Writing Fearlessly

Season 2 of the Netflix/Shondaland hit show BRIDGERTON introduces the Sharma family from India into the world of the Bridgerton siblings and Regency-era England. Join me to hear writer Geetika Lizardi talk about writing for the show and holding steady to her dreams, passions, and vision as a storyteller.

Almanya Narula, actor, fight choreographer, and writer, speaks about her solo show, Noor Inayat Khan: The Forgotten Spy, playing the Hollywood Fringe Festival. In 1943, Noor became the first woman and Indian to be sent out as a spy & wireless operator under Churchill’s orders in Nazi France. Her story is one of bravery and betrayal. 

Storytelling: Beyond Western Narratives, the third episode in The Artists's Journey series, is now available on Spotify, Apple, Google, rukusavenueradio.com, and most podcasting platforms. In this jam-packed 14-minute episode, I explore two common western narratives and their complicity in the colonial enterprise. I also explore three non-western story structures (more to come in part II). * LIFEFORCE airs regularly on Sundays @ 1pm PST, 4pm EST, 9pm GMT, and Monday 1:30pm IST at rukusavenueradio.com * #storytelling #storytellinglife #lifeforce #prana #nonwesternnarratives #indigenousstories #brownstories #southasianstorytelling #southasianstorytellers#southasianstories #desibooks #desibooklovers #desiwriters#desiwriter #desireads

International award-winning filmmaker and director, Pan Nalin, speaks about his latest film, LAST FILM SHOW, the Opening Night movie at the 2022 Indian Film Festival Los Angeles. LAST FILM SHOW is the story of 9-year-young Samay falling in love with filmmaking and how friendships and love collude to help him achieve his dreams despite all odds. Pan Nalin’s previous films include ANGRY INDIAN GODDESSES, SAMSARA, VALLEY OF FLOWERS, FAITH CONNECTIONS, and many others.

Join me in the second episode of our Storytelling series. Today we speak about vasansas, a Sanskrit term meaning psychological seeds. In storytelling, these types seeds shape your characters' psyches and motivations, and they are also the unconscious motivations or tendencies behind all actions.

Documentary Film Director, Sue Carpenter, and Co- director Belmaya Nepali, speak about the making of their 2021 feature film, “I am Belmaya,” which is a story of Belmaya’s own journey from a conservative hill village of Nepal to self-discovery, creativity, and agency. The film has won numerous international awards, including Best Documentary at the UK Asian Film Festival and Best Documentary at the Pame International Film Festival in Nepal. Ending song "Stronger" by Simi Carpenter from the 3min film Stronger, about women in Nepal wanting to break free from family and societal chains, and to be themselves. 

Storytelling can be a radical, revolutionary act that's not only about entertainment, but transformation. Join me as we discover how to enter into this transformation process - of ourselves as artists and the world. Hosted by Shilpa Agarwal, author of the bestselling novel, Haunting Bombay. 

Author and academic Namrata Poddar talks about her debut novel, Border Less, from 7.13books (2022), and the diasporic experience of crossing borders.

Poet and educator from Toronto, Kenya, Kutch and Gujrat, Sheniz Janmohamed talks about how we receive reminders as travelers on the path of life and how these reminders - whether we perceive them as beautiful or ugly - can bring us wholeness. We talk about her most recent collection of poetry, published by Mawenzi House: Reminders on the Path (2021). “What do I need to hold onto and what’s holding me down? What are the inheritances that I need to release, that are no longer serving me as I move forward my own path? And also, with that, there’s this disorientation because once you’ve released those habits, ideas, beliefs, ways of seeing the world, you suddenly have to find your own orientation, so you can get lost, you can veer off a path [but] you can come back to a path, you have to remake a path.” - Sheniz Janmohamed

Author, performance poet and filmmaker from Liverpool, Malik Al Nasir, talks about the ways in which we can liberate our minds from society's conditioning, and by corollary, liberate ourselves. He speaks about his book, Letters to Gil, a memoir of his years of abuse in state care and how mentoring by poet, musician, and social justice activist, Gil Scott-Heron, changed his life. “In Britain we were being bludgeoned into believing that we had no right to be anything other than what they told us to be and sought to make that a self-fulling prophecy. It’s only when you have insight that you can understand the structures of society and how they’re being deployed upon you that you recognize how it manifests itself within you, and you have to do what the Last Poets use to call – dewestoxification. It’s about unpicking everything they’ve implanted in you because if you don’t think freely and independently, then you become a surrogate for their ideas." - Malik Al Nasir