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Magazine
Agent provocateur
KAREN YAP LIH HUEY
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Thought-provoking in her work, Rakini Devi highlights social issues so honestly that watching her performance requires courage and understanding.
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Photo: Karen Yap Lih Huey
complicated relationship with India: Rakini Devi.
It’s difficult to forget a conversation with Rakini Devi. She’s funny. She’s intelligent. She’s honest. And, she’s vulnerable. At her home in Melbourne, she talks about her love and tribulations with her homeland, India,
that have continuously challenged her identity and values as an artist and a person. She was born in Kolkata to a Bengali father and a Burmese mother. The family decided to move to Perth 20 years ago, after which her theatre work took her to Sydney, Melbourne and different parts of the world.
Her passion for Indian mythology and dance techniques prompted Rakini to form a cross-cultural dance school in Perth, which was then — more than a decade ago — one of the very few of such schools in Australia. It was also an outlet for her to educate others about issues that troubled society. “I’ve been plagued for many years by people labelling me … the usual stereotype of people from cross-cultural background. There was a lot of ignorance but not aggression. It was more passive racism that I’d encountered.”
“Rather than stand-up and be self-righteous, let me create work that speaks for the issues I want to highlight without sounding presumptuous,” she says, surrounded by striking images of herself in the theatre: as a female terrorist, an artist in transition, an Indian widow, a phoney new age guru and devotional works of the Goddess Kali, among others. Over time, she included visual arts into her theatre work through collaboration with other artists, when she discovered that she works well with still images.
Far from being defeated by her adventures and misadventures in Kolkata during her trip late last year, she came away with inspiring stories gathered from the Indian media. The stories — murder cases, suicides, dowry, infanticide and domestic violence — are now a subject of a grant application for a theatre work that she’s planning to produce with a Japanese documentary maker and Santanu Bose, a Bengali director.
Stranger in the self
She chuckles as she recalls her experiences in Kolkata after a nine-year absence, “My own city assaulted me on every level. I behaved worse than the tourists. My first day, I had to run to my hotel room to hide … the noise, the pollution, the heat, everything. It assaulted every sense of mine. I was all set for the Puja festival and going to work with Santanu Bose. I had all these plans but after three days in Kolkata, I was down with food poisoning.
“I was living in India for two months,” she continues, laughing an infectious laugh, “I was blasé, thinking that I had acclimatised. But India is not Kolkata. Now that I’ve a month to reflect on it, I think next time when I go back, hopefully sooner, Kolkata has to be the first thing on my agenda. I have to undergo rigorous training and arm myself with all medication under the sun.
“I speak Bengali. I dream in Bengali. I read Bengali. Bengalis are sentimental, warm and talented people. And for all those reasons, Kolkata is amazing. I always look for the positives when there.”
Her two months in India were packed — she went to Adishakti, a theatre laboratory in Puducherry; learnt Indian martial arts and trained local dancers there before heading to Nrityagram, a dance village near Bangalore to learn Odissi dance movements. After a 14-year absence, what greeted her at the dance village was an oasis of beauty and fluidity of the dances. Deeply inspired by the dancers, for 15 days she learnt vigorous, graceful movements and exercises and even produced a piece for the dancers before she headed to Kolkata.
She has been visiting India frequently over the last 20 years and always takes away life-changing experiences. This time, her home country made her realise that she has changed. Inevitably for those who live abroad, there comes a time where they seek a place to call home, to set roots. She came home with the idea that India could be a place that she could retire to during her final years. “Could I possibly go back and live there?”
Cultural differences
Following her mother’s death three years ago, when Rakini was closely involved it struck her that the plight of the aged in Western society was horrific in comparison to Eastern society where the aged are usually respected and taken care of. Looking to her relatives in Kolkata, she said they are proud of their home despite opportunities to live in New York or Paris.
“I could understand that when my uncle is at home; he’s the master of his home. He’s surrounded by the community and is not considered second-class. He has had the same friends and same maid for 17 years. The girls at Nrityagram, when they toured a lot in America, said they would never dream of living overseas.
“They said: ‘We are taken care of. Why do we want to live abroad?’ I told them that they wouldn’t want to leave because it’s difficult. Again, I come back to the issue of a single woman who is also an artist. It’s a struggle as an independent artist to live and to persistently do what you love. When you do it alone, it’s more difficult.”
Drawing comparison between Indian and Australian artists, she admires Indian artists for their talents, skills and experimental work. Not only are Indian artists well-informed and well-supported by the government, they tour a lot, she says, adding that Australian artists in general are isolated. “So, I’m constantly challenging myself.”
Art and responsibility
As a storyteller, content is important and is a driving force for her. “Art, especially in this day and age, has a responsibility.” She feels her responsibility in Australia is to inform people of her culture. Although it’s her views, it affects not just herself but others who come from different cultures and speak different languages. Art is nourishing, she points out. “It’s an informing element. If I perform to converts or artists, it satisfies me but to do it for the general public, it satisfies me even more. They might be moved by the content because art speaks to people on different levels.”
When she was in Japan, she did a work titled “Women in Transit”, showcasing three women who are practising artists living in countries not their own. Despite all the difficulties, she still finds Australia the place that has given her the opportunity to do her work. “This is where I was supported. This is where I was given the opportunity. As someone who came from a different culture, I’ve been lucky that I was extremely well-supported by the artistic community and funding bodies,” she says.
She is quick to add that the independence she enjoys in Australia is something that she can’t readily disregard. In India, she found herself helpless — it’s not easy to travel alone. “I’m not sure if I could adjust to all the other things that struck me down the last time and the disturbing images that I saw. But I felt and realised that I’ve been away from India for too long to be able to give an honest opinion about my future in India.”
A space called home
However, for her India is unique. It gives her inspiration, resources, and deep human relationships and contacts. “I know this after living in Australia for 20 years. I’ve never been able to forge long-lasting bonds such as what I have in India. I know that I could always go back to these people and pick up the relationships as if I had left them just yesterday.”
Whether her future is with India or not, she’s emotionally and spiritually bound to it. She looks very much to India in an esoteric way, very much like a goddess. “If she accepts me back, then I’ll go back. If this is what is supposed to happen to me, I accept it fully,” she says, giving a thoughtful look at her well-tended garden where a miniature Goddess Kali is seated at the base of a broad tree branch.
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