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The Platforming Artist podcast series is supported by Torch as part of humanity's cultural programme.

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Hello and welcome to the third instalment of our Chameleon Artist podcast, and today we're so happy to have someone open with us similar.

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It's one of the poets on our original production of Medea. Hello, how you doing?

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And they're I'm doing really well. Thank you. How are you doing? I'm not so bad.

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Really glad to have you on. Just to tell you us a bit about you.

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You studied classics at Oxford. Obviously, that's where we met.

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And whilst that not only did you work on the day with us, you were absolutely at this make up and you are now the founder of Coriander Theatre,

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which is something I'm sure we're going to talk about later on. You're also a performance poet.

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Obviously your commissioned for us right now,

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but you have had other recent commissions from the English heritage, from Sony, from the Barbican galleries,

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and alongside all of this, you're a political organiser and you currently work for local anti-poverty charity where you live in Hackney.

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And my sort of favourite facts about you is you're also a yoga teacher. And yeah, that's a whole story that maybe we'll touch on later.

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But yeah, so, so glad to have you on. So glad to be here.

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So let's start, let's jump straight in, Corey out there to great name.

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Great story. What made you found it? What's the story? What's your mission?

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Obviously incredible group of people running it where people of colour.

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Let's let's have a little chat about that. Talk to me about coriander. Yes, absolutely.

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I would love to. So in many ways, the seed of coriander theatre was the very same production of Medea that we were lucky enough to work with you on.

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But when we were studying together and I think it was seeing that production, that extraordinary,

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truly extraordinary up in production was such an inspiration to me and certainly other people in that age making community of seed.

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And so some of the theatre they've done before, all with my very dear friend that we went on with perhaps a more like community building approach

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towards art making and theatre making because we're really seeing the power that could come from that.

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When we graduated uni and moved to London,

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we wanted to keep taking it further and we found that so many of the artists around us just to keep them alive,

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really, who many of whom happened to be artists in different disciplines or producers them were also queer people of colour.

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And we saw all their resources out there, the funding as hard as it is to access.

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And we thought, well, we can do that. We can use the skills that we have to access that funding,

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access those resources and then use those like very real material things to support queer artists of colour,

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all kind of politically engaged artists and make some amazing art together.

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It's an incredible mission,

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and I'm so glad that you guys were inspired by the production and certainly do that and put on productions at Oxford and continue now.

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But I've got to ask coriander, theatre, coriander, what's the what's the story there?

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What's the name? Yes. I was such a fan of the name.

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We went through many, many iterations of the name for a long period of time.

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I was really deeply committed to something like yoghurt and rice collective or something until a dear friend who is out being like, Well, no,

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when you're not really a collector, if you are a theatre company and submit to you,

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this makes it sound like you manufacture those like Malaya, you'll get to put home.

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So we we took the note and instead we reflect a little bit.

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We loved the idea of staying connected to food similar to what it is that they make for some reason focuses on food or just guest.

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We just like to eat. We like to make through this that connected to cultural heritage to be thinking about how

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one shared element of North Indian food and Typekit Mediterranean Arab Lebanese food,

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and of that heritage is fresh coriander that kind of threw it on top of it.

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We also particularly like that detail that, you know, some people have that genetic predisposition.

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That means they just can't enjoy coriander. We kind of like that because we were like, OK,

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some people might not like as if this company of great people of colour and if they don't like us, then that's their problem.

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I'm certainly a fan of that coriander beer to great people, but I am one of those people who is doesn't like coriander, genetically type smoke.

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But I love with this company, and I think it's very interesting.

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I mean, what is it like being in that in that space or what have you being queer people of colour?

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I mean, it just took me about how it feels to create in that space and the experience you had.

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I mean, you've done numerous things. You've gone to Berlin.

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You've you've you've really had experience within with this theatre company and we'd love to hear just a bit about how that is and how that feels.

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Yes, absolutely. And in many ways, it's been absolutely extraordinary.

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Remember when we were in Berlin, it was part of this theatre festival festivals,

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the kind of like oppressed and political theatre makers around the world with all these amazing people from all different backgrounds,

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from really a fairly big geographical spread. And I remember at one point we were in just just our company.

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In the kind of converted chapel of the site of this, it used to be a church.

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Now it's a progressive theatre venue of some sort.

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And I remember in this very like sacred feeling space, reciting this like fairly queer,

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like really voicing like translation of a beautiful piece of North Indian devotional,

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which can be ecstatic to have this wonderful friend of mine shiver with their dancing to this classically trained as well as a Bollywood dancer.

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And she was there like dancing and dancing and dancing and entering this state of this kind of like state, almost like mystic love, right?

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Like such a rich part of our shared cultural heritage in that spiritual aspect that I'm interested in.

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And then someone else, after a night was playing the drum and this this energy built and built and built, and we could access this.

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Profoundly vulnerable part of ourselves that we wouldn't have been able to do in so many other places at the same time.

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There are always difficulties queer people of colour are so often disproportionately affected by so

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many of the worst forms of exploitation and violence in our society today and managing those things,

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managing the potential of violence and trauma and insecure housing and lack of stable income.

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Managing all these things as it accompanies a community as hard, always hard.

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Sure. I think I mean, that all sounds amazing and I got I wish I was there in the bill judge.

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But I think that's what you know to the end is also really important.

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And I think that so often we we should be celebrating these spaces and I think people from the outside looking in things like,

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Wow, they've created space. Wow. But I think that it's so often forgotten how difficult these spaces are to create.

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It's not just a case of throwing a bunch of queer people or people of colour, queer people of colour in a room together.

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It's got to be nurtured. You've got to put a lot of time and energy into it. It comes with a lot of difficulties and hiccups and hang ups and funding,

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even things just like finding funding and finding people who can get behind the idea or a difficult enough.

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And then when you're in that space and trying to create safety and a nurturing environment throughout these cases,

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it's kind of I think that it sounds great from the outside. But believe me,

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I appreciate and know the work that it takes to actually to successfully make that space and then use that space to create to create work,

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to create art too. Even if even if it's just to create, you know, relationships, it's a really it sounds a lot easier than it is.

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Issue, but to jump starting, I think I mean, we're both South Asian, we're both Indian, we're based North Indian, and my dad was born and raised.

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I was born in south when my dad was was that emigrated south over the age of like seven from Kenya.

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And there are a lot of Punjabis in South. But we we grew up with a bunch of jobs in our life and you could draw.

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The Indian community has a real tight bond in this country. And I would love to hear sort of a bit more specifically about your your experience.

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You know, I'm a I'm a North Indian gay man.

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I would love to hear about your experience, particularly as a sort of Indian Indian queer person.

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Mm-Hmm. Absolutely. And I had no idea that you were born in Seattle and your dad spent so much time in subtlety.

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My own my grandparents worked in software. My parents worked in Seattle.

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I worked in Philco. I grew up in Ealing. In fact, my my, my grandparents, my side were the first South Asian doctors in the UK.

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Well, of course. Yeah, I was born in Ealing General Hospital.

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Pretty, pretty typical folk. Pretty typical anyway. Love that.

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Yeah, it's it's incredible. Thank God my connexion. That centralised like so much the heart of everything I love about London as well.

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I especially like to bring it back to food.

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My God, when this is all over, we should go south and just like we are way down our way through the ice, through the border.

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Exactly. Yeah. If nothing else to do. Well, yes, particularly like as like a sundaes.

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In comparison, if a person has an equivalent ethnic heritage, maybe like a cookie they see,

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like what does that mean in the UK and especially is like a non-binary person or a queer personal, the person that they are?

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Well, I suppose it's been like a real. Trajectory.

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I think it's been a real journey in a lot of like real, very intense suffering and a lot of quite violent and traumatising experiences over the years.

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And I think at the heart of it, a kind of if you're destabilising in the sense of self,

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I think that's one of the things that runs through all of these experiences.

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I feel very lucky to be where I am now, which is able to hold these things quite lightly.

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Most of the time not to kind of deny any of that sadness or suffering,

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but to recognise that there is like a lightness and a joy and an ability to move with it and through it and in celebration.

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I think often what comes to mind for me is a slight sense of.

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Freedom, perhaps maybe chaos is a better word. There's this sense of.

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Like, not completely understanding what it means for me to be this person who I am in this society as it is.

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I didn't really know. I have a kind of love that I'm happy to just kind of twiddle through my life.

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Yes. Do I have I been working on a whole bunch of programmes which are like queer mystic poet from the subcontinent?

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Like yes or mean, taking other prisoners to the subcontinent, just making them even more gay?

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They already? Yes.

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And these are things that are so important to me, like they're really not just my army can be a part of the fibre of my being like these.

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I'm sensitive. It's like they're part of me. I'm.

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But they know who I am, that they kind of fibres within this slightly confusing, loose edged, porous rebounded mess that I see myself as being.

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So yeah, I don't know. I think that I mean, I think that's completely fair, and I certainly can said to that as a.

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I think that what I've always. Said, we talk a lot about that chameleon is, you know, there is no role models.

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Very few of, you know, India. Queer people, you have the guy from Queer Eye.

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Mean, it's a sin, which is an incredible series. I mean, one of the one of the main characters is India, and that was I remember when, when, when,

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when, when watching the first episode, suddenly seeing some of that sort of I was completely shocked.

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And Russell T Davies has done an incredible job with that series.

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But on the whole, I mean, growing up, these examples career and it's a senator from the last three or four years,

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like growing up that just I'd never seen myself on screen, on stage, on film.

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And I think that that really has incredibly detrimental effects.

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And I do think that absolutely through the work that we're doing,

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comedians and we do encourage and I'm sure numerous numerous other activists are trying to get those stories out there.

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And these are just I'm sure these two examples are just the beginning of numerous stories that will be that we'll be talking about that.

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But on the flip side, to try and make it a positive and unlike I suppose, other people of colour who know other people of colour,

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other queer people who maybe have had role models or have these like weird stereotypes and things.

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And we just don't sort of exist in a way that we like now creating our own existence, our own story and motive,

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and we get to be part of creating that space on stage, on film, on in our communities.

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And I think that the positive from it is that like I do feel very free and very I don't I mean,

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I don't have a role models for things, and I think it's really important that younger queer Indians do.

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But at the same time that the blessing of where we're at now, if we can find one, is that we do just sort of have this liberty.

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And I think that, you know, the great thing is we should try to create that liberty also by making it easier for the people that come after us,

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that we can look at that as a positive and not be put into any box or stereotype or film character, whatever.

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I mean, I'd be called the guy from Queer Eye. I don't know town or something numerous times.

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But you know, other than that, I've been pretty free to just doing kind of whatever I'd like,

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and I think that's it's a very interesting space to be in, I think as a as a queer Indian and.

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Absolutely, I love how you say that about the like, the freedom that comes from not having a model like a role model,

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I think that so beautifully done and the way that even celebrating that freedom,

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we can still make it easier for those who come after us so beautifully.

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It's absolutely part of our sensibility. But to think about it, we had an interesting conversation before the podcast started about visibility.

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And this is why I think it's very interesting.

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I mean, I'm very vocal about visibility and talk a lot about it, but you said something that that sort of stuck with me.

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I think we should talk about, which is.

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A different reaction to the idea of visibility and something that I think is really not spoken about and I would love to,

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yeah, but see if you expand on any of the things you sort of talking about before we started recording.

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Absolutely. I was really struck in that moment when you mentioned visibility, I was so surprised actually,

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that this like I felt the real sense of discomfort arise inside me around word noise, as I say surprise because of course.

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Visibility feels like such a wonderful thing. So often I've had beautiful experiences of people responding to my work young people,

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young queer people of colour say after a gig they were like, Oh my gosh, that was amazing, like I didn't know about.

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I have this one poem, which is about a girl not meeting this like gender nonconforming femme.

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And it's drawn on like a sick manuscript that didn't actually happen.

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The fact that the trans queer Sufi was actually lived a few hundred years before,

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but by telling stories and going up on a stage with, you know, like, you know, with a full face on like so very like.

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Let's just say with a lot of mess and at the least, like other Musk or cis or straight presenting kind of stage is poetic that I felt able to

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embrace the sense of celebration that in telling a story about queerness in your life,

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your ancestry and your heritage. So where do I have this discomfort?

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I think it's to do with safety and lack of safety and vulnerability and danger.

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And I like many, many queer people who come in and like many people,

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have so many experiences they've experienced harassment youth and things like that.

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I think there's a way in which, of course, like visibility it has.

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These two sides, has celebration and community at the one site, and then it has harassment and abuse and trauma and the damage to one's sense of self,

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the damage to one's ability to to be in the world and be well in the world.

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And. Alongside each other. I think recently I've been trusting the robustness of myself,

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and I think perhaps the more that I lean into that sense of robustness in myself, robustness in my community,

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surrounded by all these people who I share strength with,

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perhaps then visibility becomes much easier visibility as something collective rather than visibility or something individual.

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I think that what you say is so important because.

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I think it's very easy to get the effect of being the visible one of being the one that does the fight,

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even in the last year where we've had these racial reckonings and things that started to come to the fore always and so often.

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The majority looks the minority and goes. So what do we do?

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So tell us, and even when it's well meaning, even when it's tell us what you need, tell us what you want.

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So much of the onus falls on the person who's just experienced all the things that they recognised.

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That is a really tough space, and I think that it's not this weird expectation for every gay man to fight

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the gay fight and every brown and black and person collected to fight that.

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I mean, we're also just people who want to do things and have experienced things and individually lives.

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It's such an interesting.

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Nuance that is that is even even when it's not forgotten is not I don't think it's really people say, Oh, of course, you know,

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you have the incredible vignette about is that why Americans, white people about race, I mean, the conversations are had.

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And yet it doesn't really seem yet to sink in to people that it's not always easy.

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It's not always what you want to do. And being the visible one is often as difficult as not having someone visible on a personal level.

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I think it's it's a real nuance, and I appreciate you sort of being so honest and talking about that because it's a difficult thing that.

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I find it hard often to say that myself, because I also don't want people to think that I'm not invested in those things,

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I'm not interested, I do want to make a change. But some mornings everyone wakes up not wanting to be the one that's looked at, pointed out, you know.

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And it's a really it's a really tough new ones. And I think even between us within our own communities,

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I think I often tend to frown or someone else is working with me that we've got to

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be pushing off some of that responsibility because you just don't feel that day.

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And we all got to be sensitive to to the burden of of of trying to make this change.

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As much as is an extremely positive change that obviously is to people who have created production companies.

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All about it, all committed to changing doesn't necessarily make that something you want to do every day,

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but I feel that it's easy to do every day of her life, even if you are doing it every day.

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And I appreciate you being so honest about. This complex relationship with disability that I think so many of us have, but we don't speak about.

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Absolutely. But I think there are two things that come to mind there for me.

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And the first is really about making what I see are making in such a way that we can reclaim our humanity.

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And when you say, like, I don't want every day to be an educator, I don't want every day to be in the fight.

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I don't want every day to be organising. Some days I want to just watch Netflix and do nothing.

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Some days I just want to make. I just want to, like, be a human like channel.

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This like, we create a thing we have inside us. And I think that links to the ideas of community and solidarity.

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Like, how can we stand very really in solidarity with each other?

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You know, with people of colour in this country experiencing such different things as Indians in particular,

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we have access to a lot more privilege than, say, Bengalis or Pakistanis,

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let alone and all of the communities in terms of income and housing and

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disproportionate state violence against black people here and across the world. And how can we deal with our exhaustion?

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And also, like continue to fight for ourselves and all the people around us?

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And I think it's exactly what you were saying about leaning on our friends and being like, Hey, I can't do this today.

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Can you do this like today? I rest tomorrow. I'm really coming together in solidarity in that way.

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Maybe, even perhaps through a community organisation, through a trade union or yoga teachers, or even with something a little relevant to my life.

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Do you talk a little bit? But I think that's very interesting and we'd love to hear about what you're.

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Yes. Very, very briefly. Even I've been really lucky to be involved with a brilliant group of yoga teachers over the last couple of months

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forming and the UK's first trade union of the early teachers and part of the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain,

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who've done these amazing things on organising Uber drivers and delivery drivers and other precarious the gig economy workers really like.

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Reclaiming those rights that some of the most exploited workers and gig economy workers,

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precarious work in this country, in this country, and they're being deprived of yoga,

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teachers actually have a pretty terrible time of it and coming together in

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the framework of the union and really organising together like we're really,

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really doing this in this light, so closely interwoven ways in such an amazing experience,

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fighting for workers rights, for better material conditions and doing that as a collective.

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That's actually I mean, I didn't I have to say that since, I mean,

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I've thought about incredible and I will tell people that there is an article coming out.

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Did you say The Telegraph tomorrow in India voices that the Independent's online independent online that is going to be coming out about that said,

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do keep our eyes on that, but let's come back to let's come back to you.

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I mean, let's come back to your work,

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actually something I want to speak about here because just just thinking about what we've been talking about this, this this whole podcast.

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All centres around, you said two very interesting things.

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First of all, recognising our sort of limited visibility position as as is create Indians, but also recognising our very unique position within UK.

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I mean, very few countries have a sort of being south south South Asian, being an Indian UK.

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Such a weird position because obviously you that you're a minority, being the biggest minority and as you so,

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so well said, I mean, we we experience privileges that so many of the other minorities.

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I mean, you mentioned some names of people from Bangladesh are just our neighbours in India,

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but nowhere near experience, the same type of privilege we do in this country.

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I mean, it's so much nuance. But on the flip side, you know, we we don't appear in TV as much.

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We don't appear in film as much. I mean, it's such a complicated conversation.

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But another thing that you speak about in your work that I think is really refreshing and is is how we perhaps belong in another way.

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And I'm just going to read a little little snippet of your poem and I'd love for you to talk.

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It took a bit about that.

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And if this is from your piece, from being mistreated, which is which is going to be published if we can't, we can't say a lot from it.

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But I'll just I'll just read this little line, it says. Did my ancestors see their ancestor remembering Hitler's sitting far from the church by water?

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I asked the rocks if they are my ancestors. They say yes, of course.

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I think it's a really interesting step,

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and I'd love to hear you talk a little bit about what that means and your your unique perspective here, I think.

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Yes, thank you so much for bringing that celebrity poetry into the space.

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It's always so odd to hear someone on a radio programme so beautifully done to.

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Yes, I was glad that this is the part of the programme that maybe spoke to you in any way that you wanted to draw it out.

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I mean, this piece is in part of a wider project about exploring history in in writing and poetry.

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And it was received by Maleka Book an incredible poet and somebody who is both incredible black British poet.

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How do we, as people of colour, how did they, like British poets, relate to like the countryside in English heritage sites?

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And there's been so much writing about the way in which people of colour are

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reluctant to go in the countryside because of increased charges of racism.

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You can experience that right and the way in which even in this heritage sites race,

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the history of people of colour is weak working class histories, queer history.

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And this project was of changing and run by English heritage.

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And we were like. And this problem was so much about like.

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Reclaiming the spirituality of the land like even if my blood ancestors on from this land, are you grown up on this land?

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I moved every step of my life on this time. Even if I hadn't, this can still be the alarm that is.

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It is part of my. That is more connected to in terms of.

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And I think if these healers sitting from the church, I'm not that I have any opposition to to the Church of the Church.

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I say that a weakened institution and by the water like in nature is somehow connected to some like.

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Naturally, some naturally emerging spirituality,

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this idea that the people sitting on this land for thousands of years celebrating the coming of spring and the turning of the

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seasons for my is the sense that the line that fed my mother fed me right constitutes my booms is somehow my insisted too.

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I ask the rocks if they are my ancestors. They say yes, of course.

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I think that's so interesting, because the other thing that has been encouraging to hear people talk about and should talk about more is how,

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you know, as much as people are really.

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Understanding and relating to their own heritage, and I think a lot about how I am, but I always say I've said it on this podcast before my family,

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having lived in India for 100 years, my mom was born in Malawi, my dad was born in Kenya, my grandmother was born in Madagascar.

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They all came here at different times. My dad came in and had school here, my mom and you came here for education at university level.

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This idea that there is any one place of belonging is so ridiculous, even for people who want people of colour.

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People come from such a varied space, and I was born in London. I went to university 40 minutes away from London.

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I'm there now like, there's there's nowhere is home to me other than London in any real way.

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And I think it's so interesting and I really love the way that people in the ancestry in the area that I know in the area that we are,

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you know, there's a sense of us also trying to even reclaim the space, but just be in the space that we have been in all our lives.

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I think that's really interesting.

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It really did speak to me that particular line, because it was refreshing to think about not only think about this weird immigrant connexion,

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I have to go to a different country to many different countries, but to think about my great,

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my real connexion to that, to the country that I was born in the country, that I've been educated in my first language,

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the language I speak best and the thing I know most about, I mean, I certainly feel foreign.

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I've been going to India in Malawi, the only place. I'm weirdly not a foreigner, though of course I am an immigrant is is London.

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And I think it's a really interesting conversation.

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I think there's a lot more nuance it ought to be made about that particular, that particular feeling as violent learning how we can combine both.

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Our heritage as wherever we come from and a real sense of identity as being

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part of the very fabric of the countries that we were also born and raised in.

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If they weren't our own to begin with. So that's associated, put that sometimes for me, I have this thought that we have millions of ancestors,

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we have infinite ancestors, and we I think if I wasn't queer, I wouldn't have taken such a like an explorer like.

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My quit, I had quit, and in this country and around the world who have no bloodline connexion to me,

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and it's somehow about the freedom of understanding with ancestors that I think opened up the

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possibility for me that I can have access to Punjab ancestors in so I could have ancestors in Ireland.

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I didn't know clouds of ancestors, and I think it's really refreshing, actually.

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And I don't know, I sort of it's a sense of.

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Sense of finding belonging in places where often I think it feels like you shouldn't or can't or couldn't, and it's great to find that now,

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I mean that we've come to somehow we've come to half an hour and it's been so great speaking to you, I could continue speaking to you for forever.

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And as I said, people watch out for the article tomorrow. I'm sure that carry on to fisheries is going to be making moves in the next.

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I mean, whatever current advice lets us, of course, but soon they keep it all.

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And obviously, you will be tied to us for the foreseeable future, obviously working on media, working in the spectrum.

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Thank you so much for being a part of today and really being very honest and

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open about about your experiences and how you're feeling fitting right now.

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That is difficult to do. We haven't actually seen each other since this whole process started.

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I mean, it's all been busy. So, yeah, thank you so much for contributing to this podcast today.

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My absolute pleasure.

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Thank you so much for having me and hopefully catch you and the rest of the media team down south or as soon as this is all they're going to.