BENGALURU: I believe that socially and culturally, there are many different shades of brown and framed in the context of Canada, I got to explore these shades in many different situations,” said Amrita Kumar-Ratta, a Canadian-Indian social researcher, writer and artiste who was in the city for a storytelling workshop that explores the themes of gender, culture and identity artistically.
Starting with a performance titled Shades of a brown girl, the workshop explores possibilities of creative self-expression. “I was never able to connect to regional identities in the way many Indians who I grew up around were able to. I grew up in Sikh-community and my customs were very different, so I thought that was the only way to be Punjabi,” said Kumar-Ratta. Only during her college education did Kumar-Ratta realise that there were many different brown identities. “I met Indians whose parents migrated from East-Africa, but they were Indian and this prompted me to go on a journey of discovery of my identity.”
This journey of self-discovery culminated in Shades of a brown girl. “I took a ten-week play-writing course, and I wrote this play at the end of it. After that, this project took a life of its own because so many people were able to connect to it,” said Kumar-Ratta, who went to an Arts High School, but never thought that theatre had a place for her since most of her classmates were Caucasian. “So many years later, even though I had strayed from my path in arts, this play cemented my connection to it,” she said with a smile.
The arts have enabled her to connect to her audience in a very different, powerful way. “My topics really include complicated issues of gender, culture and identity. These are mainly informed by my research and are strongly political, but art is really a tool to uncover hidden vulnerabilities, she said, adding that the performance at the beginning of the workshop breaks the fourth wall. “I create a space of emotional-intimacy because I am giving the audience my story with all of its vulnerabilities,” she added.
The researcher and artiste finds that South-Asian women’s identities and stories are often invisible. “We are forged in this culture of silence, even though our art, dance and cinema are so expressive. So, I am really trying to resonate with these women and break this silence,” she said, adding that she uses symbols that are relatable — such as the shades of brown, braids and names. “I make sure to emphasise that this invisibility that I talk about is not informed by stereotypes because I grew up in the west, this is a cultural reality that South-Asian women face globally,” she said.
Speaking about the atmosphere of intolerance that has overtaken the world socially and politically, “I think self-reflection is a powerful tool that not only enables us to determine who we are but also really think about how the other person feels,” she concluded.