We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Sangeetha Shinde. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Sangeetha below.
Sangeetha, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.
There have been so many that it is hard to pinpoint just one. So, I’ll talk about the latest project I have undertaken. I come from a tiny hill district in the South of India called the Nilgiris. Having returned home to live after nearly 30 years of globe trotting I wanted to give back to the community that raised me. It’s a unique district, with winding hill roads that curve their way through tea gardens and sholas (indigenous forests) and beautiful streams and waterfalls. Home to bison, leopards, malabar squirrels, bears, elephants, tigers, and a curious and fascinating mix of local tribes and people from around the country, and around the world. Life here is unique – people are very social, and the six degrees of separation shrinks to two degrees in these blue-green mountains. And things have changed, from a sleepy town in the 70s and 80s it has become the cosmopolitan place that attracts a wide assortment of people into its welcoming arms. While it has become a place for the privileged to have a second home, it is still the only home to many people who have contributed to the place, generationally, in all sorts of meaningful ways.
So, with my return, I decided to bring my magazine experience to the table and chronicle a living history of this district. And so, I began Inside43 (TN43 being the car registration code of the district), a 96-page high-end print magazine that is released every three months – www.inside43.in. While people may question the wisdom of starting a print magazine in a digital age, the 1500 copies we print and distribute around the district get picked up within two weeks of hitting the stands. The fact that we distribute free may have something to do with it, I suppose. Inside43 is a volunteer-driven magazine – from editing to writing, to photography to social media to distribution, the magazine draws on volunteers from the community to get itself done, and we only raise money from advertising and patrons and sponsors to cover our printing costs. We are a unique publication with a unique model and a unique purpose.
Why is this project one of the most important I have done? Well, for starters, it has brought an entire district together under a single umbrella, uniting people from all walks of life, all ages, all communities (of which there are many) in a shared love for the district we all call home. Importantly, it has offered a platform to countless unsung heroes who are quietly working for the betterment of the space we all occupy, and who otherwise might have the world pass them by without so much as a glance.
I firmly believe in the power of storytelling – and to tell the stories of people currently living, to recall legacies of those who have passed on – this is to leave a footprint in time, and on people’s hearts. We have covered a music school run by visually impaired teachers, a collective of daily-wage workers who bury the unclaimed dead with due honors, the work of artists, eco-warriors and local musicians. We have covered stories of tribes people who are contributing to ecological balance and not-for-profits who daily make a difference to the lives they touch. And so it goes. Each issue is a chronicle that recounts the incredible amount of good being done in the world that rarely makes it to mainstream news and it is my joy and privilege to helm this unique undertaking. It is tough work, especially the fund-raising, but when I see the faces of the people featured in the magazine, their happiness at having their work profiled and recognized by the community they operate in – it makes the long hours and begging for funds quite worthwhile.
The Unseen Goddess is also about storytelling – as are my other books. To chronicle the greatness of the ordinary, this has become a mission, a challenge and the focus of all I do. We all can’t be Nelson Mandelas or Abraham Lincolns or Keanu Reeves. But we can, with every breath, do our little to level the playing fields for others. We can do it by sponsoring a child’s education, adopting a dog from a shelter, donating blood or being conscious of our environmental footprint on this planet… or we can sometimes just tell a story that matters.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Amongst the First Nations there is the legacy of the Heyoka – the sacred clowns – who are healers. They heal using their voices and they are meant to be powerful agents of change and transformation. When I read about them some years ago, it resonated, for like the Heyoka, the need to heal wounds in others, to mend the torn shards of community fabrics has always been a driving force with me. It began in early childhood, where being bullied and ostracized for being different made me a rebel, and made me want to defend those that were unable to stand up for themselves. I had a lonely childhood, sticking out like a sore thumb in the very community I have returned to now. I was teased and mocked a lot, by my peers and extended family. I always felt like I was on the outside looking in, excluded from things that I should have rightfully been a part of. Being dark-skinned in India made it that much harder, and I was sidelined and treated like a pariah more often than I care to remember. A brutal first marriage that involved some extreme domestic violence added to the terrible mix that was life back in the day. I have been homeless, without food or access to sanitation, friendless in my moments of greatest need, but all of it, every single one of these terrible things, were leading me somewhere…
I channeled my loneliness and pain into writing, the neglect of the world made me a champion for those who did not have a voice, I became an animal rescuer (58 rescues single handedly and counting), and I became a feminist. I started writing about the human experience through my stories, and this of course led me to write the stories of women. The Unseen Goddess is based on a true story of a woman who worked for me as a cleaner. Bought and sold three times (there is no other way to put it), she is a living being of such light and dignity, living in a slum; the poster child for all those women whose stories are rich, powerful and unbelievably tragic all at the same time. She showed me what real strength, love and honesty looked like and she is The Unseen Goddess and it is my sincerest hope that through my words she will be seen, heard and her life celebrated as it deserves to be.
Other things that move me – funny sitcoms – there aren’t enough, Star Trek, funny books – again, not enough of those, dogs and their wagging tails – it’s the happiest sight in the world, country western music ( yes, I know), karaoke – no, I’m not that great at it, and the concept of reincarnation – if I come back again, I hope someone shoots me at the start.
How am I different? To paraphrase… I believe we are all different, some of us are just more different than others. I think I have an overly smart mouth which gets me into trouble, and I can swear like a sailor – but being a tiny person, it comes out sounding cute I hope.
I am most proud of the fact that I still have hope, that life’s tragedies have not made me cynical or bitter, I can still laugh at myself. I am unbelievably proud that when people are in trouble or hurt, they reach out to me with their broken dreams and aching hearts, and somehow, in some small way (maybe it’s the Heyoka in me) I am able to help them find some light again. I am proud of every single time I spoke up against injustice, when I stood up for myself and others who could not defend themselves, and in doing so I hope I will have left the world a kinder place than I found it. I know when I reach the other side an army of four-legged angels will be waiting to greet me, and of that I am the proudest of all. All the rest, it’s insignificant.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
It isn’t the big problems or challenges that bring us down. It is the small hurts and wounds that leave the most lasting scars, I believe. The recurring pattern in my life has been the betrayal by close female friends. I’ve had friends steal from me, spread rumors about me, ostracize me in ways that only a woman can, with a stealth and subtlety that carries such venom. I have had women compete with me even though we were in different spaces, abandon me for reasons I still don’t understand, and form armies against me. Aunts, cousins, women much older than me, women I have helped, women who I have raised, it’s incredible how women will talk feminism and walk misogyny with such abandon. In my small hometown I face it today – starting a community magazine or writing a book seems to have sparked off some inner demon in some women I once considered an allies. The barbs are both covert and overt in what is essentially a small community. They think I don’t know, but one would have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to see the little games they play. And that’s what I mean, the things that wear us down – it’s always the small stuff.
However, despite the continual knocks, to this day, I still believe in the power of female friendship. I believe the greatest support a woman can have is another woman. And I know every time I got knocked down by a woman, I rose up, determined to not be that woman ever. If that is not resilience, I do not know what is.
In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?
Well, it would really help if people started reading more than just Instagram posts and Facebook feeds :-)
I think the first thing that needs to change is how the publishing industry works. I was lucky to find Villa Magna, as they are truly committed to telling stories that matter. But as a general rule, agents and publishers seem to be the gods that decide a writer’s fate, and it is a punishing, humiliating process for writers to go through. Rejection letters are worded harshly, and even worse, often there is no response. Of course, I understand that they have their time and resource constraints, but I can’t help but wonder what the first 14 publishers who rejected JK Rowling were thinking.
I think every published writer needs to support or mentor aspiring writers and make the right introductions. There is space enough for us all at the top. I think every influencer needs to do his or her bit of literary charity, and promote one book, film or artist as part of a CSR initiative, every quarter, tall order I know, but, as I said before, I live in hope.
Governments, everywhere, do not do a lot to support writers. There are not enough grants, not enough government agencies to fund literary creativity… and if there are, I have not come across any. The stories of humanity can not be preserved through statistics and numbers. As the world evolves to new social paradigms everyday, more than ever, we need to trace our footprints through the stories of those living it right now. So that future generations can either learn from our lives or choose not to repeat our mistakes. A dry history lesson can tell us that there was great poverty in the world in 2025. But The Unseen Goddess will tell the tale of one person who lived a life of want and suffering and found strength and dignity despite it. Books are a medium that will transcend time and space, it is perhaps the noblest way to make ourselves immortal. And we need governments to put some money behind literary support initiatives. Writers need to eat too.
Lastly…reviews. World, please hear me on this. If you have read a book you liked, please review it. Nothing helps a writer succeed more than the feedback of people who liked his or her books. Five minutes of your time, if that, is all that is asked, for a person who committed years to give you a book that hopefully moved your soul.
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