My area is communication and I focus on using communication for social change, for social
justice — basically to make people’s lives better across the world — because I believe
that communication can be used to sell products or merchandise, but can also be used to sell
good ideas.
For instance, Gandhi in India was a communicator.
Martin Luther King was a communicator.
They were all effective communicators.
So that’s my desire.
I am also a performer.
I am a folk performer.
I belong to a tradition, a long lineage of folk musical theater performers from India.
My folk form is called nautanki.
How should I explain nautanki?
Nautanki … if you imagine Broadway.
In Broadway musical theater, you have dance, you have songs, and you have acting, and you
have a story line.
Nautanki is just like that, except that it is eight to nine hours long.
Nautanki is usually performed in open spaces.
Community members are welcome, and sometimes it has participation of thousands of people.
My father, who is a legend of nautanki performances — he is a legendary actor, singer — sometimes
in his performances, you can see a crowd of 20,000-25,000 people.
I have been in nautanki since my childhood and when I did my Ph.D. in communication,
I thought that I should use nautanki to write new scripts that can convey socially relevant
messages and that can convey community messages.
So what contemporary things are we communicating through nautanki?
We are trying our best to feature things that are not only relevant to Indian people, but
also Californians.
So for instance, in the last nautanki, we featured the issue of marriage fraud … Indian
young men who are getting married, not a love marriage, but an arranged marriage — they
go back to India and they get married, and they take a lot of dowry.
Dowry is usually a gift, in cash or kind, given by the woman’s, or bride’s side,
to the groom’s side.
Once they get the dowry, sometimes they come back to America, or the United States, and
then they forget their wives.
Not all of them — please don’t get me wrong.
Ninety-nine percent of Indian young men are pretty good and ethical.
I’m talking about a small percentage.
So that is what I have been using nautanki for.
Nautanki is amazing, entertaining folk form.
It’s singing and dancing — very entertaining.
Usually messages are conveyed through humor.
So, although we sometimes feature very serious issues, we do it through humor and drama so
that it can make an impact.
I am hoping that I will keep doing these performances and communicating social justice issues and
other relevant issues through my performances.
I am also writing a book these days on my folk theater tradition, nautanki, and hopefully
that will generate even more interest.