Interview #148 — Pallavi Sharda
by Kim lam
Pallavi Sharda is a performing artist, writer and advocate. She has starred in films such as the Oscar nominated Lion; Save Your Legs; Begum Jaan and Hawaizaada and Tom and Jerry (2021) and television shows Beecham House, Pulse, Les Norton and the new ABC iso-comedy Retrograde.
She studied law, French and media and was on her way to an illustrious career, before running away to join the movies. Her untitled memoir is due for publication in 2021 and she is very open to title suggestions.
Pallavi spoke to Kim Lam about idealism, personal and communal narratives, and creating space.
In the lead-up to this conversation, I've been reflecting on the two very different trajectories of our lives. We’ve crossed paths at two main places in time: Year 8 (2000), and now (2020). During those earlier times you seemed already hyper-aware of interpersonal complexities and cultural nuances irrelevant to most people our age. A strong sense of self-awareness was clearly apparent. Whereas the height of my self-awareness seemed to be that I was still such a child.
I wonder how you feel about that Pallavi, today? How did that awareness influence where you currently are?
Your conjecture is so apt. It's something I've often thought about myself, but you're probably one of the first humans in the world to articulate it outside of me. It is special, right, to have a close friend who has actually witnessed you in that manner. That person is still who I am. Or at least, I am in the process of returning to that essential ‘self’.
I can't speak for anyone else, but at that young age I didn't feel like my expansive curiosity had a place, or a home. I come from a family where ideas have been very deeply explored: ideas of truth and oneness. My grandmother was a philosopher and teacher. I also traveled when I was quite young and I saw different lives which sparked an intense curiosity about these questions.
I think that's what led me on the path of dancing and performing in life because it felt like freedom, which felt like truth. And that feeling was intoxicating. ‘Migrant kids’ often have the condition of being limited by virtue of the box in which they are operating. In the moment of dance, I felt personal expansiveness. But I guess on the other hand when you consider the idea of who is watching, the audience and the gaze—it had cultural and social limitations. So, arguably it was actually the epitome of an ongoing contest and a very early introduction into the question of transcending boundaries through art.
At a practical level, I was fighting, wondering, how do I experience this freedom? How do I fight for this ability to shine and to perform and do what I really truly believe I was put on this earth to do? Can I find a space for it?
Your art forms are all very expressive and public-facing: acting, dancing, writing, advocacy work. Amidst this, there seemed to be a yearning for a more personal form of self-expression. Did you go to Bollywood to find that space?
One hundred percent. I think because the fight has always been for space to express. That's taken up my time. It’s an ongoing process.
I first went to India with my bags a decade ago. But it quickly became tricky because all of a sudden there was so much else at play. Even after having fulfilled ‘the dream’ a few years in— where I actually became a leading lady in big Bollywood productions (against some ridiculously tough odds and circumstances, I might add)—it me took a lot of time to realise that the space in India, too, was intrinsically limiting. Perhaps even more so than that from which I was trying to break free in Australia.
In Australia, I felt almost unpalatable. As a dancer, it was very clear that I was a brown person doing ‘brown person dancing’, and I was not going to have the space to do what I wanted to do. Or if I had to do it, it had to be unseen. Or relegated to a particular space reserved for my kind of person.
At a certain point I realised or at least felt that in the real world and in the workplace I would always and only be seen as a brown woman. Until that point everything was a meritocracy from which I benefited. I got a scholarship to a private school, I skipped a year level, I got into law school. Meritocracy worked well for me. At the end of that tunnel, to be told “Sorry, you don't look the part”, was a slap in the face. That really shattered so much of what my whole life was built on.
I was told that the way things were here, I wouldn't get any work (initially: as a broadcast journalist). I was like: fuck that. It was a real reaction, my leaving. A really juvenile, visceral reaction. It also just made me turn to the seemingly most ridiculous option: to chase my childhood dream of becoming an actress in India. I thought I might as well chase the impossible, if what was meant to be possible was so impossible anyway.
But when I went to India, I was also unpalatable because I brought so much passion and idealism as both an artist but also in the realm of social justice. It was almost, I think, scary for the people in front of me. I don't think they really understood what to do with me within their ‘mafioso strictures’ where girls (certain class and privilege excepted) are expected to sort of hang around with a head-bowed obeisance until they are given a license to speak.
It was clearly naïve of me to seek belonging in a place simply because people looked like me or made the music that I grew up with. But I guess I can be forgiven for chasing the source of those influences given the ostensible lack of alternative.
As a dancer, it was very clear that I was a brown person doing ‘brown person dancing’, and I was not going to have the space to do what I wanted to do. Or if I had to do it, it had to be unseen. Or relegated to a particular space reserved for my kind of person.
It must have felt culturally incongruent for them, as well as for you.
Yes, and that was shocking to me, hurtful. I had already heard whispers about India being a misogynistic and potentially dangerous place for young women who wanted to work in Bollywood. I was given ‘friendly’ advice early on to not bother with Bollywood, to go to the South Indian film industry because I was darker than what was acceptable or at least that people are more professional in the south which might appeal to my ‘western ideals’. And I was just like, no, that's inauthentic—I mean, I'm a North Indian, Hindi-speaking performer. The blatant colourism was hard to swallow. So I had all these very non-strategic ideas about what I was doing. I just went with my idealism. I think I've never lost my idealism. I don't know whether it's good or bad but inevitably my practice again ended up becoming about creating space, and not just taking what little I was being given.
Meritocracy was and perhaps still is a system that doesn’t exist in the Indian film industry. It's a fact which is obvious, not hidden. Everything comes down to ‘where you are from’ and the consequent power that you might wield. It's like you're a coordinate on a grid of categories, to be pinned based on colour, class, religion, gender, age. I had to learn those particularities. I didn't know the difference between a girl from South Bombay and the suburbs of Bombay. People would throw these labels at me and I was like, woah—I now need to fit into this lexicon of identity. But I didn't. The closest I could get to an identity there was as a Non-Resident Indian (NRI) which is the word given to that diaspora and came with its own assumptions on behalf of people looking at me from the outside.
But no one would have known that from the age of two or three, I had been meticulously (subconsciously) training myself in the ways of being a ‘true Indian’—that’s where I thought I would find true belonging. You can't tell that I'm ‘not Indian’ when I am in India. On the one hand I was ostracised for being foreign, on the other some (hilariously) speculate that I was lying about being Australian. Just bizarro negotiations constantly.
How does it feel to be back?
Melbourne is the place I left. I was so young when I left that I have never really adulted here. To be back under the circumstances of the pandemic, and to not be allowed to leave my parent’s home feels like a weird cosmic trick, but is also so essential for my own healing.
Your life story has already been probed at so much in the media, often as a migrant success story for Australia. How does that portrayed narrative sit with you?
The story became quite public in both India and Australia about 5 years ago. The spin on it was very much “girl from the wrong side of the tracks (suburban Melbourne) ends up ‘coming good'. I became a lead actress in the biggest film industry in the world and that became a narrative of the migrant daughter who came good, for Australia. But the opposition of that is: why couldn't I fucking work here?
The narrative switched gears when I made a decision to leave money, fame...and work on an ABC show (Pulse—the first tv show I did in Australia) which was stripping all of the Bollywood flashiness and privilege that I'd garnered and earnt and could have held onto. For me, the stardom stuff was a weird by-product that came with certain mod cons, which you can really get used to. But I was intrinsically uncomfortable with those vestiges. I think that discomfort comes from having been an underdog and never having taken privilege for granted, knowing how hard I had to work for it, that it would never be something I simply inherited, but had to work twice, thrice, ten times harder than the next person to get close to.
It's a state of mind, being the Other, being the underdog. Having to choose something to fight against. Now I've adopted it as a comfortable place for me. But I would rather be on the periphery than pretend.
How do you comfort yourself and grow in the face of setbacks? What do you do for personal sustainability?
My spiritual self and intellectual self are always in opposition. My spiritual self will say, it doesn't matter. It is just finding that quiet and understanding the demarcation between thoughts and awareness. Balance is something I need to constantly work on, it doesn’t come easy to me.
My societal self says I have to do good work. I derive nourishment from positive output. I use yoga and dance when I can to ground the two forces. The lockdown has helped. When you are not on a set for 12-15 hours a day and sleeping in strange hotel rooms and flitting in and out of different characters, you can come back to yourself.
Work is how I persevere. It's a modus operandi that I can't shake.
So I had all these very non-strategic ideas about what I was doing. I just went with my idealism. I think I've never lost my idealism. I don't know whether it's good or bad but inevitably my practice again ended up becoming about creating space, and not just taking what little I was being given.
What do you think the Australian film industry does well? And how has it evolved for people of colour?
I returned to Australia the year after a Diversity Commission came out with its report. It all coincided with me being utterly fed up with the misogyny entrenched in India, and a real longing for family and home. It made sense to test the waters here. But it was incredibly strange to come back to Australia a foreigner yet again.
People often don't understand the colonial and migrant histories of this nation. We've all been asked to be subsumed by these Australian myths. I held onto them very proudly for a long time. I still accept that perhaps I had a more extraordinary life by virtue of being born into this country but there is just an essential fact which needs to be more widely enunciated: this is not a white country, this is a ‘country’ built through an intense period of British Imperialism and emancipated from Empire because of white privilege. Other colonies were crushed, not given wings to fly. White Australia is a blip in the history of this land, and I think we need to see it that way. We need to enrich the lives of our indigenous brothers and sisters—this is how we can heal.
POC struggles are not always seen by your average white creator. What's great is the recognition that this is needed. Has it come very late? Yes. Is it twenty years late? Yes. Why are we even saying things like ‘POC’? We are still operating in a world of opposition.
The UK made and celebrated films like Bend it like Beckham in 2002. Why are our first conversations around these stories only happening now? Until this point, we have relied on tokenism and representation without cultural nuance. We need South Asian’s and other non-white creative groups directing and writing the work and being actively given the space to do so.
I sometimes think it is scarier in Australia talking about race than it is in India talking about sex. Because in India I can at least fit in with the archetype of the ‘annoying activist girl’. Whereas in Australia you're for the first time literally shining a mirror in the face of people who have told you how to behave your whole life and telling them that this is not acceptable. I’ve experienced make up artists paint my face the ‘wrong shade of brown’ and then assuring me that they have “worked on Indigenous skin” before or even “worked in Thailand”. In the past I have just frozen and watched it happen uncomfortably because I have been worried about embarrassing others when these mistakes occur. But that onus should not be mine. The burden of guilt has to shift— dramatically. Those who have been marginalised their whole lives need to be given the time and space to reacquaint themselves with their voices and to be able to articulate their particularity.
Where are you finding the richest sense of hope right now?
I think the discourse around Me Too and Black Lives Matter have empowered voices and faces that were previously muted. These movements have applied to me personally on so many levels and directly to the communities within which I have operated. The act of writing a book in my own words, in an unfettered manner and without fear of consequence has become an even more emboldened activity. Previously when I would write, there was a trepidation that came from having felt marginalised for so long, which is perhaps why it was slow-going. That has washed away.
I think there is an awakening in collective consciousness which many of us are experiencing despite the direness of global politics and the obvious public health crisis. In a way so much of it feels linked to the spiritual teachings I grew up with—ideas around a global oneness, a universal spirit or soul. In Hinduism, the most supreme version of this collective consciousness is known as ‘Paramatman’.
The ability to witness the reconciliation of so many questions that I had when I was younger (going back to your first question) is a beautiful thing.
What happens next? What future projects are you currently working towards?
The book—which is turning into this strange creature separate from me. I want just truths to be in there. It doesn't serve a narrative at all. It's a simple act of baring everything and hopefully tearing up my own narrative. Because we create these mythological archetypes, and they're bullshit. They only serve to make people feel less than. I've got nothing to lose. And I feel very fortunate to be able to do this. It's my safe haven—work. While it's harrowing and difficult, I get to be an artist. And to right now spend my life in consideration.
Do you have any advice for emerging performing artists?
If you believe in it, truly. You’ll do it. It’s inevitable.
Who are you inspired by?
My mother. She is an unsung warrior to me, and I have inherited so much of my fight from her. I cannot imagine what it was like to be a beautiful, brown, Indian-accented woman in engineering academia in the nineties, in Australia.
What are you listening to?
A lot of Afro-Jazz tunes and generally enjoying discovering folk beats from around the world that in some way resemble the more tribal rhythms that drew me to Indian music. Sounds which resonate in sacral areas—there is an incredible universality to these sounds. I’m also rediscovering a lot of old music for the first time, stuff that I didn’t know about because I was too busy listening to Indian music as a child.
What are you reading?
The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel van der Kolk; Whose Story is This by Rebecca Solnit; The Good Immigrant by Nikesh Shukla.
How do you practice self-care?
I practice Yoga and Pranayama when I can, using music and rhythm to guide me.
What does being Asian-Australian mean to you?
Being able to adjust in any environment and to any expectations. The illusory identifiers of race and place and the constant negotiation of permission to perform. A need to find and allow space for oneself amidst these negotiations.
Those who have been marginalised their whole lives need to be given the time and space to reacquaint themselves with their voices and to be able to articulate their particularity.
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Interview & Illustrations by Kim Lam