18] Year nine.
[11:19] Year nine.
[11:20] That is amazing.
[11:21] Arguably an important year in development.
[11:25] Yeah, I think so.
[11:26] I have regrets about that now.
[11:28] How was that actually going?
[11:30] Because I imagine you have like a group of friends and then you're sort of like leaving them.
[11:34] I was a bit of a loner.
[11:36] Are we working too hard?
[11:36] Yeah, I was like, no, you know, I actually, this is, you know, I moved to India, weirdly, when I was nine.
[11:45] I went to Chennai to learn dance because I always had this fascination with my culture and where does it all come from?
[11:52] Why do I feel this way?
[11:53] And where do I belong?
[11:56] And, you know, the classic migrant existential angst, particularly as part of the first generation that was a critical mass to grow up.
[12:03] Brown in Australia from a migrant background.
[12:07] You know, and I was in love with Bollywood as a kid and I loved to dance and I just wanted ways to connect.
[12:14] And so my parents were like, you want to go live in India?
[12:17] I was like, yeah.
[12:18] And they're like, okay.
[12:19] And I was like, I'm nine, but I'm glad that that doesn't bother you one bit, you know.
[12:23] And so I went to India as a nine-year-old, had my 10th birthday, came back and it was like –
[12:28] I went to nine-year-old, came back a 16-year-old because it was such a mind-boggling experience, that three months to four months of my life.
[12:35] And that was by yourself?
[12:36] Yes.
[12:37] There was an auntie there that, you know, I lived with and her daughter.
[12:40] But, you know, it's not your parents.
[12:42] My parents were like, see ya.
[12:44] Within two weeks, I was like, I really want to come back.
[12:47] And my father was like, no, the deal is you're going to go to school there and, you know, follow the deal.
[12:51] Yeah.
[12:52] We have discussions at the dinner table about this all the time now.
[12:55] I'm like, really?
[12:55] Would you do that to my friend's child?
[12:57] Would you send them off if they said I want to go live in India today?
[13:00] They're like, sorry, we were just not.
[13:01] Different time.
[13:02] Different time.
[13:03] Yeah.
[13:03] They were like, well, when we were kids, you'd get shipped off to you.
[13:05] I'm like, when you were kids.
[13:07] This is just anyway.
[13:08] I just came back to Melbourne really, I think, quite precocious and a little bit unsettled.
[13:15] And so then I went from a public primary school to a private high school and that was like this other culture shock that was going on.
[13:23] All of a sudden we were in kilts and blazers and reading the hymns and, you know, reciting sonnets and all of this stuff, which was a culture shock for someone who grew up in an Indian family.
[13:34] And so I think my displacement was...
[13:37] increased a little bit more than it might have otherwise been.
[13:40] And, yeah, I was kind of like just very disassociated in Year 7 and 8.
[13:44] So my great plan was just do it quicker and just get it done.
[13:50] Oh, I asked to skip.
[13:53] Really?
[13:53] Wow, you applied for the double promotion now.
[13:55] Yeah.
[13:57] I presented the plan.
[13:59] Because traditionally I would say like, you know, you do hear about like parents who are very, you know, want their kids to be really smart and want them to achieve and it's usually the parents pushing it.
[14:07] Rarely you hear it's the kids.
[14:09] No, my parents were, I mean, they were pretty hands-off.
[14:13] They had things to do.
[14:14] I mean, and I really empathise now with...
[14:17] Both my parents worked full time.
[14:19] My mum was a professor of engineering at RMIT.
[14:22] And to be, again, a South Asian woman at that time working in a predominantly white male engineering faculty, I'm sure, had its challenges.
[14:30] And so she was, you know, she had a work cut out for her.
[14:33] So we were just, my brother and I were kind of...
[14:36] plodding along and just, you know, doing our thing.
[14:39] And I think there is, you know, it's incepted at birth when you're born in Australia in an Asian family that you have to kind of do well and do okay because there is some great sacrifice that's occurred, blah, blah, blah.
[14:52] And I don't have, I come from a, and I always like to preface this, I think there are, I
[14:58] different kinds of migrant communities, as we all know, that's obvious.
[15:01] But, you know, the waves of migration from South Asia has differed over the years.
[15:05] And my parents came from the skilled migrant cohort who were kind of invited by the government to come here in the 80s.
[15:13] And so their experience wasn't traumatic in that sense.
[15:16] You know, they didn't come as refugees.
[15:18] Yeah.
[15:20] They were given visas and homes to stay in and had to just work it out.
[15:25] But the government in Australia wanted these migrants.
[15:29] And so for them, their challenges were obviously the challenges of racism or the challenges of fitting in, but it wasn't, you know, are we going to survive?
[15:37] It wasn't that deep fiscal survivalism.
[15:42] But yet you know that there is a struggle going on.
[15:46] and everyone is trying to find their way and trying to fit in.
[15:48] And you hear the dinnertime conversations that your parents are having about what their day was like and you're very receptive to that.
[15:57] And so you kind of go, oh, I need to take care of myself in these other ways because I'm not going to come home.
[16:03] My parents are going to be like, how was your day today?
[16:05] You know, that wasn't the conversation happening.
[16:08] That emotional support wasn't necessarily there.
[16:10] And it wasn't nefarious.
[16:12] It was just they had other things going on.
[16:15] So were they, did they talk to you in realistic terms about like the world and about racism or were they sort of trying to sort of protect you?
[16:24] Again, I think it was, in my case, my parents were very laissez-faire.
[16:29] Like we, the four of us were very strong individuals since I was a kid and they treated us like adults really and there was no real mollycoddling.
[16:40] I mean I can't speak for my older brother but particularly in my case, I don't think racism really came up.
[16:46] I remember taking it into my own hands, surprise, surprise, when I was...
[16:51] Five, and this kid was calling me chocolate ice cream at school.
[16:55] And I went up to his mum and I was like, your son's calling me chocolate ice cream.
[16:59] I think he might have a problem at home.
[17:01] Oh, you spoke to the mum.
[17:02] I spoke to the mum and she was just knitting, being like, can you please leave me alone?
[17:07] And so I just had this weird awareness of, and it's not a great thing as a kid.
[17:13] You kind of want to go, I want to just be a kid.
[17:16] But I think I was surrounded by adults.
[17:19] It's an amazing level of almost objectivity at that age.
[17:22] Yeah, I was like, this is bad.
[17:23] This shouldn't be happening.
[17:25] To not take it personally or be hurt by it.
[17:27] Yes.
[17:27] Were you hurt by it?
[17:28] Yeah, were you hurt by it?
[17:28] I don't think I was hurt by it.
[17:30] I just became really aware that this happens and this is something that's going to continuously happen.
[17:34] And, you know, at the end of the day I did grow up in the north-western suburbs of Melbourne, which was quite multicultural.
[17:41] So it was normalised and people did say things but it was, you know,
[17:48] people from different multicultural backgrounds were having a go at each other half the time.
[17:52] But it's also that minority kind of complex where you start to...
[17:58] pick on the weaker link because you're like, if I can pick on that guy, then... Or test out who is the weaker link.
[18:04] Yeah, exactly.
[18:05] So the person that belongs to the host community might not be so harsh on me because I might be seen as an ally to them.
[18:12] So it's all this kind of complex stuff which was mirrored in the adult lives of those who I sort of saw at home and, you know, it's very kind of layered and all pervasive.
[18:22] And I guess you just grow to know that that's your norm.
[18:25] Yeah.
[18:25] And so it wasn't really talked about.
[18:27] You go, this is just our lot.
[18:28] It's cool.
[18:29] You know, this is the baptism of fire that we're going through.
[18:32] So when you say to your parents, sorry, was there a conversation where you said to your parents, I think I'd like to be a Bollywood star?
[18:38] Like did that happen at a certain stage and did they go, yep, well, go.
[18:42] No, that was the one which shockingly they were like, no.
[18:47] Because by that stage, had you already, like, graduated with a law degree and... Arts law.
[18:53] Arts law.
[18:54] In, like, world record time.
[18:55] Yeah, it was world record time.
[18:57] It was silly.
[18:58] It was a joke at uni.
[18:58] People would be like, pal, how many subjects are you doing these semesters at night?
[19:01] And I was like, all right, calm down, guys.
[19:03] Yeah, it's 11.
[19:05] Don't insult me.
[19:06] Um...
[19:08] Because that's not brushed over that.
[19:10] You did an arts law degree in four and a half years as opposed to it's meant to be.
[19:15] Well, I did a diploma in French as well just so you missed that.
[19:18] Hugh.
[19:19] My research is right off to that.
[19:21] This is so bad.
[19:22] This is like every Indian person watching this is just going to be like, oh, why is she just making us out to be these massive nerds?
[19:28] Well, I think it's incredibly impressive.
[19:31] Thank you.
[19:31] Thank you.
[19:33] I mean, that's what I want to talk about, how smart you are.
[19:35] Yeah.
[19:35] No, I was in Bollywood telling people I was really smart.
[19:38] They were like, no, no, no, no, no, we don't care.
[19:40] I just dance around the tree.
[19:43] Dance around the tree.
[19:46] I have an arts law degree.
[19:47] Yeah, you should have.
[19:49] The biggest failure was the, you know, Melbourne UD.
[19:52] Law, arts, again, gives you a real sense that you're something, like maybe a little bit too much.
[20:00] Because I did rock up to Bombay and I was like, guys, guys, guys, here's my cover letter.
[20:05] And they were like, cover letter, like what is this nonsense?
[20:08] Just tore it up.
[20:08] One guy was like, please never present something like this again.
[20:13] Because I didn't know how to... First of all, how the hell do you break into Bollywood?
[20:17] I grew up in Taylor's Lakes.
[20:18] Like, where do you go?
[20:19] Yeah.
[20:20] So to go back to your point about whether my parents were okay with it, this is where it kind of sort of their conservatism might have snuck in.
[20:31] I also come from a pretty...
[20:33] It's hard.
[20:34] It's really hard to talk about this stuff in black and white terms.
[20:36] I can't say my parents were conservative or they weren't.
[20:39] They were very liberal.
[20:40] I was obviously able to, like, do what I wanted to within reason.
[20:44] But there was a framework that I was operating within.
[20:48] Like compared to Sharon, my friend at school, I don't know why he's Sharon.
[20:52] I just, anyway, I'm so nervous.
[20:54] Raise your picture.
[20:55] Yeah, yeah.
[20:56] There was no Sharon.
[20:56] Yeah, yeah, there was no Sharon.
[20:57] There was an Australian girl.
[20:58] There was an Australian girl who was able to be like, oh, I'm going to the movies at 8.30 on a Friday night with these people I just met.
[21:05] Like, my mum was not letting me go to Crown to watch a movie at 8.30 on a Friday night.
[21:12] And also keeping in mind I'd skipped a year.
[21:14] So now I'm like almost two years younger than everyone on my year level.
[21:17] So socially everyone's doing more stuff and I'm trying to figure out how I kind of fit in there.
[21:23] So there was a limitation to my freedom within that.
[21:27] It wasn't socially like go do what you want.
[21:29] You were always scared you'd get busted holding a boy's hand or something by some auntie.
[21:33] peeking out of a tree in some shopping centre.
[21:36] I mean, these things happen because sexuality was not something that you could talk about with your parents.
[21:41] Having friends that were boys was scary to them.
[21:45] There were things that were still imported from the world that they left around.
[21:49] about the role of a girl and how you want to be perceived by your community.
[21:54] So I'm not saying that I grew up in a household where that was totally eradicated.
[22:00] My dad was very much and didn't care about that stuff.
[22:03] My mum grew up in a pretty conservative Indian family, so she had still inherited some of those things.
[22:08] Because of strictness.
[22:09] Yeah, there was, you know, and she wasn't outwardly strict, but she cared because...
[22:14] Her mum was pretty conservative, so, you know, it's passed down.
[22:19] But, yeah, the Bollywood thing was unsurprising to them because I'd said I wanted to be a Bollywood actress, I think, when I was three years old.
[22:26] But I think they assumed I'd grow out of it.
[22:29] And then they were very scared that I would get, like,
[22:35] About how I would be perceived because Bollywood is traditionally in India was quite a scary thing.
[22:42] It was where the loose woman goes to hang out, you know.
[22:47] There was like all of this stigma attached to what it was to be a performer.
[22:52] So they were worried about how you'd be perceived by who?
[22:54] Yeah.
[22:55] More than perceived how I might be treated, what might happen to me.
[23:01] But it's since transpired that my father actually wanted to be an actor when he was at uni and himself didn't feel empowered to go through that pathway.
[23:11] And he's a, you know...
[23:13] upper-class Hindu male who grew up in Delhi in an English-speaking home.
[23:17] I'm always like, Dad, you are the privileged white man of India.
[23:22] But if that was his fear, then I can only imagine what it would be, you know, the thought of what it might be for me.
[23:30] So I had to kind of lie to go back.
[23:34] Oh, right.
[23:35] I was going to ask, but you've sort of answered it, I think.
[23:39] Was there a double standard in, like you were saying, it's where, in inverted commas, loose women but not loose men?
[23:46] Like is there a double standard?
[23:48] Oh, totally.
[23:48] There always is, you know, and I think...
[23:51] I mean, again, it's really hard to talk about India, women, repression, sexual violence, all of these things, you know, about, you know, when it comes to women's empowerment, particularly from the subcontinent, because it's so easy to paint this sort of broad strokes picture of, oh, India's unsafe for women and da-da-da-da-da, and you hear all horror stories of tourists going there and having a tough time as women.
[24:15] Yeah.
[24:15] But because I understand the culture and I don't justify any of those things, but because I understand the culture so intimately and I understand how layered and complex it is, it's just really important for me to preface that it's not like, okay, it's a terrible place for women necessarily all the time.
[24:34] But, yes, it is definitely harder.
[24:36] And I ultimately, and I'm skipping ahead a lot here, but I did ultimately make a choice about whether I wanted to be a woman in India or a brown woman in the world and which was the tougher of the two.
[24:48] Gosh.
[24:50] And which would be a better life for me in terms of living in alignment with my values and just ease really.
[24:59] So, yeah, I actually feigned an exchange program in Delhi recently
[25:04] which is how I went to India because my parents are professors.
[25:06] You just go, I'm going to go study.
[25:07] And they're like, of course.
[25:08] Great.
[25:08] Have fun.
[25:09] Talk to you in a couple of years.
[25:11] We'll be back in six months.
[25:14] Yeah, literally.
[25:14] It was a six-month exchange.
[25:15] It was signed off by Melbourne Uni.
[25:17] Sorry, Melbourne Uni.
[25:18] But yeah.
[25:18] Oh, Melbourne Uni went along with it.
[25:19] So it was a real course.
[25:20] It was a real course.
[25:21] Yeah, I wanted to get to India.
[25:24] I was really feeling it in my bones.
[25:25] I was still a performing artist.
[25:27] So I grew up as a classical Indian dancer.
[25:29] Every Saturday I was performing on Melbourne stages and it was how I was known in the community and it was who I was and I just didn't know how to make that mean something in Australia apart from just being the diversity.
[25:42] I mean we didn't even use the word diversity then, not that I love using it now, but it was just multicultural representation on a very small scale.
[25:50] Yeah.
[25:51] So even though your parents were clearly not wanting you to be a Bollywood actress, they were okay with you dancing, working on, were you acting as well throughout this time or just performing on stage?
[26:03] It was mainly dancing.
[26:04] Okay, and that was fine.
[26:05] That was how we propagated and preserved our culture was through the arts.
[26:10] And I think one of, you know, some of the things I've distilled in the last few years is
[26:16] For me, my culture was accessible to me through the arts.
[26:20] That was what brought me close to the language, the music, the dance.
[26:24] That's what drew you to it.
[26:26] Absolutely.
[26:27] And so that's what I married with belonging in that culture and potentially why I thought that that was an appropriate pathway to discover that part of myself.
[26:37] And I've written about this in a book that's much publicised and very unpublished.
[26:42] LAUGHTER
[26:44] But the distinction between entertainment and artistry and, you know, artistry, there's respect there.
[26:52] And particularly classical Indian dance is it's an homage to the gods.
[26:58] It's mythological.
[26:59] You're telling stories that are in all of our spiritual texts and whereas going to the
[27:06] dance in Bollywood or perform in Bollywood, there was a real, I guess, a cheapness associated with that.
[27:12] And it's to the point where even if I was performing in Australia, if I was invited to dance at I guess what we might call like a cabaret in the sense that there's food and drink being served when I'm dancing, that was a no because that's just entertainment while someone's having their dinner.
[27:29] Whereas if someone's coming to watch you at a theatre or in an auditorium,
[27:33] then that's giving respect to your art.
[27:35] So there were all these little distinctions and, you know, I was pretty young.
[27:39] I was just like I just want to perform and this is what I love doing and that's where I can do it because I don't want to be just dancing for Diwali at Government House.
[27:50] No offence to Government House but I'm just saying, you know, that was going to be my path was multicultural girl.
[27:55] You wanted to be an artist more than an entertainer.
[27:58] Yeah, I wanted to embody every part of that.
[28:00] And I'm very Indian.
[28:01] You know, I speak fluent Hindi and I converse in Hindi as if I'm a native speaker.
[28:06] And I wanted to explore that as well because there's something about language that you can only express a part of yourself if you're limiting your language, I think.
[28:17] There's this whole world I step into in Taylor's Lakes when my family is there where I might as well be in Delhi, the way we're speaking and conversing.
[28:24] And I was like, I want to explore this more.
[28:26] This is great.
[28:27] What does that feel like when you go home and you're in that world and you're speaking Hindi and?
[28:33] Yeah, it's so freeing.
[28:34] It's so great.
[28:35] I miss it when it's not happening.
[28:38] And I feel really, I feel great about how our community is growing here now, especially, you know, when I meet newer migrants and they don't expect someone like me to have fluent Hindi or Punjabi and just, you know, riff and tell jokes and be crass and all of those things.
[28:54] It's just a different way of expressing and being human.
[28:58] And I think...
[29:00] my Australian tropes or, you know, the garb that we don as these Western beings, it's limiting for me.
[29:09] It's not, it doesn't express who I am completely in any environment.
[29:13] So I love being able to do that and I can't wait for the time and it will come where there's a shorthand for everyone, you know, just the way the world's going.
[29:23] But right now we're not there and it was very much you crossed the threshold into your family home
[29:29] I used to pick up the phone in primary school with an Indian accent because I speak to my parents in an Indian accent.
[29:36] I have since I was a kid.
[29:38] Okay, I speak to my brother.
[29:40] In English?
[29:40] In English.
[29:41] In English, yeah.
[29:43] I speak to my brother in an Indian accent.
[29:45] We both grew up in Australia.
[29:46] He was three months old when he came to Perth.
[29:48] Like, there's no reason for it.
[29:50] So has that just always been the way?
[29:51] No, it was actually, I think, when we came to Melbourne, weirdly, because the community here was a lot larger.
[29:57] And so we kind of started to emulate these new kids that we were meeting who code-switched.
[30:04] And we became master code switchers as well.
[30:06] Yeah.
[30:06] When you say code switchers, what do you mean?
[30:08] Like switching between?
[30:10] Two codes of conduct or two codes of being, yeah.
[30:13] Oh, gotcha, yeah.
[30:14] It's sort of, yeah, it's what a lot of people from dual heritage use as a term to describe, like...
[30:20] Because it's not just language and it's not just voice.
[30:24] It's your... Embodiment.
[30:25] Yeah, my body language, how I will stand or sit if there were a bunch of aunties in the room or how my behaviour changes completely.
[30:34] I was just at a cafe the other day with a very good friend of mine who's gay and the waiter came over.
[30:39] I know the waiter really well, really well.
[30:41] Chatted to him for years and he come over and took my friend's order and all of a sudden it was just ferry camp.
[30:48] I went, oh, I didn't.
[30:49] And I said to my friend, I didn't know that.
[30:51] Okay, that's – and he said, yeah, he code switches.
[30:54] Yeah.
[30:55] And he said, we're switching codes when he talks to you.
[30:57] Oh, really?
[30:58] And I went, oh, I didn't know that was a thing.
[30:59] And he goes, what are you talking about?
[31:01] You idiot.
[31:01] Yeah.
[31:02] How do you not know that's a thing?
[31:03] Yeah.
[31:04] And then he came back to me later and he was like –
[31:07] What do you want?
[31:07] What are you after today?
[31:08] Oh, wow.
[31:08] Just was very like, wow, that's a code switch.
[31:11] Yeah.
[31:11] It's, again, another kind of survivalism.
[31:13] Yeah.
[31:14] Yeah, I was going to ask, what's the drive there?
[31:16] Is it to fit in or is it?
[31:18] Yeah, I mean, I was so young.
[31:20] I assume there's so much of it is fitting in, right?
[31:22] So much of it is wanting to belong.
[31:24] And I think there's also a feeling of respect.
[31:27] My parents had these Indian accents.
[31:29] And I think beyond a point when you're...
[31:31] when you're old enough that you can start learning new languages or, you know, be a bit conscious about this stuff, it probably felt weird to have a really deep ocker accent talking to my mum at some point.
[31:43] She's like, you want to come for dinner?
[31:45] And I'm like, yeah, can I have some, you know, like it would just.
[31:47] Yeah.
[31:49] Like you just want to turn it down.
[31:51] I know.
[31:52] I just stopped because I was.
[31:55] Because I was about... No, because...
[31:58] It's awesome cheese twisties.
[32:00] So curly whirly.
[32:02] That's sort of...
[32:03] The best thing about coming back to Australia is the fridge at a milk bar.
[32:06] Oh, yeah.
[32:08] That's what makes me the happiest.
[32:09] I often take photos.
[32:10] I have a lot of photos in my favourites of fridges at milk bars.
[32:13] Oh, yeah.
[32:14] That's nice.
[32:15] It's the side of my childhood.
[32:17] What a smell that is, going into a milk bar.
[32:18] Yeah, it's very familiar.
[32:20] It's like a freezer smell, kind of a meaty smell.
[32:23] You know, someone's got some fizzos.
[32:24] A mix of everything.
[32:25] Yeah, exactly.
[32:26] So, yeah, that's code switching.
[32:28] Were you – was there ever a conversation – I'm interested to know about marriage.
[32:32] Were you – was it discussed a range marriage for you or was always – Honestly, you remember when I was saying my parents were really hands off?
[32:41] Yeah.
[32:43] Poor things.
[32:44] They're so sweet.
[32:45] Because I did confront them.
[32:47] I was home during lockdown in Melbourne and was sitting in the backyard and, you know, I was like, so, you know, as far as Indian parents go, really just zero effort, guys, like not even one.
[33:01] And they were just really shocked.
[33:03] And I was like, your network sucks or something's going on, you know.
[33:07] And my dad's like, but we're scared of you.
[33:17] Wow.
[33:17] I've never heard that.
[33:20] That's incredible.
[33:21] And I'm like, I do your dishes.
[33:22] I'm like, they're the model migrant daughter.
[33:25] Like, what else do you want?
[33:26] I think I'm a Bollywood actor.
[33:27] Like, how many kudos do you get every Saturday?
[33:31] So what do you think they meant by that?
[33:34] I think they're probably just scared that I'd be like, nah, nah, like, you know, or tell them off for bringing me...
[33:41] not great candidates.
[33:43] I've spent a lot of time in this interview trying to imagine what your dad looks like.
[33:46] I'll show you a photo.
[33:47] He's got an Akubra hat on most of the time.
[33:49] It's great.
[33:50] Does he have glorious hair?
[33:53] Great hair.
[33:54] That's what I was picturing.
[33:56] He combs it at every red light.
[34:02] I've never had someone be so vain for traffic cameras.
[34:11] I'm sorry, Dad.
[34:13] Well, I really, I feel like we sort of stopped the story when you get to Bollywood.
[34:17] It's like, whatever.
[34:18] So it's like you get to India.
[34:20] Can I ask a question before this?
[34:21] Because I think chronologically it'll line in.
[34:24] Yeah, I'm not excited to get to Bollywood at all.
[34:27] Had you tried to, was the dream to be an actress performer anywhere or was it Bollywood?
[34:34] And had you tried to in Australia at this point?
[34:37] Ooh, such a good point.
[34:40] It was Bollywood.
[34:40] If I'm honest, as a kid it was Bollywood because that was the only thing that would have made sense.
[34:44] I mean, like, you know, where else was I going to go?
[34:47] Like that was just knowledge I had.
[34:49] But I didn't realise how much knowledge I had until I tried to be a performing artist here.
[34:55] So I studied law and media and communications and –
[34:58] What's the next best thing to being a Bollywood actress?
[35:01] A broadcast journalist.
[35:02] You're like, oh, I get to communicate and storytell in some way and it's respectable, my parents are not going to be shamed and all of the things that could happen.
[35:11] There are job positions available.
[35:12] Yeah, exactly.
[35:13] It's like there's a pathway.
[35:16] But I was told that I could never dye my hair blonde, so it's not going to work out, so don't even...
[35:24] So I don't even send your show a real-time-tool.
[35:25] You had literally told that.
[35:26] Literally told that by a teacher of broadcast journalism.
[35:30] Oh, wow.
[35:32] And did you believe them?
[35:33] Yeah, I was like, oh, that makes sense.
[35:35] You know, it was just like, that makes sense.
[35:37] Okay.
[35:39] And then I actually initially went to India thinking I'd try and get a job as a journalist in India.
[35:45] And then I was like, one second, if I'm coming all this way, let's just go back to the OG dream.
[35:50] And how many people turn up every day to Mumbai?
[35:53] 1,000.
[35:53] So it's 1,000?
[35:54] Yeah, right.
[35:55] 1,000 a day turn up to be an actor every day.
[35:57] Actually 1,000.
[35:58] Actually 1,000.
[35:59] Probably more.
[36:01] With the dream, I guess it's like the LA thing in America, but I guess it's the same thing.
[36:06] Probably bigger, yeah.
[36:07] Way bigger.
[36:08] Yeah, and I went over there and, you know, this is where the naivety kind of probably didn't help me.
[36:14] And it's great because it got me there, but I just sort of thought that I could work it out and it was a lot harder to work out than I expected.
[36:24] And I think, you know, I think I'm grateful for the values that I grew up in
[36:29] with as an Indian woman and an Australian woman, but they didn't always compute in the industry that I was working in.
[36:37] And so that was the next hurdle was like now I'm here, got my bags and a 200-rupee room in Kalaba.
[36:43] Can you explain what that is?
[36:44] Sorry.
[36:45] So Kalaba's this part of – go on, Hugh.
[36:47] Oh, Hugh.
[36:47] Yeah, go on, Hugh.
[36:48] He's sensitive.
[36:53] Sorry, I'd just like to defer to Hugh on explaining the geography of Bob X. I actually want to actually do a follow-up question, Hugh.
[37:00] Can you tell me the difficulties of being a woman in Bollywood trying to get work?
[37:04] That would be great if you could follow up with that as well.
[37:07] Thanks.
[37:12] Can I tell the audience a little bit about your background and just legitimise this?
[37:16] Hugh and Josh are half South Asian, so you can answer these questions.
[37:21] I spent the best part of a year in India and Mumbai for a lot of that time, which is why I was very – And he's actually going to do it.
[37:26] No, he's not.
[37:29] Which is why I was so excited to know what Kalabra was and want to say it.
[37:32] But then as I went Kalabra, I went, no, Hugh, this is not for you.
[37:36] You got halfway through the word, though.
[37:38] It came out.
[37:39] Yeah, I aborted Kalabra.
[37:43] But I actually would like, okay, how about you do your version and then I'll do my version because I think the two perspectives are really interesting for this.
[37:49] Okay.
[37:49] Well, okay.
[37:51] So a Colaba would be like in Melbourne, if someone's coming to Melbourne, you'd go, go to Federation Square, I feel like as a tourist.
[37:59] To me, that's what Colaba was.
[38:00] It was like tourist wall to wall.
[38:03] It was professional beggars.
[38:04] It was the most touristy Indian experience I probably had while I was there, I think, I would say.
[38:14] No, everyone just... How'd he go?
[38:16] Really?
[38:17] Well, no, but that's so great.
[38:18] I don't know why I wanted to fail.
[38:19] That is so great because... And Shantaram is very much like Shantaram Experience.
[38:21] Yes, he said it, Shantaram Experience, which for the listeners is Gregory, Robert, Gregory Davis.
[38:26] I can't remember his name, but I read it at that bar in... Leopold's.
[38:30] Yeah, I read it at Leopold's in Calaba, and I just, yeah, I read the whole book pretty much there.
[38:34] How did you feel?
[38:36] I loved it.
[38:36] Sorry, I'm just auditioning for, like, when one of you guys are sick.
[38:39] Like, I'm just kidding.
[38:40] This is good.
[38:42] I loved it.
[38:43] I'd been pretty miserable in India for the first two months.
[38:46] Right.
[38:46] I didn't – it was too much of a culture shock.
[38:48] Yeah.
[38:49] And then just I started to – it was around the time I was starting to feel like – not that I ever understood India and I'm still so confused by India as a country and the culture –
[39:01] But it was at that point I was starting to feel at least comfortable walking around in Mumbai by myself or with my ex-partner.
[39:08] And it coincided with the time I was reading Shantram at Leopold's and I just felt like...
[39:15] The memory to me is like I started to feel comfortable in India.
[39:18] So I love that.
[39:19] It's a very fond memory.
[39:20] Oh, wow.
[39:21] So, like, again, for me, going back is similar but different, obviously, because I'm an Australian the way you are, but also I present as an Indian woman, right?
[39:32] And so it's so interesting because I seldom get to experience that outwardly
[39:39] because it doesn't compute for people.
[39:41] They're like, but you're Indian.
[39:42] But I'm like, but I'm also observing this as an Australian.
[39:45] And sometimes I just want to observe it that way and I don't want to understand the subtext and I don't want to understand the languages that are flying around and that that person's having a fight with their grandma and the other table.
[39:56] And so sometimes I get envious of those moments that people talk about in their experiences with India.
[40:02] I mean, I look back at a white man, an Australian man, who was reading Tramon Leopold's must be like, I don't know.
[40:08] Peak envy for me.
[40:10] I'm just like you couldn't get a more, like, I mean, the biggest cliche possible.
[40:16] But it's also interesting because...
[40:18] But one of the things a lot of people don't realise is the immense privilege of having white skin in India.
[40:25] Oh, that's ridiculous.
[40:27] Yeah.
[40:27] Yeah.
[40:28] I mean, I did a TV ad over there and I wasn't going to bring this up because it's, like, shameful looking back on it.
[40:33] I didn't quite get it.
[40:33] Just salt in my wounds.
[40:34] I'm, like, lighting up in the back lots of Bollywood.
[40:37] You're just like, oh, I'm just going to reach out to our lamp holds, get cast like that.
[40:42] No, it was one of those experiences where you can, it's a tourist thing, you can go and just be in a, you can go and be in a Hollywood ad.
[40:48] I don't know if they're real or not, but what they got me to do is just ridiculous.
[40:52] Like, and I wasn't going to say it, but it was like, it was a moisturising cream.
[40:55] A whiteness cream.
[40:56] And it was like, I was the after person.
[40:58] So yeah.
[41:00] I don't know about this.
[41:02] Surely I've told you.
[41:03] You've never told me this.
[41:04] Fanta's cream.
[41:05] You don't know about Fanta's creams?
[41:06] No, I know about Fanta's creams.
[41:07] I didn't know you were in an ad.
[41:08] I just had to like rub it on my face.
[41:10] So did a brown person turn into you based on this cream?
[41:13] I don't.
[41:14] You never saw the edit?
[41:15] Potentially.
[41:16] Yeah.
[41:17] Well, there was an Indian man next to me and he was like looking all frustrated.
[41:22] Oh, my God.
[41:23] We've got to track this down.
[41:24] I love that you're explaining this for the audience and I don't have to.
[41:27] This is making me feel really good.
[41:28] That is great.
[41:29] He was just frustrated that his moisturising cream just wasn't doing as what he wanted it to.
[41:35] And then I put my moisturising cream on and everyone cheered for me.
[41:38] Did you start with brown makeup on?
[41:40] Did you, like, did you, were they brown-faced?
[41:42] No, I was, no.
[41:43] Okay.
[41:44] Maybe we found the thing that will bring the Resilience Project down.
[41:49] Knew it happened one day.
[41:52] Did not expect this to be it.
[41:53] The reason I laughed so much before it, like the tree thing, dancing around a tree, was the whole thing was set around a tree.
[41:58] Yeah, okay.
[41:59] I didn't get what they'd do before and after.
[42:01] I just was like, this poor guy's moisturising cream is shit.
[42:04] Yeah.
[42:05] Yeah, I have the most visceral memories of Mumbai.
[42:09] Yes.
[42:09] They've been the most...
[42:11] unhappy and uncomfortable and scared and then joyously, you know, it just felt amazing when I embraced what India really was.
[42:20] You surrendered to it?
[42:21] Sorry, I shouldn't – Josh has spent so much more time.
[42:24] Oh, Josh, okay.
[42:25] I want to hear about it.
[42:25] Well, not in India but I lived in Bangladesh for a year.
[42:28] Oh, wow.
[42:28] With my wife when we were a lot younger.
[42:31] Okay.
[42:32] And –
[42:33] Yeah, I loved it so much, lived in Dhaka, but it was so challenging.
[42:39] And the longer I was there, the harder I found it because I was like, and I feel more uncomfortable about it the older I get because I was like the thing you're talking about, the white privilege of being a white male and the way I was able to just kind of float through this incredible place that had so much.
[43:03] So much life and brilliant people, but also so much heartbreak and tragedy and poverty.
[43:09] And the way I was able to sort of float through it, kind of untouched.
[43:15] Almost revered.
[43:16] And celebrated for just walking and just talking to someone.
[43:19] And even the levels of privilege between being a white male as opposed to a white female and the different experience I had there compared to my wife.
[43:30] At the time And I always have this incredible guilt about it Because I found it very It's so confronting To live there But And then therefore I was like Well I lent into the comfort of being Of the ease that came with being white Mm-hmm
[43:48] But then I feel guilt over that, of the preferential treatment you get the older I live because I'm like I kind of felt like I also needed it to survive in a weird – does that make sense?
[43:58] Well, absolutely.
[43:59] I think I'm guilty of it as someone who was an expat in Mumbai, you know, and I think I lived –
[44:05] multiple lives based on the levels of privilege that I had.
[44:09] You know, at the end of the day, I was from Australia.
[44:12] I have an Australian passport.
[44:14] Like no one's – if something was going to happen to me, I had a consulate that I could contact.
[44:19] That's a huge level of privilege that I was always aware of.
[44:22] And that kind of kept me –
[44:24] maybe being able to walk in the face of danger towards it quite often.
[44:28] Yeah.
[44:29] But it was, I guess, you know, and because I was so hyper-conscious, I had a lot of friends who were white, you know, expats in Mumbai and, you know, coming over to do a JV with a bank or this or that and I found so much, too much comfort, I think, in having dinners with those people.
[44:47] Yeah.
[44:47] Because I was able to then escape the grime and the grit and the sheer lack of,
[44:53] of any of those trappings that I went through during the day because I rightly or wrongly...
[44:59] stripped my privilege when I went to India in terms of what I did in the local sphere.
[45:05] I didn't wear my Australian-ness on my sleeve.
[45:07] I didn't keep my Australian accent.
[45:09] I didn't say blah.
[45:10] I mean, I told everyone.
[45:11] I was like, I'm from Melbourne Uni Law School.
[45:14] Make me an actor in an Indian accent.
[45:18] But that was just, I was even more of an alien then because it was like their impression of
[45:25] a woman who's from abroad or an NRI, a non-resident Indian, or as I was constantly told, a not-required Indian.
[45:30] You're NRI, not-required Indian.
[45:35] I had to say, well, no, I'm as local as it gets because I thought that was my way to acceptance or my way to convincing them that I can portray characters that reflect this country.
[45:47] And honestly, if I had have gone, hey, I'm Australian,
[45:50] I have money, all of these things, then maybe my inroads would have been different.
[45:54] But I didn't respect that as a process and I think that's my Australian upbringing where you go, no, I'm not going to just use power right now.
[46:03] You believe in this mythology of mateship and egalitarianism and equality and equity and, again, doing a law degree probably didn't help because those a priori truths and that feeling of...
[46:17] you know, the truth will prevail, that's not how the world works.
[46:22] And particularly in a screen business that had operated in such a skewed way for so long until I would say, you know, there's been this reckoning in the whole world in the last five or six years around inequities between gender and race and
[46:39] We didn't have language like this five years ago.
[46:42] We weren't talking about – I wasn't certainly talking so openly about my struggles five years ago because there was no space for it.
[46:50] You're expected to go –
[46:52] Hey, what a great life you got because your parents migrated to Australia.
[46:55] Yeah.
[46:56] And so it's so complex and I was really trying.
[47:00] There was always a tightrope to be walked where you don't want to come across as this arrogant, obnoxious foreigner.
[47:07] You don't want to come across as a foreigner because that's othering.
[47:11] But you also don't want to be open to exploitation.
[47:14] And unfortunately, if you don't come from privilege, if you don't have connections, if you don't wear...
[47:22] certain things on your sleeve, then you're almost fair game because it's a misogynistic place.
[47:31] It can be.
[47:32] And wait, you don't want to do that either?
[47:35] Like you're not going to come and have an audition in a hotel room?
[47:38] Well, then you're too difficult, you know.
[47:41] Then you've got a mind of your own.
[47:42] Then you're like this whole other monster.
[47:45] So that was kind of what I was doing.
[47:47] So what do you mean by that, like come to a hotel room for an audition?
[47:50] I mean, so when I first got to India, it was pretty explicit that if you didn't know anyone or if someone wasn't going to back you or help you get in or give you the right audition, that the way that women who were not from the industry got into the industry was by aligning themselves with a powerful man through either sexual favours or something else.
[48:14] I don't know.
[48:15] The casting couch was real.
[48:16] It was a part of the lexicon of how it operated and it wasn't that cloaked either, you know.
[48:24] And I think because of the fact that I came armed with that information and maybe it wasn't as bad as I was, maybe my fear was talking, you know, maybe I was like, that's the worst thing that could happen and I do not want to be in that situation what come May.
[48:37] So I'm going to keep myself so far away from power structures that are exploitative.
[48:44] And so what ended up happening was I actually only knew a small amount of people, got to know a small amount of people intimately as friends or as colleagues because that fear had marred my early journey and had created all these shields and how I needed to protect myself.
[49:01] And in a way, I think that's maybe a disservice I did myself because I was more corporate in my approach.
[49:07] I was more...
[49:08] I was more girl from Melbourne Uni than I was freewheeling artist who wants to have fun and be embodied as a person and an artist.
[49:17] And now again in hindsight I can like reconcile the yin and the yang of that and say, oh, it makes sense why you used one over the other, but I just didn't know what I was doing.
[49:29] There was no pathway.
[49:30] I just turned up, my bag went to Calaba.
[49:33] And my father had said to me, when I think he realised I was going to India and, you know, he was like, oh, this girl, she's probably going to try something, you know, in the Indian industry.
[49:43] He said, make sure you turn up in an air-conditioned car with a driver to every meeting.
[49:48] And I was like...
[49:49] What?
[49:49] He drove a 95 Camry.
[49:53] What?
[49:53] I didn't understand.
[49:55] And what he was in a coded way trying to explain is the hierarchy of privilege and the way that you're treated.
[50:00] And I was like, I'm Australian and I'm a student.
[50:03] Like I don't need to do any of that.
[50:06] But he was right in a sense because I would catch the local train, I would take the rickshaws and turn up in a sweaty heap and therefore I was the same as any girl who came from a small village in the mountains of, you know, northern India who wanted to be an actress in Bombay.
[50:24] I didn't...
[50:26] you know, you could call it queue jumping, but I didn't walk into a room that I could have walked into.
[50:32] I walked into a room where I would never be seen because that's just where this mass was herded.
[50:40] And, you know, it is sort of there are various lanes.
[50:44] There's the fast track lane, there's the middle lane, there's the slow lane.
[50:47] And it's not that people that have to turn up in the slow lane don't get through, they do.
[50:51] But their slog is different.
[50:53] And I kind of chose the slow lane.
[50:56] I imagine that's a tricky thing to figure out because you're really choosing between wanting to be treated equally and wanting to do it like, quote unquote, the right way, but then also safety.
[51:09] Yeah.
[51:10] And like, you know, and looking after yourself and protecting yourself.
[51:13] Yeah, exactly.
[51:13] That's a tough decision.
[51:14] I led many lives in Bombay.
[51:16] And, you know, there was the privileged life that you, where you could walk into a nice coffee shop and pay for what is...
[51:24] was a $3 coffee then, which is a lot of money for somebody.
[51:28] But you're earning in rupees.
[51:29] My first paycheck for a play I think was 400 rupees, which is $8 for opening night.
[51:35] My taxi, though, because I chose an air-conditioned taxi that day, was $20.
[51:40] And the dream was very...
[51:44] It wasn't even let me be a lead actress in Bollywood short, that's your kind of subconscious goal.
[51:50] But it was like, can I be an actor?
[51:52] Like, can I...
[51:53] Make a living.
[51:53] Yeah.
[51:54] And you'd be like me.
[51:55] Yeah.
[51:55] You're thinking.
[51:58] And I get that.
[51:58] I just want that cream ad.
[52:01] No, and it was, it was, it was sort of like everything was a clue to legitimacy in a sense.
[52:07] Like where do I get to actually do the thing that I said that was promised to me as a kid who grew up in Australia where they say you can be what you want to be when you grow up.
[52:16] And you go, no, actually, I can't be what I want to be when I grow up because you've just told me in the real world that I can't.
[52:21] So where can I go for that to happen and that to actualise?
[52:24] So it was really an actualisation that I was seeking.
[52:27] And the goalposts keep shifting because the industry is ever changing.
[52:33] And there were so many voices because the power dynamic is very skewed.
[52:39] hundreds of thousands of people wanting to be an actor and like a fistful of people who have power to determine who gets to do that.
[52:46] So I'd walk into a new room every day and be told that something different was lacking or there was a different goalpost I needed to kick.
[52:55] You know, I used to get told, ironically, I was too brown because I was a darker skinned Indian woman and fair skin was preferred.
[53:07] And it's not like I didn't know that.
[53:08] I grew up Indian in Australia.
[53:10] Like I was called various things for the colour of my skin.
[53:13] And I'm...
[53:14] to some people, a fair-skinned Indian person because I'm North Indian.
[53:17] So even that whole thing is complex.
[53:19] I was like, oh, wait, so I was too brown in Australia and too brown in India.
[53:23] Like what?
[53:23] What's happening here?
[53:25] And that was a time where they were also casting a lot of women who were Indian passing but they were South American or European.
[53:33] And is that controversial in India?
[53:35] No, it wasn't at all controversial.
[53:37] I was like, this should be controversial.
[53:39] People were like, what do you mean?
[53:40] She's fair.
[53:41] Okay.
[53:43] Right.
[53:44] They were like, the fact that you think it's controversial is controversial.
[53:49] So I was again, you know, you're 20 years old and you're going, what?
[53:54] How is this?
[53:54] Like nothing was computing.
[53:57] And I think...
[53:59] Gradually I just fell back on the work.
[54:01] You go, how do I get to as many auditions as possible?
[54:04] How does – it was literally a numbers game going, do as many as possible, work as hard as you can and you will maybe get noticed or get that next leg up.
[54:12] And I have to say while it was a real convoluted journey –
[54:17] Those things did happen.
[54:19] You know, I'm very lucky that I did meet a director at a screening.
[54:25] So I was sort of struggling a little bit for a few years.
[54:29] Struggling, and again, this is a whole other topic, but the word struggler is thrown around a lot in India in the arts industry and I used to find it really abrasive.
[54:39] And they'd be like, so you're a struggler?
[54:40] And they'd just call you a struggler.
[54:42] Yeah.
[54:42] If you're not getting work and things.
[54:44] Or even if you are, but if you're not top shelf.
[54:47] If you're not striving.
[54:48] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[54:49] And I was like, no, I'm good.
[54:51] I'm fine.
[54:52] I'm not struggling.
[54:53] We're fine.
[54:54] Double promotion.
[54:55] Yeah, yeah.
[54:56] Serious?
[54:57] Struggling?
[54:57] I know.
[54:58] And I was like, please refer to cover letter.
[54:59] Yeah, page four.
[55:02] And so I was in that phase where people just thought it was okay to say things like that to you because you were an aspirant, which is probably a better word.
[55:12] And I'd started doing bit roles in films and lots of plays and I guess I'd developed a reputation as a reliable actor and I'd been told you'll never work as a lead in this film industry.
[55:24] It's just not going to happen.
[55:25] You don't have the family backing, the pedigree, the looks, the this, the that, blah, blah, blah.
[55:29] And I think I'd gotten to a point where I was cool with like, oh, I'm a working actor and that's respectable and there's dignity in that.
[55:37] But just when I had accepted that, I heard about this movie being cast for and it was this big guy, not physically a big guy but like a big star.
[55:47] Famous, yeah.
[55:48] Famous star.
[55:50] And the director had seen my, happened to be at the screening of my last film that I was in.
[55:55] And so when I approached him saying, can I audition for you, he actually responded positively, which was statistically kind of strange that that happened.
[56:04] Or maybe not once you hit that kind of nucleus.
[56:07] Maybe people are in those rooms.
[56:08] But it hadn't been my experience because I was in the periphery for so long.
[56:12] And then I just did a series of auditions for this guy and it was quite unbelievable that he cast me as the lead in this film.
[56:18] Which film was this?
[56:20] It was still Beersherum.
[56:21] It was my first big Bollywood film.
[56:23] And then I continued to work.
[56:26] I actually started my next big film right after that and then I took a break from Bollywood.
[56:32] Actually, the truth is there's two big films that I did over three years.
[56:35] They took these two films.
[56:37] To film them?
[56:39] From being cast in the first one to the release of the second one, it was almost three years.
[56:46] Yeah.
[56:47] And that really did burn me out in, you know, again, a part of my time.
[56:52] Like I'd had a struggle and then I'd do these two big films and I just needed to kind of recalibrate what I was doing
[57:01] who I wanted to be as a person because now I'm in the nucleus of this power structure and I need to figure out whether I'm buying into it or not and whether I'm comfortable being in those rooms where I'm rubbing shoulders with certain people that maybe were not nice to me a few years earlier, maybe I know they're not nice to people today.
[57:20] So from that point of view, did the Me Too movement impact India?
[57:26] It did.
[57:27] Well, it hit India.
[57:29] Yeah.
[57:29] I was at that stage had decided that I would probably not work in India much longer.
[57:35] Why is that?
[57:37] Well, I mean, for all the reasons that Me Too had to happen.
[57:41] Okay, yeah.
[57:43] And I think, you know, I really felt like there was a gradual curbing of my agency as a human and a voice.
[57:49] So all of...
[57:50] Going back to our original conversation about me asking for things and having that confidence, like that had been decimated, you know, by the time I was in my early 20s because all of a sudden nothing happened like that.
[58:03] You know, all the things you believe, all of your gumption, your principles are actually leading to your implosion or destruction or, you know, a lack of you being able to succeed.
[58:14] and all of the things that I was told at primary school, high school or uni are positives were actually now negatives in my life.
[58:20] Yeah, and they'd worked as positives because you'd achieved so much.
[58:24] Yeah, so I was like, wait, I have to decondition everything and you have to relearn the codes of being back in Australia.
[58:32] But, yeah, I mean I can't remember all your questions.
[58:35] Well, no, it's just about the Me Too movement.
[58:37] Of course, that old thing.
[58:40] So, I mean, I guess the point about Bombay and Bollywood also to note is that it was the early part of my career that I worked in India and then I made a choice that it might be a safer place to be a brown woman in the world.
[58:52] Very hopeful that this push for diversity was real.
[58:58] And so I started working in the UK, a little bit in Australia and the US, which I
[59:03] you know, now I actually feel quite sad about sometimes.
[59:05] I miss dancing on big sets and I miss being in that world, but it was such an unsupported experience for me, even though it was highly celebrated publicly and Australia loved to go.
[59:16] Our girl became a Bollywood actor.
[59:18] There was no institutional support for me as an individual artist going over there in a way that was safe for an Australian girl to go over there.
[59:26] When you use that, you've used the word safe a bit a couple of times.
[59:28] Can you define that a bit more for me?
[59:30] Because I've got an idea of what I think it might be, but I think I'd love to hear what you describe as safe.
[59:35] Do you want me to?
[59:39] Just defer to my South Asian brother here.
[59:42] I was like, you can say anything.
[59:45] I think it's so many things, you know.
[59:47] I think it's, you know.
[59:50] Which is poignant for what you guys talk about.
[59:53] Mental health is a big part of it.
[59:55] Physical wellbeing and the boundaries of my body were a big part of it.
[1:00:00] And literally just, you know, being a woman in India, being an actress in India and the connotations that come with that.
[1:00:10] And I think...
[1:00:11] Yeah, I guess the safety of someone with two heritages kind of trying to reconcile that is a really arduous task.
[1:00:21] And I just grew up with the belief that in order to be accepted in Australia, I had to be exceptional.
[1:00:29] I think that's underlying.
[1:00:30] You know, that's an underlying belief that a lot of kids that grow up other in this community have.
[1:00:37] And I have to say I did not have parents that wanted me to bring straight A's that cared about my double promotion or anything.
[1:00:43] My parents, they did not even know what grade I was in.
[1:00:45] Well, it did get confusing.
[1:00:48] It got confusing, granted, but even before that they were like, is it four or five?
[1:00:52] They were really hands off.
[1:00:53] I said to my dad, I was like, I don't want to be one of those kids that's up studying all night to get...
[1:00:59] you know, the top mark, I'd rather do, you know, paint.
[1:01:02] And he was like, cool, do what you want.
[1:01:05] So I didn't have that familial pressure.
[1:01:07] But yet societally I knew that if I was to be one day invited into a room like this even, all of these other things would have to come before it, you know, because your access points would be marred by the fact that you grew up either on the wrong side of the tracks or you come from a different culture, you look a different way.
[1:01:26] And I didn't walk around thinking I'm a brown woman,
[1:01:29] inherently know that there's something that you're fighting just by stepping out of the house.
[1:01:35] Do you feel like you belong?
[1:01:38] And if so, where?
[1:01:42] On a plane.
[1:01:43] Okay.
[1:01:45] No, and it's so interesting because I'm now channeling a lot of these questions into work because I'm like I can't do it any other way and I've put my own work on hold for so long just because I'm
[1:02:00] a lot of what I thought would give me belonging or create belonging for others that felt like me was being seen on screen as a brown woman or being, you know, a person on a panel, love being a person on a panel.
[1:02:17] And so, you know, I've spent a lot of time
[1:02:21] putting my energy in those places.
[1:02:23] But I have found that that's not a solution to the internal feeling of that oneness and that home.
[1:02:31] And it is an internal thing, right?
[1:02:33] We all have to get there internally.
[1:02:34] I don't think there's anything that I can say that if Australia was a certain way or my parents did something, it would have changed it.
[1:02:42] Yeah.
[1:02:44] But belonging also comes from community and being able to be open-hearted, right?
[1:02:48] And that's what we're doing right now.
[1:02:50] We're having this open-hearted discussion.
[1:02:52] And so I feel belonging right now in this room.
[1:02:54] But I might go somewhere to a restaurant where –
[1:02:59] I might be triggered into feeling how I felt as a kid when my mum ordered with a weird grammatical error.
[1:03:07] And it will take me back to that place of unbelonging.
[1:03:09] So it is about mastering that emotional rollercoaster because I think that trauma is real.
[1:03:17] And when that triggers, I do...
[1:03:19] sometimes go into those spaces of unbelonging internally.
[1:03:22] Yeah.
[1:03:23] And it happens quite a lot because I work in the culture industry which isn't yet geared towards safety of people with different backgrounds.
[1:03:35] Yeah.
[1:03:36] So I'm often in, yeah, I'm often experiencing those emotions internally that the rest of the world might not realise are ongoing.
[1:03:45] It's kind of challenging to negotiate that in your work and then do the work.
[1:03:52] Does that make sense?
[1:03:53] Thank you.
[1:03:54] Can I just play that for people?
[1:03:57] My next panel will be like, just got to do a statement by Josh here.
[1:04:03] It is.
[1:04:04] And I think that's sometimes I get sad because I'm like, I just want to be an actress.
[1:04:09] I just want to dance.
[1:04:10] And I'm doing very little of that most of the time.
[1:04:15] But I think of my colleagues in the UK and the US and this film, Wedding Season on Netflix, everyone can watch that.
[1:04:23] It's only 90 minutes long.
[1:04:24] It won't take very long.
[1:04:25] Just get on it live.
[1:04:26] I don't know.
[1:04:26] It's like about 90 minutes.
[1:04:28] I do that to her.
[1:04:29] I'm like, it's only 90 minutes.
[1:04:30] Just watch it.
[1:04:31] No, but Riz, who played my dad, we were talking on set and he was Ray in Schitt's Creek, if anyone's seen Schitt's Creek.
[1:04:39] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[1:04:40] So he's great, you know, and he's a generation above me in terms of his work as a brown actor in the States.
[1:04:47] And just hearing him talk about playing a taxi driver for 20 years, you know, and you go, shit, well, these guys have already done that there.
[1:04:56] So I have to do some heavy lifting right now and that's okay.
[1:04:59] You know, we've all, we're all...
[1:05:02] It is a bit of a chicken shit sandwich that you have to eat.
[1:05:05] You go, I would have liked to have been a 19-year-old ingenue who got to just be like, I want to be an actress and here's a role.
[1:05:12] But that's not what my journey was.
[1:05:15] And I guess first principles of Vedic philosophy also help when I remember to remember them, which is the concept of dharma or dharma, as we like to say.
[1:05:26] And that is that there is a duty to partake in the work.
[1:05:32] You know, there's work we have to undertake in life and that is a part of being human and how we live a good life.
[1:05:39] And, you know, it's different for everyone.
[1:05:42] This is just the shape it's taking, I guess.
[1:05:45] I think there's a bit of a question that needs to be asked because we've talked about so much of what you've gone through and then now working as an actress back in Australia.
[1:05:56] And earlier you mentioned being told by your lecturer at uni that basically you don't look right for Australian TV, subtext.
[1:06:05] Yeah.
[1:06:05] Yeah.
[1:06:08] How do you feel about that now?
[1:06:10] Because at the time you were like, it seemed to, whether this is true, the way you told it, you seemed to accept it with just logically, yep, okay, now what do I do to make it somewhere else?
[1:06:21] Yeah, it's a good question because I've been thinking about it a lot, obviously, now that I'm in Australia again at this time and spearheading the conversations in many rooms about how we get this right now.
[1:06:36] Mm-hmm.
[1:06:37] And it's such a complex issue because there's sort of corrective behaviour going on, which is so important.
[1:06:42] And I think it's easy to say we don't have diversity, we need diversity.
[1:06:47] Okay, yes, these are two true facts.
[1:06:49] How do you do that, though, is a lot more complex.
[1:06:51] And the box ticking, the kind of tokenism, all of this, these are things that are going to happen.
[1:06:57] And I've accepted that because we're going from a context where no one has literally ever thought about this as a problem.
[1:07:03] Yeah.
[1:07:04] All of a sudden this is a problem, a massive problem, and we need a solution really quick, smart.
[1:07:08] Otherwise we're going to lose an audience that's important to us because fundamentally economics drives a lot of these changes.
[1:07:16] That's maybe a bit pessimistic to look at it that way.
[1:07:19] I think quite realistic.
[1:07:21] Yeah.
[1:07:22] And I know this because until streaming came along, no one really cared about what was happening in India until, you know, you can go, oh, wait, but there's an audience there that our show is going to watch.
[1:07:34] So now we care about whether or not we have Apu from the Kwik-E-Mart or a fully-fledged Indian man talking on this screen right now.
[1:07:44] It's interesting that the pessimistic or realistic driver can still have really positive effects though.
[1:07:51] Totally.
[1:07:51] And I think that's, there's always an intermarriage of this stuff.
[1:07:54] I don't think they're disparate things.
[1:07:56] I don't think you can say that politics, trade, culture, they're all part of one whole.
[1:08:04] And I think the cultural conversation's just been largely ignored until this point.
[1:08:08] And now I think there's a lot of listening going on, especially in this room.
[1:08:13] I don't mean that facetiously, but not always in every room.
[1:08:17] Mm-hmm.
[1:08:18] So empathy is really important with how we approach this stuff and, you know, really going.
[1:08:26] And this is just for those who, you know, find it important or useful.
[1:08:31] If I'm going to be inclusive, am I really walking in the shoes of the other person that I'm talking to or am I just doing it because I have to right now as a directive?
[1:08:39] Yeah.
[1:08:39] And I think the former just is healthier and safer and makes working easier.
[1:08:46] I think I've had way too many difficult conversations in my time working in the West as a brown woman and to the point where I've probably disaffected people because it is difficult.
[1:09:00] And I'm going, I know it's hard, but these things are not great.
[1:09:04] And just because people accept them,
[1:09:07] Doesn't mean that it makes it okay.
[1:09:10] We have so much privilege in this country where we, most of us, have most of our basic needs met, you know.
[1:09:17] So we can talk about stuff like feelings, safety of our mental health.
[1:09:23] And so then let's do it.
[1:09:26] What's difficult is many communities don't even know how breadcrumbed they've been because it has been a culture of obedience and a culture of gratitude and just walk your lane, you know, just do the right thing and, you know, you'll be okay.
[1:09:41] And don't spread your wings any wider than the lane allows you to.
[1:09:45] So...
[1:09:48] I don't know.
[1:09:48] It's a very, again, a really lofty concept.
[1:09:51] But I like to have these conversations because it just opens up hearts to others' experiences and that's the bottom line really.
[1:10:01] So well said.
[1:10:02] It's beautifully said.
[1:10:03] I feel kind of compelled to tell a story but I don't know if it's going to make sense or link in.
[1:10:08] But I feel... Is this the time you made 100?
[1:10:12] I don't know if it's appropriate, but...
[1:10:15] So we're two for 60.
[1:10:16] The team needed me.
[1:10:20] God, did they need me.
[1:10:22] Chasing three eighties, that was a bit...
[1:10:25] I was meant to be 12th man, but I got promoted earlier that day.
[1:10:29] More than a double promotion.
[1:10:30] Yeah, yeah.
[1:10:32] No, I...
[1:10:34] Our dad came out here with his family in 1956 and when he was put on, they came out on a ship to Australia and when he came out here, his parents were very careful to make sure that he didn't go out in the sun too much on the boat and had to stay inside because at that point coming to Australia he was going to be
[1:11:02] held up against basically effectively what looked like a Dulux colour card of shades of colour and he was the darkest in their family and he might mean that the whole family didn't get let in and they'd get sent back to Sri Lanka.
[1:11:13] Yeah.
[1:11:14] And then when he came here, he – sorry, I get quite emotional talking about it.
[1:11:22] He, I think, fell into that category that you've talked about, about it needing to be exceptional.
[1:11:27] And he worked so hard and got the best mark he could.
[1:11:31] Or till 10 every day after school studied.
[1:11:33] Yeah.
[1:11:33] With a 10-minute break to speak to mum on the phone.
[1:11:36] Yeah, yeah.
[1:11:38] And he became a dentist and he worked the traditional story that you hear.
[1:11:44] And it just makes me so excited to hear the way you've talked today about a changing world.
[1:11:53] in which people of multiple cultures and different backgrounds can live a life that doesn't have to follow one path.
[1:12:02] Absolutely.
[1:12:03] Thank you so much for sharing that because I think you sharing that story, it just, it enables so many others to also share in those stories that people might not have any idea of, you know, and I think that's the power of storytelling now.
[1:12:19] And that's why the work I want to do now is saying, how do we get your father's story or someone else's and say, this is why I'm fighting for representation or why it's important?
[1:12:30] Because
[1:12:32] The history of this country is so marred.
[1:12:34] What you're talking about, which is a white Australia policy, I mean it was only abolished in 1973 and my parents arrived the next decade into Perth.
[1:12:45] So you go, oh, holy crap, like, you know, that would have been tough and what your father experienced would have been tough.
[1:12:53] But that's a whole generation of people whose voices were
[1:12:57] in relation to those very, very real traumas were quashed, you know.
[1:13:02] And then we, as the kids of these people, have inherited all of this.
[1:13:06] And I don't know how it percolates or permeates through our bodies, but it does.
[1:13:10] And I think that the mass healing and, you know, there's obviously a whole...
[1:13:16] Other question around Indigenous Australia, which I'm not equipped to talk about, but in terms of being someone whose parents arrived in this country, I just think that there is also a piece of healing that needs to happen there.
[1:13:29] And I think we've all been slowly assimilating and slowly figuring it out.
[1:13:35] And again, that's okay because that's how the world goes, but it's also we just have so much space and time and privilege in this country.
[1:13:43] where we can examine all of those questions.
[1:13:46] And I think, therefore, with our traditional spirituality, with what we've inherited, with this kind of presence of mind, it is just such an opening for increased consciousness about this stuff.
[1:13:59] And in sharing that and for it to not be stigmatised or, you know, get on with it and all of those other Australianisms,
[1:14:07] I just, yeah, I think it would be empowering for a lot of people and very healing for even our parents' generation who still walk around feeling the things that they felt.
[1:14:17] So anyway, thank you.
[1:14:18] Are your parents so immensely proud of you?
[1:14:22] I hope so.
[1:14:22] They better be by now.
[1:14:24] What else do you think I've got to do?
[1:14:26] Seriously, I'm just like, guys, surely there's like by now.
[1:14:30] But no, what's lovely about coming home and being with my parents is that they've never, ever actually made me feel like any of it was that awesome.
[1:14:41] True migrant parents.
[1:14:43] No, they are proud.
[1:14:44] And now they've started saying it to me.
[1:14:47] And I think that wasn't language that I received when I was growing up.
[1:14:49] I think my mum once said it when we went to the ballet and I was invited to the ballet and I was able to take like 10 people.
[1:14:56] And, again, it was this very white art space.
[1:14:59] And all of a sudden I was there celebrated as an Indian actress and a dancer and that's why I'd been brought into this institutional art space and my mum was wearing a sari.
[1:15:09] And it was that moment we sat...
[1:15:11] There's the pink carpet of the Arts Centre.
[1:15:12] I love the Arts Centre because back in the day one of my dance teachers, the guy in Richmond, used to perform there when there was a lot of arts funding available.
[1:15:19] And that was my first experience of live theatre and dance.
[1:15:23] And so to be in that same theatre with my mum and these family friends, she just looked at me and she just said, I hope you know that we're really proud of you.
[1:15:30] And I was like, wow, this is a full circle moment probably for her as well, who had her little girl saying, please take me to the Arts Centre.
[1:15:37] I want to dance there.
[1:15:39] And again, I guess that's interesting.
[1:15:41] The invitation is so important to someone like my mum.
[1:15:45] The fact that she is able to sit in that hall and be a welcome part of the audience.
[1:15:52] And it's not like the spirit of India restaurant in, you know, Craigieburn or whatever, you know, which is no disrespect to them because that's great too.
[1:16:00] But that's the segregation of audience and where we belong.
[1:16:04] And that's what everyone's carrying with them.
[1:16:06] So I hope that in our generation we can just go, everyone feels like they can walk into any theatre and everyone's story is equally worthy of being told and received.
[1:16:18] Can I ask one more question?
[1:16:20] Yeah.
[1:16:20] We do have a couple of hours.
[1:16:21] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[1:16:24] All good.
[1:16:24] Something that I often think about is like the role fame plays in our dreams and then in the reality.
[1:16:36] So like you have experienced extreme fame.
[1:16:39] Mm-hmm.
[1:16:41] And I just wanted to know how if there was a sense of belonging in being extremely famous and accepted by millions and millions of people, I know that people do chase this dream of fame, I think, for the reason of belonging.
[1:16:58] Yeah, I mean, I think, and I've had, I have thought about this, because there was a time when I would come home and, you know, like we'd get into an Uber and my dad would just be like, she's dressed so poorly just so she looks anonymous.
[1:17:11] I'm like, dad's.
[1:17:15] He'd pick me up from the airport and be in trackies and he'd be so disappointed.
[1:17:19] He's like, my daughter's a Bollywood actor.
[1:17:21] She just still looks like a grub from that.
[1:17:24] He'd feel embarrassed because he had to reconcile.
[1:17:28] But, you know, and I think I was in a way fighting the kind of trappings of what I was meant to be as this person from this industry and what it meant because I was a girl from suburban Melbourne and that was what made me.
[1:17:43] And I didn't feel authentic in that belonging.
[1:17:49] It never felt right to me because there were so many layers of agency that had been stripped and, yeah, just kind of the mould within which I had to fit.
[1:18:03] Like you're filling out a silhouette of this femme woman.
[1:18:10] Oh, what a great way to put it.
[1:18:11] Yeah, I know exactly what you mean.
[1:18:14] Yeah.
[1:18:14] Not because I'm a woman.
[1:18:16] It's just such a good visual.
[1:18:17] I know exactly what you're saying.
[1:18:19] And it was like if I fit into that cardboard cutout, then it was like, bang, you are, you know, just asteroid level star.
[1:18:28] But if you want to kind of change shape a little bit, then, oh, it's a little bit, you know, eerie and weird and we're not quite sure.
[1:18:36] And I was like, hold on, I derive belonging.
[1:18:40] from my otherness in a sense.
[1:18:43] I derive my belonging from challenging what it means to be this nucleus and a part of this nucleus.
[1:18:50] And I was almost more comfortable, and maybe this is a sign I actually need some serious therapy, but like more comfortable at the periphery than I was at the nucleus because it allowed me to interrogate
[1:19:04] what it was that I was doing, whereas otherwise I had to just be a thing, like this static thing.
[1:19:12] And so, no, the fame and all of those elements that it brought for me created a detachment, which is probably why ultimately I was like, let's go to Australia and see what it's like to build, because now I get to build an authentic version.
[1:19:28] And you know what?
[1:19:28] I may or may not be as famous as I was or –
[1:19:32] Could have been if I continued to work in Bollywood.
[1:19:34] But, yeah, it just, that was the reason fundamentally.
[1:19:41] I was like the lack of authenticity that comes with this just takes away the feeling of belonging that it was meant to provide.
[1:19:48] Beautiful.
[1:19:49] Beautiful.
[1:19:49] Thanks.
[1:19:50] Well, Pallavi and I have both really enjoyed your questions today.
[1:19:53] Thank you so much.
[1:20:00] No, it's just, I mean, I have just loved today's conversation so much.
[1:20:05] I particularly appreciate the insight to...
[1:20:09] to your world and the thought and reflection you've given it and the way you're able to articulate it as well has been really lovely to sit here and listen to.
[1:20:18] Thank you, guys.
[1:20:18] So thank you so much for joining us.
[1:20:20] Thank you, guys.
[1:20:21] An unpublished book continues to be unpublished, but look out for it.
[1:20:25] Out soon, maybe.
[1:20:26] Out soon, maybe.
[1:20:28] Thanks, guys, and I appreciate it.
[1:20:29] Thanks for, like, really good questions and making me feel safe.
[1:20:33] Oh, good.
[1:20:34] It's good to hear.
[1:20:34] Thank you.
[1:20:35] Thank you.
[1:20:43] Pallavishat.
[1:20:45] It's really...
[1:20:46] I'll finish her name.
[1:20:46] Pallavishata, not Pallavishat.
[1:20:49] Pallavishat.
[1:20:49] It's very...
[1:20:50] It's just so...
[1:20:51] There's something really refreshing and inspiring about hearing someone...
[1:20:57] Really like know what they want and go after it.
[1:20:59] And even just what she was saying about walking away from these huge opportunities in Bollywood and wanting to rebuild the authentic version of her is very, it's just very cool.
[1:21:14] It's incredible.
[1:21:15] Yeah.
[1:21:16] And...
[1:21:17] I also feel like obviously she's incredibly intelligent because of the – we talked a bit about her education and how amazing she was at that.
[1:21:23] But just hearing her talk, it's just – I find it really incredible and lovely to speak to someone who can – who is so intellectually curious and honest about their own life and the world in which they live and can talk about it with such clarity.
[1:21:37] It's really cool.
[1:21:38] Yeah.
[1:21:39] Yeah.
[1:21:41] I had something I wanted to talk about, though, coming off the back of this.
[1:21:43] It's been something I've been thinking about for a while and it became kind of evident in the interview.
[1:21:51] There was pre-interview, there was a bit of a discussion about you and I being Sri Lankan, you having South Asian heritage.
[1:22:01] And then during the interview, she sort of directed the conversation to us a couple of times to talk about that.
[1:22:07] And I...
[1:22:08] The older I get, the more of a complex relationship I have with the dual heritage part of me, dual culturally, because I kind of feel like as a younger person, I used to –
[1:22:23] Especially growing up, I used to think it was like, and to be clear, I'm extremely proud of where my dad comes from.
[1:22:31] But as a younger person, I used to think it was really cool to be able to look the way I am.
[1:22:36] So for all intents and purposes, if you bumped into me on the street, I am probably of only English descent.
[1:22:42] I'm a very white, Caucasian-looking guy.
[1:22:45] And I used to think, oh, that's cool that I can trick people and say, I'm actually half Sri Lankan.
[1:22:49] But I felt more and more uncomfortable doing that the older I've gotten to the point where I don't really bring it up anymore because I find a sense of guilt and shame over the fact that I'm kind of claiming to be Sri Lankan when it's suitable for me.
[1:23:06] But I don't have any of the drawbacks that people who, the way Pallavi described it, of being...
[1:23:12] of basically appearing and looking South Asian, experiencing things that our dad experienced growing up in Australia, of being victims of racism, having less opportunities in the workplace, all the negatives that come across as being a minority in Australia and the complex relationship of the way white Australia has treated people of colour, which I alluded to or didn't allude to, I said a specific example of in the episode.
[1:23:41] Yeah.
[1:23:42] I've ended up, I don't know, I've got a complex relationship with it now because I feel like I'm kind of picking and choosing when to hold on to my, to use that without any of the negative consequences and I'm therefore almost like a traitor to my cultural heritage because I've never really properly engaged with it apart from our childhood growing up with granny.
[1:24:08] But even then we didn't really speak that much about Sri Lanka.
[1:24:10] Yeah.
[1:24:11] I know a little bit about dad's upbringing there.
[1:24:14] He left when he was eight.
[1:24:17] So, and I've been back to Sri Lanka quite a few times, but I didn't visit our relatives that live there.
[1:24:23] So, yeah, I kind of, I'm finding it a complex thing to navigate.
[1:24:28] So, I almost felt a little bit hesitant to own it when she wanted me to, which is... That's really interesting.
[1:24:35] Yeah.
[1:24:36] Yeah, because I don't...
[1:24:40] How do I phrase this?
[1:24:41] It's a complicated, it's a tricky one to explain.
[1:24:45] So for me, I find that so fascinating because I think I'm like in the, and not that you aren't proud, I'm still in that like excited childlike phase of like just love that I'm part Sri Lankan.
[1:24:58] Yeah, yeah.
[1:24:59] And I don't think too much more that other than when I'm in Sri Lanka, I keep noticing that all men have the exact same legs as me.
[1:25:11] and I have similar facial features to Sri Lankan people I've noticed.
[1:25:15] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[1:25:15] I remember a former boss of mine said to me once when I told her, she said, oh, you've got a Sri Lankan nose and eyes.
[1:25:21] Really?
[1:25:22] Yeah.
[1:25:22] So maybe I feel like a... Maybe you feel like you do look a bit more.
[1:25:25] Yeah, I do.
[1:25:26] Obviously, not the skin color, the skin tone.
[1:25:28] But I do... Yeah, I don't know.
[1:25:31] I just love Sri Lanka and Sri Lanka and you do as well.
[1:25:35] Yeah.
[1:25:35] I love Sri Lanka.
[1:25:36] I love Sri Lankan people so much.
[1:25:37] I don't think any deeper than...
[1:25:40] I just love that I'm like half from here, I guess.
[1:25:43] And you do as well.
[1:25:44] I'm not saying you don't.
[1:25:45] But you've obviously just given it a bit more thought than I have.
[1:25:48] Yeah.
[1:25:49] Yeah, I don't want anyone to think that I'm saying anything other than the fact that similar to what – same thing as you're saying of how proud I am.
[1:25:54] And when we go back to Sri Lanka, I'm like so – I find it quite emotional, especially when I see old ladies because they all sound like granny.
[1:26:02] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[1:26:03] And it's quite – and some of the – just some of the food that was cooked in granny's house, I start smelling things from going – what it was like to go see granny's house.
[1:26:12] But I do feel – and I really don't want this to come across the wrong way, but –
[1:26:18] A little bit stuck in the middle of like ashamed of the way that a lot of white Australia has the history of white Australia with treatment of Aboriginal people, treatment of a lot of minorities, treatment of our dad when he came here to a degree, but also not really being able to claim Sri Lankan-ness.
[1:26:38] either.
[1:26:38] So, sort of stuck in the middle.
[1:26:40] And I'm aware that there are many people out there who that traversing those two worlds is far more traumatic.
[1:26:46] I guess my point is to say that I don't have to in the presence of other people.
[1:26:50] It's something I can do completely privately and internally because for all visual intents and purposes, no one would know anything else.
[1:26:57] You're very aware of your privilege, I guess.
[1:26:59] Yeah, extremely, extremely aware of my privilege.
[1:27:01] Yeah.
[1:27:02] Because I get to, which is the most privileged thing ever, I get to invoke it whenever I want.
[1:27:07] Yeah.
[1:27:07] And I can decide to deny it at other points as well, which is about as privileged as it gets.
[1:27:12] Yeah.
[1:27:13] Yeah.
[1:27:15] Yeah.
[1:27:15] It's sort of like, even though my experience being Jewish growing up is, is very different and, you know, there's a whole different set of things.
[1:27:23] I'm not definitely not comparing or anything, but it just makes me think about it.
[1:27:27] And not, not from a super religious family, but definitely with grandparents, we did Shabbat dinner and things.
[1:27:32] And so I would go to school and,
[1:27:34] it was an Anglican school.
[1:27:34] And so there was, from as far as I knew, not another single Jewish person, you know, in the school.
[1:27:41] And so I hid, I hid it.
[1:27:43] I didn't, no one knew I was Jewish.
[1:27:46] And I would never, like if I had to, if I couldn't do something on Friday night, I would just say, I've got a family thing.
[1:27:52] I would never say it was like a Shabbat thing.
[1:27:53] I was kind of,
[1:27:56] Ashamed of it seemed, I was more embarrassed about it.
[1:27:58] I was like embarrassed because it was different.
[1:28:00] Yeah.
[1:28:01] And, uh, and it wasn't until like my, um, bar mitzvah when I was 13 and I had to invite friends from school to the, to the bar mitzvah.
[1:28:10] And I was so scared about, about them being there because they were going to see me in the Yamalka and, and in synagogue reading Hebrew on, you know, in front of everyone.
[1:28:24] Mm-hmm.
[1:28:25] And I was so terrified because it was like, oh, this is the secret I kept.
[1:28:30] The reason I bring it up is because the older I get, the more proud of it I am.
[1:28:36] And I embrace the difference maybe isn't the right word, but I embrace that part of me because it is very, very special.
[1:28:46] And it represents so much with family and my grandparents and stuff.
[1:28:50] But definitely growing up as a kid, it was...
[1:28:53] yeah, it was, um, I hit it, I hit it quite a lot.
[1:28:57] Yeah.
[1:28:58] And so this is probably bigger questions that have much bigger context, but it's interesting that like there's a,
[1:29:07] broader cultural something going on that Hugh and I felt growing up like it was like I wanted to drop it into conversation as much as I can because it was an interesting thing and I felt like it was cool to be different in that way whereas for you it felt like you needed to hide it but this is probably a
[1:29:27] Well, it's similar in the sense that like I can, being Jewish, you can pick and choose as well.
[1:29:32] There is a privilege in that.
[1:29:33] And I can sort of pick and choose if I'm around like a group of Jewish people or if I'm, you know, in a meeting with someone who's Jewish, I'll definitely say that I'm Jewish because it's like, it's a way to connect and it's a way to, but then if I am with people like when I'm at school as a kid and I feel embarrassed about it because I don't understand it and I don't want to be different.
[1:29:53] I can hide it.
[1:29:54] And there's like, there's a great, like yourself, like you're saying, Josh, there's a great privilege in being able to do that, which I only, you know, as an older person now I'm aware of.
[1:30:04] Yeah.
[1:30:05] So it was just something that was present for me throughout the interview.
[1:30:09] And it's something that I want to be much more, it just makes me want to go to Sri Lanka again and meet some relatives and actually like really start to engage in my story, my experience,
[1:30:21] our specific cultural Sri Lankan story.
[1:30:24] Prepare to hear a lot of singing.
[1:30:27] Yeah.
[1:30:27] Mom and dad went and they just got sung out for about four hours by every family member they met.
[1:30:32] Oh, wonderful.
[1:30:33] That sounds good at first.
[1:30:36] Originals or covers?
[1:30:38] I think they were – good question.
[1:30:40] I don't know.
[1:30:40] It wasn't like a pub cover band.
[1:30:42] They just did Daryl Braithwaite covers.
[1:30:45] Yes!
[1:30:48] Anyway, Pallavi Shada, just what I felt so privileged to meet her and I know you guys felt the same.
[1:30:52] She's just an amazing, amazing person.
[1:30:55] Yep, absolutely.
[1:31:03] Hugh, it's Ryan.
[1:31:05] I'm inspired, right?
[1:31:07] OK, so after speaking to Pallavi, I reckon we should make an Imperfects movie.
[1:31:11] You know what I'm talking about?
[1:31:12] So I was thinking, how's this?
[1:31:15] So you, me and Josh, we play rookie cops, fresh out of the academy, who are thrown into the action on our first day because there's a bank heist happening and the robbers have hostages.
[1:31:25] So I'm thinking you're the responsible, by the book, cop type.
[1:31:30] I'm obviously the rebel without a cause who wears a leather jacket and doesn't do anything he's told.
[1:31:34] Unless it involves stealing a squad car and doing donuts at the precinct car park.
[1:31:39] And Josh is like this gifted young inventor, right?
[1:31:43] Who's developed a vulnerability gas that he releases into the bank, which causes the robbers to start sharing their personal stories.
[1:31:49] struggles, which connects them to the hostages, forming a bond with them and letting them go.
[1:31:55] Josh saves the day.
[1:31:56] Happy ending.
[1:31:57] All the cops eat donuts, do donuts and celebrate.
[1:32:00] It's a, I don't know.
[1:32:02] It's something.
[1:32:03] Anyway, call me back.
[1:32:05] Just throw around ideas here.
[1:32:07] Let me know what you think.
[1:32:08] It's Ryan Shelton from the podcast.
[1:32:11] To call back, press 2-2 to replay this.
[1:32:18] The Imperfects is hosted and produced by Hugh Van Kylenberg, Ryan Shelton and Josh Van Kylenberg.
[1:32:22] Our executive producer is Bridget North East.
[1:32:24] Researcher, Isabella North East.
[1:32:26] Sound design by Nick Van Kylenberg.
[1:32:28] This episode is filmed and edited by George Martin.
[1:32:31] The Imperfects is not a licensed mental health service and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice, treatment or assessment.
[1:32:37] The advice given in this episode is general in nature, but if you're struggling, please see a healthcare professional or call Lifeline on 13 11 14.
[1:32:47] You set the flame by the doorway, let it be my hand.

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