The Desh Pardesh Project DP 001 - Interview with Amita Handa
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Not a Place On The Map- The Desh Pardesh Project DP 001 - Interview with Amita Handa Researcher/Interviewer: Anna Malla (AM) Participant: Amita Handa (AH) Interview Date: June 8, 2015 Interview Location: Conducted in person at Bloor and Dufferin in Toronto, ON. — AM: What were you up to/doing in Toronto when the first conversations about throwing something like Desh were happening? AH: I don’t remember what I was doing in Toronto. I remember it was like the late 80s (maybe 88,89) and I was dating Ian Rashid’s brother at the time and this is how it all gets connected. And at that time, he was organizing Khush. He was involved in Khush and then he started talking about Salaam Bombay. I went to the first Salaam Bombay and I think it was in the 519 Community Church Centres in a small room and there was like some samosas. I remember that but I don’t remember too much about the content but I remember it being a kind of small gathering. I think Ian was working out between the lines press and he was talking about organizing this kind of what started to grow into Desh Pardesh. At the time there was also the Toronto South Asian review which was another publication and it was the first time I kind of started hearing about these things. At the time probably in my life I think I had started going to university and I started connecting with the Women’s Centre at the UofT campus and I met some, like I think at the time I met this woman Baljit who used to be the head of the women’s centre and she’s not around anymore. And then there was Sharon Fernandez around that time too. And anyway, I met Anita …what’s her name it’s going to come to me … another woman. And uh they kind of started talking about their experiences. They were very politicized and I wasn’t at the time and they were talking about their experiences of racism and I had always saw my experiences as very individual like oh the people at the school didn’t like me and there was something was wrong with me and that’s just the way people were and they just weren’t very nice. And in these conversations with them they were like no Amita don’t you understand what you experienced was racism and I’m like what. And they were like we all went through it too and they kind of started talking about their experiences as well. So that was I think the beginnings of the politicization. Because I went to a very white school in Toronto. Very few people, any people of colour in that school. So then anyway Ian and this thing happened-Desh Pardesh. I remember my first Desh Pardesh was very mind shifting for me because a couple of things happened. For one thing in terms of the music. I can’t remember if it was the first or second Desh Pardesh but we did invite Dj Ritu down, and she played on the Rivoli on Queen Street. And it was the first time I had been in this kind of mainstream space and heard South Asian music. And I thought it was so bizarre because I had always been to the Rivoli and it was always the king of the white rock and roll place where you go and you drink and suddenly we took over the same place. And I remember at the end of the night she played Chalte Chalte which was this song my parents used to listen to from this Pakeezah movie. And I remember thinking that up until then my life had been very divided it was like okay you listen to this South Asian stuff at home and once you leave the house you have to recreate yourself and then you’re in the white world. And because there were very few allies at the school I went to. I had these two separate lives the South Asian life and then what happened at school. And I remembered in that moment it all came together and I was like oh my god I never would even think I would hear Chalte Chalte like in this mainstream club space. So that was really pivotal. I remember even Desh Pardesh, like a couple of the people, there was this really incredible--it collapsed so many stereotypes I think I had, not only about ourselves, but even people- so many. I remember, for example, and I can’t remember his name right now, but he was a South Asian Punjabi taxi driver from British Columbia and he had flown up, but he was also a poet. He sort of talked a lot about his experiences. He was also older at the time. But being a cab driver tied with this whole idea of Desh Pardesh being away from home and trying to create this new sense of home and some of the experiences of racism. And I remember his things really sticking out to me. And then even Pratibha Parmar and some of her stuff. Sunil Gupta who was a photographer. It was a place where you could really begin to explore this idea of identity, which I think was very important to me at the time. Especially because I grew up in this kind of, like my household was very South Asian. A lot of community and cultural expectations and outside of school there was this whole double life right. So I think it was the first time there was this space to be able to talk about this-to talk about what it means to be South Asian. Then all the challenges that came within that Desh Pardesh community, you’d get this leftist political activist that might be talking about racism but might not have that lgbtq or the anti- homophobia lens to it. So it was a constant kind of challenge and I would say there was probably even amongst the organizers the tension that ‘okay is this person political enough or not?’, but do we want to connect with people who are in the mainstream and also hear from them but then and also shift them along. Like what’s the space going to look like? So in that way it was great and I think we also learned a lot about different South Asian communities all over the world. I remember sometimes like in the films I remember there’s this one filmmaker. No someone did a little documentary that settled somewhere in the states but that was somewhere near the Mexican border. And how like the rotis became tortillas (chuckle). Like they were just talking about like this whole fusion that was happening in a lot of this South Asian community that also spoke Spanish. And we talked about like I don’t know any Jewish South Asians. And a lot of people didn’t even know that there was this community of Jewish South Asians that existed. So it was a lot educating ourselves and of connecting with this diasporic South Asian community that we are. So that was really amazing I think and powerful. And in terms of the music so when DJ Ritu came she and I were actually childhood friends. This was another interesting story so her mom and my mom were really really good friends. But we hadn’t connected in years. I guess we lost touch when we were like 6 or 7 or 8 or something. And here she was kind of invited to Desh Pardesh and we reconnected and she said Amita why don’t you guys start something here in Toronto. Because in the UK at the time it was like the big Asian explosion or whatever they were describing it as musically. So there was a lot happening but there was nothing happening here. So she took myself and my friend Vinita and we went to, um, Gerrard street and she bought us these like 4 bhangra tapes, cassette tapes, and she was like here you go like this is what’s in right now. And so then my friend Vinita was like let’s put in this proposal to CKLN maybe we’ll get like this half hour show once a month. Um and then they gave us this 2 hour slot every week. And we’re like we only have these 4 cassettes what are we going to do with 2 hours. So that was a very interesting process because we had very little training we only had this one day two, three hour training and then we find out after two months that we have this show and that we’re kind of thrown into CKLN. And then shortly, I think after like a couple of shows Vinita told me that she was going to leave to travel. AM: And this is Vinita..? AH: Srivastava, eah. So I was like oh my god like how am I going to run this show? And it was so funny cause the first time we went in there they were like okay, you know, there’s that, there’s a show before you doing their show and they basically sign off and then that’s it you’re on. And we didn’t even know how to use the mics and we didn’t know anything. We were like you can’t leave us! And there was this woman Marva Jackson, a black woman who used to do a show and she was like no no no okay I’m going to help you guys.