Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Hyderabad
`We voice what is wrong'
"We have never sat and talked to each other although we have collaborated with each other," said Mallika Sarabhai, who teamed up with Samia Malik to produce Colors of the Heart. While Mallika Sarabhai is well known as a dancer-choreographer, London-based Pakistani Samia Mallik is a lyricist-cum-singer. Both caught up with each other for a few minutes at Taj Krishna . The conversation recorded by Radhika Rajamani:
Mallika: When did you first start writing?
Samia: I started when I was singing and learning Indian classical music in London. I lived in Norwich and had to travel 200 miles to find a teacher. I came from a tradition where it was unacceptable for a woman to stand and sing on stage. I was singing film songs and ghazals in small programmes and trying to find things I thought were meaningful politically. Once I went to do a women's event where I announced on stage I would like to sing if anybody had poems or songs. Ruksana Ahmed was in the audience. She had just edited and translated We Simple Women.
Mallika: So was that the beginning?
Samia: She said here's the book. I started composing music from what I had learnt already.
Mallika: How did you compose? Did you play harmonium or something?
Samia: In fact I just started singing. I don't know how I do it. People ask me how I write my tunes. Sometimes I sit on the piano or play the harmonium but often the tune will suggest itself from the words or I have the tune and the words just come around. You know the act of being creative is not linear at all.
Major work
Mallika: I'm waiting for the day when I can have computer electrodes plugged to my head so that when I get an idea (which is usually in the middle of the night) it can be recorded. For my biggest piece Devi Mahatmya - Of Journey Inwards I could hear the music, could see the lighting and the sets. Then I could never reproduce it the way I saw it.
Samia: It's often in the in-between times when you are going to sleep or waking up that thoughts occur. Something about being alert but being in a meditative state.
Mallika: Yes probably. I often get my dance compositions as visual images so that I see shapes. My kick-off point most often is music.
Samia: That's interesting. I'm going towards the visual arts too. It's similar visual work - equivalent to the musical work I do about the same issues - power, strength, breakdown.
Mallika: Somebody was asking me earlier this morning about how I write, communicate and dance. I said they are all different strings to the same instrument.
What I am doing is communicating my concern and concerns that I think people need to think about. How I communicate them might vary with several practical things. - These are the things that engine me.
Samia: I think that's the really important phrase - because fuel for creativity is interesting.
Where does that fuel come from for you? I know where mine comes from.
Mallika: I think both of ours comes from this basic fight for injustice. I don't think either you or I have ever said `Oh fusion is in fashion, let's fuse'. Ours comes from a passion to fight injustice, voice what is wrong and to do it with a hope that it can be corrected.
Samia: Yes.
Mallika: Have you ever created something because there is funding available? I have never been able to do that.
Samia: No I can't. I can't see the point of creating work that hasn't got integrity. I have three words I live by - courage, integrity and beauty. Those three things must work if I am to be satisfied. That is the passion.
Mallika: Because I can't not say it. We will burst, we will explode unless we talk about it.
Samia: I wanted to write my own experiences of Asian women and the issues facing me. When I started writing I had two children and worked as a teacher. I would come home, put the children to bed and stay up late and songs would pour. Sometimes I would write three songs in one day. And some days I couldn't write any.
Mallika: I have learnt there are periods when things are simmering and one must not take them as dead periods. Many years I used to think my creativity is finished. It is never so. Things are cooking at a much more sub-conscious or semi-conscious level.
Samia: I think you and I will be doing this till we die.
Mallika: I agree. Samia: When I first met you I was working with a band Garam masala which had fine musicians. But not one of them understood the political-sexual content of what I was doing. When I saw you perform I wanted to work with you.
Partners in art
Mallika: When I heard your songs I felt I found my musical counterpart.
Samia: I felt here is my visual counterpart.
Mallika: I feel strongly about taking `Colors of the Heart' to other countries.
Samia: There is scope for that as there's a very international flavour to it. The personal and the general experiences come together in it.
Mallika: For me women's issues are human rights issues. Women have unfortunately been the largest marginalised community over a 1000-year history of patriarchy. But there are lots of marginalised communities, andI always say at one time in each of our lives we must have felt the other. The other means being hated, division, often cruelty, self-doubt and feeling helpless and alone.
Samia: Don't you think it's the biggest single issue facing our world - our challenge as human beings is to get past that?
Mallika: And not say everything is homogenous but to say otherness does not mean superiority or inferiority, it means just difference is difference. The issue is when difference becomes a power game. We are showing victimisation of a more recognisable form.
Do you think your children have got any of your passion?
Samia: My children have been quite influenced by the political stance I have taken.
Mallika: Were you brought up in London?
Samia: I was brought up at Bradford. When I came to work with you last year I felt I belonged here.
Mallika: India is a civilisation of people who lived with difference. That's what we are forgetting. This is the first time I am working with five other women. It feels wonderful.
Is it the same to you?
Samia: I would say it is an example of how we can be at our very best.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Hyderabad
|
