The Transcript

Karthika: Welcome Mili. Thank you so much for joining us today on CulturallyOurs. I know this is going to be a very, very interesting conversation. I cannot wait to chat with you.

Mili: I can’t wait. I’ve been waiting for for this podcast interview for at least 37 years. Well, I am 36 now, so I’ve been waiting for 37 years to share my story.

Karthika: This is your moment is yours. I know this is going to be fun. So let’s just jump right in. Your story is very interesting and it is a story of migration almost even before you were born. So can you tell us a little bit about your family, where you grew up and just how your initial years unfolded.

Mili: So I was born in Mwanza which is basically a part of Tanzania and I lived there probably three or four years until my parents moved out to Dar es Salaam, which is a much bigger city and I am technically a third generation African Indian. So my dad was born there and my dad’s dad was also born there. He must been, from what my mom told me, gotten there on a ship. Just like every Indian entrepreneur back then looking to enterprise. So he came maybe about a hundred years ago I’m guessing. And so he started this whole commercial real estate business and he owned multiple buildings and he would rent them out for commercial reasons. Sometimes in the early 70s when the country started getting nationalized these properties were taken away because of the rule that one group cannot have more money than the other. So it was taken away. Something similar happened in Uganda, but for other reasons there was more hatred as well. And they really wanted Indians out of that country. So that’s what happened. And we could have been minting and millions by now, but the unfortunate part is that the government did take a lot of our wealth and our buildings and our properties went to a point where we actually did not have our own home. My dad did not have his own home because it was all part of the one building so they had to fight for it and it took them years to actually get back their own house and that’s how, that’s what I was born.

Mili : So there was a lot, a lot of history and interesting facts there to my birth and to my place of origin. And I lived there only for a couple of years. And then of course I’ve moved out to Dar es Salaam, which is a much bigger city, a lot more, a lot more Indians there as well. Just to give you a background, my dad was born in Africa, my granddad was born in Africa, but my mom was born in India. So I’ve got all the Indian hookup and the culture from her. My dad lived in India for some time, but he’s mostly African. So if I were to ever ask my mom and my dad where do you belong? They’ve spent most of their adult hood in Dar es Salaam. So they can say they’re Africans. But for me it was my childhood and most of your childhood learning about who and what you are.

Mili: I think I can probably say from 10 to 18 years all I knew was all Africa and those are the formidable years. We have done the whole Africa thing – the national parks, the safaris but also the boating and the fishing and all the activities in and around Africa. Being surrounded in nature a lot, going to the beach pretty much every single day of my life, being so close to the waters so that, that is very hard to take away. It’s very, yeah, it’s just kind of stuck there.

Karthika: I am learning so much about you that I did not know before. I knew Dar es Salaam but did not know the family history that goes back over a 100 years. Right from your grandfather’s time, Africa is such a core part of your family. You talked a little bit about your memories, but what are some of the things that you’ve come to love about Africa and probably on the flip side to what are some things that you probably had challenges with when you were growing up and like you said, your formative years.

Mili: I think the challenge is I have to say is probably the fact that I never really understood this whole dichotomy between this African and Indian part of me and my family. We love to embrace their dancing. My mom and dad, I remember, they’d go to these African nights, which are basically the traditional dance nights and they’d come back and they’d be very excited to share these stories. And I would watch Goma (African Indian dance) when we’d go to the hotels and but we weren’t really friends with Africans. I would always ask my dad – you love the culture, you love the food, we live here, but how come you don’t have any African friends? How come they’re not part of your friends circle? So I really didn’t like that and I didn’t understand it. I didn’t like it because I felt like we were segregated like we had our own kind of life and they had their own life and we just go existed. And every Indian I grew up with in Africa was the same. I got the same sense that while we are here, we love it. We were respected and we got everything because they were so nice and allowed us to stay in their country and letting us do and be who we are. But we’re really not friends. We don’t see them in the social gatherings and the social circle getting together. Ours was a very tight community that just kind of was very incestuous and just stayed with amongst us. And so that part I really didn’t like. My school was very multicultural because it represented almost 70 different nationalities. I liked that part because my parents put me to international school which is very expensive and they pay to their nose to get me there. And I really do appreciate it because I got that exposure where I got to be with all kinds of nationalities and I got to have the multicultural kind of mindset. But then it was a completely different narrative at home. Being an Indian Gujarati we have a caste system which was so prevalient even among this group that was basically living away from India. My cast is Shatriayas who are the warriors.  We call shuttery as the warriors and the shadows and Yohanna are very, or other the Ohana. Hannah’s were called shutters are very highbrow. It sort of, I mean I wouldn’t say highbrow, but they’re just like stuck up because they, they feel that they only get to, they only should be interacting amongst themselves.

Mili: When we had these cultural festivities and celebration like Diwali and all, we wouldn’t allow other cast members to come to our community hall. It was crazy. I did not understand it and even my dad did not understand it. He fought for many years and I think even to date, if we were to go back to our community hall where we celebrate together, it would be the same. Like if somebody were to get married, everybody gets called, but we wouldn’t, we wouldn’t allow a non-Louhana to enter the facility or participate in anything that we were doing over there. I’m married to a Bengali and it’s a completely different region altogether. No way that my husband would be able to join me, that if I were to celebrate Diwali or the festival of Garbha they would not allow him that we would have to probably stand outside the hall or just wait the corner. Even though he is from the same country – even though he is Indian.

Mili: It’s crazy this is the kind of real dichotomy that I was born with. I had this home life which I was really put off with and then I had this school life where I was taught so many about culture and diversity. It taught me to become very open to receiving to other cultures and be very open and sensitive to other cultures. My closest friends on school were also Indian. My parents and my community had such a string hold on what happened at home and I never really could understand. I was, of course, friends with everybody, you know, but my closest friends were Indians, because that’s who I saw even after school and they were part of the community and we could hang out together as well after hours. So those were my challenges. I have to say that I didn’t like that. And growing up I was also told not to make any male friends especially any non-Indian male friends.

Mili: We were all given this manuscript on ‘how to’ for growing up over there that you would just have to follow it. You just had no choice because this community was so tight and so conservative minded. You could not get out of the house wearing something short and skimpy and tight. There was no way you could do that, you would be stared down. So these things have really, really been challenging. Now that I look at it, I don’t know how we survived that part. You went to school which was so progressive and then come home and had to deal with cultural norms that were almost 100 years of aggressive. I couldn’t handle it and we had so many arguments over this growing up and I was a very rebellious kid. So I’d come home with a ton of questions. It would be really tough for my mom to answer them because even she didn’t know why she would blindly follow these so called manuscript that was just blindly followed by everybody why everybody was just like not friends with other people from other cultures, why we did not have any Muslim friends. I was not be allowed to have a Muslim friend. Doesn’t matter if he comes from a social, like an upper class society or a lower class, middle class. It doesn’t matter.

Karthika: This is very interesting to hear this and part of me feels like some of these restrictions are because you’re so far away from India and you know, that whole community, that whole society sort of feeling that you have very few Indians around and so you want to be tight knit, you want to be protective of the kids. I’m not saying it’s right or wrong, but could that be the mindset?

Mili: Yes, it could be. And its not like we don’t have a history. We do have a history of a lot of hatred, and mistrust. But also there is a generational mindset. With the older generation all the tension is very fresh in their minds. And it got passed down through generation. We don’t think about it but they do. It probably had affected their grandparents or it affected someone close. That’s why they think like that. I never really felt that my Muslim friends and I hadn’t good friends, like a lot of girlfriends. I never really felt that their were sort of telling them not to be friends with us. That didn’t happen. I don’t think so. It was the Indians over there in Africa who were mostly like, no, I’m sorry, but you can have girlfriends but you cannot have both. You could were afraid was as if the boy would have a little more sort of influenced in, you know, sort of turning you into Muslim or something like that. And when cases like my friend who ran away with a muslim boy, it agrivated it even more. Now she is very happy – has had a good life with two lovely kids but still that stigma is there. These stereotypes were very difficult to live with. I guess that was the hardest part for me because like I said, I had so many fights with my mom and I guess that kind of pushed our relationship into a lot of negative situations where it was almost like I don’t want to live here.

Karthika: Of course you will questioning what you were kind of experiencing because, like you said, you had that opportunity to be in a school environment that was so multicultural. Everybody was learning, everybody was adjusting, everybody was being friendly. And you came out of school and unfortunately at home things were so different and home is a big part of our everyday.

Mili: Yes, they definitely didn’t go hand in hand and I didn’t like that. My parents were definitely more progressive, but the Muslim part, my mom was mostly the one that was not so much my dad, that was mostly my mom. And she’s a completely different person now. She has moved here and she’s an accountant with a Pakistani employer. She does not have that mindset anymore as she is surrounded by people from many different communities. And she’s very open to receiving and she’s very open to everything. That the whole environment has changed. And the narrative and the landscape has changed completely.

Karthika: You bring up a good point. I think as we get to experience other things and get to understand, we get to appreciate and we realize that deep down everybody is just the same. We are all people. You strip away the cast with the religion, the community and all of that. At the end of the day, we’re just people and we all have these same basic needs of connecting, of friendship, of good health, of love, and that’s all the same no matter where you are. So lets get back to the present. After Africa, you mentioned that you moved away and your parents moved away, so can you talk a little bit about why you moved away? Where did you move away and how did they kind of move away too?

Mili: So they moved away much later. Of course I had to go because it’s really the future of every kid that you have to leave at certain point because of education. We don’t have a strong education system post high school. So you have to get out and of course go for your highest studies. We didn’t have a whole lot of means, of course, but my mom was very adamant that I get the right exposure. So she put me through a university by herself. She owned a pet shop in Tanzania and used her resources and her business to put me through school. She put me through university, my four years. I started in Canada first. So I studied in Canada in a place called Camploops, which is North Vancouver, about four hours away. It’s a small town. I don’t know what I was doing there. Honestly, I had no idea. That’s probably the only place maybe where I don’t even want to go back because I have no idea what I was doing there. It was beautiful surrounded by nature. But for someone who comes from this big city landing in a place a population of 8,000 people, it was crazy. Life unfolded so slowly. I don’t have very good memories of that. I just remember crying and crying because my mom dropped me off of, I don’t know anybody in Canada except for two mutual friends. We figured out that we had a connection in Vancouver and stayed with them for a few days. I just remember crying and I was like, Mommy, why are you dropping? I had never seen snow in my life. I was like this beach tropical weather I’m used to humidity. I couldn’t walk outside. And it was depressing. So I told mom not to leave. I still remember the point when mom and I dragged her bags through those powdery snow. And when she left and I was scared. I thought to myself that I am here by myself and I have no idea what to make of this place. It was not exciting. So that’s one part I wanted to kind of forget about it. And then I moved to US a couple of years down the line because I wanted to be close to my husband Sid and he lived in Ann Arbor, Michigan. So we figured out that the best place that I could probably end up in Windsor because it was at the border of Detroit so he could also commute and it would be much easier for us to meet. By then I had already found a boyfriend. So imagine l land in Canada and I’ve already figured out who I was going to marry. I didn’t know what I was doing otherwise but I knew who I was going to end up with. We met online and dated for a year before I moved to Canada. We have a five year gap so I was technically I was in high school and he was doing his masters.

Karthika: Let not dwell on too much on Canada and your time there since you don’t have too many good memories there ,but you’ve kind of progressed and moved into a very interesting career. You are an amazing creative and you do very interesting stuff. So can you share a little bit about sort of how that evolved and what do you do now?

Mili: Yes, I am a visual storyteller. That’s what I think I’ve found the right word for it because I, I love cinema. I think I attribute everything, whatever I am, the amalgamation of all of my life experiences to cinema. I give credit to Indian cinema because while I was in Africa, I think my biggest exposure was cinema was because I had no other way to sort of dive into culture as easily. I didn’t have regular access to India and Indian culture so I always would watch films to actually get my culture fix. I would just go and understand anything about language, about geography or about food or whatever. I wanted to know about Indian culture, about myself. Watching films and getting creative inspiration from films is the best form of self expression. Like being able to use what I know or what I’ve learned over the years into photography or into filming.

Karthika: Just to clarify, this is Indian films and Indian movies right? So growing up, you used Indian movies as a way to sort of bridge the gap between living in Africa, not having access to Indian culture readily, is that right?

Mili: Absolutely. I mean I would have wanted to learn the traditional way. But I did not have access to the traditional ways one learns culture and heritage. So instead I watched movies. While my friends were watching mainstream cinema, I watched Bollywood and indie films. I watched those too but Indian films was a study for me. So I would go to the video cassette stores close to home and I would go through his collection of films. And since there was no way for me to figure out who was good and who was not. So I literally went down the list to see all those movies. Raj Kapoor films were my favorite, my absolute favorite because they focus so much on the simplistic storytelling and there was not a whole lot of glamorous entertainment that followed with that. So I appreciated that. Even back then when I was about 8-10 years old I was watching Sanjeev Kumar movies and I really was trying to understand and appreciate films at a very young age. To a point where I did go one day to this video cassette store, and the guy literally said that, you got your PHD in movies today. I have nothing for you as you have finished all the cassettes that I have. We had such a limited supply of movies. Even TV shows were far and few in between. Not like in India where there are so many channels and shows.

Mili: We didn’t have television. There were some news channels but they were a hodgepodge of everything. Reporting and journalism was not very good as in the standards were not as it is today. So there was nothing there for me to appreciate and expect for my own culture where I was. So I turned to music and film. Music was another big influence in my life. I have this deep love for film and music. I did not understand anything that was classical. I did not have the appreciation for it or the ear for it because nobody gave me the exposure.

Mili: I did understand gazals, but that’s because of my parents. They listened to them. When I watched the films, I appreciated the music in them. I liked the way it sounded and I would think about how layered the music was. So many different tunes. And I would ask these questions, but then we really didn’t have the right visual exposure to get deeper into it. And it was very difficult. You know, for me that, that part was so tough because I wanted it. And whenever we went to India I tried my best whenever we traveled to get a glimpse of it. And get a better understanding from a deeper perspective. But when you are traveling you don’t always get that change. To stay in one place and to appreciate , but when you’re traveling, you really don’t get that in depth. So I feel like I lack that sense of belonging because I’m Indian more than anything else. But I don’t know my own culture. I’m from inside out the way I want to know the way I really should know because I didn’t live. Now I know everything that I could possibly know through films, through reading, through traveling a little bit, but it’s still not enough.

Karthika: So let me ask you this because you said something that’s very interesting and I want dig a little bit deeper into it. You talked about how close knit your community was. You talked about how in spite of all of that not getting exposure, grew up with Bollywood or Indian movies and Indian music through cinema. Why do you think you had that need? Even though you were away from India, but you still had an Indian community, so to speak. Why was that cultural storytelling so important to you?

Mili: Visual storytelling was important because I was seeing it. I wanted to create that. I would watch films and watch the way people and circumstances were portrayed and I would want to recreate that. I had never seen a visual like that in my day to day life. I did not get exposured to culture and other aspects of India so films were my source of inspiration. I’m literally looking at everything and looking at the fact that everything in her room was. If you go back and watch that song, I can literally tell you which parts you know and how it is framed. I can tell you frame by frame how it’s done because that’s what grabbed me. Because I was really paying attention to, to cinematography then because I wasn’t paying attention to American films. Even though I was exposed to it in school, I wasn’t into it. Not at that time, I was more into this and don’t ask me why but probably because of my mom. She wanted me to get into something that was creative because she also had these hobbies and interests. I mean, she was really into music and dancing and she really pushed me into whatever channel that we could find. So I was the one who was organizing cultural programs in our community. In my school I was the one who organized international fashion shows and Indian nights even in school. It was literally called an Indian night where we would show and showcase our culture so because of all that, I think it was important for me to understand it. So I was watching a lot of films and then I just got into it. I really got sucked it and I wanted to know from the inside, how and why these choices were made. Do you know, why was this music played with this kind of an instrument? And this instrument sounds so much different, why is this camera moving so fast? My dad was not very supportive of this passion and fascination. He kept telling me that there was no future for me in Bollywood or that I would never really learn anything from films. But I was not going to give it up. I had such a deep curiosity for everything that I really cannot see myself mastering anything. Even today, while I am a good photographer, I am a good cinematographer, but I can’t say I’m the best. I cannot say that I’ve mastered any of it. I mean, people may think that, but I don’t think.

Karthika: I don’t think so. I think you’re selling yourself short. You are an amazing creative and your clients and all your friends would attest to that. You did not have access to all the resources some of the best creatives have but you made the best of what you had.

Mili: Yes, I did make the best of it that I had. I don’t think any one of my friends were asking those questions because I was very different. I was always very different because they never really get to get into the details or the intricacies of how the shot was done or how the moves were choregraphed. I dug deep because I really wanted to understand the logic and the decision making process. Then I started understanding the direction process in films. I could understand the difference between a minimalist performance and what is a maximum performance. Funny thing is that I never had focused in school. I mean I was good, in certain subjects, but I was really not focused. I was sort of odd one out in my community that way because all my friends were very intelligent and grade A students. But I was not very inclined towards academia. I just was not into it. Somehow I managed somehow to get through. Math is not my forte so that part of my brain never really developed because I didn’t get into it, but this creative part did for sure. The creative part definitely was just getting to multiply and every time I would close my eyes the only thing that comes to me is colors, patterns, dancing sequences, filming frames. That’s all I saw. I never saw anything else. That’s just how my world has been now. I think as an adult I read a little more and all that. But back then, no,

Karthika: That’s so interesting and also makes so much sense. You use a lot of what you’ve sort of grown up with and got your culture exposure that translated into what you do. Is it fair to say that your ethnicity and your culture affects your work? It is a huge part of what you do today.

Mili: Not huge, but I’m so dipped into my culture that without it I don’t think I could have created what I’ve created. So when I sometimes speak to clients, I mean this might be a little negative, but when I speak to some clients and they tell me, you know, how are you better than this photographer? I respond with the confidence that I know this more than anybody else I’ve gotten, I’ve got perspective. I have thousands and thousands of hours of perspective that this person can not have because he’s just not born into it. He’s not into this culture as much as I am. So my creative eye is very unique and special and I do owe it to my ethnicity, to the Indian culture that I’m brought into that I’ve completely embrace myself with. That’s what comes out of me and that’s exactly what I feel is required. If I’m doing an Indian wedding, I need to know about it very deeply. As a photographer, you have a good eye to frame, but you can’t have a great voice unless you’ve understood, you’ve seen those images, you’ve seen those frames, you’ve got to see all of that. You’ve got to see the history behind. If you haven’t had that, it’s very difficult to find that voice. Because you would be borrowing from others. You would also be just looking at whatever the standard of being in photography is and just adding your little extra bonus to it, which I feel is not as authentic. It’s not as deep.

Karthika: I definitely think that your work is very different from what a lot of others sort of do because of these experiences and these perspectives. And like you have said you are an Indian, you are an African, you have Indian culture, but you’ve not lived in India and now you live here in the US. Even though you have so many different paths. I think they of converge well into what you do. So that sort of leads me to my next question because you’ve been so many places, both physically and mentally, what is home to you? Is Africa home? Is India home or is it now LA where you live home?

Mili: If there was a country called Bollywood, I would consider that my home. There is no other way. I think its all of the above. I can’t live in India. I can’t live in Africa, I really cannot commit to any of these places. Even here, I think I’m here by consequences. I’m not here by choice. I think it’s just part of consequence. My husband has a really good job over here in LA. So it’s happened by consequence. I love it, I embrace it, but I mean if I were to commit to one, it’d be hard, but if I’m allowed to be in all three countries and divide my time equally that’s what I would do.

Karthika: Okay. So let me ask you this. How do you create a sense of belonging wherever you go? You’ve gone to so many different places, you’ve lived in so many different places. How do you go about creating that sense of belonging for however long you are in a certain place.

Mili: Definitely by connecting with people. In Chicago, I met friends and people who helped me create my own safety net. A family of sorts. It was enough for me to feel like I belonged. Similarly here in LA. I did get to meet a lot of likeminded Indians and some displaced Indians like me too who are neither here nor there. And we just have that really good bond over culture and language. And you know, food. Food is very comforting thing. I really cannot live without Indian food. Food brings it all together. No matter how long I live away, a simple Indian meal of Lentils and Rice will be better than anything else. I cannot suddenly be eating avocado toast for breakfast everyday. I can’t. Growing up, I never had it. And now through my adulthood, I never had it. And it’s not going to suddenly change. For health reasons, of course we adopt new ways and new styles and all that. But if you ask me what my core is, my core is that I’m Indian and even though I have not lived in India for years, I’m very much Indian. And sometimes more than even more than my husband because I feel like I do embrace it way more than he does because he takes it for granted and I don’t know. For example, when we went to Calcutta, I showed him Calcutta the way I wanted to see it and he really thanked me for it because he is taken it for granted. But I really treasure it and I cherish it. So I really do appreciate and respect it more than he does, so I feel I am a lot more of an Indian than even him.

Karthika: So you talked about food and food is a great way to connect to any sort of culture. Even in a place like India which is so diverse in the kind of foods that are around. So what’s your favorite food? Indian or non-Indian.

Mili: One of my favorite foods is from Africa called Zanzibar mix which was sold on the streets of Africa where I lived. And we got that readily.

Karthika: That sounds yummy! So perhaps the last question. What lies ahead for you? Are you fully living your dream or do you have big grand plans that perhaps you can share with us?

Mili: Am I living my dream? No, I’m not. I’m making the best out of it, but I don’t know if I’m living my dream. I think my dreams evolve very quickly. So it’s like dream for something and it just gets bigger and bigger. So from that perspective, no, I’m not sure if I’m living my dream, but I’m definitely making the most of what I can. And there’s a lot more that I know I can do, there’s a lot more that I can reach. I know my goals are high, I know my ambitions are high, so this is good for now. It’s great for now, but there’s a lot more to me and I’m hoping that I can get there. I’m hoping at least 10 years or 15 years I should be able to at least make a film because I’m so passionate about that so that needs to happen. I’m really hoping that, that it does.

Karthika: So that’s your big goal and everything that you’re doing now kind of helps you move towards it. I think that’s a good way to kind of look at it and kind of move forward,

Mili: Yes, absolutely.

Karthika: Well thank you so much Mili. I really appreciate all of what you said and I did get an amazing walk down memory lane with all the movies, the films and the songs that you referenced. And like you said, if there was a country called Bollywood, you would be the prime minister, president or dictator of that. But in all seriousness, I think given your limited resources and your curiosity, you made the most of it. And I think that’s such a wonderful thing to take out of this whole interview.

Mili: Yes, don’t let limitations stop you. If you really want to know something or if you want to be something or if you want to get somewhere, just use the resources that you have because there are all. Just nosedive and by that I mean literally nosedive and seek. Do not just stop at the surface of it. You really have to go and have that first principles kind of mentality. Seek your own truth, you know, don’t just take somebody’s word for it. If somebody told you that this is how it is, now you really have to find your own truth. And I was always that person. I just didn’t know that that’s what first principles thinking was. You really should be seeking your own truth, find your own truth and go down that path to discover and ask questions.

Karthika: Thank you so much Mili. And I really enjoyed our time together.

Mili: Thank you so much. I love being part of this and you are doing a really good job and bringing so much awareness to the world. I cannot wait to hear more.