Stories Seldom Told Smita Tharoor

"One of the things that always struck me is it takes a village to
raise a child. Right? And that's how we grew up. We had a whole neighborhood bringing us up, we could stroll into anybody's house and be fed by some aunty or the other. Right, and the parents didn't worry. Now to the elderly, it takes a community to transition the elder into death. It takes a community you need the support expanded. You need, you know, you need all of the support of not just family in your old age. I think it needs a community. I think it needs the community of elderly who can empathize, who know exactly what you're going through and it's not the younger who can empathize, it's the same age."

When Shubha Priya was in her teens, she heard Maurice Chevalier singing the lyrics of a song in the movie Gigi: ‘Oh I’m glad that I’m not young anymore!” Struck by the way he sang it with such conviction, she wondered how growing old could ever be joyful,

Fast forward to her 60s, Shubha moved with her mother to what most people referred to as an ‘old age home’. The stark side of ageing was visible all around her, a daily reminder of a Shakespearean vision coming true. Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. Shubha’s mother passed away in 2021. But Shubha chose to stay on at the old age home.

In between the teenage years and those of living in an old age home, Shubha served as a Creative Director in leading advertising agencies around the world. She is currently fulfilling her lost childhood dreams of being an author and musician. She wrote, illustrated and designed her book of satirical verses for adults, called Whimsical Brew.



Shubha is hoping to keep dementia at bay by learning to play the piano!

To stay up to date, follow @SmitaTharoor on Smita Tharoor (@SmitaTharoor) / Twitter or Smita Tharoor (@smitatharoor) | Instagram
and follow the podcast on your favorite streaming service.

"At 28 My marriage broke. So those days,to say that you're divorced was very difficult. At this point. My son was about ten, My daughter was about nine. They were young and I thank God that my mother and my sister was there to give me support and help me and you know, be there for me because I had to keep going for training . But to lift my head high and walk in Agra, the place where I was in was difficult."

It is 1979, a small-town young lady, a mother of two small kids, just 23 years old, decides one evening at an Army Party, to join a Skydiving Course at Agra. Unknowingly history was created. Rachel Thomas was the first Indian woman to compete for India in a skydiving competition in 1987. After 23 years, she ended her career in 2002, when she skydived from 7,000 ft over the North Pole also creating the record of being the first Indian female to skydive over the North Pole. During her career, Rachel has completed 650 jumps in 18 countries. She has won multiple awards including the winner of the National Adventure Sports Award and is a TedX speaker.

In 2005, Rachel was honoured again by the Government of India, with the fourth highest Indian civilian award - the Padmashree  

To stay up to date, follow @SmitaTharoor on Smita Tharoor (@SmitaTharoor) / Twitter or Smita Tharoor (@smitatharoor) | Instagram
and follow the podcast on your favorite streaming service.

"


"

Maggie Steber is an internationally known documentary photographer, educator, and photo editor whose work has appeared in major magazines, newspapers and book anthologies as well as national and international exhibitions. She has worked in 72 countries specializing in telling the stories of underrepresented people and her work has been seen in 70 exhibitions in 35 countries.

Best known for her photo essays in National Geographic Magazine and her humanistic documentation of Haiti, she published Dancing on Fire: Photographs from Haiti with Aperture. Her nine-year project on her mother’s melancholic voyage through memory loss was made into a multimedia presentation by MediaStorm and won a Webby award. In her career Maggie has worked as a picture editor for Associated Press, a contract photographer for Newsweek, and as the Director of Photography at The Miami Herald. Maggie is a member of VII Photo Agency.

Maggie has received numerous awards, too many to mention here but they include a Pulitzer Prize finalist, Guggenheim foundation fellow and a medal of honour for contribution to journalism.

To see some of Maggie’s moving photographs just check out her website. https://www.maggiesteber.com/main.html

Maggie lives in Miami, Florida in the United States

To stay up to date, follow @SmitaTharoor on Smita Tharoor (@SmitaTharoor) / Twitter or Smita Tharoor (@smitatharoor) | Instagram
and follow the podcast on your favorite streaming service.

"People around me, including my family, they believe that one day, a miracle will happen to me and that will treat & cure my disability. But I don't want that right now. I have accepted myself through my disability. I really care for empowerment; I want to be empowered and I want other people with disabilities also be empowered."

Nematullah Ahangosh is from Afghanistan. Nemat studied school in Kabul and from 2014- 2018 worked as a young member with a group of peace activists in Kabul.


Subsequently Nemat went to Chennai in India to study a Bachelor of Social Work at Madras School of Social Work where he was awarded the Budding Social Worker Award and the Best Library User Award in 2021.

This was followed by a one-year diploma course in Trivandrum, Kerala in leadership and social entrepreneurship. Nemat has been busy writing poems in English since 2017, mainly about the day-to-day life of refugees, women and overall life in Afghanistan alongside studying an MA in Conflict, Security and Development at the University of Sussex.

Apart from this, Nemat is a good swimmer and coach. He is the founder of Stretch More, a mobile empowerment parkour that empowers people with disabilities to survive natural and man-made disasters. Parkour (French: [paʁkuʁ]) is an athletic training discipline or sport in which practitioners attempt to get from point A to point B in the fastest and most efficient way possible.

Nemat’s first and upcoming poetry book, The Color of Peace, will be published by Haley’s Publishing, a company based in Massachusetts, USA. He is 28 years old. He says his ambition is to bring about change in the future leadership of Afghanistan, mainly in the social sector.

"Of Women and Courage"
-By Nematullah Ahangosh

"that night when curtains were dancing

in the presence of moonlight

nobody was watching

frogs and dogs outside

creating a poetic jingle

and anarchic music

'woof, woof' 'ribbit, ribbit'

'woof, woof' 'ribbit, ribbit'

'woof, ribbit, ribbit', woof'

this moment!

this small happy moment

did not last, was taken away! "

To stay up to date, follow @SmitaTharoor on Smita Tharoor (@SmitaTharoor) / Twitter or Smita Tharoor (@smitatharoor) | Instagram
and follow the podcast on your favorite streaming service.

"What would you do if you had a ring of invisibility?
And the children will say, well, I would rob a bank. I would go into a shop and Steve chocolate. I
would have a stigma favorite packet of crisps. I would be going in and stealing money out of my
mommy's purse. I would do all this and I do not moralize with the federal budget. Yep, I will
turn and I read it up on the board. And then I say well, what should you do?"

Kevin Mc Arevey is the Principal of Holy Cross Boys’ School in the Ardoyne area in Northern Belfast in Northern Ireland. Kevin has been a teacher in the Ardoyne area for 26 years with the last 10 as the Principal.
Kevin has written a book "Think Think Respond (slow thinking) and TTR (fast thinking)".
This can be purchased at the school at a price of £20. It’s a big book and all proceeds go to HCBoys. Kevin is also the main protagonist in the Film documentary Young Plato - a film about hope, peace and reconciliation.
https://youngplato.com

You are able to stream Young Plato by renting or purchasing on Amazon, iTunes, and Google Play
The Troubles, also called the Northern Ireland conflict, was a violent sectarian conflict from about 1968 to 1998 in Northern Ireland between the overwhelmingly Protestant unionists (loyalists), who desired the province to remain part of the United Kingdom, and the overwhelmingly Roman Catholic nationalists (republicans), who wanted Northern Ireland to become part of the republic of Ireland. Some 3,600 people were killed and more than 30,000 more were wounded before a peaceful solution, which involved the governments of both the United Kingdom and Ireland, was effectively reached in 1998, leading to a power-sharing arrangement in the Northern Ireland Assembly.

To stay up to date, follow @SmitaTharoor on Smita Tharoor (@SmitaTharoor) / Twitter or Smita Tharoor (@smitatharoor) | Instagram
and follow the podcast on your favorite streaming service.

"I suddenly felt that I don't belong, till then I felt that I was a part of this group. And at that moment, for me, it was like, no, I don't belong. I don't feel that I would want after the two got over to continue. You know, my friendship, you know,because very often people say that it's important to have discourse, have discussed with people. And then if you really think that I've spent my lifetime doing that, and at some point, you're exhausted in constantly trying to validate your identity. And now I'm at a point of life where I am like, it's your shortcoming. And it's not my job in life. It's not my duty, to spend my time energy effort to constantly educate people, about learning to respect someone else."

Onir is an Indian filmmaker, producer, screenwriter and editor.

Born as Anirban Dhar in Samchi, Bhutan, Onir spent much of his childhood going to the cinema.

He received a scholarship to study film editing at SFB/TTC in Berlin but returned to India and worked as an editor, scriptwriter, art director, music album producer and song/music video director.

In 1992,Onir directed and produced his first Documentary film on the painter Bijon Chaudhary, “Falling Hero”.

He is best known for his film “My Brother...Nikhil”, based on the life of Dominic D'Souza, starring Sanjay Suri, Juhi Chawla and Purab Kohli. It was one of the first mainstream Hindi films to deal with AIDS and same-sex relationships.

Onir won the Indian National Film awards for Best Film in Hindi for the anthology “I AM” in 2011. I AM is considered one of the first and largest crowd-funded and crowd-sourced film through social media in India. The film dealt with single motherhood, child sexual abuse, displacement and LGBTQI rights.

Onir has also the received Likho Award (Trailblazer Award), the Diversity Award at the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne in 2019 and in 2020 the Engendered Spirit of Independent Cinema Award at the Engendered Human Rights Film Festival in Delhi.

In June 2022, Onir finished shooting, PINE CONE, a queer love story which is written by Ashwini Malik and Onir. It is currently in post-production. It is loosely based on Onir’s memoir; I Am Onir and I Am Gay which he has co-written with his sister Irene Dhar Malik and published by Penguin Viking.

In August 2023, PINE CONE, a queer love story which is written by Ashwini Malik and Onir received the "Rainbow Warrior Award” and the "Rainbow stories Award" given by the Minister of Equality, Australia at IffMelbourne. This was followed by Honorary mention Best Feature at the International South Asian Film festival, Canada. It premiered at The KASHISH Mumbai International Queer Film Festival in June 2023.

To stay up to date, follow @SmitaTharoor on Smita Tharoor (@SmitaTharoor) / Twitter or Smita Tharoor (@smitatharoor) | Instagram
and follow the podcast on your favorite streaming service.