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Ep 44 - Sheba and Malavika Talukder share a coffee (and tea!)
88 Plays3 years ago
Presenting a soul conversation over coffee (and tea!) with Malavika. Malavika is the design head at DK India.
More on her is on her LinkedIn.
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Transcript
Introduction: A Relaxed Saturday with Malvika and Shiva
00:00:02
Speaker
I'm delighted to have you in the podcast where all stories are welcome and the masks come off.
00:00:13
Speaker
Hi Malrika. Hi Shiva. So wonderful to see you. Welcome to Soul Brews with Shiva and I am so delighted to host you on Coffee and Soul. Thank you so much for making the time. I am equally delighted.
Chai and Conversation: Malvika's Love for Tea
00:00:27
Speaker
It is the best thing on a Saturday morning and Shiva I have known you so long.
00:00:33
Speaker
uh it's been great you know it's good to have a conversation and if so it makes us come together absolutely more than so be it isn't it yes do you have your cup of tea or coffee what do you what are you drinking what's your well today because i'm i've escaped
00:00:49
Speaker
the hills and being a chai ka bacha I thought it would be tea but then you know pakawat hill tea doesn't do it for me and I didn't bring my correct orthodox tea so I have pulled out a ready sachet of samahana. Samahana is great tea so lovely and I'm going to pour myself can you imagine am I doing gaddari I don't know I drink a lot of coffee but bring a chai kid tea and coffee it all kind of goes together so
00:01:18
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. All right, let me just pour myself. Lovely to have you here. Thank you. Pleasure to life, to all this getting over soon and to physical meetings in the very near future. Look forward to it. Absolutely. Oh, yes.
00:01:39
Speaker
What's this about coffee, I wonder.
Nostalgia and Nature: Memories of Pabhoi Tea Estate
00:01:41
Speaker
Anyway, so Malvika, I'm gonna ask you to hold this cup of tea in your hands and if it's necessary in your palms and sit back. You're in the right space, actually, for it right now. But just sit back and close your eyes. Now what comes up for you? Anything you see? Right now I can first actually feel the silence. I can hear a couple of dogs and I think of my pet.
00:02:10
Speaker
And after that, it takes me back to the silence of a veranda in Paboy tea estate, actually looking out at the garden, the trees, the little hedge, lilies, and I'm also got a little bit of art in front of me. It was a perfect moment that day. The silence just took me back. It's very evocative. Thank you so much for sharing it.
00:02:39
Speaker
What else does it do? What does it mean for you? It's bringing me a sense of what I love doing best is watching nature, like watching the grass grow as well as drawing it. So it was, it's something that I do less now or very little of, but I keep, you know, every now and like today you've got me, I'm toast. I've had nice breakfast. I'm sitting up.
00:03:05
Speaker
a cozy and warm and nice guy. And it's like, hmm. Pabhoi tea estate, veranda, you know, cause maybe I'm sitting up in the hip things. I miss my slightly warm, tropical, humid, flushed, uh, East. Yeah. Every now and then. So that's what it's bringing for me. Yeah. Yeah. And you've just recently come into, uh, come to Lando, right? That's why you are taking, taking a break from work and home and here with family. How's that going?
00:03:36
Speaker
What, the, the break, the break.
Perspectives and Change: Views from Mussoorie and Dehradun
00:03:39
Speaker
So, um, actually it was looking out of, um, I'm really looking at the window now and it's this view where I look, I'm looking onto the whole Doon Valley, which is where I grew up, uh, not chunk of my life. And, um, two things occur. One is a shift in perspective. I always looked up at the Missouri lights every night, walking back.
00:03:59
Speaker
to school and tennis courts and walking to number six and generally it was one of the things you did, you know, I looked up past the military and you saw Missouri twinkling there. The funny thing is the first time I'm up in Missouri for, you know, musks for the night and I'm looking down on Dehradun.
00:04:23
Speaker
I thought, you know, that the flip of it is quite interesting because it was all looking at this magical elevated Musurian. Now it's just the reverse. What is that? And the second is the, you know, this view. It's a veranda, small veranda.
00:04:41
Speaker
looking out at the mist rolling in. And sometimes there's something available, which is this beautiful vista. I think I could see Saharan put this morning and a couple of hours just white out. We in a cloud and
00:04:58
Speaker
there's nothing there and then slowly it's ephemeral. I do read a lot so I use these words but it's like magic because sometimes something is showing and something isn't and it's so uh capricious it's so mutable that and it's ever changing so I just feel like this is it right now is it oh and the next thing this is it right now is it and it's all
00:05:25
Speaker
It's very restful, you know, it calms you down, knowing that there's nothing, you don't know what's coming ahead, and yet you know it's going to be fabulous, you know. Of course, it is a beautiful aesthetics do matter. So you know that, you know, once you've seen that beauty, you know it will show up in different ways.
00:05:46
Speaker
Sometimes when I look out of my gold gown window, I do miss oak forests. But when you know it's there, it's texting, even in this beauty, sometimes it's there and sometimes it isn't. And between my first cup of coffee in the morning to this. So stop here. Sometimes it's there, sometimes it isn't. What does that mean to you?
00:06:09
Speaker
What is it? It's almost like a metaphor is being created here for you, which you are probably what I'm sensing. You're trying to voice it and articulate it in a manner. I mean, it takes some time, maybe this trip, you know, but maybe I'm pushing it a little bit. So I'm very curious to what is it doing sometimes here and sometimes not. And it kind of comes to breath, isn't it? Breathe in and breathe out.
00:06:33
Speaker
One minute, one second. After, on the out breath you anyway, you're not there, right? You think life comes back. Yes. So, I'm curious. Tell me more. And also then tell me about Veranda's.
00:06:48
Speaker
I will tell you, Verandas, I think life is ideally spent, be spent in Verandas with a bookshelf close by.
Life Reflections: Upbringing and Education in Tea Estates
00:06:58
Speaker
That's everything else that will work out. But before we come to Verandas, you know, something about being there and available, not there, like breathing in, breathing out, is somewhere you find stillness and I'm finding that stillness. It was a deep focus that always helps me
00:07:18
Speaker
feel calm or feel or heal or sort of reenergize. All these words don't work but it's like being scared. Don't play works. Go ahead. Rejuvenates feels too much like a spark but it's a general sense of being able to be still and being okay.
00:07:41
Speaker
So it's like, you know, you abandon yourself rather than trying to control. So surrender to the moment, right? Yeah. It's like surrender, but more like surrender in the sense of abandon, in the sense of letting go. Abandon that. And that's a beautiful, powerful world. That was what it was. It was sometimes, and otherwise, always thinking, you know,
00:08:08
Speaker
Yihoga, Nihoga, Plan B, Plan C. Somewhere, you know, there's always this thing going on. And it was simple, as simple as, will it rain today? Will there be sun? Will we be able to go for a walk? Oh, it started drizzling. Oh, now it's got to, let's wait 10 minutes.
00:08:26
Speaker
Will it pause? Will it pause? So there's no, it's not a perfect plan. There is no plan. And that I think sometimes being away is really like, you know, within 24 hours and it's not even 24 hours since I got here. I can feel the shift. And it takes me back to when I was younger and maybe even much younger than when I was in Paboy, I was a teenager by then.
00:08:53
Speaker
A boy being a tea estate, right? He grew up in the tea estate, especially if you want to know that heritage. So I grew up in the tea estates and I grew up in Upper Sam actually. And I will take you back to a place there, which is my go-to
00:09:11
Speaker
place, it's almost meditative. So when I go to Namtok, which is beyond Namdang and Margarita, it's one of the tributaries of, it's the Dirac River, which goes into the Buri Dhing at some point, and it's literally the foothills, it's lovely pebbles, and it's sort of a glen into which we used to go for picnics. But there, I must have been seven,
00:09:39
Speaker
The sense of stillness is, I used to feel I used to fade away. I didn't have a body. I would fade into, I was, there was no, I didn't exist. And that feeling, you know, because maybe I grew up in such beauty and such carefree, remote-ness that then you, without realizing it is something you search for.
00:10:07
Speaker
and find those moments that define your decisions, or at least mine. And so when I go back to sitting in maybe, how old was I? I was 18, 19. Didn't realize my hormones were raging, but as a teenager, it was about a happy, you know, like happy teenage where you listen to your music and you, well, everybody played
Career Path: From Design to Film Industry
00:10:32
Speaker
tennis. I was a lazy sod and I still am. I would sit,
00:10:36
Speaker
in verandas and paint and for me that's what it took me back and I didn't bring any of my usually I always have a sketchbook with me and today I haven't even brought that you know it just didn't happen in the packing and I wrote my laptop but I didn't bring my paintbrush so for me it's beautiful you know as I said again this is so and I resonate so completely
00:11:04
Speaker
coming from the same kind of a background and I know exactly what you're talking about and it takes me back so thank you for the gift thank you for the gift because I think that's what a lot of it a lot of who we are is shaped by where we grew up and the kind of early life we
00:11:23
Speaker
And I think we share that heritage and that history and no one can take that away from us. So moving further on this note, as you reflect on your journey and we've
00:11:37
Speaker
You've got on to a very interesting start with going back to six, seven-year-old in the sand in these pebble waters and then verandas. How did it go? How has your journey been? What have been some of your key movements?
00:11:56
Speaker
So there are two things, you know, I often think because also my answers will keep changing. I feel what I would have said maybe five years ago will be different to what I say five years later. They grow and change. In this instance, there were two things that critically shaped because I've been thinking about it, you know, in different conversations. And one was that
00:12:15
Speaker
Growing up in a sort of corner of India, literally, Margarita couldn't be further, probably furthest civilization, next to Burma, there was sense of hunger and wonder. You know, these old libraries made us travel because it was, I was 70s and 80s kid, you know. So you traveled and the world came to a curious about the world.
00:12:45
Speaker
that was there was a certain hunger and curiosity to know. The second really was also a great amount of privilege and I want to talk about that because while a large part of India, my country is very differently placed
00:13:03
Speaker
I did grow up in a very feudal old colonial system, which is something I'm looking at when I'm reading a book now, saying, oh, really, is this the way I would write the sentence? And maybe there's a different perspective. But I did grow up with privilege. And I went to even going to Carmel Convict Dig Boy, which is this oil town.
00:13:22
Speaker
which is quite fancy from where Margarita was, was a sense of privilege, you know, and being able to have a veranda and being able to access NAM talk on a weekend was privilege. So from that corner of the world, I think the best thing I got was an education.
00:13:45
Speaker
And that I was lucky to have a good education in school and then further on I made those choices. I was always challenging my dad. Now I realize my dad was probably my best champion because I am a single woman.
00:14:01
Speaker
49 who's straight and has chosen to be this person and I work and I run a company, you know, work at a company and work with a large number of colleagues and I've had a very checkered. And you work with DK, right? I work in a publishing company called DK. I'm a designer who works there and I've sort of become a
00:14:21
Speaker
more into leadership and management. So I'm now the design head of DK India. And DK is a Brit company, which does a lot of visual design books. So DK stands for Dorling Kindersley, erstwhile Dorling Kindersley. Now it's just a brand, you know, a brand word. Yeah. But it's, it was started by a designer and they really were, used design thinking and visuals right from the start. And also
00:14:50
Speaker
the things that pulled me into DK was that they're crazy about plants and animals and knowledge and presenting it in absolutely fabulous ways so it was an instant love story there and I want to work for them because they're just amazing stuff so that was that was it so I am there and I think the thing was when I go back my dad was my mom and dad were classic
00:15:16
Speaker
1960s education and my dad went to Stephen, my mom Miranda house and my dad said on the breakfast table one day that girls shouldn't go to Stephen's and that was it. Challenge and I was like I will go to Stephen and I will get my marks and I will not use your you know how you'll get it because you're my daughter.
00:15:40
Speaker
And so, and of course we at that time I was listening to Madonna would just go on Papa Don't Preach and he thought it was the worst song and he was listening to Dire Straits and couldn't understand why I couldn't understand Mark Knopfler, which who I do now. So, you know, it was teenage years and I was like, home college esse careta. So, and in all this, my mother, who's the voice of government,
00:16:02
Speaker
you know there's this design institute you seem to always want to draw you know I put my the back of my notebooks were always sketches and you know I was always the person in school who would do chart competition and all you know so you felt you were like the cartoonist the doodler and everybody said wow you write your name so nicely but it wasn't that but my mother said try this you know nid m the bar then what
00:16:27
Speaker
I thought Calcutta was the zenith of the empire. So Delhi was very rural, I mean backward in those days. So in 1978-79, talking cheese.
00:16:44
Speaker
And I landed up quite by chance, filling up those forms. We were all filling up forms. Usha Al-Bukkuk, I think she had come and done career counseling. And she said, you should be administer, IFS, IAS, criminal lawyer. I was like, wow, because we just filled up a form. And investigative, no, design was second, some sort of designee sort of thing which they had to win.
00:17:12
Speaker
And I was like, I'm not going to do any of this. I'm going to do English on us, Stephens. And just to put Papa down, that's my plan. So, but you know, everybody was doing these and we filled up the form and I wrote all sorts of whatever came to my head first thing. So I feel that one was also the curiosity. So there was no fear, even though I thought I had this privilege of saying I'd go this way, I landed up in Ahmedabad. And I think that was,
00:17:43
Speaker
probably quite by chance the happiest mistake that happened to me. I found my tribe of people who often would think like me or would be okay and far more talented and far more creative. So college was great. I went to design school in Ahmedabad and it changed some of my wiring.
00:18:08
Speaker
And I'm very glad for that. I made the most tremendous friends and I feel very confident of that. I sometimes feel those are really good years or best years. Young, you're doing stuff, the world's your oyster. So that's it. And because it was so plural and opal and multidisciplinary,
00:18:29
Speaker
For someone who came from seeing a factory working from a paint shop to a, you know, my granny used to weave, to come into an institute like that, it was, it was okay to have different interests. And that kind of, that's why I feel that it wasn't unidimensional even when I was growing up, you know, I remember Jason,
00:18:52
Speaker
a painter in Bhagavan who was lettering my trunk, my school trunk, 1980, probably February. And it was the first time I watched somebody do hand typography. And I was a great watcher. So I spent hours watching him get, and he was a perfectionist. So it was like watching art being created, you know? So I felt that that was very lucky.
00:19:16
Speaker
So then through my career, which is here and there and everywhere, I decided, when there was already by the 1990s, not so much, but by 1994, 1995, that you must have a career and, you know, what about, in Ahmedabad, you see the IIT Ahmedabad, you know, I am sort of seen and,
00:19:45
Speaker
you know, the sort of choreographs and writing resumes and so on. And I was like, who cares? So I think that kind of was nice. And being able to find, what I'm hearing is being able to find your center in the middle of all this as well. Do what you want and have the thing sometimes you feel, sometimes you get it right. But I think to have worked in a dabble in
00:20:11
Speaker
ad filmmaking. So I trained as a visual communication, which was graphic design with a specialization in video. Nobody knew what video was. So it was just about looking at a bit of advertising, early days in Bombay.
00:20:29
Speaker
And did you spend some time? I think two months in advertising was enough, but I love it.
Return to Design: Joining DK for Visual Storytelling
00:20:36
Speaker
And I came back to Delhi and I wanted to make documentary filmmakers and I felt a feminist voice must be heard. I wasn't even sure that was a feminist or anything. And I'm probably not. But at that time there was, you know,
00:20:50
Speaker
And I landed up finishing some work and landed and said, oh, you know, recruiting for a film, will you want to be an assistant? And I had this bucket list. I want to work on a movie set. I want to do a documentary. I want to do a shoot. I want to do a book. So I had this list of things I wanted to do, and none of them were. There was a Jack of all trades master of none.
00:21:15
Speaker
So after that, I worked on a film and then I did a career in feature films that came to India at that time. And- Which films like which ones? I worked for, I started with Deepa Mehta's first of her trilogy. So I was- I didn't know that. You didn't know that? No, I was, the people I was working for, you know,
00:21:43
Speaker
They had a company called Octave and I was doing some docues for them. They said, I don't know what to do now. So they said, Ari, go and meet my friend Aradhna. She's going to be looking for an assistant. You know, because I had worked in Bombay.
00:22:01
Speaker
sets where you, if you're a flunk, you're a real flunk, you know. I said, Kuch bhi karega, feature film, unknown director, unknown whatever. And I went to the IIC and met Aradhna, who I ended up knowing, you know, so in another world. And I said, yeah, I'll work. So I landed up being, what was my credit now? I can't remember. I think art department assistant,
00:22:27
Speaker
On fire. So. Oh. 596 winter shoot. So yeah. So that was.
00:22:42
Speaker
Yeah, that was the winter. So that's my, how did that go? How did that go? Did you enjoy those? I loved film. I still love, I, you know, yeah, it's, it's my, no, I don't know when this will get broadcast, but it really definitely is what I sometimes miss as a rush.
00:23:01
Speaker
Yeah, it would be an adrenaline rush. It was great. And also working with so many interesting people, cameramen, and it's again a very multidisciplinary lights, camera, carpenters, painters, and of course brilliant talent. So, I mean, I was so kicked out, Shabana was on my set.
00:23:24
Speaker
and Kurbushan Karbandi was terrified of. But what it taught me very quickly was a work ethic, which I'm always grateful for, and accountability. Film is like a boot gap. So yeah, so I had a career in film, and then I was missing my design, so I would come and work in what would spend multimedia and CD-ROMs.
00:23:53
Speaker
high tech. It was a nice journey. And then I just kept evolving with technology. I went back into books and always enjoyed books. And then DK was hiring for multimedia in India. So I joined them. And it was like the best thing. I was like, oh, you know, they make CD-ROMs and they are open to movies and digital and books kind of fit them. And then next thing I knew, I've been
Life at 50: Embracing a Maverick Path and Learning
00:24:19
Speaker
with DK. But then I was in and out. I used to do film.
00:24:23
Speaker
then you got to do stuff that and you actually got paid for it. It was like your passion you were working with it throughout. Seems like that now but at some time there was also I did movies because they paid much better so DK would be like oh I sick you know I want to I want to buy a Mac those days was damn expensive you do a movie you can buy one. You know it was I was young and foolish so sometimes I feel some of those decisions were very well thought out. I was often told when I said oh I would just settle down and
00:24:51
Speaker
I just call it my experiments with the desk because I was just always hopping from one thing to the other and designers do get bored easily. So unless it's your passion project, you've been there, done that next. So I remember a recruiter telling me, no staying power. You haven't done anything. You are master of none. And those were things that you
00:25:20
Speaker
Of course, I had a group of people in film, which I felt that, you know, there was shorthand, there were people I'd worked with for years. If they call me even today, I would drop everything and deliver. But it's different to working in an office environment. So, you know, it just all came together and then. Yeah. So do you think you would have chosen anything differently? Is there something you feel you should have done differently?
00:25:45
Speaker
I don't mean it in terms of. There's only one thing, because I think definitely not. I love my now looking back and I'm going to be 50 at the end of the year. So I am doing a bit of a think. And I was like, no, I loved all the maverickness.
00:26:02
Speaker
what's the point of looking back and regretting not but there is one regret which was I think I was not astute enough or I was at that point too distracted by other passionate encounters was I had the opportunity of going to a grad school in the states and somebody was very politely telling me that they would sponsor me and they weren't trying to tell me without making me feel
Adapting to Challenges: COVID and Personal Growth
00:26:35
Speaker
embarrassed or you know they were just actually saying perhaps take it we got it and it was something you know it was de-school at Stanford and my aunt in California who said this is starting they were you know internet when it was starting and that's the one thing I feel that
00:26:56
Speaker
that might have been, that's just as a lover of knowledge and an eternal student. At least that's my only regret that I didn't do that. Because I do it, the only place I go and look at with envy and say hi. So it's not the jobs or the places or things one could have done. I'm very happy with what I did. When I look at some of the moments, I was cribbing and moaning and groaning like a real chew. But looking back,
00:27:26
Speaker
None of it was as true as I would have looked at. It's good, yeah. Did exciting projects and... I think it's fabulous. I think it's fabulous that you chalked out your own path and you followed it courageously, bravely, and because perhaps there was no other way that you... And there was no path also, no? It was not a direct path. It wasn't advertising. I said, I have to design this. But then I published it and I said, I don't want to design this. So it was just that...
00:27:55
Speaker
Yeah, and I'm so, you never know, you might be going to Stanford and lecturing at some point. Yeah, I've been back there a few times since. Is there anything I said? That was an opportunity I did not recognize.
00:28:14
Speaker
It was a recognition problem, not a miss. So when things are going not so well, and we were talking just before we started, we got into this recording this and saying that it has been the last six months have been very tough for a lot of us, you know, because COVID just seems to be endless, you know, and the implications thereof. When the chips are down,
00:28:40
Speaker
What do you fall back on? Is there a metaphor for life or a couple? How do you get back to a space where you feel it's okay? I think right through, but last year particularly, and I think this year particularly, when you're performing your role or whatever decision making you do in whatever you do, not just work,
00:29:09
Speaker
but life as well. If you're doing it individually as an individual performer, then my expectation of myself or what my optimism for myself, my bounce back, and even my wallow can be very mercurial or up and down because I'm talking to myself and I can say, okay, now just shut up or get on with it or chin up.
00:29:32
Speaker
You know such words, but now for the last few years when i'm working with a really wonderful bunch of designers i'm very proud of all my colleagues and when i'm over the years. i've had some tougher assignments or mandates to deliver.
00:29:51
Speaker
in terms of transformation of teams. And I think I do bring, I've often been told, can you just slow down? I remember one IT guy said, what do you eat for breakfast? Because I used to walk in with this energy, which I never waited for people to catch up with it. But in the last few years, what has helped me was
00:30:15
Speaker
If you take, while I am the person who will do what I have to do for myself, it was taking everybody with me. And sometimes that load became too heavy to share, you know, you needed to share, to stand together, to be there for each other. And I think the ability to sometimes just be vulnerable and say, okay, today's a really tough day today. I just don't feel like working. I think, you know, I am in my pajamas, guys. I'm still at this meeting, which would not have happened. I would never have cried at work.
00:30:44
Speaker
It was, my work ethic at film was if you cried on set, you were a loser, you know, some issue. So the vulnerability, the empathy that I needed to say, okay guys, we've got to get through this together. That I think, whether it's for the family, whether it's for my connection with my dog who's aging, whether it's with my team, whether it's my friends, it was that. And this year, strangely,
00:31:13
Speaker
put that optimism or that equanimity to real test where you don't have that control. It wasn't about defying death or anything like that. I'm not having any sort of foolish thoughts like that. It was about saying, oh my God, I can't help somebody with something that's basic in oxygen. I can't actually get out and get into my car without endangering
00:31:39
Speaker
my parents, it was just like a sense of being in a mental straitjacket. That I found was where it tested real testimony and to find opportunities and to keep stepping back, you know, going back to that veranda moment or putting on music that took you back or saying make keeping it light.
00:32:03
Speaker
That I think is what is the secret of keeping it light, to carry it lightly, it's okay. Even the control, even the need to be organized, even the need to be heartbroken or devastatingly sad, not to be in that extreme.
00:32:25
Speaker
Everybody around us is also, but you don't need everybody to be always in the same boat as you. The fact is that to keep it light, it's okay. So I found that, have I answered your question? Yes, absolutely. So I felt that- Wear it lightly, right? Wear it lightly because even the intensity of getting something done or being late or getting it perfect or doing your duty of, you know,
00:32:52
Speaker
Just wear it lightly. It's okay. Have fun while you're washing the dishes. It's all right. It's fun. You know, God bless Amazon. Fine. I used to be the person who say, oh, I'm against big co-op. And I was like, you know, thank God. It's just, it was, it's okay. You know, do both. Both, it's okay. Don't have to be a polar. That was fine. But I do feel that what one took as your rhythm of every day,
00:33:21
Speaker
being able to walk in the park or just walk, you know, have a chat and laugh with your friends, all those things, when they go away, then you really have to only be with yourself. And then what are you, what am I with myself, which was what created some of the very difficult question. But I think it's just, it is what it is.
Influences and Mentorship: Continuous Learning
00:33:46
Speaker
itself you pull you back you know it's for me it's always nature it's almost the need for green for cheese and the need to discover things so I live in Gurgaon and thanks to
00:34:06
Speaker
this pandemic and finding ways to walk, not on a treadmill, was I discovered the Banda Road, the great reforestation project. And I've been, every time I walk on it, I bless the people who had the courage and the gumption to put it together.
00:34:28
Speaker
We're here in Gurgaon. I don't know about it. I have to talk. That's a walk we'll do together. Sounds very good. So sorry. I can waffle on, but I have the mic back to you. No, I think, no, this is great input for many of us who are living in Gurgaon. Maybe don't know about this. It's a great thing. It's called the Bandar Walk. The Bandar Walk. It's something reforestation.
00:34:56
Speaker
They've taken the, with MCG Gurgaon, I think IAM Gurgaon is the, they've reforested the path along the Nala and it's wheelchair friendly. It's, you know, sight, people who have a problem with sight friendly. It's just, they've changed slightly. That's amazing.
00:35:24
Speaker
Just to understand a little further, who have been the key influencers in your life, who shaped you, what shaped you. Would Michael Jackson be all right. Totally. Steve Jobs. So for the people who have never met.
00:35:39
Speaker
but definitely had an influence would be people who I've read and watched, and of course a lot of thinkers. First also, then with my family, both my grandmothers, my maternal, both very different, but my sense of my knowledge of mythology and
00:36:05
Speaker
scripture, all came from my Dadi who was quite a religious lady and she had all of her thing but what I managed to get from her was just the essence of working with your hands, being able to grow plants, to be able to cook everything that you want and also know the plurality of the Mahabharata. So when I was a kid she used to live with us and every afternoon was a story from
00:36:34
Speaker
one of the epics and I didn't realize that. The second was my nani who I got to know as an adult better as an adult was she brought the rest of taught me how to live in a city and also brought a lot of appreciation for
00:36:54
Speaker
classical music. So between those two very, you know, strong people, I was definitely nurtured by them. And they do, I realize now some of my decision making is from that. The next were a lot of my teachers.
00:37:12
Speaker
you don't realize but with the sense of discipline and rigor of doing my homework for anything you know putting in that little extra effort or having you know Mrs. Bob who thought said you don't get up on stage and do elocution I don't know whether it's even done anymore but it gave me a sense of being able to do stand up and present you know sometimes I'm standing in front of a you know
00:37:41
Speaker
stage fright and I said oh no I could hear an old teacher or someone's you know the voice somewhere saying it's going to be okay and you're fine to do that. School teachers and Mrs. Menon who I was quite afraid at one point to getting it wrong.
00:38:02
Speaker
the tremendous pressure to be a good student or good, you know, this good as a word that can be bad. She said, you know, brought a different perspective when I was quite young in junior school. So I'm very, very grateful to her for that because
00:38:17
Speaker
Now, when I met her many years ago, I realized what she was trying to do. And then in her school, as in junior school in Williams, right? She would, she said, you know, she just told me, why are you so afraid? And we're like, somebody asked you that and you never thought of an answer for that. You know, why are you so afraid?
00:38:35
Speaker
You know, some people just not give up until you've figured out. And even if you, whatever your answer is, then you're not afraid of that answer anymore. And next answer, and it's like, okay. So something like that, as simple as that. And then of course, my tremendous and wonderful gurus really, not teachers and friends who were my teachers in design school. Really. And then as an adult, I mean, as a person in the last few years,
00:39:04
Speaker
There were a couple, Sophie Mitchell and Stuart Jackman for classical decay. They were there from the inception. I was very lucky. He's a designer. She was managing editor, publisher, and I really was mentored by them. And I didn't realize I was being mentored. It's the best kind of mentoring. And the faith they had in me,
00:39:33
Speaker
help me see my potential. And I think somebody having that blind faith in you, which is not family, somebody having that, it just changed. So yes, I have a set of people right through and a few of these. And of course, there's always space for Madonna, Michael Jackson.
00:39:59
Speaker
Great. Great to hear all this. Each individual has something to contribute. I feel it's unique to him or her or them. What do you think you contribute? What do you bring as a gift to humankind? What I don't know, actually, one of the things, and this is weird, because whether it was in the gardens where we were on the top of the pyramid as children of
00:40:29
Speaker
as well as when working with craftspeople and people that actually were talent. For me, it was always learning from somebody else and being able to talk to anybody. And I think one of the biggest changes for me was when we went for a course called Environmental Perception and we was actually sent into the village of Adalaj.
00:40:55
Speaker
Now in Assam I knew, I grew up in an agrarian society, but the maths was a pyramid. I was still part of it and it was not an equal interaction. But it taught us how to be, work with people who were doing different things, whether it was the Bitchley mystery, whether it was the Kart mystery, you know, the Mali would know something more. But when I went to NID and I went to this, really it was working with villagers and you see the magic of what everybody brings to the table.
00:41:23
Speaker
It wasn't the education. It wasn't the degrees. It was the ability to see what that other person is doing. And it could be just fantastic to identify the talent and have a conversation and be saying, you know, I don't know this interview. And it was, I think mostly, I think what I can bring, I don't know.
00:41:47
Speaker
But I'm happy to always be open for a chat and, you know, help. But for me it was always the other way, say, Acha, you know, whether it was an old cook telling me
00:41:59
Speaker
baby Abka custard saying, yeah, vanilla dalo, which was just a few years ago. And I said, you know, it didn't have to be Martha Stewart telling me. And then Sinku tell me just as well, whether it was Lozari and Yashwant Bhai, these painters I worked with, who taught me everything I know about wood and paint. I feel that almost selfish that I'm the one who's hogging, you know,
00:42:27
Speaker
Learning all the time. So I suppose being able to recognize the gift everybody else has, which what I'm picking up from what you're saying is that the uniqueness that you bring is being able to see what anybody can give you and being able to appreciate it and incorporate it.
00:42:44
Speaker
into your being. And I think that is a huge group. What it does for people then is gives them equity, you know. And my belief, the thing that I can give back, and this is not because I work in publishing, please, but read, read, read, or watch
Curiosity and Openness: Lessons from the Pandemic
00:43:04
Speaker
slightly more, just watch stuff that will make you think, even if it's a clever TikTok video. I feel that the most exciting thing is to be curious all the time. That's what I offer.
00:43:22
Speaker
don't underestimate curiosity and you that you are curious and that everybody is a designer in themselves you know you're creating something every day and you say oh it's not it's not the part of somebody else's job to do it and often I find people saying I'm not artistic at all I can't draw I can't be everybody has that spark just
00:43:45
Speaker
find your channel, but just keep it open. That's what I feel. It works. Great. Thank you. That's very powerful. And to be able to share that and to keep that alive for in yourself and therefore kind of being almost like a mirror for somebody else too. This whole thing about contagion, I'm talking about good contagion.
00:44:07
Speaker
We need to we need to kind of keep building that up some good contagion and I think doing being able to do that is phenomenal Malika. I really enjoyed my conversation with you and thank you so much for making the time. Before we close out is there anything else you'd like to say? You know the current thing is which I heard last year from both an American leader called Whitefoot and Arundhati Roy
00:44:34
Speaker
was that the pandemic is our portal and there is opportunities and ways of change that we can be. So I just feel be the change. It's all changing and I've had a lot of changes and a good way. So, you know.
00:44:53
Speaker
Use the portal. Thank you so much. That's a very powerful message to end on. And thank you, Mallika, for sharing, for being on this journey, for helping us, letting us be a part of it, and sharing your life with us.
Conclusion: Peace and Reflection in Landour
00:45:10
Speaker
It's been an absolute pleasure. You have a great time in Landor and find your stillness and your space and your joy and I wish you great peace before you come back again. And I'm off to get some cake so you can see.
00:45:26
Speaker
Thank you, Sheeba. It's always lovely to chat to you. And you know what? You gave me almost, this is 50%, 55%, I mean, 190, 95% of talk time. And you said just a few open questions. So thank you for being such a great listener. Thank you so much. Thank you, Malvika. Take care of yourself. And we can connect up soon again. Yes, definitely. Bye.
00:45:55
Speaker
Thank you for your time and attention and for being a part of Soul Brews with Shiva. Until next week, keep the coffee swirling.