[roshnishah27]

Big smiles, bigger hearts from the #chicago @servicespace crew! Prepped and shared over 70 meals today for the first #hearthehomeless event. Planting seeds of community on this beautiful #ServiceSunday #dowhatmakesyouAWEsome #soulsunday (at Chicago, Illinois)

[roshnishah27]

Physician vs. Nursing Care 

[roshnishah27]

on repeat =) 

Post  coming soon...

[two-browngirls]

PHOENIX READY FOR FLIGHT

MONICA DOGRA X TBG

Singer, actor, performer, designer; many words describe but can’t define Monica Dogra, a multi-dimensional, holistic artist. She’s been making waves in India as part of electronic music duo ‘Shaa’ir + Func’ but is now rising to be an all-around icon. 

TBG caught up with Monica to understand the experiences and thoughts about her journey so far.

1. We love what you do and admire your courage in pioneering the Indian indie music scene! We want to learn more about your journey, as two brown girls. Why did you decide to move to India from America?

Hey, thank you! I really appreciate that.

 I moved completely on a whim, totally unplanned, and shocked the hell out of my family. I studied musical theatre in NYC and afterwards got my first show in a union production of Fanny at the Citigroup Center. After that, I was the arab dancing girl in a production of Love’s Fire. I was baking cookies at an ad agency in the afternoons, and bar-tending at night. I like to think I am pretty smart, and I definitely didn’t feel like I was in a position of value all too often.

I was sort of stuck in an artistic identity crisis. I didn’t know how to be a Brown Girl in a world that was constantly pegging me as “Brown”, “exotic”, “ethnically ambiguous”, “sexy”, “hot”. What did that mean? I just wanted to be a hippie chick, rocking torn jeans, crying while I laughed, spitting poetry, writing mash up music that represented how mashed up I felt. I’ve never been just one thing…but I desperately wanted to fit in and slot in to a world that made me feel pretty lonely.

So, in that space, I went to India and took time away to explore it on my own. In about five days, my world turned upside down. I was around Indian people in Bombay, with tattoos, in metal bands, people who grew up listening to ABBA and The Beatles - and they were all Indian. No one could say they weren’t proper Indian. They lived in India. In a way, India emancipated me from being chained by an Indian Identity that was imposed upon me, and allowed me to create a new Indian Identity that was rooted in truth. 

In ten days, I quit all my projects, wrapped up my life, and moved to India. I crashed on strangers floors, and hopped around Bombay, finding my first band-mates along the way, and playing my first ever original shows on the road. I had no idea what the hell I was doing. But, I could feel in my gut, that I was on the right track.

2. What have been the highs and lows of adjusting and settling in India over the years?

This is a tough one. It’s been 8 years! I can site a recent high…I was on the cover of Maxim, and the very same week the magazine came out, I played a show for Women’s Day in Bombay. It was my band-mate, Randolph’s idea that we all go cross-dressed. It was a sort of in your face reaction to all the objectification, gender pressure put on people these days. I felt so loved and confident in my boys clothes, in my home city - after giving a short speech about watching all my peers in the music fraternity crowd surfing, and feeling left out because I’m worried I’ll get felt up I finally jumped into the arms of my people, and it was ALL GOOD. I don’t think a woman in India has ever been able to do such a thing. I felt so clear about who my tribe is. We represent a new and pervasive energy that will take over.

A low point would be in the beginning when S+F played quite small venues that didn’t have proper sound. I once got badly electrocuted on stage. I sweat so much - so my body was basically a conductor. The audience kept shouting for me to sing and I had never felt so alone. I realized in that moment how much of an object you are. You aren’t a real person to your fans. I suppose, it is a major theme in my work, to be a REAL person…relatable…attainable…touchable…flawed…but still, special I guess.

3. Your music and film work has gone from strength to strength. How do you balance these two aspects of your creative self and what are your aspirations for the future?

I don’t know how I balance. I do know that I don’t allow myself to stop. It’s my job to keep innovating, to keep trying to improve. I’m not the type who is content in one thing and my artistic efforts reflect that diversity in creativity.

I’m releasing a line of clothing in a months time. It’s street wear that aims at being affordable. It’s grungey, rock and roll and pays homage to the concept of Bombay. Not Mumbai (whatever that means).

Also, I have a solo record releasing in August and I’m releasing my 5th album with S+F in September! I just finished shooting a short film in LA, and India is up in arms about it’s “lesbian content” (uh. whatever). I just shot a music video that I conceptualised and cast myself in NYC, which is being edited as I type this. It’s going to be a crazy year! I feel like a cloud is lifting. 2013 was a tough one…and I’m ready for flight.

4. Last but not least, what advice or guidance would you give to young, brown girls?

ah! I’m so honoured that I can even be in a position to give advice man! Uhhh.

I’d tell brown girls around the world to spend a lot of time with yourself. Be comfortable with alone. Alone is an awesome thing…don’t get it twisted.

Once you know yourself so well, once no one can shake you, chances are you’ll know your path and you’ll have the courage to walk it. Be relentless. Be resilient…and never measure time. It’s a useless obsession.

Remember this quote as well…I love it. "All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man" - Thoreau

We really admire the work that Monica does and can’t wait to see where her journey will take her next!

- A&S x

Photo credits:

1. Akshay Sawant

2. Wearabout

3. Veda Raheja

4. Monica Dogra

5. Cory Goldberg

6. Dewarists

[spiritualfolly-blog-blog]

If Dr. Seuss had Been a Yogi.

“I don’t want to practice yoga today!

I do not want to. Namaste.

…

But yoga makes you feel so strong!

Heart is open and muscles long! I know you’re tired, and grumpy too, But yoga is the thing to do To lift your spirit and your mood You’ll have a better attitude!

Okay! Since you refuse to quit, I guess I can practice… a little bit.”

[talvelhunt]

[intergalactix]

Sometimes all you need is a little motivation!

It’s easy to say, “I’m going to exercise more.” But it’s important to follow through with that goal, too. I want to incorporate yoga back into my daily routine, rather than just a few days a week, and I’d like to hopefully motivate some more people...

[msmensen]

a list poem for working-class girls trying to grow up and into themselves

1. It is okay to leave anyone and anything and anyplace that makes you feel like shit. It’s hard, but it’s okay. And fuck explaining anything to anyone, unless you want to. Let them fucking wonder.

2. Know who the fuck...

[roshnishah27]

[arnade-deactivated20181214]

Stop trying to save people

My piece in the Guardian: Stop trying to save people

Please Share. I don’t ask that often but I really feel strong about this.

"Saving someone" is an arrogant presumption that you know what is best for others. The only person one can save is oneself.

[irresistible-revolution]

"What counts as activism? Why didn’t the kind of emotional self-care me and my girls were doing—talking to each other about all the fucked-up shit we were going through as brown girls—count? Why didn’t my best friend driving her elderly East African mother to the doctor and renegotiating her way through the layers of the racist, sexist, condescending bullshit medical system count as activism? Did staying alive count as activism? Did re-learning Tamil, one of my Sri Lankan family’s languages, count? Did cooking good Sri Lankan food and learning how to cook those recipes I didn’t have female family members around to teach me count? As a South Asian femme immigrant who was having a shitty week, did shopping at the MAC counter and finding the perfect shade of fuchsia lip gloss for my milk-tea skin count?"

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, “A Time to Hole Up And a Time to Kick Ass” in We Don’t Need Another Wave (via irresistible-revolution)

[kyleschen]

Don’t aim at success–the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run—in the long run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it.

Viktor Frankl (via kyleschen)

[newwavefeminism]

Skin lightening advertising from across the world. No matter where you go, lightness is a hot commodity.

[wocinsolidarity]

so sad

[roshnishah27]

PET PEEVE!!!!!!

[mydarlingvintage]

[roshnishah27]

My beauty regimen =)

[vogueandcoffee]

[roshnishah27]

2014 Resolution

[npr]

It’s not easy being the odd person out. Sometimes, hanging in situations where we’re the only ones from our ethnic group can get weird, sad or even hilarious.

NPR’s Code Switch Team is looking for your “I was the only…" stories. Holler at them on Twitter or fill out this form to tell your story. (via npr)

[roshnishah27]

When young, we’re anxious--understandably--to find out if we’ve got what it takes. Can we succeed? Can we build a viable life for ourselves? But you--in particular you, of this generation--may have noticed a certain cyclical quality to ambition. You do well in high-school, in hopes of getting into a good college, so you can do well in the good college, in the hopes of getting a good job, so you can do well in the good job so you can ... . And this is actually o.k. If we’re going to become kinder, that process has to include taking ourselves seriously--as doers, as accomplishers, as dreamers.  We have to do that, to be our best selves. Still, accomplishment is unreliable. “Succeeding,” whatever that might mean to you, is hard, and the need to do so constantly renews itself (success is like a mountain that keeps growing ahead of you as you hike it), and there’s the very real danger that “succeeding” will take up your whole life, while the big questions go untended.  So, quick, end-of-speech advice: Since, according to me, your life is going to be a gradual process of becoming kinder and more loving: Hurry up. Speed it along. Start right now. There’s a confusion in each of us, a sickness, really: selfishness. But there’s also a cure. So be a good and proactive and even somewhat desperate patient on your own behalf--seek out the most efficacious anti-selfishness medicines, energetically, for the rest of your life.  Do all the other things, the ambitious things--travel, get rich, get famous, innovate, lead, fall in love, make and lose fortunes, swim naked in wild jungle rivers (after first having it tested for monkey poop)--but as you do, to the extent that you can, err in the direction of kindness. Do those things that incline you toward the big questions, and avoid the things that would reduce you and make you trivial. That luminous part of you that exists beyond personality--your soul, if you will--is as bright and shining as any that has ever been. Bright as Shakespeare’s, bright as Gandhi’s, bright as Mother Theresa’s. Clear away everything that keeps you separate from this secret luminous place. Believe it exists, come to know it better, nurture it, share its fruits tirelessly.