By Amrita Rajan

Indrani Dasgupta has one of the most famous faces in India – the Lakme girl is in every magazine, on hoardings and television across the country. Sugandha Garg is the young actor who’s a part of New Bollywood, appearing in movies such as Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na and Tere Bin Laden to name a couple. Together, they host FOX History & Traveller’s original series, What’s With Indian Men, currently airing through July.

Amrita Rajan (AR): How did you come to be involved in What’s With Indian Men?

Indrani Dasgupta (ID): The channel called and asked me if I would be interested in doing the show. This show was different from everything I have been offered on TV. It sounded like a show I would watch, which was the tipping point.

Sugandha Garg (SG): I was approached by the channel to host the show. When I heard the name of the show, I had no doubt that I was doing it! We all want to know ‘What’s With Indian Men’!

AR: Were you involved at all in the production process, specifically in choosing locations and subjects?

SG: The show has been produced by Small Screen and they operate out of Delhi. The production house is in charge of selecting locations and the men we meet, but once on location the process is very collaborative. We usually have a specific question per city that we’d like answered by the men and most often these questions get them talking about other aspects of who they are and what they do.

ID: We – the director [Abhinandan], Sugandha and I – enjoy a great working relationship, where we sat together and discussed ‘our takes’. Some of it is locked in pre-production, and some is ‘we make it up as we go along’. One has more experience in one city over the other, and we used all of that on the show. For example, I am more familiar with Delhi and Kolkata, Sugandha with Mumbai, and so on. None of the conversations were scripted though. What one sees on TV is the edited version of completely impromptu conversations we had with our guests.

AR: What was the most difficult moment shooting this series? Did you have any misgivings going in?

ID: I did. It is my first time on TV. It wasn’t [as] ‘fancy’ as the sets or locations I am used to, coming from fashion and advertising. Plus we shot 30 days on the trot through May and June. The heat was pretty intense.

SG: The heat and not the men might have made this series difficult to shoot at times. We shot in the peak of summer and at times it was unbearable. I personally think that we have just about scratched the surface of What’s With Indian Men and would love to do a more heart to heart interview in winter!

AR: Any funny moments?

SG: Delhi boys outdid themselves in the humour department! Funniest was seeing Sanjay Rajora (comedian from Delhi) practically having a cardiac arrest at the sight of Ghagaras worth 2 lakhs! And that somebody was going to pay that money and sure as hell it wasn’t going to be the bride!

I also enjoyed being in Guwahati because all my misconceptions of north-east boys being hard core rockers were dispelled…They respect women and I felt safe there.

AR: What was your favorite moment/ episode?

ID: I liked Delhi so far. I have consciously decided to see the rest of the episodes as they get aired with the rest of the viewers. But I think the one on Kolkata will be great too. I am looking forward to that.

SG: I personally loved being in Goa and meeting the men there. There is a calm about them of a life well lived that is very apparent. I also enjoyed being in Guwahati because all my misconceptions of north-east boys being hard core rockers were dispelled. They are very soft spoken and somewhere untouched by a speeding world and continue to live surrounded by nature and all other good things. They respect women and I felt safe there.

AR: Do you feel like you’ve come away at the end of this series having learned something new about Indian men or gender relations in India?

ID: Look, I am not parading or pretending to be any kind of an ‘expert’ as far as the gender issue is concerned. This is primarily a travel show, where the city is the star. And I am still a model who loves doing what I do. We looked to meet a couple of men from every city to see how one shapes the other, and vice versa. Beyond that, men will be men… trying to sound all ‘right’ and asking you out for a drink after the camera stops rolling.

SG: I feel men in India are going through a confused time because at one hand they still want to hold onto older traditions and yet be modern owing to the great extent of exposure via internet, TV etc. I do think I might be speaking for comparatively more upwardly mobile cities and the reality of gender dynamics might be different in more orthodox communities.

AR: You guys have great chemistry but the toughest part of any journey can be the time you spend with your travel partner. What have you learned about each other in this process?

SG: I didn’t know Indrani at all before we started [the] shoot. We have traveled extensively in these past few months and neither of us are girly-girls. That’s why we have managed to put together a good show. We don’t squabble over clothes, make-up etc and are comfortable in our skins. I’m pretty sure that we will be friends even after the show. Amen!

ID: I met Sugandha on the shoot, and luckily for both of us we got along just fine. I was looking to learn and have fun doing this show. That is usually my approach to most things, that it should be fun. If it’s not worth writing home about, then maybe one is better off at home. Second, do the best that you can. Both of us were committed to that 100 percent. It’s been an honest effort. Sugandha has done TV, so she coached me on that, and I gave her tips of the trade for make-up and styling. It worked out well, I think.

AR: Any plans for a sequel? Maybe ‘What’s with Indian Women’? What kind of scenarios would you be interested in exploring in a series like that?

SG: What With Indian Women as opposed to their counterpart, in my humble opinion, will take a lot more than a television series. Besides I don’t think we have exhausted what the men in this country think. In fact, we have just started. I don’t know what the channel thinks but my vote goes to the men for the sequel as well.

ID: I hope so; it would be interesting to see how we could do it differently. Am not sure I am done with men though, there’s definitely more we can do with that.

The basic qualities desired from a man from our previous generation have evolved. Back then you needed a man to provide for you and now it seems to be more about sharing a life together as partners. 

AR: What’s your idea of the perfect Indian man? Has it evolved over time?

ID: Perfect Indian man? Wow, am not sure if there is such a thing. I think at the moment [M.S.] Dhoni is up there on my list. But the Indian man does have it rough. He has large shoes to fill and many roles to play, and let’s face it; it’s a pretty thankless job!

SG: Personally, I require my man to be progressive. I feel I’m as much an alpha female and it would require someone very secure to be with me. My husband Raghu [Note: Sugandha is married to Raghu Ram of MTV Roadies fame] is inspiring in this regard. He is the most committed feminist I know! The basic qualities desired from a man from our previous generation have evolved. Back then you needed a man to provide for you and now it seems to be more about sharing a life together as partners.

AR: One of the reasons the title of your show resonates so much is because of the slew of articles that came out just a little while ago about what’s wrong with Indian men. I appreciate that’s not the direction of your show, but I want to ask:

Sugandha, you’re very Gen Now, with a hip and modern vibe. How do you handle harassment?

SG: Well, this happened very recently. I was at the Delhi airport at around 10pm and was walking to the basement where the car was parked. As I was about to enter the car park a guy came out of nowhere and banged into me and continued walking. I screamed at him and asked him to watch where he was going and he turned around and said to me, “Can’t you see a MAN is coming, why don’t you just step aside?” I took a step forward and asked him if he didn’t see “a WOMAN” was coming! For a brief second I was really scared but stood my ground. He mumbled something and left. It’s important to react and at the point of attack. Women rarely enter into physical altercations when they are growing up, whereas most men do – it is a fear we feel when under attack. I think that needs to be addressed. I would have done nothing differently!

AR: Indrani, you’re an absolutely gorgeous supermodel. How do you deal with harassment? Is it true that men are intimidated by a combination of beauty and success?

ID: Firstly, thanks! I will take that! I went to college and did my masters in Delhi, which involved a lot of public transport. So sure, I have been harassed. What has changed is how I tackle it, which I think has come with time and experience. Earlier, I would avoid eye contact, and carry something sharp in my pocket. Now, with time, and success if you please, I am much more confident when something happens, so I look to make a scene, or act totally indifferent. But I continue to keep something sharp in my pocket.

But, I have to admit, it is true that Indian men are intimidated by successful, beautiful women, and I wonder, What’s with Indian Men?!

By Amrita Rajan

India is rich soil for documentaries of all kinds – food, travel, politics, culture – and going by the programming schedule of channels like TLC and Discovery, these features are enormously popular with Indians. Strangely though, very few of them are actually made by Indians for an Indian audience.

Batul Mukhtiar (150 Seconds Ago, Lilkee and the forthcoming Kaphal) is a filmmaker, writer and blogger who has worked on a number of such documentaries in many roles. In this interview, she talks about her road to documentaries and the interesting experiences she has had, as well as on being a woman in the tough world of film-making.

Amrita Rajan (AR): What was your first filmmaking job?

Batul Mukhtiar (BM): I started as an assistant on a corporate film, with a local advertising agency. Nothing fancy, just a small film for a builder.

AR: Do you think going to film school helped you?

BM: Yes, definitely. In the days before DVDs and Internet, it exposed me for the first time to international cinema of all kinds. We also had good infrastructure at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), and did a lot of exercises throughout our course, so we had a lot of hands-on experience. FTII also gave us the time and space to produce work and make mistakes without the pressure of commercial considerations.

AR: My impression of filmmaking is that it’s a consuming process. We know from your excellent blog that you’re also a wife and mother. How difficult was it to juggle everything, especially when your daughter was younger?

BM: It was not difficult, but exhausting. I had my daughter while I was still at film school, and everybody helped to look after her to some extent – my hostel warden, our hostel cook, some of the staff’s wives and families, but even so I used to be working almost all day and night, managing the baby and my work. When I moved to Mumbai, I was always lucky to find help – not only employed, but from neighbors and friends.

Since my husband and I both work in films, we also try to juggle our assignments to the best of our abilities to make it so that one of us stays at home while the other is working.

AR: Have you ever experienced a gender divide in your work?

BM: On my first job in a music channel, I realized that I had a disadvantage as a woman, that too a mother, because I could not go out after work and drink with the guys, but had to head back home. I think for someone like me, who doesn’t drink much or frequent pubs, it is a definite disadvantage.

Being a woman does help me on the roads; cops are more reluctant to ask me what I am doing, people are more open to being interviewed, or giving me access into their homes.

Being a woman does help me on the roads; cops are more reluctant to ask me what I am doing, people are more open to being interviewed, or giving me access into their homes. 

AR: How difficult is it to find funding for indie projects?

BM: It’s difficult but not impossible to find money to produce an indie project. But it’s virtually impossible to distribute and exhibit it. With digital equipment, a lot of people can make their own films, but it’s still hard to figure out where and how to show these, outside festival circuits.

AR: You’ve worked for a number of foreign companies such as the CBC and the BBC on well-received documentaries like India Reborn. What was your experience with Indian production companies or news channels? (Watch a clip from India Reborn)

I got into line production for international crews almost right out of film school. Their way of work suits me, it is more straightforward. Once they get you on board, they almost always trust you, and there are no hassles about payments. Indian production work is usually about cutting deals and trying to make a commission on everything. Though I think that is changing now, with a lot more professional producers coming into the picture.

Though Lilkee got caught in bureaucratic quagmire which was very demoralizing for me, I continue to feel its reverberations until today as it is shown in schools, colleges, NGOs… I receive calls from strangers telling me they have seen the film, and what it means to them, and that has made the entire exercise worth it.

AR: What would be your advice to all the young women out there who want to be filmmakers?

BM:This advice is not for women as such, I don’t think young women in particular need any advice from me. But I would tell any young filmmaker to try and go to film school. It’s an opportunity to hone your skills without worrying about how you are looking on the job. And I would advise every filmmaker to assist someone after film school. I didn’t do it, but I realize now that it is a disadvantage. Assisting allows you to ease yourself into the industry, and to get to know how it works, and to make valuable professional contacts.

By Aparna V. Singh

Gita Aravamudan started her journalistic career in the 1960s when female journalists were still not common in India. Since then, her writing has been wide-ranging – from fiction to critiques on cinema. Of special interest to us, is her extensive writing on gender and women’s issues. In 2007, Penguin published her Disappearing Daughters, on female foeticide in India – a book that was received very well by readers and generated much discussion on the subject.

With her latest book, Unbound: Indian women at work, Gita again plunges into a subject very much on the minds of Indian women at present – the world of career, ambition, earning and the conflict with other roles that form a large part of their lives.

Aparna V. Singh (AS): Your last book, Disappearing Daughters tackled the subject of female foeticide in India. From that to working women and their challenges – how do you choose the subjects that you will cover?

Gita Aravamudan (GA): Disappearing Daughters happened because Penguin wanted me to do a book on gender issues. I had already done a series of articles on female infanticide in rural pockets of Tamil Nadu and I could use that as a base. I knew that the gender ratio was getting alarmingly skewed in our country. I thought it would be interesting to look at why this was happening. It was a depressing book to write.

I am a journalist so basically this was an investigative report rather than an academic treatise. I travelled all over the country and talked to women and men, to families, social workers, activists and academics. I came to realise that unlike infanticide which happened among poor, illiterate, rural families, foeticide was a crime committed by the educated middle class and rich people. They aborted their daughters not out of ignorance or poverty but specifically because they considered them to be economic burdens.

…unlike infanticide which happened among poor, illiterate, rural families, foeticide was a crime committed by the educated middle class and rich people. They aborted their daughters not out of ignorance or poverty but specifically because they considered them to be economic burdens.

In that anguish, my next book Unbound was born. In this book I wanted to prove that women could be right up there amongst the economically most productive. I wanted to write a book which showed that women can be high achievers and major wage earners provided society gives them the space to function as complete human beings.

AS: ‘Unbound’ deals with women working in many different fields – from entertainment to the corporate sector; were there common themes that emerged in terms of the challenges that these women spoke about?

GA: Certain themes are common to working women all over the world no matter what the job or the pay – bearing children and rearing a family is always a challenge. So is marriage and domestic commitment. Sexual harassment, safety at work and on the job, dowry, family support – these were some of the other common issues which came up whenever I spoke to women.

AS: Tell us a little about the process; you must have come across many, many stories. How did you decide finally on the ones to be used? What was compelling about them?

GA: I shortlisted and interviewed nearly 200 women for the book but used only about 50 of the interviews. My friend Sudheshna Shome Ghosh at Penguin held my hand right from the start to the finish and helped me to sort through the stories and place them thematically. I decided to focus on women in new age jobs between the ages of 25 to 40 who are serious about their careers. I wanted to get an across-the-country cross job sampling but decided to stick to the big cities. Obviously many of the stories were similar though not identical. I chose the one which illustrated an issue best. Then having got the stories together I had to find the pattern; discover what they were trying to tell me.

What emerged was fascinating. I found that there was a new feminine pattern of achievement – a feminine ambition and a feminine approach which was distinctly different from the traditional masculine one.

AS: A ‘feminine pattern of achievement’ – that’s an interesting concept!

GA: When a person puts her (or his) domestic responsibilities on par with her professional commitment, I call it a feminine approach to achievement. Work-life balance comes automatically to such a person because the family provides the cushioning against the often dog-eat-dog office atmosphere.

Also, such a person is able to bring new and more humane perceptions to office management. More and more men are beginning to understand and follow this essentially feminine pattern of achievement where the person strives to seek an even and comfortable balance between office and home rather than soar to great heights at the cost of domestic happiness.

AS: What about differences by age? Did younger women have a sense that things could be different for them?

GA: Almost all the women I interviewed fell into the 25 to 45 age group. Only my two ‘icon women’ (Kiran Mazumdar Shaw and Meena Ganesh) were a little older. I think age had little to do with ambition or approach to work. The ambitious women were ambitious and those who were not… were not! But certainly, I found that the younger women were more confident and self assured and had more courage and hope.

Thank you, Gita – we hope your book gives courage and hope to more women that they can truly pursue their dreams!

By Aparna V. Singh

Given the costs of printing and a small subscriber base, most literary magazines in India, whether in English, Hindi or other languages have had it tough. Enter the new independents – who start their ventures online, where on shoestring budgets, they can still reach out to the right audience.

TheBanyanTrees (TBT) is one such online creative magazine that recently completed a year of publishing. We interviewed Nivethitha Kumar, part of the all-women founding team of TBT (her co-founders are Anuradha Chandrashekaran and Dhivya Arasappan) to discuss their journey in the literary world and the pleasures and pains of starting up.

Nivethitha describes herself as “yet another software engineer in California!” An avid writer, she began blogging in 2005 and has recently had a short story published in Eleven Short Stories by Bloggers. Anu works in Lafayette, Louisiana and says that “During the course of working for this magazine I have developed a certain flair for digital media designing as well”. Dhivya lives in Austin, Texas and has found working on TBT ‘an absolute blast’. She also says, “I don’t like the term ‘feminist’, I prefer to say that I’m ‘pro-equality’, but let’s just say that you don’t want to start a fight about women’s rights with me.”

Aparna V. Singh (AVS): How did TheBanyanTrees come about?

Nivethitha Kumar (NK): TheBanyanTrees was an idea that came about when Anu, Dhivya and I were discussing about finding a place online where we could find all sorts of creative content. Specifically we were thinking about platforms where people who wanted to write or create art could showcase their talents. We then went, “Why not do it?”

It started out as a test project to see what kind of response an initiative like this would have. We were overwhelmed by the response and thus came about “TheBanyanTrees”

AVS: Given that many online literary magazines exist, what space do you see it occupying in the Indian literary community?

NK: Every month we suggest a theme and accept articles/art based on that theme. This makes every issue unique. We see ourselves as the literary magazine an avid reader would go to every month to see genuinely creative content. We have columns ranging from lifestyle to historical fiction every issue.

As for the writing community, TheBanyanTrees kindles their creativity. We challenge writers and artists with every theme and the response until now has been truly fantastic. We pride ourselves on being a platform where creative content producers can reach out to readers and express themselves.

AVS: What have been some of the highlights of the first year of running TBT?

NK: There is nothing that beats the sense of accomplishment in bringing an idea to life. This one year though exhausting has been one of the most rewarding experiences ever. There is so much to running a magazine that we had not thought of when we started off. We have stumbled along the way but every issue is a great learning experience.

AVS: What kind of writing does TBT look for?

NK: TBT as our tagline says is ‘a confluence of creative content’. We accept any article/writing as long as it is creative, has good content, and makes for a good read. We welcome short stories, flash fiction, poetry, book/movie reviews, articles on lifestyle, current affairs, humour. We have a theme that we publish on our website/facebook page.

Any articles we receive that do not fall under a theme are placed in a miscellaneous folder and we go to it each month to see if there is any article that we can use for the current month. We also run a ‘Motley’ issue where we publish the good articles that do not fall under a particular category. This way we make sure that no good article ever goes unpublished.

AVS: Where do you see TBT going? Does it have a business/commercial plan?

NK: That is a great question. This is something that all three of us bring up every once in a while. As we quickly found out, running a magazine is no easy task. We do have great plans for TBT and see it going commercial in a few months/years but that is currently in progress. Until then, we want to focus on building a strong reader base and a writing community that contributes regularly.

AVS: How easy/difficult is to do a venture like this when all the founders have other jobs as well? Is TBT likely to become a full-time occupation for any of you?

NK: Full time day jobs makes running TBT very tough. However, since there are three of us, we try and manage the various tasks based on each other’s schedule. We are very proud of the fact that we are able to pull a miracle out of the hat every month. At the end of the day it is the passion and love for what we do that helps us manage. I think all three of us would love to take it forward and make it our full time profession; however that is a big step and we are taking baby steps right now!

By Aparna V. Singh

Ishita Srivastava grew up in New Delhi and very early on, was inspired by the power of the arts to effect social change. After completing her MA degree in Cinema Studies and Cultureand Media at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts in May ‘09, Ishita left academia to explore her passion for making documentaries. She is interested in harnessing the power of non-fiction storytelling and exciting, new media forms to raise awareness about political, cultural and human rights issues. She currently lives in New York and works on the media team of a non-profit organization called Breakthrough that uses media tools to create awareness of human rights issues.

Desigirls is a documentary made by Ishita, on the experiences of queer women of South Asian origins/backgrounds, living in New York.

Aparna V. Singh (AVS): How did Desigirls come about? 

Ishita Srivastava (IS): I have been interested in gender theory and sexual identity since my undergraduate degree in London. After moving to New York in 2007, I became interested in the South Asian diaspora, and the ways in which Indians here relate to their dual cultures, as Indians and Americans, and their conceptualization of “Indianness.” Add to this my personal experience as a new “New Yorker”; the self-consciousness one often feels as a “foreigner,” the pride one simultaneously feels at assuming the title of a “New Yorker,” and the smidgeon of guilt one constantly feels at being a “deserter” (leaving India to come and make documentaries about someone else’s country), and I can’t help but be immersed in questions of identity.

In the first year of my MA, I came across a group of queer South Asian women, some of whom had been born in the U.S., and some in India. Their diverse experiences and attitudes to their complex identities inspired me to make Desigirls.

(Above, a quick 3-min peek at the Desigirls documentary film; the entire 20-min film is found here in two parts – 1,2)

AVS: In the documentary you have Priyanka and Ashu, comfortable on camera, and ‘A’, who is still in the closet. Was there a common thread in people’s responses? 

IS: People were remarkably open with me- both men and women, in and out of the closet. It helped that I was Indian and familiar with issues associated with South Asian culture. The obvious problem arose when it came to talking on camera. The irony was – those willing to talk on camera were those who either had happy stories, or whose erstwhile issues (with their families, their own struggles with their identities, etc) had been resolved. While those stories were important, the voices I really wanted to represent were the hardest to show on camera.

I was lucky that with ‘A,’ she understood that her story was crucial in the context of the “cause,” and knew that it would reach out to other people like her, and especially to parents of people like her, that might be dealing with similar issues. While she is not out to her parents even now, I feel like her decision to tell her story on camera was a step in her coming out process.

AVS: At one point in the documentary, Priyanka mentions that her friends from India have been more tolerant of her sexual preferences than those raised in the US of A. Is that too broad a generalization perhaps? 

IS: Well, it is reflective of her personal experience rather than a general comment. My decision to include that statement (as a line of thought) within the film was based on the fact that I heard a number of people make similar remarks. I find it fascinating to look at the ways in which the diasporic experience impacts different communities in different ways.

By no means do I think that all Indians from India are more accepting of alternative sexualities. It is important to note that the “Indian born-Indians” here belong to a specific cultural-educational background. Currently, the majority of Indian society is not accepting of alternate sexualities and relationships. In a strongly collectivist culture such as ours (a view that Priyanka mentions, and I agree with), there is a lot of resistance to those that are “different.” One can only hope that with greater representations of LGBT people in mainstream media, art and culture, as well as the visibility of queer individuals in society, people will come to respect it.

AVS: ‘A’ talks about the pressure on girls to conform to certain notions of ‘Indianness.’ Do you think Indians who’ve migrated abroad sometimes suffer from this fixed idea of India? And that in a sense is what makes it even more ‘awful’ for a woman of Indian origin to be queer?  

IS: I think there are two issues at play here. I do think that emigrant Indians who are bringing their children up amongst different cultures, feel a more pressing need to conform to a notion of ‘Indianness.’ However, I think that Indians in India too are driven by a strong desire to conform to norms set by society (as are many cultures), and it is only the notion of ‘Indianness’ that might differ across continents, while the basic need stays the same.

In this respect I feel that what makes it ostensibly ‘worse’ for an Indian woman to be gay than a man is a very deep-rooted double standard that exists between men and women in Indian society and culture. The same double-standards that educate men over women, that dictate what women wear, that favour sons over daughters and generally make it harder to be a woman than a man in many South Asian cultures, also translate when it comes to gay men and gay women. As my character ‘A’ told me, it was she who had dress up and go to the temple with her mother while her brother was given the choice about whether to go or not.

AVS: One issue I had with the film is that it’s really too short! You started out exploring issues like queer women who’ve had to face some really violent reactions from family, but it doesn’t get explored in detail. 

IS: I am glad that the film gave you enough to bite on and I’m sorry that it wasn’t longer. I would have loved to make it into a longer piece but since it was my MA thesis film, it was constrained by budget and time. With reference to ‘S,’ the character who suffered abuse from her family when she told them about her sexuality, well, it was her story that inspired me to make the film, but after initially agreeing to do it, she felt that it would be too difficult for her to open up on camera. After watching me film the support group meeting she felt that the stories that I was filming were only representative of the “happy” stories, and that those like hers needed to be heard, so she walked in mid-shoot and decided to tell her story as long as I kept her anonymous.

I definitely intend to make a similar short film in India, with Indian/South Asian queer women who live in India, so let’s hope that happens soon!

AVS: For those interested, what other such films would you suggest? 

IS: Since my film is a documentary, I will talk about some of the few Indian films dealing with queer content that have impacted me the most. There is a general dearth of representations of ‘queerness’ in South Asian popular culture; while male homosexuality is somewhat alluded to (albeit in limited and caricatured ways such as in Dostana and Kal Ho Na Ho), there is little if any reference to female homosexuality in popular Indian media and culture. It is for this reason that I wanted to focus purely on South Asian women in my film.

Even 14 years later, Deepa Mehta’s 1996 Fire remains one of the only fiction films to show a sexual relationship between women. Some years ago I watched a beautiful Malayalam fiction film called Sancharam or The Journey directed by Ligy Pullapally, a woman filmmaker. Within the realm of documentaries, one of my favorite queer filmmakers is Sonali Gulati, who is also from Delhi, like myself. I recently watched her first feature documentary entitled I Am, which looks at the way that the parents of Indian queer men and women have dealt with their children’s sexuality, and the ways in which their relationships have been impacted. The openness and honesty with which she deals with her own life is reflected in the movie, and brings a lot of depth to the individual stories. Watching Sonali’s film inspired me to try and make deeply honest work that speaks to the people and places that mean the most to me.

AVS: Finally, what plans for the future? As a documentary film-maker, what other subjects interest you?  

IS: To me, the point is about telling stories that need to be told, with a purpose to inspire, motivate, and raise awareness. This could be about a community that is facing persecution, an individual that has lived an interesting life or a forest that is being taken over by a corporation. For me, documentaries are about making people think about things that they might not have thought about before; about taking everyday experiences and interactions and bringing out what is unique in them.

Ideally, I want to travel and make documentaries about cultures and issues in different countries, motivated by stories with a socio-cultural, as well as a human rights angle. New York city, where I live at the moment, is a place that gives me inspiration, energy, optimism and experience, all at once. Just by walking the streets of this extremely diverse city, the cultural observer and documentary filmmaker in me gets sharpened and inspired on a daily basis.

Not that one is ever done learning, but at a later point in my career, I would definitely like to make films in India. Being my home, it is definitely where I feel most connected to the issues. Although my decision to make documentaries developed during my undergraduate and graduate studies in London and New York, my motivation for this career choice has everything to do with my childhood, my own people, my culture, and my country. Often I think I might be asking for too much by wanting to be everywhere all at once, so let’s see where life takes me!