The first Akhara of 2022, a pandemic-induced virtual affair, coincided with Pongal, the ancient harvest festival of Tamil Nadu—some 13,300 km away from the suburb of Toronto where Sharada Eswar, the host and creator of the Akhara series, lives.
In the southern state of Tamil Nadu, one of the many places in India where Sharada studied and worked before migrating to Canada, Pongal is a time when “we remind ourselves that everything we are is what we take from Mother Nature,” she told fellow participants, most of whom had logged in from different parts of Toronto, at the beginning of the online Akhara.
It’s hard to conceive of Pongal without the humble yet delicious ven pongal, called khichdi in north India, a dish made from “freshly harvested rice, lentils and turmeric.” Sharada said her mother still made ven pongal the traditional way in an earthen pot in India, and Sharada herself tries to continue this lovely culinary tradition at her home in Brampton.
Conceived by Sharada in 2016 originally, the Akhara has become the centrepiece of her creative research at the Laboratory for Artistic Intelligence. “The Akhara is a community space where people can gather and just have conversations,” she says. And food plays an important role in these conversations. “Food is a vital part of any community setting. So, the idea behind the Akhara was if we were to meet in a physical space, just have everyone cooking together a simple meal and then have the featured speaker or storyteller talk about a particular topic, or have a general dialogue around these topics.”
Though meeting physically in Toronto was not practical because of Covid-19 restrictions, food and the traditions linked to it remained a pivot around which conversations flowed in various fascinating directions in the virtual Akhara on January 14. India-born Ronica Sajnani—a film, TV and stage actor (whose credits include Black Mirror and Deepa Mehta’s Water) and a chef in her own right—showed how she makes khichdi in her kitchen. And Indigenous (Anishinaabekwe) singer, songwriter and storyteller Aqua Nibii Waawaaskone meditated on Mother Earth, the power of forgiving ourselves, and the deeper significance of food and water in Anishinaabeg culture.
The word ‘Akhara’ is loosely inspired by the akharas (places of learning and worship) of the eastern Indian state of West Bengal, where traditional Baul artists (known as Baul masters) live and practise their arts. Interestingly, a community kitchen and dining hall are part of the traditional akhara too. Sharada has herself been training with Parvathy Baul, one of India’s best-known Baul singers.
Though they have a structure in place and a list of main guest speakers, Sharada’s akharas are spontaneous and participatory in nature. “It’s a little bit like TED Talks but not quite. More like a French salon. It is not meant to be just intellectual. It is open to anyone and any and every topic is welcome,” she says.
Curating the Akhara series is only one of the many things the South Asian-Canadian artist, storyteller, arts educator and theatre practitioner does.
Sharada is the brain behind the ambitious border crossings, an art project which seeks to map places like Brampton and Mississauga using “border crossing stories” of the diverse population that lives here. The idea was born some years ago during her daily commute between Brampton and Toronto, an hour-long journey that made her think about the various borders she had crossed in her own life, from the time she was a child in India. “My dad had a transferable job, so every three years we would move from one city to another. It was not just the physical or geographical border that one was crossing, but a border crossing in terms of culture, in terms of the weather, too.”
Later, of course, a bigger and more consequential border crossing would happen when she moved from India to Canada—and from the world of advertising to art—to start a new life. But the strong bonds with India have endured.
For the people who cross these borders, including immigrants who arrive in Canada from all over the world, there are thousands of untold, often unspoken stories about these journeys and what they mean to those making them. Sharada wanted to tap into this deep reservoir of stories, and slowly the original idea expanded in scope. “I opened it up to any kind of a border crossing—cultural border crossing, [or border crossings linked to] religion, identity, gender. Or it could even be an imaginary border crossing, like a border crossing from the real world to your imaginary or your dream world or your fantasy world.”
As part of the border crossings project, Sharada and her team got people to make ceramic story vessels and asked them to embed their border crossing stories in them. “The Art Gallery of Mississauga came forward to give us space to collect these stories, and we actually created this beautiful live water body out there. Over 7 weeks we gathered stories. By the end of it we gathered close to 1,500 stories from the community.”
She is now working on Phase 2 of the project, Blue Skies, Red Earth and Tall Pines.
The project may take different shapes and forms as it evolves, but the choice of the title is a deeply felt one. Like so many Canadians with loved ones abroad, Sharada was not able to visit her mother in India during the pandemic. The beautiful blue skies above her suddenly became symbolic of the challenges in crossing borders half a world away despite the convenience of air travel. Similarly, ‘Red Earth’ is a remembrance of Indian monsoons that she has left behind.
And ‘Tall Pines?’ One of the indigenous names for Brampton is believed to be ‘tall pines,’ Sharada explains. It’s also a way of connecting with nature at a time of enforced lockdowns. “All of us have a relationship with nature, all of us have a relationship with trees, in particular,” she says. As part of the project, she has been facilitating workshops “where I invite the participants to embody their favourite tree that they have an association or memory with and share stories.”
Trained in South Indian classical music, Sharada is passionate about presenting Indian myths, legends and folktales to audiences in Canada that may not be very familiar with them, through her work as a theatre artist, musician and translator. “I am who I am because of the culture that I grew up in. And my grandmother herself was a storyteller and I grew up with her.” But beyond the audiences in Toronto, there is also a “selfish motive” in telling and retelling these timeless tales—“this was something I wanted my daughter (who has grown up in Canada) to also experience.”
Before she came to Canada, Sharada worked in some of the biggest names in advertising in India, in companies like J. Walter Thompson, Lintas and FCB Ulka. Does that experience come in handy when she is working on new art projects? “It [working in advertising] definitely taught me discipline. In the sense that I’m very conscious about deadlines,” she says with a laugh. Another useful skill those 10-second TV ads honed was the ability to quickly make your point “when you have a short window.”