In his heart, every Indian feels white: Playwright Sujit Saraf
Sujit Saraf, a Bay Area techie originally from Bihar, is an author and playwright who has written about socially-relevant themes for more than a decade. (Photo credit: Divya Satia)
Apartheid isn't a pigment of the imagination, someone once said lightheartedly. Indeed, the issue of skin color hangs darkly over the world dominated by light-skinned people. Nowhere is the issue of skin tone more pervasive than in India; even among Indians who have left the country's shores and settled across the world — from Africa, the "Dark Continent", to America, a "Red" continent that has turned into a rainbow continent on the strength of invasions and immigration.
Sujit Saraf, a Bay Area techie originally from Bihar, is an author and playwright who has written about socially-relevant themes for more than a decade. His latest play Amavasya ( new moon in Sanskrit and most Indian languages), a Knight Foundation grant winner, opens at the Cubberly Theater in Palo, Alto, California this weekend. It centers on Princess Amavasya, who is hidden behind a mask — is she stunningly beautiful or hideously ugly? What will people see when she reveals herself?
Featuring a unique combination of theater, music and dance — theater by Naatak, live music composed and performed by Nachiketa Yakkundi and group, and original dance choreographed by Rasika Kumar and performed by Abhinaya Dance Company, Amavasya deals with an issue that most Indians, even NRIs and PIOs, are in denial about. In an interview, Saraf, an IIT-Delhi alumnus, discusses the issues of race, skin color, the Indian obsession with being "fair and lovely."
(Poster artist: Pragya Tiwari)
One can't imagine a better place for Amavasya to be staged than India considering the country's obsession with fair or light skin. How relevant is the topic in US, particularly in multi-cultural and multi-racial California? Are the issues the same? Do African-Americans, Hispanics, and other dark-skinned immigrants have the same fixation with light skin as Indians do?
Indians in California are no different from Indians in India in their preference for light skin and sons. Just as Indian and Asian immigrants are beginning to skew the sex ratio in America through reproductive behavior that favors sons, Indians continue to hanker after light skin long after they have settled in the land of rainbow skin colors. I think this preference is less pronounced in second-generation Indian Americans — they are perhaps arriving at the American mean. Of course, the American mean is not color blind either.
I can't speak for African-Americans and Hispanics, but it is difficult not to regard white skin as desirable in a world dominated by white-skinned people.
Why do you think actors like Shah Rukh Khan, who from all accounts is a thoughtful individual, endorse products such as Fair and Lovely? (Or Aamir Khan with respect to Coke) Is it merely a commercial proposition? What will it take to change the Indian mind-set in this regard?
We are all whores to varying degrees. Being beneficiaries of skin-color obsession, we can hardly expect them to turn up their noses when more money is thrown their way to further that same obsession. In their position, I would have done the same. Aamir put on some dark paint for Lagaan in a half-hearted attempt at "authenticity" (I have not seen the film, only posters), but of course his Caucasian looks and still-light skin were never in question.
Our obsession with light skin has even infected our self-image. After a bomb blast in Tees Hazari court in Delhi, the police released artist renderings of the suspects which showed fair-skinned men. When the men were arrested, I noticed that their features matched the drawings but their skin color was the usual Indian muddy brown. Sub-consciously, the police artist had imagined white men, just as he perhaps thinks of himself as "wheatish."
In his heart, every Indian feels white.
We all grew up with white-skin-pink-lip calendars of Gandhi and Subhas Bose. Our white self-image shows up everywhere, in over-exposed photographs (I look fair-skinned in all studio pictures taken in my childhood in Bihar) as well as women's foundation that is two shades lighter than the skin.
I doubt this obsession will ever loosen its hold. It is difficult not to regard light skin as desirable in a world dominated by white-skinned people.
How did you come into theater, what were your major influences, and how did you come to write Amavasya?
My interest in theater derives largely from an interest in books. In its basic incarnation, the stage is a platform from which a story is told, so my influences are novelists and lyricists, rather than playwrights. Examples: Those who tell wonderful stories (e.g. Peter Carey), those situated so firmly in their own worlds that their every word is soaked in a sort of truth (e.g. Premchand), and those whose words can be described simply as "beautiful" (e.g. Gulzar).
In a way, Amavasya was born out of "mora gora ang laile" by Gulzar (sung by Lata in the film Bandini). I am moved every time I listen to that song, and I have listened to it hundreds of times. With these ideas in my head, I have been writing both plays and novels. The novels sometimes get published (The Peacock Throne, The Confession of Sultana Daku); the plays I "publish" on my own!
Naatak artists rehearsing for Amavasya (Photo credit: Ashima Yadava)
What sort of audience are you expecting for Amavasya? Will it be mostly Indian? What is Naatak's typical audience — do its themes resonate beyond the Indian/Indian-American community. Have you staged beyond Bay Area?
Our audience is largely Indian, and our plays tend to be in Hindi, with themes that do not always travel well. We are primarily a theater company "of, for and by Indians". That said, non-Indians do watch our plays, especially those in English and those that are music and dance performances like Amavasya. We always run super-titles in English (above the stage) for non-Hindi speakers.
We've travelled once or twice to LA and Sacramento, but our jobs keep us mostly confined to the Bay Area, where we have a very large following.
I assume Amavasya/Naatak's actors are professionals in other fields and theater is an amateur pursuit. What is their typical background/experience/ characteristic. What is the Bay Area's arts scene like these days?
The typical Naatak actor is a techie at Apple, Google, SAP, Oracle or a similar company, or a startup. Many years ago, we made Bugaboo, a film that poked fun at Indian techies getting rich! That was in 1999, just before the Nasdaq crash. Indeed, the money spent in that movie was partly earned on the Nasdaq.
Because there are so many Indians in the Bay Area, the arts scene is both mature and fragmented. There was a huge Kannada convention last weekend, there are Maharashtrian conventions, Bihari groups, Rajasthani groups, Bengali groups, Tamil groups, and so on. The cultural activities of these organizations are often confined to establishing a connection with India, especially Indian celebrities. So the Kannada convention had Preity Zinta (don't ask).
Walk us through Naatak's own existence in the US, Hindi/Indian theater in the US, and the Nataak's highpoints. Have there been any collaborations with theater groups in India (there are also theater groups called Naatak in India).
Naatak began in the fall of 1995, when a friend and I thought it would be nice to re-create our theater days from IIT Delhi. We were at neighboring universities (Berkeley and Stanford), and the first few members were students at these universities along with a few techies. Over the years, we graduated, got jobs, got married, had children. The make-up of Naatak members evolved similarly. We have become larger and more professional in our productions, and now have a large and growing following.
While some of my plays have been staged at NSD and other places in India, Naatak has not officially collaborated with Indian or American theater groups. Because we have day jobs, we tend to go back to them as soon as a play is over, and then regroup for the next production, leaving little time for collaborations.
We like to think of ourselves as the largest Indian theater in America. Our plays are seen by thousands and have a very wide reach in the Bay Area community. I could send you, for instance, a picture of the Amavasya set (35 feet wide, 12 feet high, still being assembled for our opening night on Sep 6), which might give you a sense of the scale of the production.
Naatak artists rehearsing for Amavasya (Photo credit: Ashima Yadava)
What about the commercial viability of your theater activity.... What does it cost to stage a play, how you raise funds, do you have sponsorship? Is it just pure love of theater or do you guys come ahead?
We always come out ahead! The Bay Area has a large number of Indians who love watching our plays, so ticket revenues have always been higher than expenses — the very first play in Feb 1996 earned a small amount of money. For large expenditures — such as Naatak House, where we meet and rehearse — we have been fortunate in securing the support of philanthropists like Vinod Dham, better known as the "father of the pentium".
Sujit Saraf, a Bay Area techie originally from Bihar, is an author and playwright who has written about socially-relevant themes for more than a decade. His latest play Amavasya ( new moon in Sanskrit and most Indian languages), a Knight Foundation grant winner, opens at the Cubberly Theater in Palo, Alto, California this weekend. It centers on Princess Amavasya, who is hidden behind a mask — is she stunningly beautiful or hideously ugly? What will people see when she reveals herself?
Featuring a unique combination of theater, music and dance — theater by Naatak, live music composed and performed by Nachiketa Yakkundi and group, and original dance choreographed by Rasika Kumar and performed by Abhinaya Dance Company, Amavasya deals with an issue that most Indians, even NRIs and PIOs, are in denial about. In an interview, Saraf, an IIT-Delhi alumnus, discusses the issues of race, skin color, the Indian obsession with being "fair and lovely."
(Poster artist: Pragya Tiwari)
One can't imagine a better place for Amavasya to be staged than India considering the country's obsession with fair or light skin. How relevant is the topic in US, particularly in multi-cultural and multi-racial California? Are the issues the same? Do African-Americans, Hispanics, and other dark-skinned immigrants have the same fixation with light skin as Indians do?
Indians in California are no different from Indians in India in their preference for light skin and sons. Just as Indian and Asian immigrants are beginning to skew the sex ratio in America through reproductive behavior that favors sons, Indians continue to hanker after light skin long after they have settled in the land of rainbow skin colors. I think this preference is less pronounced in second-generation Indian Americans — they are perhaps arriving at the American mean. Of course, the American mean is not color blind either.
I can't speak for African-Americans and Hispanics, but it is difficult not to regard white skin as desirable in a world dominated by white-skinned people.
Why do you think actors like Shah Rukh Khan, who from all accounts is a thoughtful individual, endorse products such as Fair and Lovely? (Or Aamir Khan with respect to Coke) Is it merely a commercial proposition? What will it take to change the Indian mind-set in this regard?
We are all whores to varying degrees. Being beneficiaries of skin-color obsession, we can hardly expect them to turn up their noses when more money is thrown their way to further that same obsession. In their position, I would have done the same. Aamir put on some dark paint for Lagaan in a half-hearted attempt at "authenticity" (I have not seen the film, only posters), but of course his Caucasian looks and still-light skin were never in question.
Our obsession with light skin has even infected our self-image. After a bomb blast in Tees Hazari court in Delhi, the police released artist renderings of the suspects which showed fair-skinned men. When the men were arrested, I noticed that their features matched the drawings but their skin color was the usual Indian muddy brown. Sub-consciously, the police artist had imagined white men, just as he perhaps thinks of himself as "wheatish."
In his heart, every Indian feels white.
We all grew up with white-skin-pink-lip calendars of Gandhi and Subhas Bose. Our white self-image shows up everywhere, in over-exposed photographs (I look fair-skinned in all studio pictures taken in my childhood in Bihar) as well as women's foundation that is two shades lighter than the skin.
I doubt this obsession will ever loosen its hold. It is difficult not to regard light skin as desirable in a world dominated by white-skinned people.
How did you come into theater, what were your major influences, and how did you come to write Amavasya?
My interest in theater derives largely from an interest in books. In its basic incarnation, the stage is a platform from which a story is told, so my influences are novelists and lyricists, rather than playwrights. Examples: Those who tell wonderful stories (e.g. Peter Carey), those situated so firmly in their own worlds that their every word is soaked in a sort of truth (e.g. Premchand), and those whose words can be described simply as "beautiful" (e.g. Gulzar).
In a way, Amavasya was born out of "mora gora ang laile" by Gulzar (sung by Lata in the film Bandini). I am moved every time I listen to that song, and I have listened to it hundreds of times. With these ideas in my head, I have been writing both plays and novels. The novels sometimes get published (The Peacock Throne, The Confession of Sultana Daku); the plays I "publish" on my own!
Naatak artists rehearsing for Amavasya (Photo credit: Ashima Yadava)
What sort of audience are you expecting for Amavasya? Will it be mostly Indian? What is Naatak's typical audience — do its themes resonate beyond the Indian/Indian-American community. Have you staged beyond Bay Area?
Our audience is largely Indian, and our plays tend to be in Hindi, with themes that do not always travel well. We are primarily a theater company "of, for and by Indians". That said, non-Indians do watch our plays, especially those in English and those that are music and dance performances like Amavasya. We always run super-titles in English (above the stage) for non-Hindi speakers.
We've travelled once or twice to LA and Sacramento, but our jobs keep us mostly confined to the Bay Area, where we have a very large following.
I assume Amavasya/Naatak's actors are professionals in other fields and theater is an amateur pursuit. What is their typical background/experience/ characteristic. What is the Bay Area's arts scene like these days?
The typical Naatak actor is a techie at Apple, Google, SAP, Oracle or a similar company, or a startup. Many years ago, we made Bugaboo, a film that poked fun at Indian techies getting rich! That was in 1999, just before the Nasdaq crash. Indeed, the money spent in that movie was partly earned on the Nasdaq.
Because there are so many Indians in the Bay Area, the arts scene is both mature and fragmented. There was a huge Kannada convention last weekend, there are Maharashtrian conventions, Bihari groups, Rajasthani groups, Bengali groups, Tamil groups, and so on. The cultural activities of these organizations are often confined to establishing a connection with India, especially Indian celebrities. So the Kannada convention had Preity Zinta (don't ask).
Walk us through Naatak's own existence in the US, Hindi/Indian theater in the US, and the Nataak's highpoints. Have there been any collaborations with theater groups in India (there are also theater groups called Naatak in India).
Naatak began in the fall of 1995, when a friend and I thought it would be nice to re-create our theater days from IIT Delhi. We were at neighboring universities (Berkeley and Stanford), and the first few members were students at these universities along with a few techies. Over the years, we graduated, got jobs, got married, had children. The make-up of Naatak members evolved similarly. We have become larger and more professional in our productions, and now have a large and growing following.
While some of my plays have been staged at NSD and other places in India, Naatak has not officially collaborated with Indian or American theater groups. Because we have day jobs, we tend to go back to them as soon as a play is over, and then regroup for the next production, leaving little time for collaborations.
We like to think of ourselves as the largest Indian theater in America. Our plays are seen by thousands and have a very wide reach in the Bay Area community. I could send you, for instance, a picture of the Amavasya set (35 feet wide, 12 feet high, still being assembled for our opening night on Sep 6), which might give you a sense of the scale of the production.
Naatak artists rehearsing for Amavasya (Photo credit: Ashima Yadava)
What about the commercial viability of your theater activity.... What does it cost to stage a play, how you raise funds, do you have sponsorship? Is it just pure love of theater or do you guys come ahead?
We always come out ahead! The Bay Area has a large number of Indians who love watching our plays, so ticket revenues have always been higher than expenses — the very first play in Feb 1996 earned a small amount of money. For large expenditures — such as Naatak House, where we meet and rehearse — we have been fortunate in securing the support of philanthropists like Vinod Dham, better known as the "father of the pentium".
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