SANGEETA PILLAI
Interviewed by Nicole & Hashika
October 31, 2020
Hashika and Nicole were so excited to sit down with the lovely founder of @soulsutras, Sangeeta Pillai (she/her)! Stay tuned all weekend to hear about how she is breaking down the stigmas of taboo subjects for South Asian women across the globe! We present, Sangeeta!
Sangeeta: Well, I grew up in India in a very traditional Indian family. I was the first woman in my family to have a job so that tells you kind of where we come from. I was born in Kerala and moved to Mumbai when I was a year old. I never quite fit into my family. They were all kind of like, well you need to get married, you need to have children, blah blah blah. And I told them I was never going to do any of that. So they didn’t know quite what to do with me. And I didn’t know what to do with them. I think I spent between the years of 15 to 29, when I eventually left home, fighting with them. It was almost a fight for survival. A fight to believe that I was worth more than what they were telling me what I was worth. In many ways, feminism has been the ethos that has run my life, except I didn’t know what it was called. I was just doing these things, saying these things and I didn’t have the language for it. I discovered the idea of feminism many many years later and it was like, oh that was what I was doing!
My story has been very much fighting the patriarchal systems that I have experienced first hand. Fighting to have a voice within a culture that didn’t give me a voice. Fighting to have a life that was different from everybody else around me. That was always kind of within me. I moved to the UK about 15 years ago to work in advertising which is what I did in India as well. But it felt like I wanted to do something more meaningful with my life and use some of the battles that I have fought - and I have fought many battles for many things over many years - to actually mean something for other people.
And I think that that’s how Soul Sutras started. It started as writing workshops. I wanted to get South Asian women in a room in a together and get us to talk about stuff we don’t get an opportunity to talk about, whether that’s sex or periods or body or shame, or whatever. One workshop led to the next. I did about 20 that year and then as I was doing the workshops it came to me how important it was, the conversations were.
We were in rooms where we could talk to each other and say things to each other that we haven’t said outside of that room. It was really powerful, really vulnerable and important. And I thought that I wanted to take that to the theatre and show it to a larger group of people. So I worked with a director and a producer and we put together a show called the Masala Monologues. We did two shows, one was at something called Rich Mix in East London and another was at a festival. They both had incredible responses, we had a 100 or so people turn out. And literally everyone after the show came up to me and hugged me and said, “oh my God, thank you for doing this. We’ve never seen this in this kind of space before.”
From there on, I felt like I needed to do more of this. This was what I was born to do. This is my life’s purpose very much so. I applied for a competition for Spotify to create a podcast without any idea how to create one. I had no clue. I was on Google typing, “what is a podcast” a couple of months before that. I really wanted more mediums, more channels where I could talk about the experiences of South Asian women and give voice to some of the things that they have felt and things that have happened to us. I pitched to them and in shock horror got in somehow. They had around 750 applications in London that year. I think I was one in 10. At the end of the week when they trained us on how to create a podcast, we had to pitch to the head of Apple, Google and BBC. We got 5 minutes. And you had to say what your podcast was, what your idea was, why you were the best person to do it and what was your marketing strategy. It was very stressful but I’m very good at that kind of thing. I thrive when you put me in a corner. And I won the competition! I was one of 3 people that won. That led me to create the Masala Podcast. Now, we have Masala Monologues, the writing workshops, the theatre shows and the Masala Podcast which is now in Season 2. Masala Podcast is now sponsored by Spotify which is really good. I’m in the midst of Season 2. I don’t know if you’ve heard the show but this Season has been incredible. We’ve had a porn star, we’ve had someone talk about menopause, we’ve had a director of a film about Bangladeshi women being raped during the Bangladeshi war. It’s been incredible. I’m getting loads of responses of people writing to me and saying, “We happened to listen to your podcast and it’s amazing. It makes us feel heard.” So that’s the journey of Soul Sutras!
Hashika: And you said this before, how as you’ve connected with people around the world, you started to realize that all of our experiences are pretty similar. So what do you believe in your opinion are the biggest or most painful hurdles South Asian women have to face and tackle in their societies?
Sangeeta: I think the hardest thing for us as South Asian women is that in our own culture, we’ve never really been given a voice. We’re the quiet ones. We’re the ones cooking in the kitchen. We’re the ones looking after people. Nobody’s really said, what do you think? What do you want? In the countries that we live, whether that’s the US or the UK, we’re not really mainstream. Our culture doesn’t give us a voice. But neither does British or American culture say, hey what are South Asian women about? What do they want? We’re the terrorist’s wife or the cornershop guy’s wife. That’s pretty much it in terms of representation and in media. So when you’ve had hundreds and hundreds of years when you haven’t had a voice, it’s very difficult to pipe up and say, hang on a minute, I actually don’t want this or I do want that or I want to say this. I think the biggest hurdle is internal because we feel like we’re not really sure we have a voice. So how do you challenge that? You have to believe you have the ability to challenge that.
The advice that I would give is to talk to other women like yourself who have come from that culture or even another culture where they’ve had to battle patriarchal structures. Talk to people like me, talk to your network. Talk to other people, engage in other conversations and see what people are saying. And then you start to hear the similarities. When I did the project at the University of Berkeley and worked with the young women there, a lot of the things they were saying were very similar. It’s like, “oh I can’t talk about sex,” or, “my family still thinks I’m a virgin,” or “I’m queer and I can’t tell anybody.” There are so many similarities because at the end of the day, the root culture is exactly the same. It’s the Indian or the Bangladeshi or the Sri Lankan or the Pakistani culture that we’ve been brought up in or our parents have brought to the new country we live in.
So the conditioning we grew up with is exactly the same. So my advice would be to start hearing and listening to what other people are saying who’ve come from that culture or similar experiences. From that, start to form your own kind of opinion or voice for whatever you want to say and start challenging things. And tell yourself, it’s absolutely okay to challenge and say, “I’ve had enough of this. This is what I want.”
Hashika: Yeah, wow. You’re so right. I recently learned about tantra as well. Like, people aren’t talking about this enough, you know? People don’t know about this. I’m relating to a lot of what you’re saying, even with my family and my relatives. I think what’s really interesting is that respect is really important in South Asian cultures. A lot of it is tied into culture but also religion. As a society we have taken specific things and we have chosen what we’re taking and what we’re practicing and it just hasn’t been feminist. It hasn’t been fair, to be honest. How do you think we should go about shifting the conversation? Making it more fair to women in a way that is not disrespectful? What if there are women out there who don’t want to piss off their families? I think that it creates a lot of conflict and it’s a really hard road to navigate.
Sangeeta: So I have good news and I have bad news. The good news is yeah, we can definitely challenge things and it’s been unfair and it’s gone on for centuries. It’s about time we change it and we have the power to do it. The bad news is that you are going to tread on some toes and you are going to make some people unhappy. And that is part of it. So either we accept it and carry on and shut up as we have done or we open our mouths and start saying, “actually this is not okay.” But when you say that this is not okay and that you don’t agree with this, you are going to piss people off. That’s sometimes going to be your family or people you really care about but the best way I can think of to do that is to stand strong with what you are. You can say, “this is no reflection on you. I understand where you’re coming from. But this is crucial to who I am.” Start those conversations.
It’s going to take time. If things have been the way they have been for hundreds of years and you go in there and start shaking things up, of course people are gonna get pissed off. It’s like, “oh this has been perfectly fine for this while. Why are you feeling the need to do this?” But it’s been fine for them. It’s not been fine for you. The onus is on us. We’re the ones that are unhappy. I’m afraid that’s going to ruffle feathers and make people angry. But at the end of the day, how important is this? How important is it to change the narrative versus keeping things as they are?
And with respect...I completely get it. I come from that culture where you wouldn’t open your mouth if an older person was speaking. You would get up as soon as an older person walked into the room so that they could have the chair. This is the culture I grew up with so I completely get it. You touched your grandparents’ feet all the time. Some of that is fine. So I’m happy to touch my grandparents’ feet. But I’m not happy to be told that my role as a woman is to sit and cook in the kitchen or to not challenge somebody’s narrative. When somebody’s saying something that’s blatantly patriarchal or whatever, I’m going to say, “actually you can’t say that.” So I’ve learnt over time that I will piss people off and you know what? I’m fine with that.
Nicole: I mean, so much respect for you. That’s just awesome. And I think that it’s really cool that you were saying earlier that you were reaching out to the people around you, the women around you, to have conversation. And then you started Soul Sutras! You’ve taken to social media and created a whole community which I think is so cool. What was your experience doing that and making your presence online?
Sangeeta: Creating connections in person was fantastic. The whole experience of running the workshops, talking one-to-one with women, having them open up and trust me with their experiences was phenomenal. Going online was quite new to me. I come from a marketing background but I’m not part of the generation that grew up with Instagram, Twitter, or any social media channels. But what that lets me do is connect with people who otherwise won’t find me. And a lot of people can talk to me, engage with me, message me, get in touch like you have. There are all these conversations that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. It’s been wonderful. It’s given me an avenue to talk to people who otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to.
Having said that, I have a complicated relationship with social media because there’s one part of me that loves the engagement. Like what we’re doing has come entirely because of social media. There’s another part of me that is unwilling to put anything about me on social media; it’s a part of me that is quite private. There’s a constant battle. And sometimes social media propagates this idea of a perfect life that we’re all meant to have. But nobody does. I’d say 80% of social media is like that. Here’s me looking fabulous drinking my martini in my Italian villa where I’m on holiday. You know? It’s that kind of thing. And most of it isn’t real. We’ve all got stuff. We’re all dealing with things all the time. I would love social media to grow up and expand and be that as well. And within my work I try very hard. I’m trying. I’m trying just as much as anybody else to be as authentic as I can be. To talk about the difficult stuff. I talk a lot about my mental health. I suffer from depression, anxiety and PTSD. And there are times when it’s really bad but I will go on social media and talk about it because I feel like I want to share because this is who I am. If I’m telling people to open up and talk about mental health in our community, which we don’t do enough of, then I must do that too.
So I try and be as authentic as possible. None of my feed is particularly curated, as you can see, it’s all over the place. But that’s me. So I try and kind of keep to that. Social media has been wonderful but also challenging at the same time.
Hashika: I bet. I mean, I think it’s really interesting and something I did admire about your page was how genuine it was. And honest. A lot of topics that should be talked about aren’t talked about, especially in the South Asian community. One thing I wanted to ask you is if you had any hesitations launching Soul Sutras and taking on a public role with these topics of discussions and your ideas?
Sangeeta: You know, I never consciously thought about it. This is one of those times in my life where it all happened organically. I had some stuff happen in my own life, mental health issues, challenges, kind of life stuff and it led me to create Soul Sutras. If I’m being honest with you, I didn’t really take the time to think, “Do I really want to do this? Do I want to be this public facing person?” I’ve just become this without planning to.
I had no goal to do this. The goal was to create a platform and to create spaces for South Asian women like me. The way I’ve done it has led me to become a public figure and to engage with people through various channels like this, or through social media or the radio or whatever.
So, I didn’t really think about it is the honest answer. But now that I am here, I’m absolutely fine to do this. Fortunately for me, most of the feedback is supportive. I’d say 90% of it is pretty supportive and encouraging. I do get the odd random man writing to me about stuff. I usually just block them so that I don’t give them any space. So there is that. I’m not sure my family is really enthralled with what I do in public but I’m very happy with where I am. And where I’ve come to, almost organically without thinking too much about it.
Nicole: This was your purpose. This was your passion.
Sangeeta: It really was. This is what I was born to do. I cannot tell you how much of me this is. This is what I’m here to do. This is my purpose. I’m here to support other South Asian women in their journey and go on my journey at the same time. That is absolutely my purpose. What I was meant to do.
Nicole: I love that you’ve also opened up so many different avenues for women to be having these conversations. You’ve got the blog, the podcast, the monologues. If you could shed some light on how each of them functions?
Sangeeta: Absolutely. So the website is kind of like the mothership, if you will, of all the content. The podcast, I think, is the most visible and emotionally potent way of the work that I do. Audio, as a medium, is very very intimate. You’re in someone’s ear talking about really private and vulnerable things. So the podcast is very much about conversations, intimacy and space and giving other women a platform as well because that is very much part of what I do. Giving a space on my platform to other women doing interesting work and shedding light on the topics and taboos within our culture. That’s the podcast. It goes out to a large portion of the world and it’s very accessible. It’s on Spotify right now, Season 2. Season 1 is on every platform. It’s on Apple, everywhere. That’s the space of intimacy, dialogue and conversation, 1 to 1.
Masala Monologues, the writing workshops has larger groups that come together. I’ve done them in person before COVID-19 and now I’m doing them online. I’ve done one workshop and I intend to do more as I go along now.
That’s kind of almost like community rooms where we sit together, hold space for each other, we shut the door metaphorically or real to the outside world. That’s a safe space for us to open up to each other, share things that we wouldn’t normally and the biggest part of that is safety. It’s my job to make sure that everybody feels safe.
Everybody feels heard. Everybody feels held in that space. That’s what the writing workshops are about. Community and intimate spaces for creating stories and providing experiences. Sort of like a Vagina Monologues except it’s South Asian so it’s Masala Monologues. So that’s what that is.
For theatre, what I’ve done is taken those stories and put them out there for the world to see where larger audiences can consume that. I’m also writing a book. Yes. It’s sort of like a memoir, a feminist manifesto if you will. Very similar themes, to do with South Asian culture and women. That’s kind of what I do. Also lots of other interesting projects.
I’m doing this thing currently, trying to understand the relationship between South Asian women and sex toys. If you grew up in a culture where pleasure isn’t even a possibility for you, how do you then go buy a sex toy? That’s fairly revolutionary then. Yeah? So that’s interesting. I’m doing some surveys and putting something together for that.
The website, soulsutras.co.uk is the heart. You can get Masala Podcasts on Spotify and Apple. Then you’ve got Masala Monologues, the writing workshops. I’m going to do them via Zoom. They used to be in person but now it’ll be on Zoom.
And whenever theatres are back - I don’t know when that’s going to be - we’ll try to do more shows. That’s kind of the breadth of the work I do.
Nicole: Fabulous. Fabulous. That’s amazing. And you said that you are midway through Season 2 of the podcast?
Sangeeta: Yes.
Nicole: Are you currently recording them right now?
Sangeeta: I tend to record the whole season together first. That was recorded about two months, edited, finished up, polished and promoted. And now I’ve started to record Season 3.
Nicole: Woah! What’s that like during quarantine? Has your process changed?
Sangeeta:: A little bit. I’ve had to because previously what I used to do is record with guests in my kitchen while drinking chai. That is what we used to do. So people would come over. We’d sit and have a chat. It was literally like chatting to a girlfriend. And now because it’s on Zoom and things like that, I’ve had to recreate that feeling of safety and intimacy online. It’s a little bit harder. I’ve had to change stuff a little bit. It’s still good. Some of the episodes of Season 2 are actually not recorded in person. I think it’s okay. I don’t really see the difference, I’m like, “oh I’ve done a good job there.”
So with Season 2, as I was saying, there’s a huge range of stories and experiences. First one was with a British South Asian comedian about being a South Asian. She was talking about things like, I’m a professional comedian who’s traveled around the world but I still feel the pressure to make the perfect chapati. Is my chapati round? I did another episode with a pornstar. She’s South Asian and Muslim. How did she get into the business? What does her family think about it? That was quite dramatic. We talked about kinks and fetishes relating to South Asian culture. We talk about that. There are serious things like rape and the stigma attached to being a rape victim in South Asian culture. I’m doing the next one this week about menopause. We just don’t talk about it among South Asian women. What don’t talk about what it’s like to be a South Asian woman going through menopause. Next week’s one is about HIV. I speak to somebody who has HIV and a doctor who works in that space as well. So yeah, it’s been a whole breadth of incredible women, fantastic stories and I talk about my own experiences within those spaces as well. So that’s been Season 2.
Nicole: So what are you looking forward to with Season 3?
Sangeeta: Ooh! So I had a very well known name contact me who wanted to be on the podcast. That was pretty exciting. Their agent got in touch and said this person wanted to be on the podcast and I was like, YEAH! So interesting names. Interesting people are getting in touch.
Also, what I love is that it’s organically shaping itself. A lot of women are contacting me to say, such and such thing happened to me. Would you like to talk about it on the podcast? The themes are emerging by themselves without me even having to think about it. And I really like that. It feels like the podcast is telling me what it wants to be rather than me deciding what it wants to be. I really like that. That’s really exciting. So yeah, hoping to reach more audiences. It’s primarily British at the moment but I’m hoping to reach audiences in the US, India and in Canada where there is a South Asian diaspora. So that’s what I’m looking forward to, for hopefully, next season.
Hashika: That’s incredible. So cool what you’re doing. Everything is amazing. I know you touched on the book and Season 3. What is the future of Soul Sutras? Are there any cool upcoming projects you have on the horizon?
Sangeeta: So the podcast, I’ll keep doing. It’ll hopefully evolve as we go. The book I'm really keen to do and sit down and write. I have to actually create space. There’s so much going on. A book is a very different headspace to be in. It has to be quiet and you have to be reflective whereas everything else is very much public and is about connecting with people. So I’m very excited about that. If and when I- let me not say if. When that book gets written, it’s going to be amazing. I think a lot of South Asian women will connect to things that are in the book. Apart from that, I’m looking into things like merchandise. There’s a few things. There are these amazing t-shirts that I’ve created for Season 2 that I will be sending to my guests. They’re incredible. I’m going to maybe put them up and see if people want them. But also, I want to create more avenues.
I’m constantly looking for avenues for South Asian women’s voices to be amplified and to be given space. In the future, I want to do a lot of live events with Masala Podcasts. The first season, I had a launch and I think a couple hundred people showed for it. The energy of having live events is incredible. I had 5 people from the podcast on the panel and we discussed and debated some of the themes on the podcast. As we go on, I want to fill up auditoriums with all of us sitting there and saying, “oh my God, that happened to me too” or “I don’t like that, I want to challenge this.”
The vision going forward is to amplify this. To take this to India and Bangladesh and the US and Canada. Take it every place where there are South Asian women like us who need to hear this and who need to feel like there is a space for them. That’s the vision really.
Hashika: So I feel like we have a South Asian community within our following. How could they get involved or help and be a part of Soul Sutras?
Sangeeta: So spread the word. Tell your friends about it. Particularly with things like the podcast, send them the link and have them listen. Because what happens is that a lot of people aren’t aware that this exists I think. The minute they hear it, they go, “oh my God, I didn’t know this was here. It’s amazing. I do this, I think this, and I agree with that.” The biggest task is to get the awareness going I think. So share it with your friends. Share it with your colleagues. Get your Mom to listen. Your Aunties, your everybody. Get us all talking about it.
If you want to contribute, I take in guest pieces on the blog. If you want to contribute, feel free to email me. If there are issues that you think need to be on the podcast that are not being covered, write to me and say, “hey, this happened and I think it would be amazing to have an episode about this.” Tell me what you want to hear. And support the work that I do, because I need to hear from you that this is relevant to you. That is the whole point of this. Is it relevant to you? Does it help you? How does it help you? I’d love to hear more. So please contact me. My website is soulsutras.co.uk and my email is on there as well. I’m on Instagram (@soulsutras) and on Twitter as well. So get in touch. Tell me what you think. Share things like the podcast. It’s so easy, you literally click on a link and you can share it to all your friends. Let’s get more conversations going. Get involved, get engaged. React. I think that’s how you can help.
Nicole: You are so incredible. I don’t know how to say this with the right words but I see success happening so easily for you. This is just so important and I can’t see anybody saying no. I can see so many people wanting to hop on this and be a part of this.
Hashika: Yeah, this is amazing. I’m so inspired by everything that you’re doing.
Sangeeta: Aw, thank you.
Hashika: You’re doing such important work. I think we need more of this in our community. I was getting emotional just listening to you speak. This is literally what we need.
Sangeeta: We absolutely do. I think what is important to acknowledge is that this isn’t just a thing. This is our lives. This is who we are. This is the difference between being happy or not happy. Having choices or not having choices. So it’s really critical, this work.
Hashika: Definitely. I think that it’s amazing to see people break out of the mold that was set for them. Seeing people start having these conversations in our communities when our mothers or our aunts or our grandmas didn’t really get the chance to do that, makes me really hopeful for what’s next.
Sangeeta: Absolutely.
Hashika: So good for you! Amazing. I will brag about you everyday.
Sangeeta: Please. I’m really keen to talk to South Asian women. I’m really keen to have conversations in the US. I’m very inspired by the women I met at Berkeley and the things they were saying to me. It just feels like there’s so much room to engage there and I would really like to take that conversation forward.
Hashika: Definitely.