An All-Star Celebration of Life for Zakir Hussain at Grace Cathedral
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"title": "In Oakland, 'Dalit Dreamlands' Envisions an Anti-Caste Future",
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"content": "\u003cp>In 2022, \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/meowingmanu/?hl=en\">Manu Kaur\u003c/a> experienced severe hopelessness and depression, to the point of being hospitalized. Kaur, who is Punjabi and Dalit – the latter being a term used to describe the most oppressed people in India’s caste system — comes from a family with a lot of intergenerational trauma. “And as a result, there’s just a lot of mental health issues,” Kaur says. “Depression runs deep.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After Kaur recovered, they decided to host a birthday party to celebrate their life. “It was very queer. It was very trans. It was very rooted in joy and celebration,” Kaur says. “It gave me so much more purpose. And it kind of just showed me like, if I can do that for myself, then I can also do it for [the] community.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13955198\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13955198\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Babasaheb_JaySagathia-800x800.jpg\" alt=\"A painting of a man wearing glasses with raised fists around him.\" width=\"800\" height=\"800\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Babasaheb_JaySagathia-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Babasaheb_JaySagathia-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Babasaheb_JaySagathia-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Babasaheb_JaySagathia-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Babasaheb_JaySagathia-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Babasaheb_JaySagathia-2048x2048.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Babasaheb_JaySagathia-1920x1920.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A painting titled ‘Babasaheb Ambedkar with Ambedkarites raising their voices’ by artist Jay Sagathia. \u003ccite>(Jay Sagathia)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>And so they did. Through an Emerging Curators Program with the \u003ca href=\"https://www.aawaa.net/\">Asian American Women Artists Association\u003c/a>, Kaur curated \u003ca href=\"https://www.aawaa.net/dalit-dreamlands\">\u003ci>Dalit Dreamlands: Towards an Anti-Caste Future\u003c/i>\u003c/a>, a multimedia exhibition spotlighting over 30 artists from Dalit, Adivasi (tribes indigenous to South Asia), Afro-Indian, Indo-Fijian, Indo-Caribbean and Muslim communities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13955199\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13955199\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Curator_ManuKaur-800x1000.jpg\" alt=\"A profile shot of a non-binary person with their eyes closed wearing a light blue turban.\" width=\"800\" height=\"1000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Curator_ManuKaur-800x1000.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Curator_ManuKaur-1020x1275.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Curator_ManuKaur-160x200.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Curator_ManuKaur-768x960.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Curator_ManuKaur-1229x1536.jpg 1229w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Curator_ManuKaur-1638x2048.jpg 1638w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Curator_ManuKaur-1920x2400.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Curator_ManuKaur-scaled.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Portrait of ‘Dalit Dreamlands’ curator Manu Kaur. \u003ccite>(Simrah Farrukh)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Opening April 6 during \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalit_History_Month#:~:text=Dalit%20History%20Month%20is%20an,Ambedkar.\">Dalit History Month\u003c/a>, the exhibition showcases \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/dalitdreamlands/\">artists working in digital art, painting, fashion design, film and more\u003c/a>. Kaur is featured in the exhibition, as well, in family photographs by photographer \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/simrahfarrukh/\">Simrah Farrukh\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was the first time that my family and I had professional photos taken of us, like, ever. And so that was so meaningful to me because my family doesn’t often get to be celebrated,” Kaur says. “And now to have them exhibited in a gallery space feels so incredible to me.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13955196\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13955196\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/ManuKaur_5-800x1000.jpg\" alt=\"An elder man wearing a turban sits in front of a wall with two paintings on it.\" width=\"800\" height=\"1000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/ManuKaur_5-800x1000.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/ManuKaur_5-1020x1275.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/ManuKaur_5-160x200.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/ManuKaur_5-768x960.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/ManuKaur_5-1229x1536.jpg 1229w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/ManuKaur_5-1639x2048.jpg 1639w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/ManuKaur_5-1920x2400.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/ManuKaur_5-scaled.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A portrait of Manu Kaur’s maternal grandfather, who they call Papi ji. \u003ccite>(Simrah Farrukh)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Kaur hopes the exhibition will educate people on what being Dalit means; “There’s no one ‘look’ to being Dalit,” Kaur says. They also hope it represents the community’s reclamation of the term – which literally translates to “broken” in Sanskrit – and how the community is advocating for a more just future. Kaur says that’s why calling the exhibition \u003ci>Dalit Dreamlands\u003c/i> felt right.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The way I would say it in Punjabi is ‘Begampura,’ which is supposed to be this utopian land, free of caste, free of discrimination,” Kaur says. The term was coined by Guru Ravidas, the ancient Indian poet, centuries ago. “And so I’m taking that and making it this big umbrella, which is like queer and trans and Dalit and pro-Black, pro-Palestine – all of those things. And so the name stuck because it feels like it’s a dream that I’m making reality.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13955197\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13955197\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/DJ_Seema_Hari-800x1000.jpg\" alt=\"A profile shot of a person draped in a decorative gold top against a blue background.\" width=\"800\" height=\"1000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/DJ_Seema_Hari-800x1000.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/DJ_Seema_Hari-1020x1275.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/DJ_Seema_Hari-160x200.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/DJ_Seema_Hari-768x960.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/DJ_Seema_Hari-1228x1536.jpg 1228w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/DJ_Seema_Hari-1638x2048.jpg 1638w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/DJ_Seema_Hari-1920x2401.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/DJ_Seema_Hari-scaled.jpg 2047w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A self-portrait of Seema Hari. In addition to being in the exhibition, Hari is one of the DJs at the opening night dance party. \u003ccite>(Seema Hari)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>‘Dalit Dreamlands: Towards an Anti-Caste Future’ is on view April 6–June 10 at the \u003ca href=\"https://oacc.cc/\">Oakland Asian Cultural Center\u003c/a> (388 9th St. Suite 290, Oakland) and \u003ca href=\"https://www.artogether.org/\">ARTogether\u003c/a> (1200 Harrison St., Oakland). A Zindagi Dance Party follows the opening receptions on April 6 at 7th West (1255 7th St, Oakland). \u003ca href=\"https://lu.ma/dalitdreamlands\">All exhibition and party details here\u003c/a>.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "The exhibition includes over 30 artists from Dalit, Adivasi, Afro-Indian, Indo-Fijian, Indo-Caribbean and Muslim communities. ",
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"title": "In Oakland, 'Dalit Dreamlands' Envisions an Anti-Caste Future | KQED",
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"headline": "In Oakland, 'Dalit Dreamlands' Envisions an Anti-Caste Future",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>In 2022, \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/meowingmanu/?hl=en\">Manu Kaur\u003c/a> experienced severe hopelessness and depression, to the point of being hospitalized. Kaur, who is Punjabi and Dalit – the latter being a term used to describe the most oppressed people in India’s caste system — comes from a family with a lot of intergenerational trauma. “And as a result, there’s just a lot of mental health issues,” Kaur says. “Depression runs deep.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After Kaur recovered, they decided to host a birthday party to celebrate their life. “It was very queer. It was very trans. It was very rooted in joy and celebration,” Kaur says. “It gave me so much more purpose. And it kind of just showed me like, if I can do that for myself, then I can also do it for [the] community.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13955198\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13955198\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Babasaheb_JaySagathia-800x800.jpg\" alt=\"A painting of a man wearing glasses with raised fists around him.\" width=\"800\" height=\"800\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Babasaheb_JaySagathia-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Babasaheb_JaySagathia-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Babasaheb_JaySagathia-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Babasaheb_JaySagathia-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Babasaheb_JaySagathia-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Babasaheb_JaySagathia-2048x2048.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Babasaheb_JaySagathia-1920x1920.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A painting titled ‘Babasaheb Ambedkar with Ambedkarites raising their voices’ by artist Jay Sagathia. \u003ccite>(Jay Sagathia)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>And so they did. Through an Emerging Curators Program with the \u003ca href=\"https://www.aawaa.net/\">Asian American Women Artists Association\u003c/a>, Kaur curated \u003ca href=\"https://www.aawaa.net/dalit-dreamlands\">\u003ci>Dalit Dreamlands: Towards an Anti-Caste Future\u003c/i>\u003c/a>, a multimedia exhibition spotlighting over 30 artists from Dalit, Adivasi (tribes indigenous to South Asia), Afro-Indian, Indo-Fijian, Indo-Caribbean and Muslim communities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13955199\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13955199\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Curator_ManuKaur-800x1000.jpg\" alt=\"A profile shot of a non-binary person with their eyes closed wearing a light blue turban.\" width=\"800\" height=\"1000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Curator_ManuKaur-800x1000.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Curator_ManuKaur-1020x1275.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Curator_ManuKaur-160x200.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Curator_ManuKaur-768x960.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Curator_ManuKaur-1229x1536.jpg 1229w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Curator_ManuKaur-1638x2048.jpg 1638w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Curator_ManuKaur-1920x2400.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Curator_ManuKaur-scaled.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Portrait of ‘Dalit Dreamlands’ curator Manu Kaur. \u003ccite>(Simrah Farrukh)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Opening April 6 during \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalit_History_Month#:~:text=Dalit%20History%20Month%20is%20an,Ambedkar.\">Dalit History Month\u003c/a>, the exhibition showcases \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/dalitdreamlands/\">artists working in digital art, painting, fashion design, film and more\u003c/a>. Kaur is featured in the exhibition, as well, in family photographs by photographer \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/simrahfarrukh/\">Simrah Farrukh\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was the first time that my family and I had professional photos taken of us, like, ever. And so that was so meaningful to me because my family doesn’t often get to be celebrated,” Kaur says. “And now to have them exhibited in a gallery space feels so incredible to me.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13955196\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13955196\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/ManuKaur_5-800x1000.jpg\" alt=\"An elder man wearing a turban sits in front of a wall with two paintings on it.\" width=\"800\" height=\"1000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/ManuKaur_5-800x1000.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/ManuKaur_5-1020x1275.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/ManuKaur_5-160x200.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/ManuKaur_5-768x960.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/ManuKaur_5-1229x1536.jpg 1229w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/ManuKaur_5-1639x2048.jpg 1639w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/ManuKaur_5-1920x2400.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/ManuKaur_5-scaled.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A portrait of Manu Kaur’s maternal grandfather, who they call Papi ji. \u003ccite>(Simrah Farrukh)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Kaur hopes the exhibition will educate people on what being Dalit means; “There’s no one ‘look’ to being Dalit,” Kaur says. They also hope it represents the community’s reclamation of the term – which literally translates to “broken” in Sanskrit – and how the community is advocating for a more just future. Kaur says that’s why calling the exhibition \u003ci>Dalit Dreamlands\u003c/i> felt right.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The way I would say it in Punjabi is ‘Begampura,’ which is supposed to be this utopian land, free of caste, free of discrimination,” Kaur says. The term was coined by Guru Ravidas, the ancient Indian poet, centuries ago. “And so I’m taking that and making it this big umbrella, which is like queer and trans and Dalit and pro-Black, pro-Palestine – all of those things. And so the name stuck because it feels like it’s a dream that I’m making reality.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13955197\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13955197\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/DJ_Seema_Hari-800x1000.jpg\" alt=\"A profile shot of a person draped in a decorative gold top against a blue background.\" width=\"800\" height=\"1000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/DJ_Seema_Hari-800x1000.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/DJ_Seema_Hari-1020x1275.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/DJ_Seema_Hari-160x200.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/DJ_Seema_Hari-768x960.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/DJ_Seema_Hari-1228x1536.jpg 1228w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/DJ_Seema_Hari-1638x2048.jpg 1638w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/DJ_Seema_Hari-1920x2401.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/DJ_Seema_Hari-scaled.jpg 2047w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A self-portrait of Seema Hari. In addition to being in the exhibition, Hari is one of the DJs at the opening night dance party. \u003ccite>(Seema Hari)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>‘Dalit Dreamlands: Towards an Anti-Caste Future’ is on view April 6–June 10 at the \u003ca href=\"https://oacc.cc/\">Oakland Asian Cultural Center\u003c/a> (388 9th St. Suite 290, Oakland) and \u003ca href=\"https://www.artogether.org/\">ARTogether\u003c/a> (1200 Harrison St., Oakland). A Zindagi Dance Party follows the opening receptions on April 6 at 7th West (1255 7th St, Oakland). \u003ca href=\"https://lu.ma/dalitdreamlands\">All exhibition and party details here\u003c/a>.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "A Third-Generation Indian Coffee Roaster Carves Her Own Path in Berkeley",
"headTitle": "A Third-Generation Indian Coffee Roaster Carves Her Own Path in Berkeley | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hen many Americans think of Indian food, they probably conjure up the buttery scent of tikka masala — those grilled chunks of yogurt-marinated chicken drowned in red sauce. Or they might recall the earthy, kaleidoscopic aromas of cumin, coriander and turmeric from inside an Indian spice aisle. Maybe they imagine the sugary perfume of a hot cup of masala chai.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What I’d bet they don’t think of is\u003ca href=\"https://www.worldcoffeeportal.com/5THWAVE/Podcast/2023/A-conversation-with-tata-starbucks\"> coffee\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But for Tanya Rao, owner of \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/kavericoffee/?hl=en\">Kaveri Coffee Works\u003c/a> — a small-scale, independent roasting business in Berkeley — coffee has been a family tradition for more than half a century. The Raos’ connection to coffee dates back to 1941, when Tanya’s grandfather, M.V. Rao, opened India Coffee Kiosk in Bangalore, India, in the Karnataka region — known for being the country’s largest coffee producer. When M.V. could no longer run the family trade, he passed it on to Tanya’s father, Mohan Rao. Ever since then, coffee has defined a sense of home and purpose for the men in Rao’s family.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>No one, however, expected or groomed Tanya, the youngest daughter, to take up the mantle. Yet here she is.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I was next in line to get married,” Rao says. “But instead I broke barriers and challenged the status quo by leaving my [former] career to travel and own my business.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, Rao is leading a new wave of Bay Area coffee makers with a focus on empowering women of color in the coffee industry, which can often feel male-centric and white-dominant. Even at Berkeley’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.corocoffee.com/\">CoRo, the beautifully collaborative space where Rao roasts her coffee\u003c/a>, there was a visible lack of women during the busy morning I visited. That’s not to say women roasters don’t exist, but to see an Indian woman in a room full of male coffee roasters was scorchingly noticeable to me. Data reveals a gender gap in the coffee industry, with men accumulating a far greater share of the profits. According to \u003ca href=\"https://www.ico.org/documents/cy2017-18/icc-122-11e-gender-equality.pdf\">a report from the International Coffee Organization\u003c/a>, 70% of coffee labor worldwide is provided by women, while only 20% of coffee farms are women-owned. Similarly, \u003ca href=\"https://www.zippia.com/coffee-roaster-jobs/demographics/\">the American coffee roasting industry is heavily male-dominated\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13932434\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13932434\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/kaveri_bags-800x533.jpg\" alt='two bags of \"specialty coffee of India\" sit inside a coffee roasting warehouse in Berkeley' width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/kaveri_bags-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/kaveri_bags-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/kaveri_bags-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/kaveri_bags-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/kaveri_bags-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/kaveri_bags.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kaveri Coffee Works owner Tanya Rao gets her coffee beans imported directly from growers in her native India. \u003ccite>(Alan Chazaro)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For Rao, however, those disparities are all a part of what fuels her mission to stand out as a radical coffee entrepreneur — one who is introducing Bay Areans to the delectable, relatively little-known world of Indian coffee beans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though Americans are more likely to associate India with its tea rather than its coffee, South India — particularly the southwestern state of Karnataka — \u003ci>is \u003c/i>known for having a rich coffee culture. Karnataka is where Rao’s grandfather founded his coffee business, and it’s also where a Sufi saint named Baba Budan is believed to have planted India’s first coffee seeds over 300 years ago. The region maintains a year-round high-altitude climate that is lush for coffee cultivation. In fact, it’s helped make India \u003ca href=\"https://www.nescafe.com/gb/understanding-coffee/coffee-producing-countries/#:~:text=Brazil,producer%20for%20over%20150%20years.\">the eighth largest coffee producer in the world\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yet in much of the Western world, Indian coffee is still largely unappreciated. British colonizers controlled India’s coffee industry for nearly 200 years until the Indian Independence Act was signed in 1947. As a result, most Indian coffee never made it to the Americas. Instead, it wound up being shipped to Europe, Australia and other parts of Asia, while a colonized Latin America developed its own coffee belt along the equator to supply the Western Hemisphere. Rao estimates that only 3% of coffee in the U.S. comes from India, while the majority of India’s coffee gets shipped to Italy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But back in Karnataka? “Coffee is a part of our lives, a real luxury,” Rao says.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>Indian Coffee Revolution in the Bay\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: A woman from Bangalore who grew up in a patriarchal capitalist society leaves her native country and defies traditional gender expectations to create her own coffee business in Berkeley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Having emigrated from India at age 17, Rao began her winding path with a degree in computer science from the University of Virginia in 2001. It’s what her parents wanted her to do. And for years, she did it. She worked as a finance engineer, trying to “build the perfect American dream.” But everything changed when Rao visited San Francisco for the first time and, after falling in love with the culture here, quit her job to relocate to the Bay Area in 2008.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13932435\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13932435\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/kaveri_beans-800x1200.jpg\" alt=\"a woman scoops a handful of Indian coffee beans with her hands inside a roasting warehouse\" width=\"800\" height=\"1200\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/kaveri_beans-800x1200.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/kaveri_beans-1020x1530.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/kaveri_beans-160x240.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/kaveri_beans-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/kaveri_beans-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/kaveri_beans-1365x2048.jpg 1365w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/kaveri_beans-scaled.jpg 1707w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Tanya Rao holds up a handful of “monsooned” coffee beans, which originated along the southern coast of India. \u003ccite>(Alan Chazaro)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Here, she hiked toward self-discovery, leaving the financial sector behind to study outdoor recreation and tourism at San Francisco State, with an emphasis on social justice and cultural representation. Afterward, she became a women’s backpacking guide, which is about as far as she could’ve veered away from her life as someone with a prestigious career meant to appease her Indian family.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The Bay Area is where people who are curious and want to try something new are,” Rao says. “I wanted something different.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Rao’s father, who had moved to New Jersey, fell ill, she left everything to take care of him, reconnecting with her childhood memories of coffee. Before his passing, he offered his stake in the family coffee business, which had grown from a humble roadside stand pouring cups of joe during World War II to one of the nation’s first private coffee businesses, rebranding itself as New India Coffee Works in the early ’80s. Rao declined. As a result, the family business wound up shuttering.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, Rao decided to carry on her family’s legacy by launching Kaveri Coffee Works — named after a major river in Karnataka — in 2019. With her firsthand knowledge of both India’s coffee riches and the gaps in the Bay Area market for Indian coffee, she wanted to create a business that would bring attention to her home country’s scandalously overlooked brewing culture. She flew out to India to develop partnerships with women-owned farms around the Chikmagalur expanse of South India that now export their beans directly to Rao’s facility in Berkeley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I attribute the Bay’s entrepreneurial environment to me being able to turn my idea into a business,” Rao says. “I wouldn’t have been able to do this on the East Coast, and it would’ve looked very differently for me in India.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13932439\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13932439\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/SupriyaYelimeli1_mural-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"a mural of an Indian woman making filter coffee in India\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/SupriyaYelimeli1_mural-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/SupriyaYelimeli1_mural-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/SupriyaYelimeli1_mural-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/SupriyaYelimeli1_mural-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/SupriyaYelimeli1_mural-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/SupriyaYelimeli1_mural.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A mural of a woman making Indian filter coffee in Karnataka. Painted by \u003ca href=\"https://geechugalu.wordpress.com/2021/10/31/enoch-dheeraj-ebenezer/\">Enoch Dheeraj Ebenezer\u003c/a>. \u003ccite>(Supriya Yelimeli)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>With virtually no other Indian specialty coffee makers in the Bay Area, Kaveri is filling a tall order. Surprisingly, for a region where Indian immigrants comprise \u003ca href=\"https://localnewsmatters.org/2022/08/26/ten-maps-that-show-where-asian-american-communities-reside-in-the-bay-area/\">the second largest Asian American community\u003c/a> (making the Bay Area the \u003ca href=\"https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/top-10-us-metropolitan-areas-with-the-highest-population-of-indians.html\">fifth largest Indian diaspora in the nation\u003c/a>), it’s quite rare to find a coffee maker who is strictly dedicated to roasting Indian coffee beans. In fact, Rao might be the only one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m not aware of any Indian coffee makers like her in the Bay Area,” says Supriya Yelimeli, a first-generation Indian American who grew up in Fremont and is now a journalist at \u003ca href=\"https://www.berkeleyside.org/author/supriya-yelimeli\">Berkeleyside\u003c/a>. “My experience with Indian coffee is attached to the home. My parents would get an egregious amount of Colombian coffee from Costco and use a drip coffee machine to try to replicate Indian filter coffee here. When I was growing up, they complained that they couldn’t get the kind of Indian coffee they wanted.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yelimeli, who also has family roots in Karnataka, draws a distinction between “Indian-grown” coffee and “Indian-style” coffee, which doesn’t necessarily need to be made with Indian-grown coffee beans. Often, it involves some combination of chicory and milk, with a ritualistic preparation that relies on “bisi bisi” (or “piping hot”) temperatures. Brewed using a steel filter, the coffee comes out milky and frothy, and is wildly popular among Indian coffee drinkers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PubmeU451L8\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rao, for her part, mostly focuses on roasting Indian-grown coffee beans. But she also wants to use Kaveri as a platform to introduce customers to all different aspects of Indian coffee culture. In India, Rao explains, “pure coffee” is a drink largely reserved for the bourgeoisie. It’s expensive. But watered-down variations, like the chicory coffee, are still commonly consumed by the working classes of India. To make it, the coffee beans get diluted with ground chicory — a spice made from the root of a dandelion plant that was popular among French soldiers, and later adopted and brought to India by the British military. [pullquote size=\"large\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Supriya Yelimeli\"]“When I was growing up, [my parents] complained that they couldn’t get the kind of Indian coffee they wanted.”[/pullquote]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In some households, mixing hot water with just the chicory by itself is considered coffee, despite lacking any actual coffee grounds. Along with tea, chicory coffee is the most common (and affordable) drink you’ll find in the region.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Selling a version of Indian chicory coffee is just one of the ways that Kaveri Coffee Works pays homage to Rao’s roots in India, \u003ca href=\"https://perfectdailygrind.com/2017/10/indias-specialty-coffee-journey-from-chicory-to-the-chemex/#:~:text=Over%20time%2C%20chicory%20root%20also,%2C%20New%20Orleans%2C%20and%20more.\">where the chicory blend is still extremely common\u003c/a>. Rao offers an 80/20 pre-ground mix that customers can brew at home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a part of my cultural identity,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>Monsooned Coffee and Espresso Liqueur\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The chicory coffee is only one of the distinctive aspects of Indian coffee that Rao wants to bring to the Bay Area. She explains that in many countries, mass-produced coffee is grown as a “monocrop,” in fields dedicated only to growing coffee. Indian coffee, on the other hand, has maintained its organic essence through “intercropping.” In southern India, coffee is grown in a natural rainforest next to pepper vines, cardamon, citrus, jackfruit, mangoes and other companion crops that enrich the soil. This lends the coffee hints of earthy chocolate and nutty spices.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13932436\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13932436\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/kaveri_ground-coffee-800x1200.jpg\" alt=\"a woman scoops up chicory mix that she blends with her Indian coffee\" width=\"800\" height=\"1200\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/kaveri_ground-coffee-800x1200.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/kaveri_ground-coffee-1020x1530.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/kaveri_ground-coffee-160x240.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/kaveri_ground-coffee-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/kaveri_ground-coffee-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/kaveri_ground-coffee-1365x2048.jpg 1365w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/kaveri_ground-coffee-scaled.jpg 1707w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Tanya Rao adds chicory to her ground coffee to make a special “chicory blend,” which is popular in India. \u003ccite>(Alan Chazaro)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Because of Indian coffee’s high tolerance to extreme weather conditions, some farmers even expose their beans to monsoon storm conditions for weeks on end, allowing them to engorge and lose their natural acidity. The \u003ca href=\"https://www.goodfoodrevolution.com/monsooned-malabar-how-beards-clippers-and-monsoon-winds-gave-rise-to-a-new-type-of-coffee/\">monsooned malabar is a centuries-old method\u003c/a> that is uniquely specific to the coast of Karnataka — and one that’s become increasingly trendy in recent years. The result is a milder, mellower flavor than regular coffee, allowing for a laidback afternoon of sipping for pleasure rather than urgent morning functionality.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though Kaveri doesn’t sell monsooned beans at the moment, Rao already has a supplier and is currently experimenting with a recipe for roasting these rare single-origin beans in a way that might translate successfully for Bay Area drinkers. Rao notes that since monsoon beans are typically used for espresso drinks, they don’t taste as good when served as a simple drip coffee. If all goes to plan, she’ll start offering batches of her monsoon beans later this month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In addition to these traditional styles of Indian coffee, Rao embraces “the art as much as the science” of it all. She recently collaborated with Dissident Spirits Co., a new distillery in Richmond, to create an \u003ca href=\"https://shop.sipalkalirye.com/products/kaveri-espresso-liqueur\">espresso liqueur made by infusing vodka with Kaveri’s espresso beans\u003c/a>, then aging the boozy concoction in rum barrels. The liqueur might not be the sort of thing her family’s coffee company would have ever sold, but it’s yet another sign that Rao has developed her own personal relationship with coffee outside of what it would look and taste like back in India.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She credits Bay Area businesses like Dissident and CoRo for providing a pathway for her to creatively explore her ancestry through experimental coffee roasting. The Bay Area also has a strong ecosystem for start-ups and entrepreneurs, which Rao has utilized by attending master classes at CoRo and participating in coffee cupping classes at \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thecrownoak/?hl=en\">the Crown Royal Coffee Lab & Tasting Room\u003c/a> in Oakland — “like wine tasting, but for coffee,” she explains.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13912706,arts_13930727,arts_13916794']\u003c/span>“I’m allowed to put on a different cultural persona here than I would in India,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In spite of Rao’s efforts, for the time being, Indian coffee remains relatively obscure in the Bay Area. Berkeleyside writer Yelimeli believes the reason it hasn’t yet filtered its way into the Bay Area has to do with the geography of where Indian coffee is produced — and the cultural implications of that geography.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“As far as Indian influence in the West goes, it usually comes from North India: Bollywood, Hindi language and other known cultural exports including chai. That’s all from the North,” she says. “Northern Indians don’t grow coffee so they don’t drink it as much.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13932441\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13932441\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/SupriyaYelimeli3_coffeeshop-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"a commercial coffee shop named Gayathri Coffee in India\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/SupriyaYelimeli3_coffeeshop-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/SupriyaYelimeli3_coffeeshop-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/SupriyaYelimeli3_coffeeshop-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/SupriyaYelimeli3_coffeeshop-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/SupriyaYelimeli3_coffeeshop-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/SupriyaYelimeli3_coffeeshop.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Commercial coffee chains like Gayathri Coffee are becoming increasingly popular in Karnataka. \u003ccite>(Supriya Yelimeli)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>With the emergence of Kaveri Coffee, Yelimeli hopes people’s awareness will start to change. Rao certainly thinks so. \u003ca href=\"https://kavericoffee.com/\">She currently only sells her coffee online\u003c/a> and at a fistful of Bay Area \u003ca href=\"https://kavericoffee.com/pages/locations\">markets and coffee shops\u003c/a>, including Albany’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/kitchenette625/\">Kitchenette\u003c/a> and CoRo’s own \u003ca href=\"https://www.corocoffeeroom.com/\">onsite cafe\u003c/a>. But she hopes to continue expanding her business without losing the hands-on intimacy of small-batch coffee roasting. Perhaps a brick-and-mortar is next.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s my birthright and duty to serve Indian coffee in the Bay Area,” Rao says. “I’m thinking of ways to do it authentically. I don’t want anything to be lost in translation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-12127869 aligncenter\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/kavericoffee/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Kaveri Coffee\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> can be found online and at select Bay Area locations, including CoRo (2322 Fifth St., Berkeley) and Rainbow Grocery Cooperative (1745 Folsom St., San Francisco). Rao will appear at this year’s \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.sfcoffeefestival.com/\">\u003ci>San Francisco Coffee Festival \u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>(Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture Festival Pavilion, 2 Marina Blvd., SF) on Nov. 11 and 12 from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.sfcoffeefestival.com/tickets\">\u003ci>Tickets\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> are currently available at a discounted price.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">W\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>hen many Americans think of Indian food, they probably conjure up the buttery scent of tikka masala — those grilled chunks of yogurt-marinated chicken drowned in red sauce. Or they might recall the earthy, kaleidoscopic aromas of cumin, coriander and turmeric from inside an Indian spice aisle. Maybe they imagine the sugary perfume of a hot cup of masala chai.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What I’d bet they don’t think of is\u003ca href=\"https://www.worldcoffeeportal.com/5THWAVE/Podcast/2023/A-conversation-with-tata-starbucks\"> coffee\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But for Tanya Rao, owner of \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/kavericoffee/?hl=en\">Kaveri Coffee Works\u003c/a> — a small-scale, independent roasting business in Berkeley — coffee has been a family tradition for more than half a century. The Raos’ connection to coffee dates back to 1941, when Tanya’s grandfather, M.V. Rao, opened India Coffee Kiosk in Bangalore, India, in the Karnataka region — known for being the country’s largest coffee producer. When M.V. could no longer run the family trade, he passed it on to Tanya’s father, Mohan Rao. Ever since then, coffee has defined a sense of home and purpose for the men in Rao’s family.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>No one, however, expected or groomed Tanya, the youngest daughter, to take up the mantle. Yet here she is.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I was next in line to get married,” Rao says. “But instead I broke barriers and challenged the status quo by leaving my [former] career to travel and own my business.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, Rao is leading a new wave of Bay Area coffee makers with a focus on empowering women of color in the coffee industry, which can often feel male-centric and white-dominant. Even at Berkeley’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.corocoffee.com/\">CoRo, the beautifully collaborative space where Rao roasts her coffee\u003c/a>, there was a visible lack of women during the busy morning I visited. That’s not to say women roasters don’t exist, but to see an Indian woman in a room full of male coffee roasters was scorchingly noticeable to me. Data reveals a gender gap in the coffee industry, with men accumulating a far greater share of the profits. According to \u003ca href=\"https://www.ico.org/documents/cy2017-18/icc-122-11e-gender-equality.pdf\">a report from the International Coffee Organization\u003c/a>, 70% of coffee labor worldwide is provided by women, while only 20% of coffee farms are women-owned. Similarly, \u003ca href=\"https://www.zippia.com/coffee-roaster-jobs/demographics/\">the American coffee roasting industry is heavily male-dominated\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13932434\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13932434\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/kaveri_bags-800x533.jpg\" alt='two bags of \"specialty coffee of India\" sit inside a coffee roasting warehouse in Berkeley' width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/kaveri_bags-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/kaveri_bags-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/kaveri_bags-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/kaveri_bags-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/kaveri_bags-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/kaveri_bags.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kaveri Coffee Works owner Tanya Rao gets her coffee beans imported directly from growers in her native India. \u003ccite>(Alan Chazaro)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For Rao, however, those disparities are all a part of what fuels her mission to stand out as a radical coffee entrepreneur — one who is introducing Bay Areans to the delectable, relatively little-known world of Indian coffee beans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though Americans are more likely to associate India with its tea rather than its coffee, South India — particularly the southwestern state of Karnataka — \u003ci>is \u003c/i>known for having a rich coffee culture. Karnataka is where Rao’s grandfather founded his coffee business, and it’s also where a Sufi saint named Baba Budan is believed to have planted India’s first coffee seeds over 300 years ago. The region maintains a year-round high-altitude climate that is lush for coffee cultivation. In fact, it’s helped make India \u003ca href=\"https://www.nescafe.com/gb/understanding-coffee/coffee-producing-countries/#:~:text=Brazil,producer%20for%20over%20150%20years.\">the eighth largest coffee producer in the world\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yet in much of the Western world, Indian coffee is still largely unappreciated. British colonizers controlled India’s coffee industry for nearly 200 years until the Indian Independence Act was signed in 1947. As a result, most Indian coffee never made it to the Americas. Instead, it wound up being shipped to Europe, Australia and other parts of Asia, while a colonized Latin America developed its own coffee belt along the equator to supply the Western Hemisphere. Rao estimates that only 3% of coffee in the U.S. comes from India, while the majority of India’s coffee gets shipped to Italy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But back in Karnataka? “Coffee is a part of our lives, a real luxury,” Rao says.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>Indian Coffee Revolution in the Bay\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: A woman from Bangalore who grew up in a patriarchal capitalist society leaves her native country and defies traditional gender expectations to create her own coffee business in Berkeley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Having emigrated from India at age 17, Rao began her winding path with a degree in computer science from the University of Virginia in 2001. It’s what her parents wanted her to do. And for years, she did it. She worked as a finance engineer, trying to “build the perfect American dream.” But everything changed when Rao visited San Francisco for the first time and, after falling in love with the culture here, quit her job to relocate to the Bay Area in 2008.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13932435\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13932435\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/kaveri_beans-800x1200.jpg\" alt=\"a woman scoops a handful of Indian coffee beans with her hands inside a roasting warehouse\" width=\"800\" height=\"1200\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/kaveri_beans-800x1200.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/kaveri_beans-1020x1530.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/kaveri_beans-160x240.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/kaveri_beans-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/kaveri_beans-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/kaveri_beans-1365x2048.jpg 1365w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/kaveri_beans-scaled.jpg 1707w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Tanya Rao holds up a handful of “monsooned” coffee beans, which originated along the southern coast of India. \u003ccite>(Alan Chazaro)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Here, she hiked toward self-discovery, leaving the financial sector behind to study outdoor recreation and tourism at San Francisco State, with an emphasis on social justice and cultural representation. Afterward, she became a women’s backpacking guide, which is about as far as she could’ve veered away from her life as someone with a prestigious career meant to appease her Indian family.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The Bay Area is where people who are curious and want to try something new are,” Rao says. “I wanted something different.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Rao’s father, who had moved to New Jersey, fell ill, she left everything to take care of him, reconnecting with her childhood memories of coffee. Before his passing, he offered his stake in the family coffee business, which had grown from a humble roadside stand pouring cups of joe during World War II to one of the nation’s first private coffee businesses, rebranding itself as New India Coffee Works in the early ’80s. Rao declined. As a result, the family business wound up shuttering.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, Rao decided to carry on her family’s legacy by launching Kaveri Coffee Works — named after a major river in Karnataka — in 2019. With her firsthand knowledge of both India’s coffee riches and the gaps in the Bay Area market for Indian coffee, she wanted to create a business that would bring attention to her home country’s scandalously overlooked brewing culture. She flew out to India to develop partnerships with women-owned farms around the Chikmagalur expanse of South India that now export their beans directly to Rao’s facility in Berkeley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I attribute the Bay’s entrepreneurial environment to me being able to turn my idea into a business,” Rao says. “I wouldn’t have been able to do this on the East Coast, and it would’ve looked very differently for me in India.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13932439\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13932439\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/SupriyaYelimeli1_mural-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"a mural of an Indian woman making filter coffee in India\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/SupriyaYelimeli1_mural-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/SupriyaYelimeli1_mural-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/SupriyaYelimeli1_mural-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/SupriyaYelimeli1_mural-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/SupriyaYelimeli1_mural-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/SupriyaYelimeli1_mural.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A mural of a woman making Indian filter coffee in Karnataka. Painted by \u003ca href=\"https://geechugalu.wordpress.com/2021/10/31/enoch-dheeraj-ebenezer/\">Enoch Dheeraj Ebenezer\u003c/a>. \u003ccite>(Supriya Yelimeli)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>With virtually no other Indian specialty coffee makers in the Bay Area, Kaveri is filling a tall order. Surprisingly, for a region where Indian immigrants comprise \u003ca href=\"https://localnewsmatters.org/2022/08/26/ten-maps-that-show-where-asian-american-communities-reside-in-the-bay-area/\">the second largest Asian American community\u003c/a> (making the Bay Area the \u003ca href=\"https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/top-10-us-metropolitan-areas-with-the-highest-population-of-indians.html\">fifth largest Indian diaspora in the nation\u003c/a>), it’s quite rare to find a coffee maker who is strictly dedicated to roasting Indian coffee beans. In fact, Rao might be the only one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m not aware of any Indian coffee makers like her in the Bay Area,” says Supriya Yelimeli, a first-generation Indian American who grew up in Fremont and is now a journalist at \u003ca href=\"https://www.berkeleyside.org/author/supriya-yelimeli\">Berkeleyside\u003c/a>. “My experience with Indian coffee is attached to the home. My parents would get an egregious amount of Colombian coffee from Costco and use a drip coffee machine to try to replicate Indian filter coffee here. When I was growing up, they complained that they couldn’t get the kind of Indian coffee they wanted.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yelimeli, who also has family roots in Karnataka, draws a distinction between “Indian-grown” coffee and “Indian-style” coffee, which doesn’t necessarily need to be made with Indian-grown coffee beans. Often, it involves some combination of chicory and milk, with a ritualistic preparation that relies on “bisi bisi” (or “piping hot”) temperatures. Brewed using a steel filter, the coffee comes out milky and frothy, and is wildly popular among Indian coffee drinkers.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/PubmeU451L8'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/PubmeU451L8'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rao, for her part, mostly focuses on roasting Indian-grown coffee beans. But she also wants to use Kaveri as a platform to introduce customers to all different aspects of Indian coffee culture. In India, Rao explains, “pure coffee” is a drink largely reserved for the bourgeoisie. It’s expensive. But watered-down variations, like the chicory coffee, are still commonly consumed by the working classes of India. To make it, the coffee beans get diluted with ground chicory — a spice made from the root of a dandelion plant that was popular among French soldiers, and later adopted and brought to India by the British military. \u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In some households, mixing hot water with just the chicory by itself is considered coffee, despite lacking any actual coffee grounds. Along with tea, chicory coffee is the most common (and affordable) drink you’ll find in the region.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Selling a version of Indian chicory coffee is just one of the ways that Kaveri Coffee Works pays homage to Rao’s roots in India, \u003ca href=\"https://perfectdailygrind.com/2017/10/indias-specialty-coffee-journey-from-chicory-to-the-chemex/#:~:text=Over%20time%2C%20chicory%20root%20also,%2C%20New%20Orleans%2C%20and%20more.\">where the chicory blend is still extremely common\u003c/a>. Rao offers an 80/20 pre-ground mix that customers can brew at home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a part of my cultural identity,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>Monsooned Coffee and Espresso Liqueur\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The chicory coffee is only one of the distinctive aspects of Indian coffee that Rao wants to bring to the Bay Area. She explains that in many countries, mass-produced coffee is grown as a “monocrop,” in fields dedicated only to growing coffee. Indian coffee, on the other hand, has maintained its organic essence through “intercropping.” In southern India, coffee is grown in a natural rainforest next to pepper vines, cardamon, citrus, jackfruit, mangoes and other companion crops that enrich the soil. This lends the coffee hints of earthy chocolate and nutty spices.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13932436\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13932436\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/kaveri_ground-coffee-800x1200.jpg\" alt=\"a woman scoops up chicory mix that she blends with her Indian coffee\" width=\"800\" height=\"1200\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/kaveri_ground-coffee-800x1200.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/kaveri_ground-coffee-1020x1530.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/kaveri_ground-coffee-160x240.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/kaveri_ground-coffee-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/kaveri_ground-coffee-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/kaveri_ground-coffee-1365x2048.jpg 1365w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/kaveri_ground-coffee-scaled.jpg 1707w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Tanya Rao adds chicory to her ground coffee to make a special “chicory blend,” which is popular in India. \u003ccite>(Alan Chazaro)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Because of Indian coffee’s high tolerance to extreme weather conditions, some farmers even expose their beans to monsoon storm conditions for weeks on end, allowing them to engorge and lose their natural acidity. The \u003ca href=\"https://www.goodfoodrevolution.com/monsooned-malabar-how-beards-clippers-and-monsoon-winds-gave-rise-to-a-new-type-of-coffee/\">monsooned malabar is a centuries-old method\u003c/a> that is uniquely specific to the coast of Karnataka — and one that’s become increasingly trendy in recent years. The result is a milder, mellower flavor than regular coffee, allowing for a laidback afternoon of sipping for pleasure rather than urgent morning functionality.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though Kaveri doesn’t sell monsooned beans at the moment, Rao already has a supplier and is currently experimenting with a recipe for roasting these rare single-origin beans in a way that might translate successfully for Bay Area drinkers. Rao notes that since monsoon beans are typically used for espresso drinks, they don’t taste as good when served as a simple drip coffee. If all goes to plan, she’ll start offering batches of her monsoon beans later this month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In addition to these traditional styles of Indian coffee, Rao embraces “the art as much as the science” of it all. She recently collaborated with Dissident Spirits Co., a new distillery in Richmond, to create an \u003ca href=\"https://shop.sipalkalirye.com/products/kaveri-espresso-liqueur\">espresso liqueur made by infusing vodka with Kaveri’s espresso beans\u003c/a>, then aging the boozy concoction in rum barrels. The liqueur might not be the sort of thing her family’s coffee company would have ever sold, but it’s yet another sign that Rao has developed her own personal relationship with coffee outside of what it would look and taste like back in India.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She credits Bay Area businesses like Dissident and CoRo for providing a pathway for her to creatively explore her ancestry through experimental coffee roasting. The Bay Area also has a strong ecosystem for start-ups and entrepreneurs, which Rao has utilized by attending master classes at CoRo and participating in coffee cupping classes at \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thecrownoak/?hl=en\">the Crown Royal Coffee Lab & Tasting Room\u003c/a> in Oakland — “like wine tasting, but for coffee,” she explains.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>“I’m allowed to put on a different cultural persona here than I would in India,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In spite of Rao’s efforts, for the time being, Indian coffee remains relatively obscure in the Bay Area. Berkeleyside writer Yelimeli believes the reason it hasn’t yet filtered its way into the Bay Area has to do with the geography of where Indian coffee is produced — and the cultural implications of that geography.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“As far as Indian influence in the West goes, it usually comes from North India: Bollywood, Hindi language and other known cultural exports including chai. That’s all from the North,” she says. “Northern Indians don’t grow coffee so they don’t drink it as much.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13932441\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13932441\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/SupriyaYelimeli3_coffeeshop-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"a commercial coffee shop named Gayathri Coffee in India\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/SupriyaYelimeli3_coffeeshop-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/SupriyaYelimeli3_coffeeshop-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/SupriyaYelimeli3_coffeeshop-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/SupriyaYelimeli3_coffeeshop-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/SupriyaYelimeli3_coffeeshop-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/SupriyaYelimeli3_coffeeshop.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Commercial coffee chains like Gayathri Coffee are becoming increasingly popular in Karnataka. \u003ccite>(Supriya Yelimeli)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>With the emergence of Kaveri Coffee, Yelimeli hopes people’s awareness will start to change. Rao certainly thinks so. \u003ca href=\"https://kavericoffee.com/\">She currently only sells her coffee online\u003c/a> and at a fistful of Bay Area \u003ca href=\"https://kavericoffee.com/pages/locations\">markets and coffee shops\u003c/a>, including Albany’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/kitchenette625/\">Kitchenette\u003c/a> and CoRo’s own \u003ca href=\"https://www.corocoffeeroom.com/\">onsite cafe\u003c/a>. But she hopes to continue expanding her business without losing the hands-on intimacy of small-batch coffee roasting. Perhaps a brick-and-mortar is next.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s my birthright and duty to serve Indian coffee in the Bay Area,” Rao says. “I’m thinking of ways to do it authentically. I don’t want anything to be lost in translation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-12127869 aligncenter\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/kavericoffee/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Kaveri Coffee\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> can be found online and at select Bay Area locations, including CoRo (2322 Fifth St., Berkeley) and Rainbow Grocery Cooperative (1745 Folsom St., San Francisco). Rao will appear at this year’s \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.sfcoffeefestival.com/\">\u003ci>San Francisco Coffee Festival \u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>(Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture Festival Pavilion, 2 Marina Blvd., SF) on Nov. 11 and 12 from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.sfcoffeefestival.com/tickets\">\u003ci>Tickets\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> are currently available at a discounted price.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Oakland’s Diaspora Co. Thinks You Should Put Jaggery in Everything",
"headTitle": "Oakland’s Diaspora Co. Thinks You Should Put Jaggery in Everything | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[dropcap]E[/dropcap]very time Sana Javeri Kadri flies back to California from a visit to her hometown of Mumbai, India, she stuffs her suitcase full of treasure: hefty, golden-brown bricks of the South Asian sweetener known as jaggery. It’s been 10 years since Javeri Kadri, founder of Oakland-based spice company \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.diasporaco.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Diaspora Co.\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, first immigrated to the United States. And for 10 years now, she’s been lugging back this precious cargo. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What Javeri Kadri hadn’t thought to do until very recently, however, is to \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">sell\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> jaggery. This, despite the fact that her entire business is built around \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.diasporaco.com/pages/about\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">sourcing single-origin spices from small farms in India\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. It was just too troublesome, Javeri Kadri explains — there were too many regulations designed to protect the domestic sugar industry. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But a recent test batch that Diaspora Co. sold as part of its \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.diasporaco.com/products/chai-kit?variant=41596798271659\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">chai kit\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> was so wildly popular that Javeri Kadri decided to give it a go. \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/CjTG_VzrwoM/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In an announcement\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> that thrilled Indian home cooks, Michelin-pedigreed chefs and hardcore chai enthusiasts alike, Diaspora Co. is now selling jaggery online to customers anywhere in the U.S. (and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.diasporaco.com/pages/faq\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">beyond\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">).\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jaggery, at its core, is sugarcane juice that’s boiled down and caramelized until it’s one step away from becoming sugar, Javeri Kadri explains. “It’s like sugar’s unrefined, much more nutritionally dense cousin,” she says. “I’ve been referring to it jokingly as the ‘OG, pre-colonial sweetener.’” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13920067\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1365px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13920067\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/diasporaco_Jaggery-blocks.jpg\" alt=\"Blocks of jaggery stacked on the ground, draped with colorful cloth.\" width=\"1365\" height=\"2048\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/diasporaco_Jaggery-blocks.jpg 1365w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/diasporaco_Jaggery-blocks-800x1200.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/diasporaco_Jaggery-blocks-1020x1530.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/diasporaco_Jaggery-blocks-160x240.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/diasporaco_Jaggery-blocks-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/diasporaco_Jaggery-blocks-1024x1536.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1365px) 100vw, 1365px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Blocks of jaggery in its finished form at the Randive family’s facility in the Daund region of India. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Diaspora Co.)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Up until this point, jaggery has received little mainstream attention in the U.S. But on the Indian subcontinent (and throughout much of Southeast Asia), many people use jaggery as their default sweetener, shaving chunks of it into a coarse powder. And in recent years, Javeri Kadri explains, the product has enjoyed a resurgence in India as health-conscious middle- and upperclass elites have started to use it more frequently as an “old-school ingredient” in place of refined white sugar. (Many Latin American food cultures use a similar unrefined sweetener known as panela.)\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The important thing, Javeri Kadri notes, is that jaggery also tastes better than white sugar — or, perhaps more to the point, it actually \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">has \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">a taste beyond just sweetness. As Javeri Kadri puts it, “Jaggery is not just lending sweetness, but it’s also lending a depth of flavor.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“You can pick up hints of saltiness and earthiness,” says Nik Sharma, a Los Angeles-based cookbook author and former \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">San Francisco Chronicle \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">food columnist. “It also has a unique, molasses-like caramel aroma to it.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sharma doesn’t limit his use of jaggery to its traditional Indian applications as the sweetener for masala chai and any number of curry recipes. His cookbook, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Season, \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">includes a recipe for jaggery ice cream spiced with saffron and cardamom. And jaggery’s earthy, caramelly qualities also make it perfect for Western-style fall baking. Sharma uses it in place of brown sugar when baking chocolate chip cookies, snickerdoodles and ginger snaps. Javeri Kadri, for her part, uses it to sweeten her morning coffee.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Here in the U.S., however, jaggery is mostly only available in communities that have access to a South Asian grocery store, which likely gets the sweetener from a distributor “who bought it from a trader who bought it from another trader who bought it from another trader,” Javeri Kadri says. “It’s just as convoluted a supply chain as other spices.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For that reason, she says, much of the jaggery she has purchased from Indian markets in the Bay Area hasn’t been very good, often tending toward dry and somewhat stale — hence the trips to bring it back from the source in India.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13920068\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13920068\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/diasporaco_jaggery_SanaJaveriKadri.jpg\" alt=\"A smiling woman in a checkered pink and yellow apron shows off a box of jarred spices in a matching pink and yellow box. \" width=\"1920\" height=\"2410\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/diasporaco_jaggery_SanaJaveriKadri.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/diasporaco_jaggery_SanaJaveriKadri-800x1004.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/diasporaco_jaggery_SanaJaveriKadri-1020x1280.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/diasporaco_jaggery_SanaJaveriKadri-160x201.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/diasporaco_jaggery_SanaJaveriKadri-768x964.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/diasporaco_jaggery_SanaJaveriKadri-1224x1536.jpg 1224w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/diasporaco_jaggery_SanaJaveriKadri-1632x2048.jpg 1632w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Diaspora Co founder Sana Javeri Kadri shows off a box of her company’s spices, including its new “Madhur Jaggery.” \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Diaspora Co.)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When Diaspora Co. launched five years ago, the company’s explicit mission was to “decolonize” turmeric and the broader spice trade. You may recall 2016 as the year of the turmeric latte — or at least the year that Goop, Gwyneth Paltrow and the broader wellness industry \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/19/magazine/a-grandmothers-secret-turmeric-prescription.html\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">turned the centuries-old Indian home remedy known as haldi doodh\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> into a hip menu addition at American coffee shops. The wellness crowd’s subsequent obsession with turmeric itself usually \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://food52.com/blog/19083-how-indian-is-your-turmeric-latte\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">stripped the spice from its specific Indian context\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At the time, Javeri Kadri told \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">San Francisco Magaz\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">ine that if turmeric was going to become this buzzy ingredient in the West, she at least wanted “\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://digital.modernluxury.com/publication/?m=3609&i=469140&view=articleBrowser&article_id=2985421&ver=html5\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">brown farmers to make as much money off of it as possible\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">” — especially in light of the many centuries of history in which the space trade itself was a prominent driver of colonialism. So Javeri Kadri launched Diaspora Co. in 2017 as a direct-trade spice company that started out selling just one spice — pragati turmeric, a very potent, marigold-orange varietal that she sourced from a single farmer in India, paying roughly \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://digital.modernluxury.com/publication/?m=3609&i=469140&view=articleBrowser&article_id=2985421&ver=html5\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">four times the commodity rate\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[pullquote size=\"large\" align=\"right\"]“One difficult thing about trying to change the spice industry is that the food media tends to be more interested in identity politics than in the ethics of sourcing within a colonized industry such as the spice trade.”[/pullquote]Today, Diaspora Co. sells a full roster of 30 single-origin spices that it sources from 150 different farms spread across India and Sri Lanka. Its new “Madhur Jaggery” (“madhur,” a common Hindi name for a woman, means “sweet” or “gentle”) follows the same basic model. After tasting 12 jaggeries sourced from different farms in India, the company decided to buy jaggery from the Randive family, whose product was notable both for its depth of flavor and its \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/bayareabites/126036/what-does-the-new-regenerative-organic-certification-mean-for-the-future-of-good-food\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">regenerative farming methods\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. The family farm in India’s Daund region has been growing sugarcane organically for the past 14 years, processing it into jaggery mostly by hand. The Randives pulp the sugarcane down together with wild okra — to remove impurities, Javeri Kadri explains — and then boil down the juices and pulp in giant 12-foot vats.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13920071\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2048px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13920071\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/diasporaco_jaggery_KantilalRandive.jpg\" alt=\"A man stands in a field of sugarcane, the stalks of sugarcane behind him rising above his head.\" width=\"2048\" height=\"1365\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/diasporaco_jaggery_KantilalRandive.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/diasporaco_jaggery_KantilalRandive-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/diasporaco_jaggery_KantilalRandive-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/diasporaco_jaggery_KantilalRandive-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/diasporaco_jaggery_KantilalRandive-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/diasporaco_jaggery_KantilalRandive-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/diasporaco_jaggery_KantilalRandive-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2048px) 100vw, 2048px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Farmer Kantilal Randive stands in a field of sugarcane at his organic farm in the Daund region of India. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Diaspora Co.)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For convenience, Diaspora Co. is selling the finished product in powder form rather than the traditional blocks — $8 for a 2.47-ounce jar or $25 for a 500-gram bag.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the years since Diaspora Co.’s debut, the idea of “decolonizing” all kinds of different industries and products has gone mainstream. Folks have, variously, made it their mission to decolonize \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.eater.com/21499205/black-indigenous-craft-chocolate-makers-history-industry\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">chocolate\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://oaklandside.org/2022/05/18/oakland-rooftop-medicine-farm-whole-foods/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">farmland\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/28/arts/design/raphael-montanez-ortiz-el-museuo-del-barrio.html\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">museums\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, to name just a few recent examples. The term has also become a sort of shorthand to indicate that the people behind a particular business venture are non-white — and in that way, Javeri Kadri says, it’s largely lost its meaning.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13912706,arts_13912976,arts_13919177']These days, Javeri Kadri says Diaspora Co. no longer uses the language of decolonization, instead preferring to reserve the term for indigenous activists who are pushing for \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11848769/the-east-bay-land-tax-that-supports-an-indigenous-women-led-trust\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">land rematriation\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. “We can use ‘building a better spice trade’ or ‘giving power back to farmers,’” she says. “We don’t need that word.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One difficult thing about trying to change the spice industry is that the food media tends to be more interested in identity politics than in the ethics of sourcing within a colonized industry such as the spice trade. And there’s no question: The rise of a company like Diaspora Co., with a queer immigrant woman like Javeri Kadri as its CEO, does represent an \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/21324312/diaspora-co-sana-javeri-kadri-sqirl-jam-collaboration\">important shift in power\u003c/a>. But what’s even \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">more\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> important, Javeri Kadri says, is for Diaspora Co. to make the best choices that it can make within the framework of capitalism—choices that benefit, rather than exploit, the farmers that they work with in India.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Representation matters,” Javeri Kadri says. “But in order to change a system, you have to go deeper than that.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-12904247\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"39\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39-160x16.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39-240x23.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39-375x37.jpg 375w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Diaspora Co.’s jaggery is available for purchase \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.diasporaco.com/products/madhur-jaggery?variant=42010287210667\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">online\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. It ships throughout the U.S., as well as \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">to \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.diasporaco.com/pages/faq\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Canada, Singapore, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, the EU and the UK\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">E\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>very time Sana Javeri Kadri flies back to California from a visit to her hometown of Mumbai, India, she stuffs her suitcase full of treasure: hefty, golden-brown bricks of the South Asian sweetener known as jaggery. It’s been 10 years since Javeri Kadri, founder of Oakland-based spice company \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.diasporaco.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Diaspora Co.\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, first immigrated to the United States. And for 10 years now, she’s been lugging back this precious cargo. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What Javeri Kadri hadn’t thought to do until very recently, however, is to \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">sell\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> jaggery. This, despite the fact that her entire business is built around \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.diasporaco.com/pages/about\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">sourcing single-origin spices from small farms in India\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. It was just too troublesome, Javeri Kadri explains — there were too many regulations designed to protect the domestic sugar industry. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But a recent test batch that Diaspora Co. sold as part of its \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.diasporaco.com/products/chai-kit?variant=41596798271659\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">chai kit\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> was so wildly popular that Javeri Kadri decided to give it a go. \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/CjTG_VzrwoM/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In an announcement\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> that thrilled Indian home cooks, Michelin-pedigreed chefs and hardcore chai enthusiasts alike, Diaspora Co. is now selling jaggery online to customers anywhere in the U.S. (and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.diasporaco.com/pages/faq\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">beyond\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">).\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jaggery, at its core, is sugarcane juice that’s boiled down and caramelized until it’s one step away from becoming sugar, Javeri Kadri explains. “It’s like sugar’s unrefined, much more nutritionally dense cousin,” she says. “I’ve been referring to it jokingly as the ‘OG, pre-colonial sweetener.’” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13920067\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1365px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13920067\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/diasporaco_Jaggery-blocks.jpg\" alt=\"Blocks of jaggery stacked on the ground, draped with colorful cloth.\" width=\"1365\" height=\"2048\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/diasporaco_Jaggery-blocks.jpg 1365w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/diasporaco_Jaggery-blocks-800x1200.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/diasporaco_Jaggery-blocks-1020x1530.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/diasporaco_Jaggery-blocks-160x240.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/diasporaco_Jaggery-blocks-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/diasporaco_Jaggery-blocks-1024x1536.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1365px) 100vw, 1365px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Blocks of jaggery in its finished form at the Randive family’s facility in the Daund region of India. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Diaspora Co.)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Up until this point, jaggery has received little mainstream attention in the U.S. But on the Indian subcontinent (and throughout much of Southeast Asia), many people use jaggery as their default sweetener, shaving chunks of it into a coarse powder. And in recent years, Javeri Kadri explains, the product has enjoyed a resurgence in India as health-conscious middle- and upperclass elites have started to use it more frequently as an “old-school ingredient” in place of refined white sugar. (Many Latin American food cultures use a similar unrefined sweetener known as panela.)\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The important thing, Javeri Kadri notes, is that jaggery also tastes better than white sugar — or, perhaps more to the point, it actually \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">has \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">a taste beyond just sweetness. As Javeri Kadri puts it, “Jaggery is not just lending sweetness, but it’s also lending a depth of flavor.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“You can pick up hints of saltiness and earthiness,” says Nik Sharma, a Los Angeles-based cookbook author and former \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">San Francisco Chronicle \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">food columnist. “It also has a unique, molasses-like caramel aroma to it.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sharma doesn’t limit his use of jaggery to its traditional Indian applications as the sweetener for masala chai and any number of curry recipes. His cookbook, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Season, \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">includes a recipe for jaggery ice cream spiced with saffron and cardamom. And jaggery’s earthy, caramelly qualities also make it perfect for Western-style fall baking. Sharma uses it in place of brown sugar when baking chocolate chip cookies, snickerdoodles and ginger snaps. Javeri Kadri, for her part, uses it to sweeten her morning coffee.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Here in the U.S., however, jaggery is mostly only available in communities that have access to a South Asian grocery store, which likely gets the sweetener from a distributor “who bought it from a trader who bought it from another trader who bought it from another trader,” Javeri Kadri says. “It’s just as convoluted a supply chain as other spices.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For that reason, she says, much of the jaggery she has purchased from Indian markets in the Bay Area hasn’t been very good, often tending toward dry and somewhat stale — hence the trips to bring it back from the source in India.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13920068\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13920068\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/diasporaco_jaggery_SanaJaveriKadri.jpg\" alt=\"A smiling woman in a checkered pink and yellow apron shows off a box of jarred spices in a matching pink and yellow box. \" width=\"1920\" height=\"2410\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/diasporaco_jaggery_SanaJaveriKadri.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/diasporaco_jaggery_SanaJaveriKadri-800x1004.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/diasporaco_jaggery_SanaJaveriKadri-1020x1280.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/diasporaco_jaggery_SanaJaveriKadri-160x201.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/diasporaco_jaggery_SanaJaveriKadri-768x964.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/diasporaco_jaggery_SanaJaveriKadri-1224x1536.jpg 1224w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/diasporaco_jaggery_SanaJaveriKadri-1632x2048.jpg 1632w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Diaspora Co founder Sana Javeri Kadri shows off a box of her company’s spices, including its new “Madhur Jaggery.” \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Diaspora Co.)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When Diaspora Co. launched five years ago, the company’s explicit mission was to “decolonize” turmeric and the broader spice trade. You may recall 2016 as the year of the turmeric latte — or at least the year that Goop, Gwyneth Paltrow and the broader wellness industry \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/19/magazine/a-grandmothers-secret-turmeric-prescription.html\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">turned the centuries-old Indian home remedy known as haldi doodh\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> into a hip menu addition at American coffee shops. The wellness crowd’s subsequent obsession with turmeric itself usually \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://food52.com/blog/19083-how-indian-is-your-turmeric-latte\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">stripped the spice from its specific Indian context\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At the time, Javeri Kadri told \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">San Francisco Magaz\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">ine that if turmeric was going to become this buzzy ingredient in the West, she at least wanted “\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://digital.modernluxury.com/publication/?m=3609&i=469140&view=articleBrowser&article_id=2985421&ver=html5\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">brown farmers to make as much money off of it as possible\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">” — especially in light of the many centuries of history in which the space trade itself was a prominent driver of colonialism. So Javeri Kadri launched Diaspora Co. in 2017 as a direct-trade spice company that started out selling just one spice — pragati turmeric, a very potent, marigold-orange varietal that she sourced from a single farmer in India, paying roughly \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://digital.modernluxury.com/publication/?m=3609&i=469140&view=articleBrowser&article_id=2985421&ver=html5\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">four times the commodity rate\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "“One difficult thing about trying to change the spice industry is that the food media tends to be more interested in identity politics than in the ethics of sourcing within a colonized industry such as the spice trade.”",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Today, Diaspora Co. sells a full roster of 30 single-origin spices that it sources from 150 different farms spread across India and Sri Lanka. Its new “Madhur Jaggery” (“madhur,” a common Hindi name for a woman, means “sweet” or “gentle”) follows the same basic model. After tasting 12 jaggeries sourced from different farms in India, the company decided to buy jaggery from the Randive family, whose product was notable both for its depth of flavor and its \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/bayareabites/126036/what-does-the-new-regenerative-organic-certification-mean-for-the-future-of-good-food\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">regenerative farming methods\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. The family farm in India’s Daund region has been growing sugarcane organically for the past 14 years, processing it into jaggery mostly by hand. The Randives pulp the sugarcane down together with wild okra — to remove impurities, Javeri Kadri explains — and then boil down the juices and pulp in giant 12-foot vats.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13920071\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2048px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13920071\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/diasporaco_jaggery_KantilalRandive.jpg\" alt=\"A man stands in a field of sugarcane, the stalks of sugarcane behind him rising above his head.\" width=\"2048\" height=\"1365\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/diasporaco_jaggery_KantilalRandive.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/diasporaco_jaggery_KantilalRandive-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/diasporaco_jaggery_KantilalRandive-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/diasporaco_jaggery_KantilalRandive-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/diasporaco_jaggery_KantilalRandive-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/diasporaco_jaggery_KantilalRandive-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/diasporaco_jaggery_KantilalRandive-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2048px) 100vw, 2048px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Farmer Kantilal Randive stands in a field of sugarcane at his organic farm in the Daund region of India. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Diaspora Co.)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For convenience, Diaspora Co. is selling the finished product in powder form rather than the traditional blocks — $8 for a 2.47-ounce jar or $25 for a 500-gram bag.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the years since Diaspora Co.’s debut, the idea of “decolonizing” all kinds of different industries and products has gone mainstream. Folks have, variously, made it their mission to decolonize \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.eater.com/21499205/black-indigenous-craft-chocolate-makers-history-industry\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">chocolate\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://oaklandside.org/2022/05/18/oakland-rooftop-medicine-farm-whole-foods/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">farmland\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/28/arts/design/raphael-montanez-ortiz-el-museuo-del-barrio.html\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">museums\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, to name just a few recent examples. The term has also become a sort of shorthand to indicate that the people behind a particular business venture are non-white — and in that way, Javeri Kadri says, it’s largely lost its meaning.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>These days, Javeri Kadri says Diaspora Co. no longer uses the language of decolonization, instead preferring to reserve the term for indigenous activists who are pushing for \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11848769/the-east-bay-land-tax-that-supports-an-indigenous-women-led-trust\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">land rematriation\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. “We can use ‘building a better spice trade’ or ‘giving power back to farmers,’” she says. “We don’t need that word.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One difficult thing about trying to change the spice industry is that the food media tends to be more interested in identity politics than in the ethics of sourcing within a colonized industry such as the spice trade. And there’s no question: The rise of a company like Diaspora Co., with a queer immigrant woman like Javeri Kadri as its CEO, does represent an \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/21324312/diaspora-co-sana-javeri-kadri-sqirl-jam-collaboration\">important shift in power\u003c/a>. But what’s even \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">more\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> important, Javeri Kadri says, is for Diaspora Co. to make the best choices that it can make within the framework of capitalism—choices that benefit, rather than exploit, the farmers that they work with in India.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Representation matters,” Javeri Kadri says. “But in order to change a system, you have to go deeper than that.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-12904247\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"39\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39-160x16.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39-240x23.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39-375x37.jpg 375w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Diaspora Co.’s jaggery is available for purchase \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.diasporaco.com/products/madhur-jaggery?variant=42010287210667\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">online\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. It ships throughout the U.S., as well as \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">to \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.diasporaco.com/pages/faq\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Canada, Singapore, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, the EU and the UK\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Two Indian Half-Sisters are the Talk of 'Bridgerton'—and Modern-Day India, Too",
"headTitle": "Two Indian Half-Sisters are the Talk of ‘Bridgerton’—and Modern-Day India, Too | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Two brown-skinned women are the talk of 19th century England in the second season of the globally streaming Netflix hit series \u003cem>Bridgerton.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They’re the talk of 21st century India as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They’re Kate (played by Simone Ashley) and Edwina Sharma (Charithra Chandran), who arrive in the U.K. with their mother Mary in search of love and marriage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the Bridgerton universe, Mary is the daughter of the Earl of Sheffield and his Indian wife. We learn that when Mary was ready for marriage, she was declared a “diamond” by the queen (who bestows this title on eminently marriageable women to elevate their prospects).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Mary made an unconventional choice. Instead of marrying a man with a title and wealth, she ran away to India with an ordinary Indian tradesman whom she’s fallen in love with. He had a daughter—Kanthani (called Kate)—from a previous marriage. Mary’s defiance and elopement humiliated her parents—not because she married a dark-skinned man but because she married outside of the upper crust of English society.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now Mary is back in England after many years in India. Her husband has died. Her parents have promised to support her daughter Edwina and to grant her an inheritance—but only if she marries a man with a title.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYNCws-a6CQ\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>True to the spirit of the “colorblind” casting in \u003cem>Bridgerton—\u003c/em>a fantasy realm where no racial digs are heard—Mary and her children do not face any prejudices from the many white folk in the queen’s court. Indeed, the beautiful Edwina, like her mom, is declared a “diamond” by Queen Charlotte (who herself is portrayed by a British-Guyanese actor).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13881748']So when characters on the TV series talk about the young women, it’s because they are so strikingly beautiful and, in Kate’s case, a radical spirit who dares to go riding on her own!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But in modern-day India, \u003cem>Bridgerton \u003c/em>viewers are raising other topics in their heated discussion of the Sharma family: race and colorism and colonialism. And there’s also much talk about the uncanny parallels between the 19th century women of \u003cem>Bridgerton\u003c/em>, for whom marriage is absolutely critical, and women in the India of 2022.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Attention readers! At this point we must issue a spoiler alert because we need to bring up some plot points to fully address the reaction to \u003c/strong>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Bridgerton\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003cstrong> in India.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Viewers are thrilled by Kate’s skin tone\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>The color of Kate’s skin is generating much comment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ve appreciated \u003cem>Bridgerton\u003c/em> for their diverse casting right from Season 1. And I love that they chose a dark-skinned woman of Asian descent to play Kate,” says Rumela Basu, 31, a writer based in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many Indian women on Twitter share Basu’s views, talking about Kate’s dark skin tone and striking good looks. Some note that in movies made in India, leading ladies are often fair-skinned, because Indian society considers lighter skinned women as a model of beauty—even if it makes them look ethnically ambiguous. Many Indian women have a darker skin tone, more like Kate’s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/kumitatataaa/status/1510819563650240513\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/rujulxo/status/1511474722575372291\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s also great appreciation for the show’s depiction of Indian culture—in the distinctively Indian jewelry and exquisitely embroidered gowns in rich bold hues that are a hallmark of Indian fashion—eggplant purple, deep pinks and sky blues.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Bridgerton\u003c/em> fans in India especially like the scenes where Kate criticizes the blandness of English tea (the Indian version called “chai” packs a spicier punch, so many Indians relate to her disdain) and her loving application of oil to her sister’s hair to condition it (a common practice in India).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the scenes before Edwina is set to marry Anthony Bridgerton (played by Jonathan Bailey), the Sharma girls are seen smearing turmeric paste on each other’s cheeks. Called the ‘haldi ceremony’ this is a pre-wedding ritual in Hindu weddings, meant to bless the bride and give her glowing skin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/BritishBindi/status/1511738892390744071\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>But all is not exactly on point in the Indian details\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>But all is not peaches and turmeric for Indian fans, who have raised some criticisms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s bewildering how the \u003cem>Bridgerton\u003c/em> team paid such close attention to these visual details, making identity and culture central to the plot and yet, still got many basic Indian references wrong”, says Pratyasha Rath, 33, a consultant working in the development sector in Hyderabad. The mistakes, she feels, are absurd.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For instance, Kate refers to a musical instrument called “maruli,” She’s possibly referring to a flute, but that’s called \u003cem>“murli” \u003c/em>in Hindi.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13911808\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13911808\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/bridgerton-netflix-2-a4d23f7474a05cdad9b7f235420141bf10e75bca-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/bridgerton-netflix-2-a4d23f7474a05cdad9b7f235420141bf10e75bca-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/bridgerton-netflix-2-a4d23f7474a05cdad9b7f235420141bf10e75bca-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/bridgerton-netflix-2-a4d23f7474a05cdad9b7f235420141bf10e75bca-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/bridgerton-netflix-2-a4d23f7474a05cdad9b7f235420141bf10e75bca-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/bridgerton-netflix-2-a4d23f7474a05cdad9b7f235420141bf10e75bca-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/bridgerton-netflix-2-a4d23f7474a05cdad9b7f235420141bf10e75bca-2048x1536.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/bridgerton-netflix-2-a4d23f7474a05cdad9b7f235420141bf10e75bca-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Simone Ashley (as Kate Sharma) shares an intimate moment with Jonathan Bailey (as Anthony Bridgerton). Twitter commenters in India have expressed joy at seeing a dark-skinned Indian woman in the cast while Bollywood films often feature lighter-skinned Indian actors. \u003ccite>(Liam Daniel/Netflix)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Kate and her sister Edwina Sharma’s facial features and deep tan skin tones are typically South Indian, and yet, their surname (which can reveal a lot in India) is typically upper caste and North Indian.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The sisters claim to speak Marathi, a language spoken in the western Indian state of Maharashtra, and yet, they refer to their late father as \u003cem>appa\u003c/em>, a term used for father in Tamil, a southern Indian language. Kate calls her younger sister \u003cem>bon\u003c/em>, but the closest equivalent to that is a word pronounced\u003cem> bone\u003c/em> and it means younger sister in the language of Bengali, spoken in West Bengal, a state in eastern India. Edwina calls Kate \u003cem>didi\u003c/em>, which means older sister in Hindi, spoken in many northern Indian states.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13911809\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13911809\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/bridgerton-netflix-3_enl-fa635392b4951708ed7bad8c0fa40dfa2b6953d7-800x569.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"569\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/bridgerton-netflix-3_enl-fa635392b4951708ed7bad8c0fa40dfa2b6953d7-800x569.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/bridgerton-netflix-3_enl-fa635392b4951708ed7bad8c0fa40dfa2b6953d7-1020x725.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/bridgerton-netflix-3_enl-fa635392b4951708ed7bad8c0fa40dfa2b6953d7-160x114.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/bridgerton-netflix-3_enl-fa635392b4951708ed7bad8c0fa40dfa2b6953d7-768x546.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/bridgerton-netflix-3_enl-fa635392b4951708ed7bad8c0fa40dfa2b6953d7-1536x1092.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/bridgerton-netflix-3_enl-fa635392b4951708ed7bad8c0fa40dfa2b6953d7-2048x1456.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/bridgerton-netflix-3_enl-fa635392b4951708ed7bad8c0fa40dfa2b6953d7-1920x1365.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mary Sharma (Shelley Conn) eloped with an Indian tradesman and left her native England. Now she’s back, a widow hoping to find support from her estranged family—and a husband for daughter Edwina (center). The show’s depiction of Indian fashion has earned praise although fans are quick to point out cultural inaccuracies. \u003ccite>(Liam Daniel/Netflix)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“When so much attention was paid to the costumes and jewelry, they should have fact-checked these basic details as well,” says Pratyasha Rath.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Pragya Agarwal, a behavioral and data scientist and Visiting Professor of Social Inequities and Injustice at Loughborough University in the U.K., the cultural mishmash reflects an attitude that “Indian-ness” is a homogenous, monolithic entity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It is easier for people to stereotype Indians without the awareness that India is a huge country with many different languages and cultural practices,” she says. “Nevertheless, for second or third generation brown/Indian people, like my own children, it is so empowering to hear Hindi words on screen, beauty not being limited to fair skin and blonde hair and to see brown women as empowered, without the need to be passive or meek or talking about their past traumas.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>And what about colonialism and interracial marriages?\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>But it does disturb her that the show seemed to gloss over the colonial presence—and how Indians were affected by imperialism in that period. “We are having conversations about how imperial history is being taught here in the U.K. now and it is easy to forget that [the series] is fantasy, not an accurate representation of the past,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13881871']In reality, colonialism did affect India during the period in which\u003cem> Bridgerton\u003c/em> is set but hadn’t yet escalated into a bloody struggle; that came later, says \u003ca href=\"https://history.cornell.edu/durba-ghosh\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Durba Ghosh\u003c/a>, a professor in the history department at Cornell University.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This (period) was before the uprising of 1857, which is often considered India’s first war of Independence,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nonetheless, those earlier years saw the growing influence of the British East India Company, which is often likened to a ruthless conglomerate. It sowed seeds of discontent among native Indian rulers, which set the stage for discontent, oppression and colonialism.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As for the show’s presentation of Brits and Indians getting married, that turns out to be true to life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>≈People of color were very much a part of the Regency era, when \u003cem>Bridgerton\u003c/em> takes place. Many of them were the offspring of interracial marriages, says Ghosh, who is the author of \u003cem>Sex and The Family in Colonial India.\u003c/em> “While it’s impossible to say how many, there would have been South Asian aristocrats in these circuits as well. There are cases of [Indian] women who have traveled to Britain with their partners and who are a part of society and who have raised their children,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to Ghosh, the way those marriages frequently played out was a white British man marrying an Indian woman, so these mixed marriage families would have a father who would have been English and the mother of Indian descent, with a Europeanized last name. That is not the case with Sharma and her family, she notes.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Marriage then and now has its similarities\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>The show’s depiction of aristocratic families navigating the politics of love and duty in London’s competitive marriage market in the 1800s remind many Indian women of situations they’ve faced themselves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the first season of the show, when leading lady Daphne Bridgerton, the eldest of the Bridgerton daughters struggles to find a good suitor, she tells her brother in a moment of frustration, “You have no idea what it is to be a woman, what it might feel like to have one’s entire life reduced to a single moment. This is all I have been raised for… If I am unable to find a husband, I shall be worthless.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ghosh says the “marriage market” in Britain in this period (as depicted in \u003cem>Bridgerton\u003c/em>) and in India today are very simila—”especially in the stakes for women.” The pressure on women to wed even in the modern day is very real and often relentless. Marriage is seen by many sectors of society as a means to elevate a woman’s social status, a means of security, even a duty one must perform for the sake of family honor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13883922']Rumela Basu, the writer, says she comes from a progressive Bengali family, but there was a time three or four years ago, when she felt this pressure too. “Comments like ‘if you do want to get married, you may as well do it at the right age,’ were thrown my way, and every other person wanted to know when I was getting married,” she says. “No matter that I’d gotten a pretty impressive job and was doing so many other things.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The independence of Kate Sharma has also struck a chord. In the very first scene, we see her breaking the rules—riding a horse on her own, unfettered and free, when most women needed to be chaperoned.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think Kate’s independence is interesting,” says Ghosh. “because she visualizes a future that’s not resolved with marriage. It’s something we’re seeing girls pushing back against now in South Asian communities.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just as Eloise Bridgerton, the second daughter of the family and a feminist once asked, “Why must our only options be to squawk and settle or to never leave the nest? What if I want to fly?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Kamala Thiagarajan is a freelance journalist based in Madurai, Southern India. She reports on global health, science, and development, and her work has been published in the \u003c/em>New York Times, The British Medical Journal\u003cem>, BBC, \u003c/em>The Guardian\u003cem> and other outlets. You can find her on twitter @kamal_t\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">visit NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Two+Indian+half-sisters+are+the+talk+of+%27Bridgerton%27+%E2%80%94+and+of+modern-day+India%2C+too&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "The popularity of Kate and Edwina Sharma in the Netflix show has sparked talk of colorism, colonialism and women's rights.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Two brown-skinned women are the talk of 19th century England in the second season of the globally streaming Netflix hit series \u003cem>Bridgerton.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They’re the talk of 21st century India as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They’re Kate (played by Simone Ashley) and Edwina Sharma (Charithra Chandran), who arrive in the U.K. with their mother Mary in search of love and marriage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the Bridgerton universe, Mary is the daughter of the Earl of Sheffield and his Indian wife. We learn that when Mary was ready for marriage, she was declared a “diamond” by the queen (who bestows this title on eminently marriageable women to elevate their prospects).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Mary made an unconventional choice. Instead of marrying a man with a title and wealth, she ran away to India with an ordinary Indian tradesman whom she’s fallen in love with. He had a daughter—Kanthani (called Kate)—from a previous marriage. Mary’s defiance and elopement humiliated her parents—not because she married a dark-skinned man but because she married outside of the upper crust of English society.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now Mary is back in England after many years in India. Her husband has died. Her parents have promised to support her daughter Edwina and to grant her an inheritance—but only if she marries a man with a title.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/qYNCws-a6CQ'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/qYNCws-a6CQ'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>True to the spirit of the “colorblind” casting in \u003cem>Bridgerton—\u003c/em>a fantasy realm where no racial digs are heard—Mary and her children do not face any prejudices from the many white folk in the queen’s court. Indeed, the beautiful Edwina, like her mom, is declared a “diamond” by Queen Charlotte (who herself is portrayed by a British-Guyanese actor).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>So when characters on the TV series talk about the young women, it’s because they are so strikingly beautiful and, in Kate’s case, a radical spirit who dares to go riding on her own!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But in modern-day India, \u003cem>Bridgerton \u003c/em>viewers are raising other topics in their heated discussion of the Sharma family: race and colorism and colonialism. And there’s also much talk about the uncanny parallels between the 19th century women of \u003cem>Bridgerton\u003c/em>, for whom marriage is absolutely critical, and women in the India of 2022.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Attention readers! At this point we must issue a spoiler alert because we need to bring up some plot points to fully address the reaction to \u003c/strong>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Bridgerton\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003cstrong> in India.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Viewers are thrilled by Kate’s skin tone\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>The color of Kate’s skin is generating much comment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ve appreciated \u003cem>Bridgerton\u003c/em> for their diverse casting right from Season 1. And I love that they chose a dark-skinned woman of Asian descent to play Kate,” says Rumela Basu, 31, a writer based in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many Indian women on Twitter share Basu’s views, talking about Kate’s dark skin tone and striking good looks. Some note that in movies made in India, leading ladies are often fair-skinned, because Indian society considers lighter skinned women as a model of beauty—even if it makes them look ethnically ambiguous. Many Indian women have a darker skin tone, more like Kate’s.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003ch3>But all is not exactly on point in the Indian details\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>But all is not peaches and turmeric for Indian fans, who have raised some criticisms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s bewildering how the \u003cem>Bridgerton\u003c/em> team paid such close attention to these visual details, making identity and culture central to the plot and yet, still got many basic Indian references wrong”, says Pratyasha Rath, 33, a consultant working in the development sector in Hyderabad. The mistakes, she feels, are absurd.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For instance, Kate refers to a musical instrument called “maruli,” She’s possibly referring to a flute, but that’s called \u003cem>“murli” \u003c/em>in Hindi.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13911808\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13911808\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/bridgerton-netflix-2-a4d23f7474a05cdad9b7f235420141bf10e75bca-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/bridgerton-netflix-2-a4d23f7474a05cdad9b7f235420141bf10e75bca-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/bridgerton-netflix-2-a4d23f7474a05cdad9b7f235420141bf10e75bca-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/bridgerton-netflix-2-a4d23f7474a05cdad9b7f235420141bf10e75bca-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/bridgerton-netflix-2-a4d23f7474a05cdad9b7f235420141bf10e75bca-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/bridgerton-netflix-2-a4d23f7474a05cdad9b7f235420141bf10e75bca-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/bridgerton-netflix-2-a4d23f7474a05cdad9b7f235420141bf10e75bca-2048x1536.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/bridgerton-netflix-2-a4d23f7474a05cdad9b7f235420141bf10e75bca-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Simone Ashley (as Kate Sharma) shares an intimate moment with Jonathan Bailey (as Anthony Bridgerton). Twitter commenters in India have expressed joy at seeing a dark-skinned Indian woman in the cast while Bollywood films often feature lighter-skinned Indian actors. \u003ccite>(Liam Daniel/Netflix)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Kate and her sister Edwina Sharma’s facial features and deep tan skin tones are typically South Indian, and yet, their surname (which can reveal a lot in India) is typically upper caste and North Indian.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The sisters claim to speak Marathi, a language spoken in the western Indian state of Maharashtra, and yet, they refer to their late father as \u003cem>appa\u003c/em>, a term used for father in Tamil, a southern Indian language. Kate calls her younger sister \u003cem>bon\u003c/em>, but the closest equivalent to that is a word pronounced\u003cem> bone\u003c/em> and it means younger sister in the language of Bengali, spoken in West Bengal, a state in eastern India. Edwina calls Kate \u003cem>didi\u003c/em>, which means older sister in Hindi, spoken in many northern Indian states.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13911809\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13911809\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/bridgerton-netflix-3_enl-fa635392b4951708ed7bad8c0fa40dfa2b6953d7-800x569.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"569\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/bridgerton-netflix-3_enl-fa635392b4951708ed7bad8c0fa40dfa2b6953d7-800x569.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/bridgerton-netflix-3_enl-fa635392b4951708ed7bad8c0fa40dfa2b6953d7-1020x725.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/bridgerton-netflix-3_enl-fa635392b4951708ed7bad8c0fa40dfa2b6953d7-160x114.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/bridgerton-netflix-3_enl-fa635392b4951708ed7bad8c0fa40dfa2b6953d7-768x546.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/bridgerton-netflix-3_enl-fa635392b4951708ed7bad8c0fa40dfa2b6953d7-1536x1092.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/bridgerton-netflix-3_enl-fa635392b4951708ed7bad8c0fa40dfa2b6953d7-2048x1456.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/bridgerton-netflix-3_enl-fa635392b4951708ed7bad8c0fa40dfa2b6953d7-1920x1365.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mary Sharma (Shelley Conn) eloped with an Indian tradesman and left her native England. Now she’s back, a widow hoping to find support from her estranged family—and a husband for daughter Edwina (center). The show’s depiction of Indian fashion has earned praise although fans are quick to point out cultural inaccuracies. \u003ccite>(Liam Daniel/Netflix)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“When so much attention was paid to the costumes and jewelry, they should have fact-checked these basic details as well,” says Pratyasha Rath.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Pragya Agarwal, a behavioral and data scientist and Visiting Professor of Social Inequities and Injustice at Loughborough University in the U.K., the cultural mishmash reflects an attitude that “Indian-ness” is a homogenous, monolithic entity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It is easier for people to stereotype Indians without the awareness that India is a huge country with many different languages and cultural practices,” she says. “Nevertheless, for second or third generation brown/Indian people, like my own children, it is so empowering to hear Hindi words on screen, beauty not being limited to fair skin and blonde hair and to see brown women as empowered, without the need to be passive or meek or talking about their past traumas.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>And what about colonialism and interracial marriages?\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>But it does disturb her that the show seemed to gloss over the colonial presence—and how Indians were affected by imperialism in that period. “We are having conversations about how imperial history is being taught here in the U.K. now and it is easy to forget that [the series] is fantasy, not an accurate representation of the past,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>In reality, colonialism did affect India during the period in which\u003cem> Bridgerton\u003c/em> is set but hadn’t yet escalated into a bloody struggle; that came later, says \u003ca href=\"https://history.cornell.edu/durba-ghosh\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Durba Ghosh\u003c/a>, a professor in the history department at Cornell University.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This (period) was before the uprising of 1857, which is often considered India’s first war of Independence,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nonetheless, those earlier years saw the growing influence of the British East India Company, which is often likened to a ruthless conglomerate. It sowed seeds of discontent among native Indian rulers, which set the stage for discontent, oppression and colonialism.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As for the show’s presentation of Brits and Indians getting married, that turns out to be true to life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>≈People of color were very much a part of the Regency era, when \u003cem>Bridgerton\u003c/em> takes place. Many of them were the offspring of interracial marriages, says Ghosh, who is the author of \u003cem>Sex and The Family in Colonial India.\u003c/em> “While it’s impossible to say how many, there would have been South Asian aristocrats in these circuits as well. There are cases of [Indian] women who have traveled to Britain with their partners and who are a part of society and who have raised their children,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to Ghosh, the way those marriages frequently played out was a white British man marrying an Indian woman, so these mixed marriage families would have a father who would have been English and the mother of Indian descent, with a Europeanized last name. That is not the case with Sharma and her family, she notes.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Marriage then and now has its similarities\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>The show’s depiction of aristocratic families navigating the politics of love and duty in London’s competitive marriage market in the 1800s remind many Indian women of situations they’ve faced themselves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the first season of the show, when leading lady Daphne Bridgerton, the eldest of the Bridgerton daughters struggles to find a good suitor, she tells her brother in a moment of frustration, “You have no idea what it is to be a woman, what it might feel like to have one’s entire life reduced to a single moment. This is all I have been raised for… If I am unable to find a husband, I shall be worthless.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ghosh says the “marriage market” in Britain in this period (as depicted in \u003cem>Bridgerton\u003c/em>) and in India today are very simila—”especially in the stakes for women.” The pressure on women to wed even in the modern day is very real and often relentless. Marriage is seen by many sectors of society as a means to elevate a woman’s social status, a means of security, even a duty one must perform for the sake of family honor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Rumela Basu, the writer, says she comes from a progressive Bengali family, but there was a time three or four years ago, when she felt this pressure too. “Comments like ‘if you do want to get married, you may as well do it at the right age,’ were thrown my way, and every other person wanted to know when I was getting married,” she says. “No matter that I’d gotten a pretty impressive job and was doing so many other things.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The independence of Kate Sharma has also struck a chord. In the very first scene, we see her breaking the rules—riding a horse on her own, unfettered and free, when most women needed to be chaperoned.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think Kate’s independence is interesting,” says Ghosh. “because she visualizes a future that’s not resolved with marriage. It’s something we’re seeing girls pushing back against now in South Asian communities.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just as Eloise Bridgerton, the second daughter of the family and a feminist once asked, “Why must our only options be to squawk and settle or to never leave the nest? What if I want to fly?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Kamala Thiagarajan is a freelance journalist based in Madurai, Southern India. She reports on global health, science, and development, and her work has been published in the \u003c/em>New York Times, The British Medical Journal\u003cem>, BBC, \u003c/em>The Guardian\u003cem> and other outlets. You can find her on twitter @kamal_t\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">visit NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Two+Indian+half-sisters+are+the+talk+of+%27Bridgerton%27+%E2%80%94+and+of+modern-day+India%2C+too&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "kala-bagai-mother-india-south-asian-immigrants-san-francisco-history",
"title": "The Woman Who Became ‘Mother India’ to Generations of South Asian Immigrants",
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"content": "\u003cp>[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n September of 1915, Kala Bagai stepped off the steamship Korea onto Angel Island and entered a whole new world. Kala, who had journeyed to America from Peshawar, India (today part of Pakistan), was 21, already a mother of three, and did not speak a word of English. Her husband Vaishno was determined to seek a better life for his family, far away from the British colonial rule of their home country. Unbeknownst to the young couple at the time, their lives in America would go on to exemplify the struggles of many South Asian immigrants during the first half of the 20th century. But it was Kala alone who defined how best to survive them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kala was born in Amritsar, Punjab, and married Vaishno when she was 11 and he was 12. Child marriage had long been the norm in India—1892’s Age of Consent Bill only went so far as to raise the age a child could be married from 10 to 12. \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_Marriage_Restraint_Act\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">It would take until 1929\u003c/a> for India’s marital ages to be set at 14 for girls and 18 for boys. Despite the earliness of their pairing, the Bagais proved to be a good match—a fact demonstrated by Vaishno’s insistence on bringing his family to America with him. Most immigrants at the time left their wives and families back home. Bringing the whole family was a luxury afforded to Vaishno because of his status as a member of Peshawar’s educated upper classes. (He brought $25,000 in gold to America with him.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13904183']The Bagais’ decision to move to San Francisco was inspired by one of Vaishno’s childhood friends, Ram Chandra Bharadwaj. Bharadwaj had immigrated to the city and co-founded the Gadar Party—a political organization focused on removing British colonizers from India. The Gadar Party’s location in the Bay Area did not prevent its articles from reaching the Indian people. In July 1911, for example, party co-founder Har Dayal wrote in Calcutta’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.saada.org/item/20101216-153\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Modern Review\u003c/em>\u003c/a> about why America offered better living conditions than India under British rule.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Under the Union Jack, [Indians] have no status, as they are servants in the house. An Englishman never forgets that a Hindu is his ‘fellow-subject,’” Dayal wrote. “Very few [Indians] possess an adequate notion of the good that is being done to the cause of their country by the few Hindus who live scattered on this vast continent in small groups … America is perhaps the only country in the world from which a solitary wandering Hindu can send a message of hope and encouragement to his countrymen.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After receiving such communications, the Bagais’ hopes must have been high about their new home. And while Kala almost immediately found joy in San Francisco’s beaches, the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition, and the wonders of the post-earthquake rebuild, she later described her first impressions of California as “strange.” And it’s no wonder. On the Bagais’ arrival, the family was initially split up and held in detention over a weekend while Angel Island’s immigration station was closed. Vaishno was held with their eldest son Brij, and handled all communication with the immigration officials. Kala was held with their two youngest sons, Madan and Ram. In a 1982 interview with her grandson, Kala noted that the first word she understood during her two-day detention was American slang for food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When the eating time came,” she said, “they said ‘Chow, chow, chow,’ so I understood that means to eat … I didn’t like the food at all. But I saw that they were selling some fruits, so I bought some fruits. But I did not know how much money to give. So I took the money and put it in my hand … and let him take whatever he wants.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the Bagai family were released the following Monday, the sight of Kala was enthralling not just to San Franciscans, but to the whole country. As one of the first Indian women to move to California, her appearance was deemed worthy of coverage in the \u003cem>San Francisco Call-Post\u003c/em> and even East Coast publications. On Oct. 3, 1915, \u003cem>The Washington Post\u003c/em> reported:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Mrs. Hander Kala Bagai, coming all the way from northwestern India, has introduced San Francisco to the latest thing in jewelry—the nose diamond. “Have your surgeon,” says Mrs. Bagai, “pierce your nose horizontally above the nostrils and just under the bridge; then order from your jeweler a little, straight gold bar with a diamond set in one end; run it through the perforation and you’re right up to the minute in fashions.”\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>On Christmas Eve that year, Oklahoma’s \u003cem>Leader-Tribune\u003c/em> newspaper also wrote about Kala’s nose stud, in a report that was smattered with a heavy dose of racism:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Nose gems as desirable ornaments have just been introduced into this country. It is the latest effort of man—or woman—to achieve good looks. The fad came from northwestern India. That is the country, you know, where people starve themselves to make it rain or change their luck. Mrs. Mander Kala Bagai brought it from that country to San Francisco, and they do say that some San Franciscans are wearing the nose diamond this very minute.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>This kind of prejudice would be a constant source of disruption and upset for the Bagais during their earliest years in California. After living in a single furnished room and then a rented apartment, Vaishno’s successful general store on Fillmore Street let the family to buy a home in Berkeley—a house they would never actually live in. On move-in day, arriving with all of their belongings in tow, the Bagais found themselves barred from their own home. Racist neighbors had locked them out. In 1982, Kala explained why they left and never returned. “I told Mr. Bagai, ‘I don’t want to live in this neighborhood. I don’t want to live in this house because they might hurt my children.’” Instead, the family settled back in San Francisco, in an apartment above their shop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13906420\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13906420\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/11/Screen-Shot-2021-11-22-at-10.53.06-PM-800x574.png\" alt=\"An Indian man wearing smart slacks, vest, white shirt and bow tie stands before the counter in a shop.\" width=\"800\" height=\"574\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/11/Screen-Shot-2021-11-22-at-10.53.06-PM-800x574.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/11/Screen-Shot-2021-11-22-at-10.53.06-PM-1020x731.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/11/Screen-Shot-2021-11-22-at-10.53.06-PM-160x115.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/11/Screen-Shot-2021-11-22-at-10.53.06-PM-768x551.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/11/Screen-Shot-2021-11-22-at-10.53.06-PM.png 1194w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Vaishno Bagai standing at the counter of his general store in 1923. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of the South Asian American Digital Archive)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>[dropcap]K[/dropcap]ala always made sure to leave her door open to other immigrants moving to Northern California. Personally facing down hostilities like the confrontation in Berkeley only compounded her dedication to her community. In 2020, one of her grandchildren, Rani Bagai, wrote about Kala for \u003ca href=\"https://www.berkeleyside.org/2020/03/12/opinion-berkeley-might-name-a-street-after-kala-bagai-this-is-her-story\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Berkeleyside\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. She noted that her grandmother started her “tradition of welcoming other new Indian immigrants and visitors with a home-cooked vegetarian meal and instant friendship,” because of her own pangs of “feeling lonely in a strange land.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once the Bagais were a little more comfortable and Vaishno had established an import-export business, the family donated money to the Gadar Party and were regulars at the organization’s headquarters, which also housed its official newspaper, the \u003cem>Hindustan Gadar\u003c/em>. In 1917, the headquarters moved to 5 Wood St. in San Francisco, where the Gadar Memorial building still stands today. Those offices were, \u003ca href=\"https://www.cgisf.gov.in/page/gadar-memorial-hall/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">according to the Consulate General of India\u003c/a>, “an environment for thinkers, activists and volunteers who came to live, work, organize and help run a printing press that sent their messages around the world.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13897608']In March 1921, Vaishno Bagai gave up his Indian citizenship to become an American citizen. At the time, wives of immigrants, like Kala, automatically became naturalized when their husbands did without filing an application of their own. Sadly, the Bagais’ American dream was short-lived. In February 1923, the Supreme Court reached a decision in the \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Bhagat_Singh_Thind\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">United States vs. Bhagat Singh Thind case\u003c/a> that no person of Indian origin was eligible to become an American citizen. This not only affected new immigrants, but retroactively revoked citizenship for the Bagais and other families just like them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The court’s decision plunged the Bagais into financial difficulties. They lost their right to own property, they lost their general store, and they lost the ability to return to India. Within five years, Vaishno could see no way out. Kala saved him from a suicide attempt on Feb. 1, 1928. The \u003cem>Petaluma Argus-Courier\u003c/em> reported: “He had gone to Land’s End with the intention of jumping from one of the high cliffs to the jagged rocks below. He had been restrained, he said, by his wife.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just six weeks later, Vaishno’s lifeless body was found in a gas-filled San Jose apartment, alongside a letter detailing why he felt he had no choice but to take his own life. The \u003cem>San Francisco Examiner\u003c/em> later published the suicide note that bid farewell to his “nice and lovely wife” and “extra good children.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I came to America thinking, dreaming and hoping to make this land my home,” Vaishno wrote. “In the last 12 or 13 years we all made ourselves as much Americanized as possible. But they now come to me and say I am no longer an American citizen … Now what am I? What have I made of myself and my children? We cannot exercise our rights, we cannot leave this country … Is life worth living in a gilded cage? Obstacles this way, blockades that way, and the bridges burnt behind.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Vaishno’s death caused an uproar. On April 27, 1928, a friend named J.S. Hundal wrote a letter to the editor of Oregon’s \u003cem>Corvallis Gazette-Times\u003c/em>. Hundal described Vaishno’s suicide as an act of “protest.” He declared: “By what law of humanity and nature can you justify such a policy of accepting a man as citizen today, and make him an outlaw tomorrow … Think of the tragedy, the deception, of embittered life and blighted hopes.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1982, looking back, Kala recalled being devastated by her husband’s death, as well as “lonesome” and “lost” without him. Now, she was without a country or her partner. But she wasn’t ready to give up. Using money from life insurance policies taken out by Vaishno, Kala invested wisely and figured out how to start again on her own.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='news_11840927'][dropcap]D[/dropcap]etermined to succeed, Kala honed her English skills, attended night school, stayed in touch with the members of the Gadar Party, and sent each and every one of her boys off to college. (Madan graduated from both Stanford and M.I.T. The engineer was eulogized in a 1941 issue of \u003cem>Stanford Illustrated Review\u003c/em> after his tragic death, aged 33, of pneumonia while seeking work in India.) But what Kala did best of all was make new South Asian immigrants feel welcome in a new country. She acted as the guide to living in America that she’d never had, and she brought countless people together.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In her \u003cem>Berkeleyside\u003c/em> article, Rani Bagai wrote: “As a little girl, I recall meeting South Asians from every walk of life—filmmakers, politicians, classical dancers, yoga teachers, authors, priests and lecturers—as well as from every origin—Gujaratis, Bengalis, Punjabis, Tamils, Sikhs, Muslims, Buddhists and Parsis. All were her friends, and frequently, at her dining room table.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once she had raised her children, Kala married another member of the Gadar Party, Mahesh Chandra. In 1946, she and her surviving children were finally granted American citizenship after Harry Truman signed the \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luce%E2%80%93Celler_Act_of_1946\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Luce-Celler Act\u003c/a> into law. A year later, India gained its independence from the U.K. and together with Mahesh, Kala moved to Los Angeles. It was there, as more and more Indian and Pakistani immigrants made their way to the U.S., that Kala’s tireless community-building earned her the nickname she’s remembered by today: “Mother India.’\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rani noted in \u003cem>Berkeleyside\u003c/em>:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>She had many close American friends and never went on a social visit without a gift box of See’s candy. Working with both American and South Asian immigrant women like herself, she went on in the 1950s and 1960s to become an active community builder in Southern California, hosting Indian American cultural events, receptions, and benefits at community halls, theaters, and homes. She built bridges wherever she could between her adopted American culture and the great diversity of Indian culture.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>By the age of 90, Kala Bagai Chandra’s list of achievements was both impressive and joyful. She helped fight for the freedom of her homeland with the Gadar Party. She was an example of resilience to her children and a wider community of immigrants. And she helped forge a path, and act as an indefatigable example, for those who followed in her footsteps. Most impressive of all, she almost single-handedly built one of the first Indian American communities in the U.S., providing all those newcomers with safe spaces, cultural connections and a place to keep traditions alive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After she died in 1983, an obituary printed in \u003cem>India West\u003c/em> described exactly what had made Kala so special.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Armed with her personal philosophy expressed in the saying ‘If you are good … the whole world will love you,’ Mrs. Chandra radiated warmth, kindness, and good will to everyone. Her home became a ‘little India’ to the community, and she became the symbol of Mother India.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>To learn about other Rebel Girls from Bay Area History, visit the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/rebelgirls\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Rebel Girls homepage\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>A book celebrating women from the Rebel Girls series, \u003ca href=\"https://citylights.com/politics-current-events-history/unsung-heroines35-women-who-changed/\">‘Unsung Heroines: 35 Women Who Changed the Bay Area,’\u003c/a> is available now from City Lights.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">I\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>n September of 1915, Kala Bagai stepped off the steamship Korea onto Angel Island and entered a whole new world. Kala, who had journeyed to America from Peshawar, India (today part of Pakistan), was 21, already a mother of three, and did not speak a word of English. Her husband Vaishno was determined to seek a better life for his family, far away from the British colonial rule of their home country. Unbeknownst to the young couple at the time, their lives in America would go on to exemplify the struggles of many South Asian immigrants during the first half of the 20th century. But it was Kala alone who defined how best to survive them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kala was born in Amritsar, Punjab, and married Vaishno when she was 11 and he was 12. Child marriage had long been the norm in India—1892’s Age of Consent Bill only went so far as to raise the age a child could be married from 10 to 12. \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_Marriage_Restraint_Act\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">It would take until 1929\u003c/a> for India’s marital ages to be set at 14 for girls and 18 for boys. Despite the earliness of their pairing, the Bagais proved to be a good match—a fact demonstrated by Vaishno’s insistence on bringing his family to America with him. Most immigrants at the time left their wives and families back home. Bringing the whole family was a luxury afforded to Vaishno because of his status as a member of Peshawar’s educated upper classes. (He brought $25,000 in gold to America with him.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The Bagais’ decision to move to San Francisco was inspired by one of Vaishno’s childhood friends, Ram Chandra Bharadwaj. Bharadwaj had immigrated to the city and co-founded the Gadar Party—a political organization focused on removing British colonizers from India. The Gadar Party’s location in the Bay Area did not prevent its articles from reaching the Indian people. In July 1911, for example, party co-founder Har Dayal wrote in Calcutta’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.saada.org/item/20101216-153\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Modern Review\u003c/em>\u003c/a> about why America offered better living conditions than India under British rule.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Under the Union Jack, [Indians] have no status, as they are servants in the house. An Englishman never forgets that a Hindu is his ‘fellow-subject,’” Dayal wrote. “Very few [Indians] possess an adequate notion of the good that is being done to the cause of their country by the few Hindus who live scattered on this vast continent in small groups … America is perhaps the only country in the world from which a solitary wandering Hindu can send a message of hope and encouragement to his countrymen.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After receiving such communications, the Bagais’ hopes must have been high about their new home. And while Kala almost immediately found joy in San Francisco’s beaches, the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition, and the wonders of the post-earthquake rebuild, she later described her first impressions of California as “strange.” And it’s no wonder. On the Bagais’ arrival, the family was initially split up and held in detention over a weekend while Angel Island’s immigration station was closed. Vaishno was held with their eldest son Brij, and handled all communication with the immigration officials. Kala was held with their two youngest sons, Madan and Ram. In a 1982 interview with her grandson, Kala noted that the first word she understood during her two-day detention was American slang for food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When the eating time came,” she said, “they said ‘Chow, chow, chow,’ so I understood that means to eat … I didn’t like the food at all. But I saw that they were selling some fruits, so I bought some fruits. But I did not know how much money to give. So I took the money and put it in my hand … and let him take whatever he wants.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the Bagai family were released the following Monday, the sight of Kala was enthralling not just to San Franciscans, but to the whole country. As one of the first Indian women to move to California, her appearance was deemed worthy of coverage in the \u003cem>San Francisco Call-Post\u003c/em> and even East Coast publications. On Oct. 3, 1915, \u003cem>The Washington Post\u003c/em> reported:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Mrs. Hander Kala Bagai, coming all the way from northwestern India, has introduced San Francisco to the latest thing in jewelry—the nose diamond. “Have your surgeon,” says Mrs. Bagai, “pierce your nose horizontally above the nostrils and just under the bridge; then order from your jeweler a little, straight gold bar with a diamond set in one end; run it through the perforation and you’re right up to the minute in fashions.”\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>On Christmas Eve that year, Oklahoma’s \u003cem>Leader-Tribune\u003c/em> newspaper also wrote about Kala’s nose stud, in a report that was smattered with a heavy dose of racism:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Nose gems as desirable ornaments have just been introduced into this country. It is the latest effort of man—or woman—to achieve good looks. The fad came from northwestern India. That is the country, you know, where people starve themselves to make it rain or change their luck. Mrs. Mander Kala Bagai brought it from that country to San Francisco, and they do say that some San Franciscans are wearing the nose diamond this very minute.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>This kind of prejudice would be a constant source of disruption and upset for the Bagais during their earliest years in California. After living in a single furnished room and then a rented apartment, Vaishno’s successful general store on Fillmore Street let the family to buy a home in Berkeley—a house they would never actually live in. On move-in day, arriving with all of their belongings in tow, the Bagais found themselves barred from their own home. Racist neighbors had locked them out. In 1982, Kala explained why they left and never returned. “I told Mr. Bagai, ‘I don’t want to live in this neighborhood. I don’t want to live in this house because they might hurt my children.’” Instead, the family settled back in San Francisco, in an apartment above their shop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13906420\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13906420\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/11/Screen-Shot-2021-11-22-at-10.53.06-PM-800x574.png\" alt=\"An Indian man wearing smart slacks, vest, white shirt and bow tie stands before the counter in a shop.\" width=\"800\" height=\"574\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/11/Screen-Shot-2021-11-22-at-10.53.06-PM-800x574.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/11/Screen-Shot-2021-11-22-at-10.53.06-PM-1020x731.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/11/Screen-Shot-2021-11-22-at-10.53.06-PM-160x115.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/11/Screen-Shot-2021-11-22-at-10.53.06-PM-768x551.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/11/Screen-Shot-2021-11-22-at-10.53.06-PM.png 1194w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Vaishno Bagai standing at the counter of his general store in 1923. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of the South Asian American Digital Archive)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">K\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>ala always made sure to leave her door open to other immigrants moving to Northern California. Personally facing down hostilities like the confrontation in Berkeley only compounded her dedication to her community. In 2020, one of her grandchildren, Rani Bagai, wrote about Kala for \u003ca href=\"https://www.berkeleyside.org/2020/03/12/opinion-berkeley-might-name-a-street-after-kala-bagai-this-is-her-story\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Berkeleyside\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. She noted that her grandmother started her “tradition of welcoming other new Indian immigrants and visitors with a home-cooked vegetarian meal and instant friendship,” because of her own pangs of “feeling lonely in a strange land.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once the Bagais were a little more comfortable and Vaishno had established an import-export business, the family donated money to the Gadar Party and were regulars at the organization’s headquarters, which also housed its official newspaper, the \u003cem>Hindustan Gadar\u003c/em>. In 1917, the headquarters moved to 5 Wood St. in San Francisco, where the Gadar Memorial building still stands today. Those offices were, \u003ca href=\"https://www.cgisf.gov.in/page/gadar-memorial-hall/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">according to the Consulate General of India\u003c/a>, “an environment for thinkers, activists and volunteers who came to live, work, organize and help run a printing press that sent their messages around the world.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>In March 1921, Vaishno Bagai gave up his Indian citizenship to become an American citizen. At the time, wives of immigrants, like Kala, automatically became naturalized when their husbands did without filing an application of their own. Sadly, the Bagais’ American dream was short-lived. In February 1923, the Supreme Court reached a decision in the \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Bhagat_Singh_Thind\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">United States vs. Bhagat Singh Thind case\u003c/a> that no person of Indian origin was eligible to become an American citizen. This not only affected new immigrants, but retroactively revoked citizenship for the Bagais and other families just like them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The court’s decision plunged the Bagais into financial difficulties. They lost their right to own property, they lost their general store, and they lost the ability to return to India. Within five years, Vaishno could see no way out. Kala saved him from a suicide attempt on Feb. 1, 1928. The \u003cem>Petaluma Argus-Courier\u003c/em> reported: “He had gone to Land’s End with the intention of jumping from one of the high cliffs to the jagged rocks below. He had been restrained, he said, by his wife.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just six weeks later, Vaishno’s lifeless body was found in a gas-filled San Jose apartment, alongside a letter detailing why he felt he had no choice but to take his own life. The \u003cem>San Francisco Examiner\u003c/em> later published the suicide note that bid farewell to his “nice and lovely wife” and “extra good children.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I came to America thinking, dreaming and hoping to make this land my home,” Vaishno wrote. “In the last 12 or 13 years we all made ourselves as much Americanized as possible. But they now come to me and say I am no longer an American citizen … Now what am I? What have I made of myself and my children? We cannot exercise our rights, we cannot leave this country … Is life worth living in a gilded cage? Obstacles this way, blockades that way, and the bridges burnt behind.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Vaishno’s death caused an uproar. On April 27, 1928, a friend named J.S. Hundal wrote a letter to the editor of Oregon’s \u003cem>Corvallis Gazette-Times\u003c/em>. Hundal described Vaishno’s suicide as an act of “protest.” He declared: “By what law of humanity and nature can you justify such a policy of accepting a man as citizen today, and make him an outlaw tomorrow … Think of the tragedy, the deception, of embittered life and blighted hopes.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1982, looking back, Kala recalled being devastated by her husband’s death, as well as “lonesome” and “lost” without him. Now, she was without a country or her partner. But she wasn’t ready to give up. Using money from life insurance policies taken out by Vaishno, Kala invested wisely and figured out how to start again on her own.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">D\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>etermined to succeed, Kala honed her English skills, attended night school, stayed in touch with the members of the Gadar Party, and sent each and every one of her boys off to college. (Madan graduated from both Stanford and M.I.T. The engineer was eulogized in a 1941 issue of \u003cem>Stanford Illustrated Review\u003c/em> after his tragic death, aged 33, of pneumonia while seeking work in India.) But what Kala did best of all was make new South Asian immigrants feel welcome in a new country. She acted as the guide to living in America that she’d never had, and she brought countless people together.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In her \u003cem>Berkeleyside\u003c/em> article, Rani Bagai wrote: “As a little girl, I recall meeting South Asians from every walk of life—filmmakers, politicians, classical dancers, yoga teachers, authors, priests and lecturers—as well as from every origin—Gujaratis, Bengalis, Punjabis, Tamils, Sikhs, Muslims, Buddhists and Parsis. All were her friends, and frequently, at her dining room table.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once she had raised her children, Kala married another member of the Gadar Party, Mahesh Chandra. In 1946, she and her surviving children were finally granted American citizenship after Harry Truman signed the \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luce%E2%80%93Celler_Act_of_1946\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Luce-Celler Act\u003c/a> into law. A year later, India gained its independence from the U.K. and together with Mahesh, Kala moved to Los Angeles. It was there, as more and more Indian and Pakistani immigrants made their way to the U.S., that Kala’s tireless community-building earned her the nickname she’s remembered by today: “Mother India.’\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rani noted in \u003cem>Berkeleyside\u003c/em>:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>She had many close American friends and never went on a social visit without a gift box of See’s candy. Working with both American and South Asian immigrant women like herself, she went on in the 1950s and 1960s to become an active community builder in Southern California, hosting Indian American cultural events, receptions, and benefits at community halls, theaters, and homes. She built bridges wherever she could between her adopted American culture and the great diversity of Indian culture.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>By the age of 90, Kala Bagai Chandra’s list of achievements was both impressive and joyful. She helped fight for the freedom of her homeland with the Gadar Party. She was an example of resilience to her children and a wider community of immigrants. And she helped forge a path, and act as an indefatigable example, for those who followed in her footsteps. Most impressive of all, she almost single-handedly built one of the first Indian American communities in the U.S., providing all those newcomers with safe spaces, cultural connections and a place to keep traditions alive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After she died in 1983, an obituary printed in \u003cem>India West\u003c/em> described exactly what had made Kala so special.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Armed with her personal philosophy expressed in the saying ‘If you are good … the whole world will love you,’ Mrs. Chandra radiated warmth, kindness, and good will to everyone. Her home became a ‘little India’ to the community, and she became the symbol of Mother India.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>To learn about other Rebel Girls from Bay Area History, visit the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/rebelgirls\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Rebel Girls homepage\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>A book celebrating women from the Rebel Girls series, \u003ca href=\"https://citylights.com/politics-current-events-history/unsung-heroines35-women-who-changed/\">‘Unsung Heroines: 35 Women Who Changed the Bay Area,’\u003c/a> is available now from City Lights.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Skateboarding Gives Freedom to Rural Indian Teen in Netflix Film—and in Real Life",
"headTitle": "Skateboarding Gives Freedom to Rural Indian Teen in Netflix Film—and in Real Life | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>When Asha Gond first started skateboarding, neighbors in her village of Janwar in central India were aghast. They urged the teenager’s parents to keep her busy with housework or get her married. When she walked through the village, skateboard in hand, they would sneer at her and make disparaging comments. Skateboarding is for boys, Gond, now 21, recalls the villagers saying.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Skateboarding isn’t common in Indian cities, let alone remote rural areas like where Gond lives. The skatepark in her village was built by a German social activist. It ignited in her a life-altering passion for skateboarding—a passion Gond has pursued despite the rigid patriarchal norms in her village and one that has taken her to championships overseas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s an incredible story of how one skatepark can change a girl’s—and really an entire community’s—life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It also happens to be the plot of a new Netflix movie called \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5Fn99wmFCQ\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Skater Girl\u003c/em>\u003c/a> releasing June 11. The movie chronicles the journey of a rural Indian teenage girl who discovers a life-changing passion for skateboarding after a Westerner builds a skatepark in her village but faces obstacles when she tries to chase her dream of competing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The filmmakers say it’s a fictionalized account of stories of skateboarding girls in India. But Gond says it’s her story and that the filmmakers never got her permission—even though they met her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The things that they’ve shown in the trailer have actually happened to me,” she told NPR in a phone interview.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5Fn99wmFCQ\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Why A Rural Village Got A Skatepark\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Janwar is a tiny village of about 1,200 located at the edge of a tiger reserve in the state of Madhya Pradesh. Tribal communities called Adivasis make up about \u003ca href=\"https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/censusindia.gov.in/2011census/dchb/2309_PART_B_DCHB_PANNA.pdf__;!!Iwwt!H9Zt-H4FSAPu868Vthr_4VOFMUM6NAcTjzf_khY0Ocwc-GBvGkc-U-4EhXZs%24\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">half\u003c/a> of its population. India’s ancient caste system relegates Adivasis to the bottom of the social hierarchy and they typically live segregated from the rest of the community. When Gond was growing up, Adivasi children like her weren’t allowed to mix or play with their higher caste peers. Girls tended to marry early and the literacy rate was extremely low—especially among women.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then came the skatepark, built by \u003ca href=\"https://www.ulrikereinhard.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Ulrike Reinhard\u003c/a>, a German business consultant and activist. Reinhard has been mostly living in India since 2012 and much of her work focuses on empowering youth in rural areas. She had been toying with the idea of building a school in rural India. But inspired by \u003ca href=\"https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.skateistan.org/__;!!Iwwt!H9Zt-H4FSAPu868Vthr_4VOFMUM6NAcTjzf_khY0Ocwc-GBvGkc-U0HWm-GM%24\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Skateistan\u003c/a>, an international nonprofit organization that promotes education and gender equality through skateboarding, Reinhard decided to build a skatepark in Janwar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was an experiment,” Reinhard says. “I thought, can a skatepark trigger change in such a stiff and old-traditioned community?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To raise money for the project, Reinhard reached out to artists across the world to convert skateboards into artboards which she then auctioned.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='news_11733418']When she had the funding, she encouraged skating enthusiasts from around the world to come to Janwar to help build the park. About a dozen came and constructed the skatepark with assistance from laborers in the village. The skatepark opened in 2015.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The end result was something most of the people in the village had never seen—or even heard of. Gond said her initial reaction was that it “looked very weird.” Some people thought it was a swimming pool, Reinhard says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The kids came around quickly and thought the skatepark was cool, says Reinhard. But some adults were skeptical of Reinhard’s intentions and started spreading rumors that she was involved in human trafficking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gond’s mother was scared for her. “People would say [Reinhard] is going to sell your daughter and you won’t be able to see her again ever,” says Kamala Gond, who has since come around to support the project.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The German nonprofit \u003ca href=\"https://www.skate-aid.org/en/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Skate-aid\u003c/a> provided the first batch of 20 skateboards. Reinhard doesn’t know how to skateboard so she showed the kids YouTube videos on a tablet to get them started.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the beginning, it was difficult to maintain balance, Gond says.”The skateboard would go ahead when I stepped on it. I thought I would fall over and smash my face.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But once she got the hang of it, it was all Gond could think of. “I would lie in bed at night and think about how to maneuver the skateboard to do a particular trick,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Girls Get Priority. And Leave Your Caste At the Door\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The skatepark is free and open to all the children in the village, irrespective of caste. Encouraging Adivasi children and Yadav kids (a higher caste) to skate together is blurring caste divisions in the community, Gond says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While members of higher castes don’t get special treatment, girls do. One of the skatepark’s rules is “Girls first”—meaning if there are no skateboards free, a girl can ask a skateboarding boy to give his skateboard to her and he has to agree.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='pop_85006']“The girls’ destiny is sealed the day they are born,” says Reinhard, adding that they are typically put to work at a young age and married off early. “So this was a way to tackle the gender [inequality] issue without naming it explicitly.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not everyone was happy to see girls skateboarding, much less Adivasi girls like Gond. Villagers would gossip that Gond would be better off learning to cook instead of skateboarding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They used to say to my parents, ‘What is she going to do after she goes to her husband’s home?'” says Gond.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some mornings, Gond recalls, she arrived at the skatepark to threatening messages written on the concrete. “They said they would burn me if I did skateboarding.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13898796\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13898796\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/vicky_roy_2016_mptourism_tour_custom-719f5eb5f4daeb7d4746d960d7e2ac0038389a6d-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"Asha Gond (center right) rides her skateboard. When she first began skating, neighbors would shout that skateboarding is for boys and urge her parents to marry her off.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/vicky_roy_2016_mptourism_tour_custom-719f5eb5f4daeb7d4746d960d7e2ac0038389a6d-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/vicky_roy_2016_mptourism_tour_custom-719f5eb5f4daeb7d4746d960d7e2ac0038389a6d-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/vicky_roy_2016_mptourism_tour_custom-719f5eb5f4daeb7d4746d960d7e2ac0038389a6d-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/vicky_roy_2016_mptourism_tour_custom-719f5eb5f4daeb7d4746d960d7e2ac0038389a6d-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/vicky_roy_2016_mptourism_tour_custom-719f5eb5f4daeb7d4746d960d7e2ac0038389a6d.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Asha Gond (center right) rides her skateboard. When she first began skating, neighbors would shout that skateboarding is for boys and urge her parents to marry her off. \u003ccite>(Vicky Roy)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But Gond continued to skate and quickly became a rising star in Janwar. Over the years, she’s traveled across India to participate in skateboarding contests. In 2018, she represented India in the World Skateboarding Championship in Nanjing, China. She came in nearly last, but she was the only Indian in the women’s games, competing against many who came from countries with long traditions of skateboarding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gond is also co-founder and director of the nonprofit organization Barefoot Skateboarders, which focuses on the education and development of the children in Janwar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her mother says she’s proud of her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I feel wonderful, I had never imagined that my daughter could do this or achieve what she has achieved,” says Kamala Gond, who says she regrets that she never had the opportunity to go to school and was married when she was a young teen. “What I couldn’t do, my daughter is doing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>‘No School. No Skateboarding’\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The second rule at the skatepark is, “No school. No skateboarding.” When the kids skip school or are kept home by their parents, they aren’t allowed to skateboard. And to make school a better experience, Reinhard partnered with \u003ca href=\"https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/prakriti.edu.in/__;!!Iwwt!H9Zt-H4FSAPu868Vthr_4VOFMUM6NAcTjzf_khY0Ocwc-GBvGkc-U-jK3Wug%24\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Prakriti School\u003c/a>, an organization that focuses on innovative learning, to organize workshops for teachers in Janwar to improve their teaching skills. As a result, school attendance has gone up considerably, Reinhard says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13891248']“We really have created an eagerness to learn,” Reinhard says, adding that they’ve built a second skatepark and a community center that Gond manages where kids can take part in a variety of activities, including painting and karate. “We have a computer lab and the kids are sitting in front of computer screens learning Hindi poems or math.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Reinhard says skateboarding is the oil that keeps the whole machine running. It’s a model that’s been successful in many countries. The nonprofit Skateistan now runs programs in Afghanistan, Cambodia and South Africa. Skate After School, an \u003ca href=\"https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.skateafterschool.org/__;!!Iwwt!H9Zt-H4FSAPu868Vthr_4VOFMUM6NAcTjzf_khY0Ocwc-GBvGkc-U8BlZH3T%24\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Arizona-based nonprofit\u003c/a>, teaches skateboarding to nurture children from underserved communities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>How does it work? Sports as a means of social change is powerful, says \u003ca href=\"https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/malala.org/champions/jyotsna-jha__;!!Iwwt!H9Zt-H4FSAPu868Vthr_4VOFMUM6NAcTjzf_khY0Ocwc-GBvGkc-UzBEPwlp%24\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Jyotsna Jha\u003c/a>, director of the Indian think tank Center for Budget and Policy Studies. “Especially something like skating, which is novel and thrilling, can really create a sense of achievement among children that they had perhaps never experienced otherwise,” she said via email.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sports has always been a gendered act, she says. “But when a sport is introduced for girls that is not traditionally associated with girls, it helps in breaking many stereotypes and also generating new ways of thinking,” Jha says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13898797\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13898797\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/aslam_saiyad_03_20191_custom-debc61ed55d4bcd408e274b6ef182e9c0ee6aab8-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"Asha Gond rides over an obstacle known as a volcano at the Janwar Castle skatepark in her village.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/aslam_saiyad_03_20191_custom-debc61ed55d4bcd408e274b6ef182e9c0ee6aab8-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/aslam_saiyad_03_20191_custom-debc61ed55d4bcd408e274b6ef182e9c0ee6aab8-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/aslam_saiyad_03_20191_custom-debc61ed55d4bcd408e274b6ef182e9c0ee6aab8-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/aslam_saiyad_03_20191_custom-debc61ed55d4bcd408e274b6ef182e9c0ee6aab8-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/aslam_saiyad_03_20191_custom-debc61ed55d4bcd408e274b6ef182e9c0ee6aab8-1536x1023.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/aslam_saiyad_03_20191_custom-debc61ed55d4bcd408e274b6ef182e9c0ee6aab8-2048x1364.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/aslam_saiyad_03_20191_custom-debc61ed55d4bcd408e274b6ef182e9c0ee6aab8-1920x1279.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Asha Gond rides over an obstacle known as a volcano at the Janwar Castle skatepark in her village. \u003ccite>(Aslam Saiyad/Barefoot Skateboarders Organization)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>An Inspiring Movie And A Controversy\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The impact that skateboarding is creating in different communities is what director Manjari Makijany says inspired her movie \u003cem>Skater Girl\u003c/em>. But after watching the trailer, some people on social media familiar with Reinhard’s work and Gond’s story assumed the movie was about Gond and the skatepark in Janwar. But Gond says the filmmakers never got permission to tell her story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Why don’t you ask me that you are going to tell my story?” Gond \u003ca href=\"https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.facebook.com/NetflixFamily/posts/1182671495505173?comment_id=163450362388313__;!!Iwwt!H9Zt-H4FSAPu868Vthr_4VOFMUM6NAcTjzf_khY0Ocwc-GBvGkc-U2jrrCCu%24\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">wrote\u003c/a> in a comment to a Netflix post sharing the trailer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an email to NPR, Makijany denied that the movie was about Gond.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“\u003cem>Skater Girl\u003c/em> is not a biopic based on anyone’s life story nor is it a documentary,” Makijany says. “It is not [Gond or Reinhard’s] story.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the movie, as in Janwar, the rule is “No school, No skateboarding” and it’s a Westerner—like Reinhard—who introduces the village to skateboarding and builds a skatepark.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gond says the filmmakers met with her in Janwar and spoke to her about how skateboarding had changed her life and transformed her village. The director says Gond was just one of many girls they met during the making of the movie. The movie was also not shot in Janwar but in a village in Rajasthan state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Reinhard had a contract to be a research consultant on the movie but says she quit early because of differences over the storytelling approach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It turned out to be this kitschy, cheesy kind of thing,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Reinhard also says from an ethical point of view, the filmmakers should have made a contract with Gond and the other children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13898211']Reinhard’s name and the Janwar skatepark appear in the end credits of the movie, along with the names of other skateboarders in India and around the world. The director says Gond and the other Janwar children were given a chance to be a part of the movie’s climax scene, but they declined.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We said if this is our story we want to be seen and tell our story. We don’t want to be only in the background of the last scene,” Gond says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite her misgivings, Reinhard says overall, the movie will benefit Janwar and raise awareness about their work and about skateboarding. A new \u003ca href=\"https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.desertdolphinskatepark.com/about__;!!Iwwt!H9Zt-H4FSAPu868Vthr_4VOFMUM6NAcTjzf_khY0Ocwc-GBvGkc-UysxWPbE%24\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">skatepark\u003c/a> was built in Khempur village where the movie was shot and is now being used by the community there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As for Gond, she says she is curious to see the full movie. All she has to do now is get a Netflix account, a luxury most people in her village do not have.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Skateboarding+Gives+Freedom+To+Rural+Indian+Teen+In+Netflix+Film+%E2%80%94+And+In+Real+Life&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>When Asha Gond first started skateboarding, neighbors in her village of Janwar in central India were aghast. They urged the teenager’s parents to keep her busy with housework or get her married. When she walked through the village, skateboard in hand, they would sneer at her and make disparaging comments. Skateboarding is for boys, Gond, now 21, recalls the villagers saying.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Skateboarding isn’t common in Indian cities, let alone remote rural areas like where Gond lives. The skatepark in her village was built by a German social activist. It ignited in her a life-altering passion for skateboarding—a passion Gond has pursued despite the rigid patriarchal norms in her village and one that has taken her to championships overseas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s an incredible story of how one skatepark can change a girl’s—and really an entire community’s—life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It also happens to be the plot of a new Netflix movie called \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5Fn99wmFCQ\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Skater Girl\u003c/em>\u003c/a> releasing June 11. The movie chronicles the journey of a rural Indian teenage girl who discovers a life-changing passion for skateboarding after a Westerner builds a skatepark in her village but faces obstacles when she tries to chase her dream of competing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The filmmakers say it’s a fictionalized account of stories of skateboarding girls in India. But Gond says it’s her story and that the filmmakers never got her permission—even though they met her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The things that they’ve shown in the trailer have actually happened to me,” she told NPR in a phone interview.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/k5Fn99wmFCQ'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/k5Fn99wmFCQ'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Why A Rural Village Got A Skatepark\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Janwar is a tiny village of about 1,200 located at the edge of a tiger reserve in the state of Madhya Pradesh. Tribal communities called Adivasis make up about \u003ca href=\"https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/censusindia.gov.in/2011census/dchb/2309_PART_B_DCHB_PANNA.pdf__;!!Iwwt!H9Zt-H4FSAPu868Vthr_4VOFMUM6NAcTjzf_khY0Ocwc-GBvGkc-U-4EhXZs%24\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">half\u003c/a> of its population. India’s ancient caste system relegates Adivasis to the bottom of the social hierarchy and they typically live segregated from the rest of the community. When Gond was growing up, Adivasi children like her weren’t allowed to mix or play with their higher caste peers. Girls tended to marry early and the literacy rate was extremely low—especially among women.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then came the skatepark, built by \u003ca href=\"https://www.ulrikereinhard.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Ulrike Reinhard\u003c/a>, a German business consultant and activist. Reinhard has been mostly living in India since 2012 and much of her work focuses on empowering youth in rural areas. She had been toying with the idea of building a school in rural India. But inspired by \u003ca href=\"https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.skateistan.org/__;!!Iwwt!H9Zt-H4FSAPu868Vthr_4VOFMUM6NAcTjzf_khY0Ocwc-GBvGkc-U0HWm-GM%24\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Skateistan\u003c/a>, an international nonprofit organization that promotes education and gender equality through skateboarding, Reinhard decided to build a skatepark in Janwar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was an experiment,” Reinhard says. “I thought, can a skatepark trigger change in such a stiff and old-traditioned community?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To raise money for the project, Reinhard reached out to artists across the world to convert skateboards into artboards which she then auctioned.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>When she had the funding, she encouraged skating enthusiasts from around the world to come to Janwar to help build the park. About a dozen came and constructed the skatepark with assistance from laborers in the village. The skatepark opened in 2015.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The end result was something most of the people in the village had never seen—or even heard of. Gond said her initial reaction was that it “looked very weird.” Some people thought it was a swimming pool, Reinhard says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The kids came around quickly and thought the skatepark was cool, says Reinhard. But some adults were skeptical of Reinhard’s intentions and started spreading rumors that she was involved in human trafficking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gond’s mother was scared for her. “People would say [Reinhard] is going to sell your daughter and you won’t be able to see her again ever,” says Kamala Gond, who has since come around to support the project.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The German nonprofit \u003ca href=\"https://www.skate-aid.org/en/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Skate-aid\u003c/a> provided the first batch of 20 skateboards. Reinhard doesn’t know how to skateboard so she showed the kids YouTube videos on a tablet to get them started.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the beginning, it was difficult to maintain balance, Gond says.”The skateboard would go ahead when I stepped on it. I thought I would fall over and smash my face.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But once she got the hang of it, it was all Gond could think of. “I would lie in bed at night and think about how to maneuver the skateboard to do a particular trick,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Girls Get Priority. And Leave Your Caste At the Door\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The skatepark is free and open to all the children in the village, irrespective of caste. Encouraging Adivasi children and Yadav kids (a higher caste) to skate together is blurring caste divisions in the community, Gond says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While members of higher castes don’t get special treatment, girls do. One of the skatepark’s rules is “Girls first”—meaning if there are no skateboards free, a girl can ask a skateboarding boy to give his skateboard to her and he has to agree.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“The girls’ destiny is sealed the day they are born,” says Reinhard, adding that they are typically put to work at a young age and married off early. “So this was a way to tackle the gender [inequality] issue without naming it explicitly.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not everyone was happy to see girls skateboarding, much less Adivasi girls like Gond. Villagers would gossip that Gond would be better off learning to cook instead of skateboarding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They used to say to my parents, ‘What is she going to do after she goes to her husband’s home?'” says Gond.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some mornings, Gond recalls, she arrived at the skatepark to threatening messages written on the concrete. “They said they would burn me if I did skateboarding.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13898796\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13898796\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/vicky_roy_2016_mptourism_tour_custom-719f5eb5f4daeb7d4746d960d7e2ac0038389a6d-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"Asha Gond (center right) rides her skateboard. When she first began skating, neighbors would shout that skateboarding is for boys and urge her parents to marry her off.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/vicky_roy_2016_mptourism_tour_custom-719f5eb5f4daeb7d4746d960d7e2ac0038389a6d-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/vicky_roy_2016_mptourism_tour_custom-719f5eb5f4daeb7d4746d960d7e2ac0038389a6d-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/vicky_roy_2016_mptourism_tour_custom-719f5eb5f4daeb7d4746d960d7e2ac0038389a6d-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/vicky_roy_2016_mptourism_tour_custom-719f5eb5f4daeb7d4746d960d7e2ac0038389a6d-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/vicky_roy_2016_mptourism_tour_custom-719f5eb5f4daeb7d4746d960d7e2ac0038389a6d.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Asha Gond (center right) rides her skateboard. When she first began skating, neighbors would shout that skateboarding is for boys and urge her parents to marry her off. \u003ccite>(Vicky Roy)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But Gond continued to skate and quickly became a rising star in Janwar. Over the years, she’s traveled across India to participate in skateboarding contests. In 2018, she represented India in the World Skateboarding Championship in Nanjing, China. She came in nearly last, but she was the only Indian in the women’s games, competing against many who came from countries with long traditions of skateboarding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gond is also co-founder and director of the nonprofit organization Barefoot Skateboarders, which focuses on the education and development of the children in Janwar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her mother says she’s proud of her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I feel wonderful, I had never imagined that my daughter could do this or achieve what she has achieved,” says Kamala Gond, who says she regrets that she never had the opportunity to go to school and was married when she was a young teen. “What I couldn’t do, my daughter is doing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>‘No School. No Skateboarding’\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The second rule at the skatepark is, “No school. No skateboarding.” When the kids skip school or are kept home by their parents, they aren’t allowed to skateboard. And to make school a better experience, Reinhard partnered with \u003ca href=\"https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/prakriti.edu.in/__;!!Iwwt!H9Zt-H4FSAPu868Vthr_4VOFMUM6NAcTjzf_khY0Ocwc-GBvGkc-U-jK3Wug%24\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Prakriti School\u003c/a>, an organization that focuses on innovative learning, to organize workshops for teachers in Janwar to improve their teaching skills. As a result, school attendance has gone up considerably, Reinhard says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“We really have created an eagerness to learn,” Reinhard says, adding that they’ve built a second skatepark and a community center that Gond manages where kids can take part in a variety of activities, including painting and karate. “We have a computer lab and the kids are sitting in front of computer screens learning Hindi poems or math.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Reinhard says skateboarding is the oil that keeps the whole machine running. It’s a model that’s been successful in many countries. The nonprofit Skateistan now runs programs in Afghanistan, Cambodia and South Africa. Skate After School, an \u003ca href=\"https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.skateafterschool.org/__;!!Iwwt!H9Zt-H4FSAPu868Vthr_4VOFMUM6NAcTjzf_khY0Ocwc-GBvGkc-U8BlZH3T%24\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Arizona-based nonprofit\u003c/a>, teaches skateboarding to nurture children from underserved communities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>How does it work? Sports as a means of social change is powerful, says \u003ca href=\"https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/malala.org/champions/jyotsna-jha__;!!Iwwt!H9Zt-H4FSAPu868Vthr_4VOFMUM6NAcTjzf_khY0Ocwc-GBvGkc-UzBEPwlp%24\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Jyotsna Jha\u003c/a>, director of the Indian think tank Center for Budget and Policy Studies. “Especially something like skating, which is novel and thrilling, can really create a sense of achievement among children that they had perhaps never experienced otherwise,” she said via email.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sports has always been a gendered act, she says. “But when a sport is introduced for girls that is not traditionally associated with girls, it helps in breaking many stereotypes and also generating new ways of thinking,” Jha says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13898797\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13898797\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/aslam_saiyad_03_20191_custom-debc61ed55d4bcd408e274b6ef182e9c0ee6aab8-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"Asha Gond rides over an obstacle known as a volcano at the Janwar Castle skatepark in her village.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/aslam_saiyad_03_20191_custom-debc61ed55d4bcd408e274b6ef182e9c0ee6aab8-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/aslam_saiyad_03_20191_custom-debc61ed55d4bcd408e274b6ef182e9c0ee6aab8-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/aslam_saiyad_03_20191_custom-debc61ed55d4bcd408e274b6ef182e9c0ee6aab8-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/aslam_saiyad_03_20191_custom-debc61ed55d4bcd408e274b6ef182e9c0ee6aab8-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/aslam_saiyad_03_20191_custom-debc61ed55d4bcd408e274b6ef182e9c0ee6aab8-1536x1023.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/aslam_saiyad_03_20191_custom-debc61ed55d4bcd408e274b6ef182e9c0ee6aab8-2048x1364.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/aslam_saiyad_03_20191_custom-debc61ed55d4bcd408e274b6ef182e9c0ee6aab8-1920x1279.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Asha Gond rides over an obstacle known as a volcano at the Janwar Castle skatepark in her village. \u003ccite>(Aslam Saiyad/Barefoot Skateboarders Organization)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>An Inspiring Movie And A Controversy\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The impact that skateboarding is creating in different communities is what director Manjari Makijany says inspired her movie \u003cem>Skater Girl\u003c/em>. But after watching the trailer, some people on social media familiar with Reinhard’s work and Gond’s story assumed the movie was about Gond and the skatepark in Janwar. But Gond says the filmmakers never got permission to tell her story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Why don’t you ask me that you are going to tell my story?” Gond \u003ca href=\"https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.facebook.com/NetflixFamily/posts/1182671495505173?comment_id=163450362388313__;!!Iwwt!H9Zt-H4FSAPu868Vthr_4VOFMUM6NAcTjzf_khY0Ocwc-GBvGkc-U2jrrCCu%24\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">wrote\u003c/a> in a comment to a Netflix post sharing the trailer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an email to NPR, Makijany denied that the movie was about Gond.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“\u003cem>Skater Girl\u003c/em> is not a biopic based on anyone’s life story nor is it a documentary,” Makijany says. “It is not [Gond or Reinhard’s] story.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the movie, as in Janwar, the rule is “No school, No skateboarding” and it’s a Westerner—like Reinhard—who introduces the village to skateboarding and builds a skatepark.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gond says the filmmakers met with her in Janwar and spoke to her about how skateboarding had changed her life and transformed her village. The director says Gond was just one of many girls they met during the making of the movie. The movie was also not shot in Janwar but in a village in Rajasthan state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Reinhard had a contract to be a research consultant on the movie but says she quit early because of differences over the storytelling approach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It turned out to be this kitschy, cheesy kind of thing,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Reinhard also says from an ethical point of view, the filmmakers should have made a contract with Gond and the other children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Reinhard’s name and the Janwar skatepark appear in the end credits of the movie, along with the names of other skateboarders in India and around the world. The director says Gond and the other Janwar children were given a chance to be a part of the movie’s climax scene, but they declined.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We said if this is our story we want to be seen and tell our story. We don’t want to be only in the background of the last scene,” Gond says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite her misgivings, Reinhard says overall, the movie will benefit Janwar and raise awareness about their work and about skateboarding. A new \u003ca href=\"https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.desertdolphinskatepark.com/about__;!!Iwwt!H9Zt-H4FSAPu868Vthr_4VOFMUM6NAcTjzf_khY0Ocwc-GBvGkc-UysxWPbE%24\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">skatepark\u003c/a> was built in Khempur village where the movie was shot and is now being used by the community there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As for Gond, she says she is curious to see the full movie. All she has to do now is get a Netflix account, a luxury most people in her village do not have.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Skateboarding+Gives+Freedom+To+Rural+Indian+Teen+In+Netflix+Film+%E2%80%94+And+In+Real+Life&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "A Great Man, A Complicated Man: Gandhi On Stage in Song and Dance",
"headTitle": "A Great Man, A Complicated Man: Gandhi On Stage in Song and Dance | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>It’s an epic story; everything from Mahatma Gandhi’s early days in law school to his campaigns in South Africa, to the civil disobedience movement he led against British colonial rule in India that inspired people all over the world, including \u003ca href=\"https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/gandhi-mohandas-k\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Naatak co-founder, artistic director and playwright Sujit Saraf says, with \u003ca style=\"font-style: italic\" href=\"https://www.naatak.com/portfolio/gandhi/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Gandhi: A Grand Musical\u003c/a>\u003ci>, the \u003c/i>theater company presents an accessible yet nuanced picture for Indians steeped in Gandhi love — and hate — from childhood on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Gandhi has total ‘brand permeation’ in India. We grew up with Gandhi as our father. Some of us continue to adore him. Then there is a strain of — it’s hot in India — where you mock everything Gandhi did because he’s extremely easy to mock.” That includes some of the very things that helped establish Gandhi’s moral and political stature in the first place, like the humble loincloth, or dhoti, he wore, the vow of celibacy he held to for much of his adult life, and his campaign to change sanitation practices.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A man who led 300 million people and had something to say, over a long public career, on every subject on earth necessarily said many silly things. I could come up with a hundred silly things that Gandhi said and none of those put together would paint a picture of the man. So, in our play, he does say those things, but not in an attempt to make fun of him; in an attempt to better understand what Gandhi meant to India, to the world, and to history.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13866385\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1568px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13866385\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/09/DSC01728.jpeg\" alt='\"Gandhi: The Musical\" by Naatak runs September 14 - October 6 at Cubberley Theatre in Palo Alto.' width=\"1568\" height=\"1048\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/09/DSC01728.jpeg 1568w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/09/DSC01728-160x107.jpeg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/09/DSC01728-800x535.jpeg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/09/DSC01728-768x513.jpeg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/09/DSC01728-1020x682.jpeg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/09/DSC01728-1200x802.jpeg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1568px) 100vw, 1568px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">“Gandhi: A Grand Musical” by Naatak runs September 14 – October 6 at Cubberley Theatre in Palo Alto. \u003ccite>(Photo: Courtesy of Rajat Bhargava)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.naatak.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Naatak\u003c/a> has been delivering Indian theatre to Silicon Valley for a quarter century now, everything from Western classics cast with Indian-American locals to original work, like what opens tonight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To write the play, Saraf dove deep into books about and recordings of the great man and come up with a sense of him as “stubborn, cruel, intelligent, and very very courageous.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The problem with most writings about Gandhi, including the big \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7I6D3mSYTE\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">movie\u003c/a> [directed by Richard Attenborough], is that they are too conscious of his star power. They are too aware that he is a world figure. He is the father of the nation. So the movie, for instance, is full of slow motion footage of Gandhi putting on glasses, Gandhi slipping his feet into sandals. He utters witticisms and white people’s jaws drop.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are Indians. I don’t need to see Gandhi through Western eyes. Not only that, I’m able to represent him in his own language.” Three languages, in fact: Ghandi’s native tongue, Gujarati, as well as Hindi and English.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhLexs13cZU]Saraf says there was a distinct difference in the way Gandhi communicated, depending on who his audience was.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When he spoke in Hindi, he spoke very mundanely. When he spoke in English, he was aiming it at a western audience, and the point five percent of Indians who could speak English then. His speeches acquired a slightly more poetic air. He wasn’t an orator on the level of MLK. I don’t have Gandhi making beautiful speeches in the musical because it just doesn’t make sense. ”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That said, Naatak feels freer to take poetic license with original music (composed by Nachiketa Yakkundi and dance (choreography by Soumya Agastya, Shwetha Subraya and Nisha Natraj). “So many of Gandhi’s ideas and campaigns are presented in the play as lovely dance and music,” Saraf says. The musical also includes songs familiar from Gandhi’s life and the Indian independence movement.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Resistance as Spiritual Practice\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Gandhi’s deeply rooted spiritual practice was central to his political practice, his philosophy of non-violent resistance to oppression. Political campaigns for him were a means to a larger end. He felt he was an instrument of divine will.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He arrived at what he thought were some simple truths,” says Saraf. “Everything he did was an attempt to test those truths and his laboratory kept getting larger and larger. He really was a very personal man living as a public figure, testing out deeply held beliefs and theories — on abstinence, on sanitation, on humility. They took a political form, but the political life was not what he was talking about, and in a strange way, he never made a secret of it. He often talked about how independence from the British meant nothing [to him].”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What did mean something to Gandhi? “A life of dignity, harmony between Hindus and Muslims, and self-sufficiency. To him, these were the important aims and goals of life, and independence from British rule was merely a means of achieving these.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13866387\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1616px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13866387\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/09/DSC01284.jpg\" alt='Original music and dance feature prominently in \"Gandhi: The Musical\" put on by Silicon Valley-based Naatak.' width=\"1616\" height=\"1080\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/09/DSC01284.jpg 1616w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/09/DSC01284-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/09/DSC01284-800x535.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/09/DSC01284-768x513.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/09/DSC01284-1020x682.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/09/DSC01284-1200x802.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1616px) 100vw, 1616px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Original music and dance feature prominently in “Gandhi: A Grand Musical” put on by Silicon Valley-based Naatak. \u003ccite>(Photo: Courtesy of Rajat Bhargava)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But if Gandhi succeeded in shaming the British out of India, he was completely unsuccessful in establishing a country free of religious and class divisions, and of politicians who stoke the fires of those divisions to get into and stay in power. Naked materialism is in vogue now, as much in India as any place else on earth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He would not be pleased if he came back,” muses Saraf. “I think he would go on a fast unto death, and sadly, I don’t know if anybody would care.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Heady stuff to tackle on stage — and timely, given that October 2nd marks the 150th anniversary of Gandhi’s birth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Gandhi: A Grand Musical\u003c/strong> runs Sept. 14-Oct. 6 at Cubberley Theatre in Palo Alto. For more information, click \u003ca href=\"https://www.naatak.com/portfolio/gandhi/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>here\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "The Bay Area theater troupe Naatak takes on the life story of the father of India on the 150th anniversary of his birth.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>It’s an epic story; everything from Mahatma Gandhi’s early days in law school to his campaigns in South Africa, to the civil disobedience movement he led against British colonial rule in India that inspired people all over the world, including \u003ca href=\"https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/gandhi-mohandas-k\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Naatak co-founder, artistic director and playwright Sujit Saraf says, with \u003ca style=\"font-style: italic\" href=\"https://www.naatak.com/portfolio/gandhi/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Gandhi: A Grand Musical\u003c/a>\u003ci>, the \u003c/i>theater company presents an accessible yet nuanced picture for Indians steeped in Gandhi love — and hate — from childhood on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Gandhi has total ‘brand permeation’ in India. We grew up with Gandhi as our father. Some of us continue to adore him. Then there is a strain of — it’s hot in India — where you mock everything Gandhi did because he’s extremely easy to mock.” That includes some of the very things that helped establish Gandhi’s moral and political stature in the first place, like the humble loincloth, or dhoti, he wore, the vow of celibacy he held to for much of his adult life, and his campaign to change sanitation practices.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A man who led 300 million people and had something to say, over a long public career, on every subject on earth necessarily said many silly things. I could come up with a hundred silly things that Gandhi said and none of those put together would paint a picture of the man. So, in our play, he does say those things, but not in an attempt to make fun of him; in an attempt to better understand what Gandhi meant to India, to the world, and to history.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13866385\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1568px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13866385\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/09/DSC01728.jpeg\" alt='\"Gandhi: The Musical\" by Naatak runs September 14 - October 6 at Cubberley Theatre in Palo Alto.' width=\"1568\" height=\"1048\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/09/DSC01728.jpeg 1568w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/09/DSC01728-160x107.jpeg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/09/DSC01728-800x535.jpeg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/09/DSC01728-768x513.jpeg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/09/DSC01728-1020x682.jpeg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/09/DSC01728-1200x802.jpeg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1568px) 100vw, 1568px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">“Gandhi: A Grand Musical” by Naatak runs September 14 – October 6 at Cubberley Theatre in Palo Alto. \u003ccite>(Photo: Courtesy of Rajat Bhargava)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.naatak.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Naatak\u003c/a> has been delivering Indian theatre to Silicon Valley for a quarter century now, everything from Western classics cast with Indian-American locals to original work, like what opens tonight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To write the play, Saraf dove deep into books about and recordings of the great man and come up with a sense of him as “stubborn, cruel, intelligent, and very very courageous.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The problem with most writings about Gandhi, including the big \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7I6D3mSYTE\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">movie\u003c/a> [directed by Richard Attenborough], is that they are too conscious of his star power. They are too aware that he is a world figure. He is the father of the nation. So the movie, for instance, is full of slow motion footage of Gandhi putting on glasses, Gandhi slipping his feet into sandals. He utters witticisms and white people’s jaws drop.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are Indians. I don’t need to see Gandhi through Western eyes. Not only that, I’m able to represent him in his own language.” Three languages, in fact: Ghandi’s native tongue, Gujarati, as well as Hindi and English.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/bhLexs13cZU'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/bhLexs13cZU'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>Saraf says there was a distinct difference in the way Gandhi communicated, depending on who his audience was.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When he spoke in Hindi, he spoke very mundanely. When he spoke in English, he was aiming it at a western audience, and the point five percent of Indians who could speak English then. His speeches acquired a slightly more poetic air. He wasn’t an orator on the level of MLK. I don’t have Gandhi making beautiful speeches in the musical because it just doesn’t make sense. ”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That said, Naatak feels freer to take poetic license with original music (composed by Nachiketa Yakkundi and dance (choreography by Soumya Agastya, Shwetha Subraya and Nisha Natraj). “So many of Gandhi’s ideas and campaigns are presented in the play as lovely dance and music,” Saraf says. The musical also includes songs familiar from Gandhi’s life and the Indian independence movement.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Resistance as Spiritual Practice\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Gandhi’s deeply rooted spiritual practice was central to his political practice, his philosophy of non-violent resistance to oppression. Political campaigns for him were a means to a larger end. He felt he was an instrument of divine will.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He arrived at what he thought were some simple truths,” says Saraf. “Everything he did was an attempt to test those truths and his laboratory kept getting larger and larger. He really was a very personal man living as a public figure, testing out deeply held beliefs and theories — on abstinence, on sanitation, on humility. They took a political form, but the political life was not what he was talking about, and in a strange way, he never made a secret of it. He often talked about how independence from the British meant nothing [to him].”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What did mean something to Gandhi? “A life of dignity, harmony between Hindus and Muslims, and self-sufficiency. To him, these were the important aims and goals of life, and independence from British rule was merely a means of achieving these.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13866387\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1616px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13866387\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/09/DSC01284.jpg\" alt='Original music and dance feature prominently in \"Gandhi: The Musical\" put on by Silicon Valley-based Naatak.' width=\"1616\" height=\"1080\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/09/DSC01284.jpg 1616w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/09/DSC01284-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/09/DSC01284-800x535.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/09/DSC01284-768x513.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/09/DSC01284-1020x682.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/09/DSC01284-1200x802.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1616px) 100vw, 1616px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Original music and dance feature prominently in “Gandhi: A Grand Musical” put on by Silicon Valley-based Naatak. \u003ccite>(Photo: Courtesy of Rajat Bhargava)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But if Gandhi succeeded in shaming the British out of India, he was completely unsuccessful in establishing a country free of religious and class divisions, and of politicians who stoke the fires of those divisions to get into and stay in power. Naked materialism is in vogue now, as much in India as any place else on earth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He would not be pleased if he came back,” muses Saraf. “I think he would go on a fast unto death, and sadly, I don’t know if anybody would care.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Heady stuff to tackle on stage — and timely, given that October 2nd marks the 150th anniversary of Gandhi’s birth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Gandhi: A Grand Musical\u003c/strong> runs Sept. 14-Oct. 6 at Cubberley Theatre in Palo Alto. For more information, click \u003ca href=\"https://www.naatak.com/portfolio/gandhi/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>here\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Whatever Happened to the Indian Farmers Who Won the 'Kiki Challenge'?",
"headTitle": "Whatever Happened to the Indian Farmers Who Won the ‘Kiki Challenge’? | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>In August 2018, NPR reported on two farmers from a small village in India who went viral for \u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/pop/104969/indian-farmers-plus-oxen-just-won-the-kiki-challenge\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>\u003cem>dancing in a rice paddy\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cstrong>\u003cem> to rapper Drake’s hit song, “In My Feelings.” The video of them doing the so-called “Kiki challenge” racked up more than 1 million views. Where are the farmers and the creator of the video now? \u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ever since the internet hailed the dancing farmer video, life has changed in big and small ways, says Sriram Srikanth, 28, the vlogger who choreographed the dance and shot the video.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Their little jig put the tiny village of \u003ca href=\"http://www.onefivenine.com/india/villages/Karimnagar/Mallial/Lambadipally\">Lambadipally\u003c/a> in the southern Indian state of Telangana on the map.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=so0BwyMEO8w\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fans seek out their village, Srikanth says. “Many of our days begin by meeting people who’ve traveled long hours to come to see us,” he says. At least 20 people show up every day on weekdays, and many more on weekends. He says they often just want to tell them how much they appreciate village life and their vlogs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a great feeling to meet them, to see their interest in our village and our work,” he adds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The viral video also helped grow Srikanth’s YouTube channel, \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=My+village+show\">My Village Show\u003c/a>. He started it in 2012 to chronicle the exasperating and endearing aspects of village life with doses of slapstick comedy. When the channel first launched, it had a little over 1,000 subscribers. Today, it has over 900,000 subscribers and 200 episodes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After the Kiki challenge, Srikanth and his team uploaded 38 videos last year, 22 of which have scored over a million views. Some of their popular videos are humorous takes about how villagers deal with the influences of modern life—smartphones, selfie sticks, virtual reality technology, even fidget spinners.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The success has helped Srikanth build a steady income with advertising revenue and allowed him to pay his team and actors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the months after the Kiki challenge video, the My Village Show team expanded. “We’re currently employing eight villagers who’ve joined us in acting and scriptwriting,” says Srikanth. “We’ve built an office, and we train people in computer literacy. We’re hoping that it will help the younger ones find employment.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some people in the village are still trying to figure out why the Kiki video captivated a global audience. “They wonder why the international media came knocking on our doors when all we did was dance in the muck,” says Srikanth, laughing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And what about the dancing farmers?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Anil Geela, 25, has been offered a role in an Indian film. He’s transitioned from farming and being a regular on My Village Show to full-time acting. “It’s a small role—I play the friend of the bad guy and there’s lots of comedy,” he says with a laugh. The movie is set for a year-end release.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pilli Tirupati, 29, had a baby boy just days after the video went viral. The villagers started calling the infant Kiki and the nickname stuck, he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still a rice farmer, Tirupati shares one of his current struggles. “In Lambadipally village, water scarcity isn’t the big problem. The biggest problem is the monkey menace,” he says. “We have to stick to paddy farming, because if we plant fruits or vegetables, unruly monkeys end up eating and ruining our crops!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though things are busier for the team at My Village Show and more villagers are recruited to act in the vlogs, life for the farmers and the vlogger has remained more or less the same, they say.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But they have noticed a change in the way outsiders view village life. “Everyone knows rural life isn’t easy. There’s a perception that it is impoverished, when there really is a lot of abundance,” says Srikanth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I feel like the biggest impact our work has made is to show how living in a village can be beautiful and charming, and that there are joyful experiences,” he adds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite the hardships, we’re blessed to live this life, says Geela. “We’re healthy, happy, have strong friendships and deep connections to the land. If you have roots in a small village, it’s no longer a reason to be ashamed. And that’s the message we’d really like to see go viral.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Kamala Thiagarajan is a freelance journalist based in Madurai, India. Her work has appeared in \u003c/em>The International New York Times, \u003cem>BBC Travel and \u003c/em>Forbes India. \u003cem>You can follow her \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/kamal_t?lang=en\">@kamal_t\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Whatever+Happened+To+...+The+Farmers+Who+Danced+In+The+Mud+For+The+%27Kiki+Challenge%27%3F&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>In August 2018, NPR reported on two farmers from a small village in India who went viral for \u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/pop/104969/indian-farmers-plus-oxen-just-won-the-kiki-challenge\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>\u003cem>dancing in a rice paddy\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cstrong>\u003cem> to rapper Drake’s hit song, “In My Feelings.” The video of them doing the so-called “Kiki challenge” racked up more than 1 million views. Where are the farmers and the creator of the video now? \u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ever since the internet hailed the dancing farmer video, life has changed in big and small ways, says Sriram Srikanth, 28, the vlogger who choreographed the dance and shot the video.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Their little jig put the tiny village of \u003ca href=\"http://www.onefivenine.com/india/villages/Karimnagar/Mallial/Lambadipally\">Lambadipally\u003c/a> in the southern Indian state of Telangana on the map.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/so0BwyMEO8w'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/so0BwyMEO8w'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Fans seek out their village, Srikanth says. “Many of our days begin by meeting people who’ve traveled long hours to come to see us,” he says. At least 20 people show up every day on weekdays, and many more on weekends. He says they often just want to tell them how much they appreciate village life and their vlogs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a great feeling to meet them, to see their interest in our village and our work,” he adds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The viral video also helped grow Srikanth’s YouTube channel, \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=My+village+show\">My Village Show\u003c/a>. He started it in 2012 to chronicle the exasperating and endearing aspects of village life with doses of slapstick comedy. When the channel first launched, it had a little over 1,000 subscribers. Today, it has over 900,000 subscribers and 200 episodes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After the Kiki challenge, Srikanth and his team uploaded 38 videos last year, 22 of which have scored over a million views. Some of their popular videos are humorous takes about how villagers deal with the influences of modern life—smartphones, selfie sticks, virtual reality technology, even fidget spinners.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The success has helped Srikanth build a steady income with advertising revenue and allowed him to pay his team and actors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the months after the Kiki challenge video, the My Village Show team expanded. “We’re currently employing eight villagers who’ve joined us in acting and scriptwriting,” says Srikanth. “We’ve built an office, and we train people in computer literacy. We’re hoping that it will help the younger ones find employment.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some people in the village are still trying to figure out why the Kiki video captivated a global audience. “They wonder why the international media came knocking on our doors when all we did was dance in the muck,” says Srikanth, laughing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And what about the dancing farmers?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Anil Geela, 25, has been offered a role in an Indian film. He’s transitioned from farming and being a regular on My Village Show to full-time acting. “It’s a small role—I play the friend of the bad guy and there’s lots of comedy,” he says with a laugh. The movie is set for a year-end release.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pilli Tirupati, 29, had a baby boy just days after the video went viral. The villagers started calling the infant Kiki and the nickname stuck, he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still a rice farmer, Tirupati shares one of his current struggles. “In Lambadipally village, water scarcity isn’t the big problem. The biggest problem is the monkey menace,” he says. “We have to stick to paddy farming, because if we plant fruits or vegetables, unruly monkeys end up eating and ruining our crops!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though things are busier for the team at My Village Show and more villagers are recruited to act in the vlogs, life for the farmers and the vlogger has remained more or less the same, they say.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But they have noticed a change in the way outsiders view village life. “Everyone knows rural life isn’t easy. There’s a perception that it is impoverished, when there really is a lot of abundance,” says Srikanth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I feel like the biggest impact our work has made is to show how living in a village can be beautiful and charming, and that there are joyful experiences,” he adds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite the hardships, we’re blessed to live this life, says Geela. “We’re healthy, happy, have strong friendships and deep connections to the land. If you have roots in a small village, it’s no longer a reason to be ashamed. And that’s the message we’d really like to see go viral.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Kamala Thiagarajan is a freelance journalist based in Madurai, India. Her work has appeared in \u003c/em>The International New York Times, \u003cem>BBC Travel and \u003c/em>Forbes India. \u003cem>You can follow her \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/kamal_t?lang=en\">@kamal_t\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Whatever+Happened+To+...+The+Farmers+Who+Danced+In+The+Mud+For+The+%27Kiki+Challenge%27%3F&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>After the Wedding\u003c/em> is a movie full of transformative secrets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a gender-swapped remake of a 2006 Danish film, and when we first meet the main character—Isabel, played by Michelle Williams—she’s living a modest, humble life running an orphanage in India. Then one day she’s asked to go to New York City to clinch a deal for a life-changing donation to the orphanage. The money would come from a media mogul, Theresa, played by Julianne Moore.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That transaction lands Isabel in a world of wealth and power tied too closely to her past—when she was a very different person.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I thought of her as somebody who used to burn very hot, and whose fire had to be extinguished,” Williams says in an interview. “And that only a place like India, with all of its sights and smells and sounds, can calm a person like this.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Michelle Williams spoke with NPR about her role in \u003cem>After the Wedding\u003c/em>, the effect of pay inequality on her own career and filming in India.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a place that I’ve been drawn to for its religious heritage, its fervor, the way that it overwhelms your senses,” Williams says. “But what was most unusual about it was shooting in a Third World country. I don’t think that I’ve ever shot a film in those circumstances. And the sentiment that I was left with, when we departed India, was: It’s such a luxury to have problems. And it was one of the things that I wanted to address in making this film, was to play someone whose tolerance for petty grievances or opulent displays of wealth was shattered because of the life she had lived for the last two decades.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJ4QxPjU2Lk\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch3>Interview Highlights\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On her character Isabel, who is visibly uncomfortable with wealth\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She was a New Yorker, and she had a life in New York, and she fled it — and she recreated herself in India as somebody whose life was devoted to making other people’s lives better. And whether that’s selfish or selfless, up to you. But as a New Yorker, I think a lot about how these economic situations abut each other, and about what my family’s response is to that, what my daughter and I talk about as it relates to that. And so it was something that I wanted to put on screen and hopefully send out to a larger conversation. How do we see what we see … how does that change how we live? …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What my character finds herself in is a situation with a woman who thinks that there’s a price on people, and that what she’s offering will appeal to my character—that isn’t it what everyone wants, money and power? And what my character is saying by resisting the offer is that more than anything, she wants freedom and autonomy and to live a life of her own making. But the ultimate question comes toward the end, when what she’s made to realize is that this money that’s being dangled in front of her will affect other peoples’ lives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On the aftermath of the \u003c/strong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2018/01/10/577163183/how-a-massive-pay-gap-occurred-in-the-all-the-money-in-the-world-reshoot\">\u003cstrong>All the Money in the World\u003c/strong> \u003cstrong>controversy\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cstrong>, where she received a tiny fraction of the money her male co-star was paid\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It is a sort of private humiliation that became the greatest public platform of my life—much more so than talking about my film and stage work. Because, as I said in a speech on Capitol Hill: If it’s like this for me, how bad is it for other women? And I have started to see a shift, certainly in the way that people treat me—and from what I hear from women coming up to me, that my example has been really useful for them. …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It has changed the way that I try and think about money—because it’s tied into our self-worth. And I didn’t really think to ask for it because I didn’t think to value myself in that kind of way. And when I started to think about what would I use money for if I had it, and I started to think about freedom of choice or freedom of time, then I started to be able to open myself up to the idea that I could put a value on myself, and ask for it in my workplace.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On what she’s said to her daughter about the experience\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Well, what’s so great with single parenting is that you live in extreme intimacy with each another. So everything that I go through, she’s very well aware of it. And for the better, really—so, she was along for the ride of all of this in the last couple of years, in terms of this issue of fair pay. So she’s seen me struggle, and then she’s seen this almost fairy-tale happy ending, which is the job that I most recently finished—a TV series called \u003cem>Fosse/Verdon\u003c/em>. I was paid the same as my male co-star [Sam Rockwell]. …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And unfortunately, that’s really the only way to move forward, is that it has to start at the top. And that’s what I experienced when I did this TV show with FX, was: They wanted to make the workplace fair. They wanted me to feel valued. So, what it means we talk about when supporting women—it doesn’t just mean holding our hands. It means supporting us economically.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On if roles for women are improving \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I can say for me personally, my opportunities have gotten better and better. I’m more and more excited about the kind of work that I’m allowed to do—and that periods where I’m not working or not getting the kind of parts that I want to play, I can work on myself in those times. I can fill myself up in other ways so I’m ready and prepared when the role that I’ve been dreaming of does come my way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sophia Alvarez Boyd and Cindy Johnston produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Patrick Jarenwattananon adapted it for the Web.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Michelle+Williams+On+Economic+Inequality+In+Her+New+Movie+%E2%80%94+And+Her+Career&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a place that I’ve been drawn to for its religious heritage, its fervor, the way that it overwhelms your senses,” Williams says. “But what was most unusual about it was shooting in a Third World country. I don’t think that I’ve ever shot a film in those circumstances. And the sentiment that I was left with, when we departed India, was: It’s such a luxury to have problems. And it was one of the things that I wanted to address in making this film, was to play someone whose tolerance for petty grievances or opulent displays of wealth was shattered because of the life she had lived for the last two decades.”\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/RJ4QxPjU2Lk'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/RJ4QxPjU2Lk'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003chr>\n\u003ch3>Interview Highlights\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On her character Isabel, who is visibly uncomfortable with wealth\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She was a New Yorker, and she had a life in New York, and she fled it — and she recreated herself in India as somebody whose life was devoted to making other people’s lives better. And whether that’s selfish or selfless, up to you. But as a New Yorker, I think a lot about how these economic situations abut each other, and about what my family’s response is to that, what my daughter and I talk about as it relates to that. And so it was something that I wanted to put on screen and hopefully send out to a larger conversation. How do we see what we see … how does that change how we live? …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What my character finds herself in is a situation with a woman who thinks that there’s a price on people, and that what she’s offering will appeal to my character—that isn’t it what everyone wants, money and power? And what my character is saying by resisting the offer is that more than anything, she wants freedom and autonomy and to live a life of her own making. But the ultimate question comes toward the end, when what she’s made to realize is that this money that’s being dangled in front of her will affect other peoples’ lives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On the aftermath of the \u003c/strong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2018/01/10/577163183/how-a-massive-pay-gap-occurred-in-the-all-the-money-in-the-world-reshoot\">\u003cstrong>All the Money in the World\u003c/strong> \u003cstrong>controversy\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cstrong>, where she received a tiny fraction of the money her male co-star was paid\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It is a sort of private humiliation that became the greatest public platform of my life—much more so than talking about my film and stage work. Because, as I said in a speech on Capitol Hill: If it’s like this for me, how bad is it for other women? And I have started to see a shift, certainly in the way that people treat me—and from what I hear from women coming up to me, that my example has been really useful for them. …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It has changed the way that I try and think about money—because it’s tied into our self-worth. And I didn’t really think to ask for it because I didn’t think to value myself in that kind of way. And when I started to think about what would I use money for if I had it, and I started to think about freedom of choice or freedom of time, then I started to be able to open myself up to the idea that I could put a value on myself, and ask for it in my workplace.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On what she’s said to her daughter about the experience\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Well, what’s so great with single parenting is that you live in extreme intimacy with each another. So everything that I go through, she’s very well aware of it. And for the better, really—so, she was along for the ride of all of this in the last couple of years, in terms of this issue of fair pay. So she’s seen me struggle, and then she’s seen this almost fairy-tale happy ending, which is the job that I most recently finished—a TV series called \u003cem>Fosse/Verdon\u003c/em>. I was paid the same as my male co-star [Sam Rockwell]. …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And unfortunately, that’s really the only way to move forward, is that it has to start at the top. And that’s what I experienced when I did this TV show with FX, was: They wanted to make the workplace fair. They wanted me to feel valued. So, what it means we talk about when supporting women—it doesn’t just mean holding our hands. It means supporting us economically.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On if roles for women are improving \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I can say for me personally, my opportunities have gotten better and better. I’m more and more excited about the kind of work that I’m allowed to do—and that periods where I’m not working or not getting the kind of parts that I want to play, I can work on myself in those times. I can fill myself up in other ways so I’m ready and prepared when the role that I’ve been dreaming of does come my way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
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"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
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"marketplace": {
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"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
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"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
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"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
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"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
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"politicalbreakdown": {
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"title": "Political Breakdown",
"tagline": "Politics from a personal perspective",
"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
"airtime": "THU 6:30pm-7pm",
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"possible": {
"id": "possible",
"title": "Possible",
"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm",
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"pri-the-world": {
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"title": "PRI's The World: Latest Edition",
"info": "Each weekday, host Marco Werman and his team of producers bring you the world's most interesting stories in an hour of radio that reminds us just how small our planet really is.",
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"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-World-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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"radiolab": {
"id": "radiolab",
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"info": "A two-time Peabody Award-winner, Radiolab is an investigation told through sounds and stories, and centered around one big idea. In the Radiolab world, information sounds like music and science and culture collide. Hosted by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, the show is designed for listeners who demand skepticism, but appreciate wonder. WNYC Studios is the producer of other leading podcasts including Freakonomics Radio, Death, Sex & Money, On the Media and many more.",
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"reveal": {
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"info": "Created by The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, Reveal is public radios first one-hour weekly radio show and podcast dedicated to investigative reporting. Credible, fact based and without a partisan agenda, Reveal combines the power and artistry of driveway moment storytelling with data-rich reporting on critically important issues. The result is stories that inform and inspire, arming our listeners with information to right injustices, hold the powerful accountable and improve lives.Reveal is hosted by Al Letson and showcases the award-winning work of CIR and newsrooms large and small across the nation. In a radio and podcast market crowded with choices, Reveal focuses on important and often surprising stories that illuminate the world for our listeners.",
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},
"rightnowish": {
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"title": "Rightnowish",
"tagline": "Art is where you find it",
"info": "Rightnowish digs into life in the Bay Area right now… ish. Journalist Pendarvis Harshaw takes us to galleries painted on the sides of liquor stores in West Oakland. We'll dance in warehouses in the Bayview, make smoothies with kids in South Berkeley, and listen to classical music in a 1984 Cutlass Supreme in Richmond. Every week, Pen talks to movers and shakers about how the Bay Area shapes what they create, and how they shape the place we call home.",
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},
"science-friday": {
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"info": "Science Friday is a weekly science talk show, broadcast live over public radio stations nationwide. Each week, the show focuses on science topics that are in the news and tries to bring an educated, balanced discussion to bear on the scientific issues at hand. Panels of expert guests join host Ira Flatow, a veteran science journalist, to discuss science and to take questions from listeners during the call-in portion of the program.",
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"snap-judgment": {
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"title": "Snap Judgment",
"tagline": "Real stories with killer beats",
"info": "The Snap Judgment radio show and podcast mixes real stories with killer beats to produce cinematic, dramatic radio. Snap's musical brand of storytelling dares listeners to see the world through the eyes of another. This is storytelling... with a BEAT!! Snap first aired on public radio stations nationwide in July 2010. Today, Snap Judgment airs on over 450 public radio stations and is brought to the airwaves by KQED & PRX.",
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},
"soldout": {
"id": "soldout",
"title": "SOLD OUT: Rethinking Housing in America",
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