Talking about the need for a South Asian feminist podcast.
In this extra-special final episode, Masala Podcast creator Sangeeta Pillai becomes the guest. She is interviewed by Hollywood actor & producer Melanie Chandra about the importance of South Asian feminism. Sangeeta talks about her own personal and painful experiences growing up in the Mumbai slums with an alcoholic, abusive father. She talks about seeing South Asian women being treated badly, which inspired her to become a feminist activist. She also talks about why it’s important for women and girls to have safe spaces like Masala Podcast.
SUMMARY
In this episode, the host of Masala Podcast, Sangeeta, is interviewed by Melanie Chandra. Sangeeta shares her background growing up in a slum in Mumbai and the challenges she faced in her childhood. She talks about her rebellious phase and her journey into the advertising industry. Sangeeta then discusses her transition into creating the podcast and the impact it has had on South Asian women. She expresses her motivation to continue the podcast and empower women to use their voices.
Key Takeaways
Childhood experiences can shape one’s beliefs and drive them to create change.
Rebellion can be a way of asserting one’s identity and breaking free from societal expectations.
Personal challenges can lead to self-discovery and a change in career path.
Creating a podcast can provide a platform to address taboos and empower marginalized communities.
CHAPTERS
00:00
Introduction and Background
05:19
Childhood and Overcoming Challenges
10:45
Transition to Adulthood and Career in Advertising
21:29
Creating the Podcast
27:45
Impact and Motivation
34:31
Closing Remarks
Things to take away from this podcast episode
The need to have a voice
Sangeeta Pillai talks about the importance of South Asian women having a voice, to be able to ask for what they want, have the lives they want.
The importance of South Asian feminism
Sangeeta talks about her own journey to becoming a feminist, how seeing her mother and other women around her being treated really badly, make her determined to have a different life for herself. A life of feminism and activism.
Why we must inspire the next generation of feminists
It’s important that young girls growing up now see and hear strong women, and understand that it’s important to have their own opinions and points of view.
The Power of Representation
Remember searching for role models as kids? The podcast talks about how vital it is to find reflections of ourselves in media and stories, highlighting the loneliness of not finding them and the importance of changing that narrative.
Defying Societal Expectations
The conversation talks about making personal choices that suit our own needs, rather than going along with society’s expectations of us. We talk about the power of owning your decisions and living the life we want as women, rather than the one that’s expected of us.
More power to South Asian women
This podcast episode is all about challenging ourselves as South Asian women to embrace our unique selves boldly. And inspiring each other to become to fullest, happiest versions of ourselves.
Helpful resources
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
S5 Ep 12: Sangeeta Pillai – Why I became a South Asian feminist & podcaster
TRANSCRIPT
Sangeeta Pillai
Besharam, Batameez, GandI.
Bad Beti.
I’m Sangeeta Pillai and this is the Masala Podcast. This multi award winning feminist podcast for and by South Asian women is all about cultural taboos from sex, sexuality, and sexism, mental health, menopause, to nipple hair and more. This season is a US Special and it took me by surprise. You see, I interviewed these incredible South Asian American women. I expected to hear some angst around identity and belonging. Instead, they told me how comfortable they were with both their South Asian and American identity. I confess.
This is not the podcast season I set out to record. It’s so much more powerful. Before we begin, here’s a quick warning. In this episode, I talk about some quite painful things from my past, like domestic abuse, my mother’s murder, and there’s even a mention of rape. So please check the show notes for details and please do take care of yourself.
Welcome to a very different Masala Podcast, because the guest on this episode is me. For the final episode of season 5, I’m being interviewed by Melanie Chandra in a studio in New York City. And I’m sharing things with Mel and with you, my listeners, things that I’ve never shared before. Like why I do this podcast and why I keep going season after season.
I also share my personal life, my past, like the time I cut off my hair or when I made some non-feminist dating choices. Also, the time I almost had an arranged marriage. Almost. You’ll hear more about my life journey. I hope hearing about my journey inspires you in your own life journey. Hello and welcome to Misala Podcast.
Masala Podcast (02:26.486)
This is an episode with a twist. Because when I interviewed Mel, she said, if you ever come to New York, I’ll interview you. I’ll turn the tables on you and I’ll ask all the questions. I don’t think she ever expected me to actually turn up. So here I am in New York. I kind of buzzed her and said, here I am, interview me. And that’s what we’re doing. And so here I am, we’re sitting at the Spotify offices in New York and I’m so glad that we’re actually able to do this.
Melanie Chandra
You know, honestly, just want to celebrate Sangeeta because she, you know, reached out to me to do her podcast. And afterwards I left thinking, wow, I mean, this is an incredible woman. There’s just so much compassion behind your voice. And I could tell that there was just so much there that I wanted to explore. I’m, you know, I don’t really, I don’t do this for a living, but I’m just like, let me just try, you know, let me talk to you and hear about your stories. You have such a dedicated audience and I’m sure they would love to know more about, you know, the woman behind the podcast. So I’m so glad that we’re able to make this work.
Sangeeta Pillai
Thank you so much. I’m really touched and Mel is super busy. She’s super successful. She’s running around everywhere and she’s still made time for this. So deeply grateful. Fantastic. So I guess it’s on me. No pressure, Mel. No pressure. So I thought
Melanie Chandra
It’d be fun to start with something a little bit different, just to give your audiences just a little bit of flavor. Not necessarily rapid fire, but just some questions that people don’t know about you. So first, tell me about the last book you read.
Sangeeta Pillai
I reread something that I read when I was really young called The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. So I recently found I had an old copy. It had a huge impact on me when I was 20 something living in Mumbai. Because I didn’t think you could make a living as a writer. Like I was told that, you know, you had to be a doctor, lawyer, engineer. So to see a woman like me from Kerala writing a book, which became this, and it was, it won the Booker prize and all of that. So I re-read that and it really touched me once again.
Melanie Chandra
How would you describe your fashion style?
Sangeeta Pillai
Very colourful.
Melanie Chandra
She is wearing a bright red jumpsuit and it looks fantastic.
Sangeeta Pillai
I don’t do beige. Again, it’s something I’ve learned to wear and when I moved to the West from India. I grew up in India. I spent most of my adult life in India. I tried to blend in and I started to wear a lot more like browns and grays and blacks. And those were the kind of dress codes of advertising agencies, places that I worked in. And it’s only the last kind of five years when I’ve started to embrace my identity, kind of the work that I do in Masala Podcast that I’ve started to wear a lot more color. Isn’t it funny? So it’s kind of like I’ve gone back to my roots, even with the colors that I’m choosing.
Melanie Chandra
Absolutely. And you deserve it too. People should look at you. You’re doing so many wonderful things, and when you walk in the room, you command that attention. And final question, childhood crush. Ideally someone famous.
Sangeeta Pillai
I don’t have to think twice. Amitabh Bachchan. You were probably too young to remember him, but oh my God, I remember being like 12 and he did this film. I think it was Kala Pathar, anybody that’s grown up in India will know this. And he turned up on screen like with his shirt knotted at his waist. And I had never, I thought, oh my God, I didn’t even know it was sexy. I just knew I felt something. I didn’t know what that something was. I was too young. The shirt at the waist. Oh my God. And he was like tall and lean and dark. And we’d never seen anyone like that before. So he was Amitabh Bachchan. So I think he was my stuff of schoolgirl crushes. I watched a lot of his films over and over again. I loved his voice. I found him very sexy, I think. So that was my proper schoolgirl crush.
Melanie Chandra
Let’s stay with your childhood a little bit. Ultimately, I want to know what drives you and understand why you created this podcast and where you’re going with it and talk about its impact. But I think a lot of that starts from youth, you know, can you tell me a little bit about your childhood, your fondest memories, maybe some hard things that you had to overcome?
Sangeeta Pillai
So you’re absolutely right, all the work I do now I’ve realized goes back to my childhood. It’s kind of how I grew up, who I was. I grew up in a slum in Mumbai. I grew up in a very poor family. We were from Kerala, but we moved to Mumbai when I was a year old. My father was an alcoholic, he was very abusive. So there was a lot of violence at home. So every night, I’d be terrified to go to sleep. I would, you know, like children do that thing where I would say, if I count to this and I haven’t fallen my dad would come home and I would kind of sniff the air and I think of smelling alcohol but I didn’t know what I was doing. I would like smell like an animal and he would come and it would be very violent and there was like a lot of blood and he would like you know hit her head against the wall and it was horrific. And we’d kind of I don’t know what it was we’d wake up in the morning, help kind of put her together and sometimes take her to the hospital and then just go to school. It was so disconnected and so dysfunctional but it’s the only kind of way we knew.
So I grew up thinking that women had no power. Like my mother couldn’t leave, she didn’t have a job, she didn’t have money, you know, she couldn’t go anywhere, no one would look after her and her kids. A lot of my kind of deepest beliefs come from there, where I was thinking I did not want a life like that. I was like, whatever happens, I want to have a voice, I want to have my own money, I want to have the ability to kind of live in the world without being battered by a man every single night because that’s what I saw.
Melanie Chandra
At what age did you realize that?
Sangeeta Pillai
I don’t think I did, and this is what’s funny. I think I always knew. Like it was this belief deep in my gut that I did not want this life, the life that I saw around me. Mm, I can relate. And the life that I was being told, like, you know, girls at that point, you know, eighties India were told like, oh yeah, well, the best you can hope for is a nice man will marry you. Like that’s the best possible dream life that you can have. And even my mother, sometimes I’d say like, Oh, I’d love to travel. She’d say to me, Oh, well, if you marry someone who travels, you can travel. So you see, like those were kind of the boxes we were put in, but I think I was born with this kind of fire inside me. Like that’s the only word I can think of. And I knew, I always, always knew that life wasn’t for me.
And it was really hard because I was staying at home and girls didn’t leave the house at that point. They’d say, you know, either your funeral pyre leaves or your bridal whatever leaves. You’re like, that’s one of the things I was told. But I just stayed at home. I fought and I fought and I fought. I’m like, OK, this is the job I’m having. These are the clothes I’m wearing. These are the friends I’m having. And it was very hard for them.
And now I look back and I feel a bit sorry for my mother because she did the best she could. Like she was trying to give me the best and for her the best would be like a nice guy would marry me. You know? So in her own way she was trying hard. But I was just different. I was born different. I was different. And I just, yeah, I just knew inside me. Like did like the cells in my body knew. If that makes sense.
Melanie Chandra
Yeah. I think we don’t realize till we’re older that our parents…
Most of our parents did want the best for us. And coming from not living where you grew up and not having a support system and being under so much pressure, whatever the circumstances are, they’re trying their best within the circumstances. How long did you stay in that house?
Sangeeta Pillai
I left when I was 29. So we kind of moved from the slum. I think we moved, I was in fifth or sixth standard, which is like 11, 12 in India. So I was in that place for that long. It was horrible. I still have a lot of memories. Like the toilets were outside. And when I say shitty, I mean like literally shitty. It was horrible. And there was this tiny house like this studio is probably as big as our entire home. And there were five of us. I don’t even know how we lived. So we moved from there when I was 11 or 12. And then I went to school, studied in Bombay. We call it Bombay, call it Bombay now. But I knew that the only way out was education. Like I knew, like my one out was this. So I worked really, really hard. And I did it while at school, university, eventually got a job in advertising. Okay, is that what you studied? You’ll laugh, I have a commerce degree. If you ask me what’s two plus two, I won’t be able to tell you. Like I’m that bad at anything.
Melanie Chandra
What’s two plus two?
Sangeeta Pillai
Four.
Melanie Chandra
Okay, okay. See? You’re not that bad. You’re better than my two year old.
Sangeeta Pillai
I bet you if you’re a two year old and I had a competition, they’d win.
Melanie Chandra
Did you go through any sort of rebellion phase in your youth?
Sangeeta Pillai
Oh my god, yes. So you got to keep this in perspective. So if you’re an American teenager or British teenager listening to this, you’ll be like, what is that? But imagine kind of where I was in this family where girls had never had a job, you know, university education. When I was about 15, I started to wear these really short skirts.
Melanie Chandra
I think everybody does at 15, right? Not in India, right?
Sangeeta Pillai
Not in India, not in Mumbai, not in suburban Mumbai, in a nice Malayali family. You know, like we don’t do shit like that. And then one day I remember like I had this really long black hair, you know, and my mother would put this coconut oil every Sunday. And it was like this kind of ritual, which I also love.
But one day I decided that I didn’t like the long black hair. I went and had it cut really short, like up to my ears. Or they call it boy cut. And I came home. Oh my god. So my hair was my mother’s like pride and joy. It was like the symbol of female beauty in India, especially from Kerala. It’s like a big thing in Madhya Lek culture. She didn’t speak to me for like, I think, two months after that. She just didn’t speak to me. She would tell my brother, go tell her to eat her dinner.
She was so angry. So yeah, the clothes, the hair. I had friends, I had male friends, which was again, completely unheard of. If a boy called, my mother would like this big inquisition, like, what does he want and who is he and what’s his family?
Melanie Chandra
And this whole time, why do you think you had such a rebellion?
Sangeeta Pillai
I think some of it was probably teenage hormones, I’m guessing, but I think I knew instinctively, I think I was trying to find a way out of that culture, of that upbringing, of that family, because I remember like when I think about it, I feel like this sense of being really suffocated within that life, because I had to come home at 6.30. I couldn’t, my friends would have parties, I would never be allowed to go to a party. You know, I couldn’t wear a certain thing. So I was very, you know,
And I think what I was subconsciously doing was creating my life. So it felt like rebellion, but actually, I think what I was doing was like, that’s me. That’s who I am. Taking charge. You know, in the little ways that I could. Taking your power back. Exactly. I think that’s what I was doing.
Melanie Chandra
Were you scared at all?
Sangeeta Pillai
I guess I must have been, but I don’t think I let it, because my mother and I were at war for like 10 years. My brother still talks about it and he was not happy about it.
He was like, why were you always fighting? But what he doesn’t understand is that if I didn’t fight, I didn’t have a life. He had a very different life. He was a boy in an Indian family. He became an engineer. He’s, you know, like done lots of things. So I had to fight. I was fighting for my survival. The survival of the person that I became, I think is what I was doing. So it was a very core fight. Yes.
So it could have been about the skirt or the hair, but actually it wasn’t about any of those things. It was about, I need to be who I am. You’re not giving me the space. So I need to fight to have that space.
As South Asian women, we’re not taught to fight. If anything, our culture teaches us to adjust, to accommodate to the demands of our families and society. But I think fighting for what we want, whether that’s a seat at the corporate table or the right to sexual pleasure or something as simple as choosing the career path we want, is critical. Anger can be cleansing.
Raging can be liberating. Remember, so many of our female goddesses are warriors. And they’re definitely not waiting to be given things. They demand it. They take it. So if there’s something in your life that you really, really want, fight for it.
Melanie Chandra
So what happened after rebellion? You go off, you get your degree in commerce, you get a job in advertising. And tell me about those first few years as a working professional.
Sangeeta Pillai
It was really exciting actually, because I’d never had money. And it was like piddly, it was like some 2000 rupees or something, it’s nothing. That’s like 20 pounds or whatever, $25, like that’s how small it was.
But at that point it meant something. It was my first ever job. And I felt, I used to feel really good and I’d take the Mumbai trains and they were horrific. Like if you think the New York subway’s bad, try Mumbai locals. So it would take me an hour and a half to get to work, hour and a half to get back. And I don’t know if you’ve ever seen pictures of how people get into the Mumbai locals. So the train comes in and before the train stops, you’ve got to jump in and hang on to the bar, the pole in the middle and all these ladies in their saris would hike up the sari and just jump and aim to get into the middle of the compartment. It was mad. I wish I could do that. I’ll send you a video. It’s quite hilarious. But they were so like adapted. It was, you know, so you had to do that. Because if you didn’t do that, you wouldn’t get into the train. There’s just too many people. Right. So you had to do that kind of maneuver. So anyway, so all of that was tough, but I still was very, very happy to kind of have a job like…have like a thing I was doing, bring money home.
And funny enough, I remember my first paycheck, I bought my mother a sari, I still remember the sari, it was like this cotton block print green and black sari. And she was actually really proud of it, although she and I had quite a complicated relationship. That’s one of my happy memories of her and our relationship and she kept the sari for years.
And anyone that came home, she’d say, oh, this is my daughter. She got me a sari with her first salary. So you know, I think somewhere she was proud of me, even though she said, oh my God, you’re going to ruin my life.
Melanie Chandra
Here’s my daughter, a working professional, earning an income, helping the family, buying me nice saris, of course.
Sangeeta Pillai
Exactly. So sweet. That was really lovely.
So yeah, that was a good couple of years.
Melanie Chandra
And how about dating life? Tell me.
Sangeeta Pillai
So dating life, Mel, was a zero, because we were not supposed to date.
We were supposed to get married. So since the age of like 18 or 19, these CVs would appear at home.
Melanie Chandra
CVs?
Sangeeta Pillai
A CV like a resume.
Melanie Chandra
Oh, resume. Okay. Yeah.
Sangeeta Pillai
I think you call them resumes. And they were of boys. So when I say boys, I mean like marriageable boys. And I remember turning around and saying to my parents, like..is it like they’re applying for the job of my husband? Like, what is this, what am I supposed to do? Like it says his qualifications, his height, his address.
Melanie Chandra
And where are your parents getting these from?
Sangeeta Pillai
I have no idea. They would just appear like on the table. They would just be- family friends. Yeah, must be somebody. Like when a girl reaches a certain age and they’re like, oh my God, she’s eligible.
Melanie Chandra
Fair skin. Yeah, yeah.
Sangeeta Pillai
I wish I wasn’t even fair skinned, but like a good cook, which I wasn’t. I’m wheatish. We’re wheatish.
Melanie Chandra
If you’re not watching this, we’re a wheatish complexion. We’re not fair skinned.
Sangeeta Pillai
Couldn’t cook because I refused to learn to cook. I’m like, I’m not doing this thing. But anyway, these resumes used to keep coming and I’d be like, no, I’m not doing it. I’m not doing it. And then one day a boy, I say boy in quotes and quotes because the boy was like, I don’t know, 30 or something.
I was so angry that somebody had just me saying, no, I do not want to get into an arranged marriage, had ignored me and turned up. I, there was only like at that point we were living in this one room, one kitchen. So I came out of the kitchen in my pajamas. And you know the traditional arranged marriage scenario, you’re supposed to like wear your sari and wear your jewelry and be like really pretty. I came in my pajamas and just sat in front of him like really grumpy.
So, suffice to say, the boy didn’t stay very long.
Melanie Chandra
I feel like this is straight out of a movie. Disgruntled daughter comes into the living room.
Sangeeta Pillai
Didn’t even brush her hair, just sitting there in her pajamas. Okay, fine, deal with this. Spills chai on the husband’s hands. You want chai? Here, I’ll give you chai. There you go.
Melanie Chandra
I’m sure the boy was still smitten with you.
Sangeeta Pillai
He did come back actually and he said, oh, we like the girl. And I’m like, well, I don’t like the boy. And that was the end of him. That was the end of that. So nobody else came after that. So I think that was the only dating as in marriage proposal scenarios.
I briefly dated this one guy. He was such an idiot, but I didn’t know any better for a couple of years.
Melanie Chandra
What makes a guy an idiot?
Sangeeta Pillai
I was a very different person, very naive. I said yes to everything. I’ve kind of grown into a far stronger person. And he would tell me what to wear, what he didn’t like me wearing. Whether how many drinks I could have. Cause all this was hidden because in India you couldn’t date. And because I had no experience of relationships, I thought it was love. I remember thinking, oh, I really love this guy. But lucky for me, he dumped me. Best thing he ever did was because.
I mean, who knows, I could have ended up marrying him or something, right? So he was a horrible guy. Really, really not nice. Alan, if you’re listening to this, thank you for dumping me.
Melanie Chandra
I was like, who are you talking to?
Sangeeta Pillai
Oh, Alan was the name of it.
Melanie Chandra
Is that his real name?
Sangeeta Pillai
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, okay, Alan. Bye bye.
Melanie Chandra
Bye bye, Alan.
Sangeeta Pillai
Adios.
Melanie Chandra
Okay, so now you’re working, you’re turning away these suitors at your home.
Still have this rebellious energy to you, but this fire, this independent spirit. Where did your career continue to go? And at what point did you decide to create this podcast? And why?
Sangeeta Pillai
So I carried on working in advertising, moved finally after 10 years of trying to leave home by finding other jobs in other cities. I must have applied to hundreds. Nothing worked until one day a job in Bangalore worked. So I left very, very quickly. I moved into this tiny one room, one bedroom, like flat, and I was happy as anything. And my idea of like freedom, you laugh at this, was to drink half a bottle of Bailey’s and wear shorts. Because I wasn’t allowed to do either of those at home. So I was like sitting there thinking, I love Bailey’s.
Melanie Chandra
Little Bailey’s over the holidays, so good.
Sangeeta Pillai
So that was my, this was freedom for me. I’m like, oh my God, this is an amazing life. Like that’s all I wanted to do.
So anyway, moved and I ended up going to, I had a couple of days between joining my new job. So I’m like, what do I do? I don’t know anyone in Bangalore. I got on a bus and went to Goa. Like I’d never done anything like that before. Didn’t know anyone in Goa. Got into an auto like a tuk-tuk and started chatting with them and said, do you know any nice hotels? So he recommended this hotel. I ended up staying in this hotel and remember that I’ve never gone anywhere. This is my first ever trip anywhere. And I sat there and this guy, English guy came to join us, joined me and the lady who ran the hotel. And he asked me for, he said, do you want to go for lunch? So we went for lunch. And over lunch, he said to me, don’t freak out, but I’m going to marry you. And I’m like, whatever, dude, I’ve just managed to escape my home. I’m really not getting married to anybody. But I did about three years later. He was very persistent and he kept flying over from the UK and all of that. So we moved to the UK eventually.
The marriage didn’t work out, but, you know. I think everything in life happens for a reason. And I continued working in advertising in many jobs. It was OK.
And about five years ago, I had, I guess, what can best be described as a sort of a mental health breakdown. It was hard, highly anxious, couldn’t get out of bed, like everything was like palpitations. It was just really, really scary. And I had no experience of anything like that before, like no one that I knew had spoken about anything like that.
Now looking back, I think it’s all the stuff I hadn’t addressed in my childhood. There’s a lot of crap that happened. My dad, his violence, my mom, she was murdered. There was a lot of stuff.
And I, I think like a lot of people just said, right, I need to get on. I need to work. I need to do this. I’m fine. Until there was a point when I wasn’t, it was hard. It was really hard. So there was a couple of months of very dark days and coming out of it.
Kind of did a lot of therapy, a lot of kind of inner work. I realized that I no longer wanted to work in advertising. The path that again, instinctively knew was this, this work with South Asian women, feminism.
I started running these workshops for South Asian women to write their stories. I did about 20 of those the first year. Then I was like, I need to do something with this. Turned those into two theatre shows, got South Asian actors together.
And a lot of people came to see them and loved it because we’d never seen our stories represented.
Melanie Chandra
So what were you doing with these workshops?
Sangeeta Pillai
I’ve always been a writer. So it’s something that the only thing I knew is words and writing. So I’m like, I’m going to get a bunch of women together and get us to talk about all the stuff we don’t talk about.
Melanie Chandra
Which is like the basis of this podcast.
Sangeeta Pillai
Exactly. So sex, periods, mental health, you know, all the stuff. And my brief to each of these workshops were like: Think about the one taboo that you’ve experienced and write about it. And I’d coach them and kind of tweak those stories. And then I found a director and a producer turned it into the shows. The shows were like received really well. Like all these women came up to me, hugging me and saying like, oh my God, we never see our stories on, you know, represented in that way, on a screen, in the theater. And I was like, this is really, really good. Like I knew that there was something really good there.
For me, having that huge mental health crisis was the best thing to happen. And I’m not saying this lightly. Like so many who experience mental health issues, it was incredibly tough not being able to get out of bed or function beyond the most basic level. But it forced me to stop. It forced me to seek help. It showed me that I literally couldn’t carry on as I had all my life.
Because ignoring difficult emotions is what we all do, right? We tell ourselves, you know, it’s okay. Ignore what we’re feeling and hope it goes away. So yes, my mental health crisis was the hardest thing, but also the best thing to happen. Because everything good in my life came from there. This podcast. This life. This clarity. This joy. And I am deeply grateful.
I wanted to broaden the canvas. I’m like, I want to reach a lot more of my women. Like when I say my women, I mean like South Asian women like us. I started thinking about what were the other avenues. So theater is great, but it only reaches like a couple hundred people at a time. And I wanted to reach a lot more. Someone sent me a link to a podcasting competition from Spotify called Sound Up. And it was to find more women of color podcasters. And I just dashed off these couple of lines, thinking it was at midnight or something and I’m like, I’ll never hear back from them. They called me the next week. They said, we had 750 people apply in London. You were one of 10 that got shortlisted. I was put into like this bootcamp for podcasting for like a week long. And at the end of the bootcamp, I got five minutes, all 10 contestants got five minutes to pitch to the head of BBC audio, Apple audio and Google audio. And they got five minutes to ask you questions and I did my presentation.
This is where the advertising experience came in very useful. I’m like, okay, my five minute deck rock. And I won the competition.
Melanie Chandra
That’s fantastic. And I’m so glad that you found that contest and that you just crushed it. And your experiences leading up to that point prepared you.
Sangeeta Pillai
I say this all the time, like there is nothing wasted in our lives, whatever we may do, even the pain, nothing’s wasted. Everything leads you to the point of where you’re supposed to go. Like I look back now, look back at all the pain, my mother, you know, like us, and you know, all the pain of those early years, advertising, the things I learned, everything has led me to this point in my life where I do the podcasts and I do the work that I do. So for all of us, I think there’s nothing wasted.
Melanie Chandra
On our interview for season five, I had a similar turning point to so many stresses and pressures. Your body just breaks down, right? And you have to use that as a signal and take a new path forward, which is what you did. And now you have this award-winning podcast that is reaching so many people. So what continues to propel you forward? You’ve done five seasons now. And what keeps you going? You’ve already had such success. You could say, you know, I’ve done my part.
Now I’m going to go work on something else. But you’re not, you’re here. You’re here and you’re so invested.
Sangeeta Pillai
Yes, massively. So to me, so it’s been super successful, right? Like to explain to somebody, like I am not from the audio world. I don’t know anybody at the BBC, you know, or anything. I didn’t know what a podcast was. I had to actually Google what a podcast was, like seriously. I didn’t know. I’m old, you know, like I grew up with radio. I don’t know what a podcast is.
So for someone like me coming in with zero knowledge, so it is a big deal, I think, that podcasting allows that space, so I have a lot of time and passion for podcasting because of that. But I learned and I taught myself and I had people supporting, helping, all of that. It’s been hugely successful, like six British Podcast Awards, Audio Production Award. I was on a billboard in New York City. It was big.
Melanie Chandra
You in Pink, the billboard in Pink.
Sangeeta Pillai
A little bit insane. All those are great. So that’s obviously, you know, like it’s validation for the work you do. And I’ve been kind of written about and I’m on the BBC and Guardian and, you know, and all of that’s happened organically. So that’s again, wonderful. So I really feel like this is a divine journey in many ways. Like I really feel like I am guided. All I know is the next step. I know what the next step is. I don’t know anything beyond that. And then as I do that, then the next step unfolds and the next step unfolds. So therefore I believe like there’s a divine purpose to all of this.
The thing that keeps me here and turning up and doing this again and again and again is the women in our community. I was one of those women. I would have loved to have a podcast like this when I was 15 and drive some sort of strength or energy or support from it. But I want to do this for the girls, for our girls, for our young women, for our sisters, for our daughters. I want to be in their ears and I want to tell them that it’s okay, that it’s okay to challenge some of the stuff you’ve been taught. Not everything is culture.
We’re allowed to pick and choose. We can be the women we want to be and still be Asian or Indian or Pakistani or whatever, you know, can be American, can be British, can be whatever we want to be. So to me, it’s, that’s why I do this. I get a lot of feedback, like amazing feedback. Like almost every single week I get an email or a message or a DM or something. Um, from young girls in India who sort of write to me and to say, you know, thanks to you, we feel less alone.
Like I say this always because it’s so dramatic. I was in Kerala, someone contacted me on Instagram to say, hey, are you in my city? And I was, and she said, how do you feel about a coffee? So we met in the cafe, had a cup of coffee. And she said, you know, your podcast changed my life, like quite literally. And I’m like, okay. And she said, she had an arranged marriage and the husband was gay and in…many traditional South Asian homes, they’ll marry a guy off thinking it’ll fix him.
You know, it’s just one of those things. And obviously they weren’t happy. So she told her in-laws that, you know, we don’t really have a sexual relationship because, you know, he’s not that way inclined. They had a word with him. He forced himself on her. She got pregnant. She lost the baby. And she’s like, I had the most traumatic time. But she said, through all of this, I kept listening to your podcast.
I kept listening to your episodes again, the same episode sometimes over and over again. And one day I left. And like even now when I say this, I get goosebumps.
Melanie Chandra
Wow.
Sangeeta Pillai
You know, it’s like I didn’t know what to say to her. I just sort of stared at her and I’m like, thank you was all I said. Oh, so I was just, you know, like really blown away.
Melanie Chandra
You really changed her life.
Sangeeta Pillai
I really changed her life.
Melanie Chandra
Wow. I’m sure there’s so many more stories like that.
Sangeeta Pillai
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And her I just happened to meet, you know, because I don’t know what it is that people will very rarely reach out to tell you. If you meet them, they’ll say, oh my God, you know, I heard this or this happened. But it takes a lot for someone to reach out and tell you that. So to me, that, that girl, that young girl in India, or this girl I met in Kuchchi, that’s why I do this. And I will do this until my dying breath. Like, I don’t know how, you know, whether I get the funds to do it or not, you know, whatever, I don’t know what happens, but I will find a way, to keep doing this because it is that important. So yeah, that in a nutshell is why I do this. Well, that’s a beautiful way to close things.
Melanie Chandra
Is there anything else you’d like to share with your audience?
Sangeeta Pillai
Yeah, keep talking to me, I think. I’d love to hear from you and I will respond as I always do to every single message that you send me because to me it’s a really precious relationship that you, the audience and I have.
So keep writing to me, keep telling me what, you know, if it helps you, what you’d like to hear, is there anything different you want me to do? Just tell me and I’ll do my best to make it happen. And follow the work, tell each other about it.
I’ve just done the US season of the podcast, which Mel was on.
I want to do another American season because I find it very interesting how the American South Asian experience is so different from the British South Asian experience and the Indian experience, the Pakistani.
It’s just so different, dramatically different. It really surprised me. So I like being surprised as well.
So I went in thinking it was going to be one thing and it wasn’t. So I had to kind of change things and I like that. So I hope to do another season here. I hope to come back to the US. I want to do maybe something in Canada. So I want to kind of reach.
There are, I don’t know how many million, 2.75 million South Asian women in this country. Canada is a similar amount. There’s just millions and millions of us. And we, because of the culture we come from and also Western culture, which doesn’t really kind of give us a lot of voice, we tend to be the quiet ones.
We’re the ones that are the doctors, the lawyers, the engineers, the ones behind the desk, you know, working away. But I want us to have a voice. I want us to kind of step up, talk, ask for what we need, even if it’s not been given to us.
We can be quiet, we don’t need to be shouty, or if we don’t want to be, we can be shouty if we want, whatever.
But ask, use your voice. It’s the hardest thing in the world, but it’s also the most like beautiful and profoundly life-changing thing that you can do.
Sangeeta Pillai
Thank you for listening to Masala Podcast. Masala Podcast is part of my platform, Soul Sutras, dedicated to celebrating and supporting South Asian women. This is a space for all of us bad deities who don’t do as we’re told. This is where we get to celebrate our culture our way and be exactly who we want to be. I’d love to hear from you. Get in touch via email at soulsutras.co.uk or my website soulsutras.co.uk.
I’m also on Instagram and Twitter. Just look for Soul Sutras.
Besharam, Batameez, GandI.
Bad Beti.