#39 - Am I me? Is Malkovich Malkovich?
Hello folks,
I'm typing this while tucked up in a blanket on my sofa. I'm typing very slowly because Chill Cat is currently installed somewhere between the 'wall' of the sofa and my leg and it would be a crime to disturb him.
I realised today that I prefer neither cold or warm weather. What I really love is being warm when it's cold or cool when it's hot. I don't want to dig into the psychological backstory that created this instinct in me so let's get on, shall we?
IN AND OUT GROUPS
Having given up my listening of some British politics podcasts for my own sanity, I took up some others to replace them, one of which is The Ezra Klein Show. This week they did a repeat of a show from last year which was about the age of 'mega-identity' politics. You can listen to it here or by, y'know, Googling.
It both scared and invigorated me, in the way that staring at truth often will do. I can't quite bring myself to deep dive into it because it would take up the whole newsletter, but I will say that though I've heard and read similar work on this topic (hi Jonathan Haidt) it's an episode I'll be thinking about for a long time and I hugely recommend it. It's sharp on both our problems and how to move towards solutions.
Also, I was reminded of this from a conversation between Klein and Sam Harris about the way identity politics is talked about which I often try to explain but don't do with any eloquence so here it is for your own consumption:
On that note...
BROWN CHRISTMAS II: SANTA-JII'S REVENGE
Last year, I was sat in a bar towards the end of the An Adventure run at the Bush with the South Asian members of the cast. We were knocking around a common complaint about the South Asian theatre scene - that we can so often be fragmented, competitive and unsupportive. Part of that is circumstances within the industry, but another part of that, we recognised, was not seeing each other in many other instances that weren't outside of competitive or work situations. It's painful to experience that when you know you have so much more in common and often share the same struggles.
So Aysha, Anjana and I decided to throw a party. Absolutely no work chat allowed. No networking. We wanted it to be not be cliquey. We wanted it to not be hierarchical - drama students, award-winners, living legends, all welcome. We wanted to be as inclusive as it could be within an exclusive frame.
That can be tricky. We, casually, tossed around the name 'Brown Christmas' but we ended up calling the event itself 'South Asian Christmas'. It felt important to be specific and not claim the word 'brown' if we were specifically talking only about South Asians. And look, I'm a deep believer in connections not being a zero-sum game. To bring people together is not to pull them apart from others. But at the same time, you will lose some people who you'd like to embrace. Though last year I think was a big success, I was heart-broken to hear some people didn't think they were brown enough for last year - either due to having dual heritage, or because they didn't have 'typical' Asian interests.
So this year, instead of 'South Asian Christmas', we said - fuck it - and went for 'Brown Christmas' and tried to see where it would take us. Since then, I think a lot of my thinking about what it means to be 'brown' has been shaped by the people for whom it is both their identity and not. I think about friends who look brown but don't fit easily into the prominent, established groups. Were they welcome at this event? Yes, categorically. We can afford to be generous with our definitions because this one community has intersections with others and, hell, we all know castings are uhh pretty loose sometimes. (I, as someone who cast someone of Iranian-Scottish background as Indian, am fairly happy with that if it's on my terms).
I think about Jassa Ahluwalia, the self-styled White Punjabi, who I've been lucky enough to have a few conversations with about reconciling his background with his phenotype. He's at turns hilarious and profound and his "both, not half" conception of identity is something I really love. It is the anti-Tebbit test and speaks to how I feel about how identity truly works. British *and* brown. Londoner *and* English. To bolster one is to not deny the other and I think that is key to fighting against the instincts that are mentioned in the Klein episode.
We'll do the party again next year (fingers crossed). Maybe the name will change again. Maybe the purpose will. I don't know. But to be in a room that included everyone from students to literal founders of British South Asian theatre felt mighty. It won't be perfect but it will, I hope, be galvanising and fun.
My apologies to anyone who was interested in coming this year but didn't get an invite. I was pushing it on Facebook and Instagram (the social networks where I feel safest) and we asked people to spread the word but that invariably means there are some who didn't hear about it. Next time we'll use something like Eventbrite so we can depersonalise invites and spread it further while still keeping track of numbers.
One final note on this: Shout out to Jatinder Verma who has stepped down as Artistic Director of Tara Arts after 40 years. I think I've mentioned it before, but it was Jatinder sending my agent an email and asking to meet that gave me both a consciousness of and a care for British South Asian theatre. It was a meeting that gave me a useful conversation I could have with my grandparents who were cagey about my choice of career: "Look, there are others who have come before us and done this - even if you don't see them!". My paternal grandfather in particular understood the importance of that. He was a proud community man among other things, both through the Gujarati Samaj and the Lions Club beyond that.
At Brown Christmas, I looked around the room, saw people playing carrom on the board he brought me back from India, and I thought that he'd have loved this. There was no need for there to be any tension between this job and the community he came from. They are here and always were. A couple more years and maybe I would've been able to get him along to a play...
KITTY KORNER
This morning I cycled over to Maltby Street market to see my friend Cecily who runs a juice (and porridge!) stall there. It's something I do every week to shake off the fuzz of the weekend and to make a better effort with friendships. As I stepped out of my front door to do this, Pretty Cat trotted over to me as he often does when he spots me at the entrance. It's something he's done since before I owned him in fact and it's always made me smile. This time, he miaowed and the cold caught his breath and turned it into this tiny dragon fog. I didn't manage to get a picture of it, alas, but it was certainly one of the cutest things I've ever seen.
x
P.S. If you're confused about the title of this newsletter, click here for disambiguation.
If you're new to Patelograms and like what you've read, you can subscribe by clicking here.
If you're an old hand, thanks as ever for taking the time.
I'm typing this while tucked up in a blanket on my sofa. I'm typing very slowly because Chill Cat is currently installed somewhere between the 'wall' of the sofa and my leg and it would be a crime to disturb him.
I realised today that I prefer neither cold or warm weather. What I really love is being warm when it's cold or cool when it's hot. I don't want to dig into the psychological backstory that created this instinct in me so let's get on, shall we?
IN AND OUT GROUPS
Having given up my listening of some British politics podcasts for my own sanity, I took up some others to replace them, one of which is The Ezra Klein Show. This week they did a repeat of a show from last year which was about the age of 'mega-identity' politics. You can listen to it here or by, y'know, Googling.
It both scared and invigorated me, in the way that staring at truth often will do. I can't quite bring myself to deep dive into it because it would take up the whole newsletter, but I will say that though I've heard and read similar work on this topic (hi Jonathan Haidt) it's an episode I'll be thinking about for a long time and I hugely recommend it. It's sharp on both our problems and how to move towards solutions.
Also, I was reminded of this from a conversation between Klein and Sam Harris about the way identity politics is talked about which I often try to explain but don't do with any eloquence so here it is for your own consumption:
In the same way that being apolitical is a political position, we all do identity politics. Sometimes that's bad, but not always. Recognising your place within a group and how the world operates differently for you than it does for others is, to my mind, an incredibly important part of being a reflective and purposeful human.Yes, identity politics are at play in this conversation, but that includes, as it always has, white identity politics.
To Harris, and you’ll hear this explicitly, identity politics is something others do. To me, it’s something we all do, and that he and many others refuse to admit they’re doing. This is one of the advantages of being the majority group: Your concerns get coded as concerns; it’s everyone else who is playing identity politics.
On that note...
BROWN CHRISTMAS II: SANTA-JII'S REVENGE
Last year, I was sat in a bar towards the end of the An Adventure run at the Bush with the South Asian members of the cast. We were knocking around a common complaint about the South Asian theatre scene - that we can so often be fragmented, competitive and unsupportive. Part of that is circumstances within the industry, but another part of that, we recognised, was not seeing each other in many other instances that weren't outside of competitive or work situations. It's painful to experience that when you know you have so much more in common and often share the same struggles.
So Aysha, Anjana and I decided to throw a party. Absolutely no work chat allowed. No networking. We wanted it to be not be cliquey. We wanted it to not be hierarchical - drama students, award-winners, living legends, all welcome. We wanted to be as inclusive as it could be within an exclusive frame.
That can be tricky. We, casually, tossed around the name 'Brown Christmas' but we ended up calling the event itself 'South Asian Christmas'. It felt important to be specific and not claim the word 'brown' if we were specifically talking only about South Asians. And look, I'm a deep believer in connections not being a zero-sum game. To bring people together is not to pull them apart from others. But at the same time, you will lose some people who you'd like to embrace. Though last year I think was a big success, I was heart-broken to hear some people didn't think they were brown enough for last year - either due to having dual heritage, or because they didn't have 'typical' Asian interests.
So this year, instead of 'South Asian Christmas', we said - fuck it - and went for 'Brown Christmas' and tried to see where it would take us. Since then, I think a lot of my thinking about what it means to be 'brown' has been shaped by the people for whom it is both their identity and not. I think about friends who look brown but don't fit easily into the prominent, established groups. Were they welcome at this event? Yes, categorically. We can afford to be generous with our definitions because this one community has intersections with others and, hell, we all know castings are uhh pretty loose sometimes. (I, as someone who cast someone of Iranian-Scottish background as Indian, am fairly happy with that if it's on my terms).
I think about Jassa Ahluwalia, the self-styled White Punjabi, who I've been lucky enough to have a few conversations with about reconciling his background with his phenotype. He's at turns hilarious and profound and his "both, not half" conception of identity is something I really love. It is the anti-Tebbit test and speaks to how I feel about how identity truly works. British *and* brown. Londoner *and* English. To bolster one is to not deny the other and I think that is key to fighting against the instincts that are mentioned in the Klein episode.
We'll do the party again next year (fingers crossed). Maybe the name will change again. Maybe the purpose will. I don't know. But to be in a room that included everyone from students to literal founders of British South Asian theatre felt mighty. It won't be perfect but it will, I hope, be galvanising and fun.
My apologies to anyone who was interested in coming this year but didn't get an invite. I was pushing it on Facebook and Instagram (the social networks where I feel safest) and we asked people to spread the word but that invariably means there are some who didn't hear about it. Next time we'll use something like Eventbrite so we can depersonalise invites and spread it further while still keeping track of numbers.
One final note on this: Shout out to Jatinder Verma who has stepped down as Artistic Director of Tara Arts after 40 years. I think I've mentioned it before, but it was Jatinder sending my agent an email and asking to meet that gave me both a consciousness of and a care for British South Asian theatre. It was a meeting that gave me a useful conversation I could have with my grandparents who were cagey about my choice of career: "Look, there are others who have come before us and done this - even if you don't see them!". My paternal grandfather in particular understood the importance of that. He was a proud community man among other things, both through the Gujarati Samaj and the Lions Club beyond that.
At Brown Christmas, I looked around the room, saw people playing carrom on the board he brought me back from India, and I thought that he'd have loved this. There was no need for there to be any tension between this job and the community he came from. They are here and always were. A couple more years and maybe I would've been able to get him along to a play...
KITTY KORNER
This morning I cycled over to Maltby Street market to see my friend Cecily who runs a juice (and porridge!) stall there. It's something I do every week to shake off the fuzz of the weekend and to make a better effort with friendships. As I stepped out of my front door to do this, Pretty Cat trotted over to me as he often does when he spots me at the entrance. It's something he's done since before I owned him in fact and it's always made me smile. This time, he miaowed and the cold caught his breath and turned it into this tiny dragon fog. I didn't manage to get a picture of it, alas, but it was certainly one of the cutest things I've ever seen.
x
P.S. If you're confused about the title of this newsletter, click here for disambiguation.
If you're new to Patelograms and like what you've read, you can subscribe by clicking here.
If you're an old hand, thanks as ever for taking the time.
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