Ruby Hembrom (English)

Sanjeev Chatterjee: 0:06

Where dreams come from, is a podcast featuring successful people from around the world who have pursued their dreams to arrive at a station in life. I'm your host, Sanjeev Chatterjee. I'm a professor of cinema and journalism. And in my creative life, I make documentary films. I started this podcast to explore what it takes for people to follow their dreams, even while being true to who they are, at least, who they believe they're my guest, Ruby hembre is the founder of odd ivani of platform for indigenous peoples expression in India. She has been awarded the Asia foundation development fellowship, and an Atlantic fellowship, among other honors. However, Ruby did not set out in life imagining she would become a publisher and Archivist of indigenous literature and culture in India. Born into a santel tribal family, her formative years were spent with experiences of colorism that affected her deeply. Ultimately, her dream formed as a response to the exclusion that she felt at every step. Ruby hammer home, thanks for joining where dreams come from. My pleasure. I'm curious to understand where you began, and what your early memories are.

Unknown: 1:33

I was born in Kolkata, but soon after I was born, we moved to Charleston because my parents were traveling along with my six year old sister. And they couldn't really travel with a newborn baby. So I was in my maternal home called venaria. In charcoal and, and my elder aren't my mother's eldest sister raised me. And the first language I picked up was santali. And my friends were often the domestic animals around so the cows and the chickens and the dogs and cats and I would be like following them around. And very much my childhood memories were about that place, the language the food we ate, and how quickly it became dark and the lanterns had to be turned on, and how it was really scary, scary because it was so dark and all you could see were shadows. Sometimes you would hear the drums listen pal drums playing from a neighbor's house, you would hear singing, but I had to go through what you call socialization for first generation born people in the city for

Sanjeev Chatterjee: 2:54

our audience, tell us who the santel people are,

Unknown: 2:59

they are what we call in India in the official term, sheduled tribe or colloquially, tribe or tribal and, and self given name for the central Indian tribes is Adivasi are the meaning first, or ancient and vassy meaning inhabitants. So centres are one of the 720 plus indigenous peoples of India, though they are spread across five states in India. And they are also outside of India, in Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan. We speak the same language

Sanjeev Chatterjee: 3:35

to a memory of the village very you grew up, you said it was scary. I was curious to know whether it was it became scary in retrospect, and might not have been so scary when you were a child who lived through that experience.

Unknown: 3:50

As I got used to electricity, because I'm going to go back to the same example I gave at the beginning, it became more scary. I just could not adjust to being back on vacations and not having electricity. And when it gets dark, it also becomes soundless in many ways. And that was somehow frightening for me. I think as a child, I didn't care too much. But we were always told to venture with caution, because there was scorpions, and because of that, not because of anything else. And so the fear was that okay, scorpions on the ground, but then you could hear the swishing of trees and branches. And as you grew older, you imagined all kinds of things. So even now, when I lost wind, this was this year in April. As soon as it got dark, it just was kind of uncomfortable. And I kept thinking that have I become so much of a city person that this country Have not having light makes me actually feel fearful. I don't really know where to place that fear. So this fear, I think, is mostly Dr. program from the readings, or what you see on television, and very active imagination.

Sanjeev Chatterjee: 5:17

As a first generation family in the city.

Unknown: 5:21

One thing was very clear with us, there was no hiding who we were, we knew we were synthol. We knew we were indigenous peoples, we knew we were Adivasi. And everything around us was very simple. So we speak the language. Often in the evenings, my father, being this really self taught musician or a natural musician, he would be singing, and those are things that would be happening around the house in school, my sister is light skinned. And if you are from India, you would know how people treat people who have darker skin. So here I am, three and four years old, going to school. And I realized very early on, I'm going to be made fun of for how I look, a classmate of mine, one day comes up to me. And she's like, so when you Polish your shoes in the morning, they polish your face as well. And there was giggling and laughing and I didn't know how to respond to that. I just came home that day, after five hours of being at school, and I told my mother, this is what happened. And my mother's like, it's all right, you know, they don't know that, you know, you can have different skin colors. And I would go back the next day and somebody would make fun of my stop knows. It just kept happening. And I was like really young. And every day I was fearful of actually being in that classroom with those people because I knew everyone's just going to be making fun of me. So here they were like, Ah, you're Adivasi. So you live in the caves? Are you? Or do you sleep in the trees? Do you eat humans and all of that. And it was really hard for me at that age to respond, or even have any response. And I couldn't understand why they would think it was okay to just keep picking on me. And the way I was picked on was obviously different from how I saw usual youngers being picked on like, if you take someone's pencil works, you'd like it. And none of that happened, you know, where it was always about who I was, and how I made them feel uncomfortable. My presence made them feel uncomfortable. And I couldn't understand why. So in many ways, I would say that the work I do is linked to my early experiences and these experiences of exclusion. In many ways I didn't do very well, I couldn't really apply myself because of all of this. For me, it was like five hours of punishment over there. So I would just want to escape and come home. That's it. I knew my parents wouldn't have it any other way. So that is what it was. And I was like, No, nobody in school actually knows who I was. I mean, now, when they find out and they want to get in touch, and all of that. I mean, it's really weird, because I still find it very hard to reconcile that little girl who grew up with zero self confidence and low self esteem or actually no self esteem, who has become this person, but I've had to become this person.

Sanjeev Chatterjee: 8:23

And what's your first memory of wanting to be someone or something?

Unknown: 8:28

It is a very difficult question, because I'm this person who was stumbling from one thing to the other, because nothing was really sure. I didn't know what I was going to do with my life. I thought it was just going to be something every day, something mediocre, it was going to be an ordinary life where I would have sufficient to take care of my personal needs. So here we were a family and there were other families like us centers and other adivasis, who came to the city, with work in the government and in other private organizations. But for them, it was like this next generation is going to have a life that they will make in the way modern society perceives it to be who I was going to become was actually a bit now I can say was a surprise. Nobody knew. When I got into law college and studied in Calcutta University for five years. My parents didn't realize that this profession is different from the medical profession. You don't just finish the law course and then go to the courts of law and start practicing. There is a chain you have to work as an apprentice and the senior, you work your way up. And that I realized only when I started going to college and we were like 320 students and there were only about 10 people who were not from the Families when we realize very quickly that when college ended when all of our friends went to their fathers, uncles, aunts, firms to get practical information, we were like just sitting in the canteen or maybe playing table tennis, because where else do you go? What do you do? So when you have no social capital, there are so many other things that don't work out for you, even if you have this formal education, and there and then my dream of having a career in indirect alignment with my degree stopped.

Sanjeev Chatterjee: 10:37

So once you kind of realize that law wasn't for you, what did you do?

Unknown: 10:44

So the next best thing I did was just start looking through newspapers and trying to find a job. So I moved from job to job. Starting off as a call center executive, I worked in the banks, I worked in credit card departments. And I kept going to Delhi for these jobs, staying for six to nine months. And it just was not something that worked for me, you know, I did well at my work, and I refused to make friends because I was so scared that no one would want to be friends with me. So that trauma kept accompanying me, I was like, no one will like me. But I said, it doesn't matter, I have to do this work, I need to do it work well, and I need to get my salary. And every time I wanted to quit, I would just call my parents and say I'm coming home, and they never fall once shut the door on me. In one of those homecomings, I heard about a language institute being started. And my friend had joined that Institute. And it was like teaching various languages, including English as a foreign language. And my friends, like why don't you try this. So I go there, and in many ways that changed something in my life. So here I was, with all the material, all the quick tricks, the quick fixes of how to really help people speak English to the best of my ability, you know, something that will get them past all of the hurdles that actually not knowing this language brings upon us. So here I was with the material. And then when I heard about this publishing course, which again, is not something people like me, oh, people from my background here. So it just happened that my younger sister worked for their social development wing. And she told me see you're at home, and you have some time. In your hands. Why don't you join this? And I was thinking to myself, sure, it's four months 10 investment I can easily make. So here I was four months. And I'm thinking, yes, I know the material, I know what kind of methodology would be needed. But surely, I'm going to have to make books, as surely I'm going to have to create some material and add a pedagogy that will be relatable to my people. Because if I teach them the language and asked them to practice it, what are the books that they will have access to? So there were two things I came to kind of analyze. One was that we don't exist in the publishing pan around. And second is the usual. I mean, we are not important, they don't care about us. And that's why we are not included. And at that point, I was like, it's easier to accept the second one, it's discrimination on now. It's okay. And that's easier. But then I was like, wait, but then look at this. We do write, our writing history may be shorter than the history of the dominant peoples, but we write we write in our native languages, we write and we Self Publish. But that's not good enough to be paid attention to. And I said This can't go on anymore. So I decided there and then that Enough is enough. This Enough is enough. It was not only about the invisible ideation in that course, and in literary landscapes, but also kind of a threshold of my own lived experience up until now, of discrimination and inclusion and exclusion. And my audacity or my defiance to say enough is enough. And that's when this idea of ivani which is the organization through which I do, archiving and documentation work of adivasis came about what are the activities of

Sanjeev Chatterjee: 14:42

everyone

Unknown: 14:43

are the Vaani primarily is this cultural documentation and preservation center. It is this platform of our diversity assertion, which is done through looking at all the cultural facets or features of it. Dani adivasis. So this is done through books, through documentary films, through looking at our material culture, but it's also done through building awareness amongst our devices of our diversity issues and taking our diversity histories, taking our diversity issues and making it known to the mainstream. So it is a platform of preservation. And it primarily answers the question, how will we recognize we are Adivasi, when everything that makes us so is taken away from us or is lost. And this is the only place I think that we'll have those answers when we look at our diversity lifestyles changing circumstantially. And it has to because we have to move with the times. But in that moving, there's so much that we can't carry along, one, we lose our languages, because not that we don't love them, or we can't speak them anymore, but because we have told our languages are backward. So then when you have this new language, you're going to have to need which will be the passport to opening up new words for you, you pay more attention to it, and you find it easier to let go of your own because you've been told it's not good. So that's where our work intervention comes from, how to be a link to our ancestors, and to the next generation,

Sanjeev Chatterjee: 16:32

as you look back are the roots of this particular discovery only in the dissatisfaction that led up to it.

Unknown: 16:41

The work I do as advocacy, or visible lysing, or giving a platform to my people, clearly comes from these past experiences of being told that I'm inferior, that I'm ugly, that I don't belong in those spaces. And my question always has been, then why am I in this world? And how is it that you can travel to my lands, you can take over my lands, build your estates, build your second, third, fourth home, and still feel at home there. But you refuse to allow me space into entry into these spaces? And it's come from the constant struggles of trying to understand who is Indian, am I not Indian enough? Why am I not Indian, and who really should be, I mean, what gives them the power to treat someone else in this despicable way, as adivasis We take great pride in who we are, in our ways in the in the in the very simple ways we live, I mean, our lives are not really comparable to the modern ways and we are looked at being backward, but then you look at how sophisticated many of our ways have been are, or how we are the ones who will be able to if at all, challenge or curb climate change. We were the the original conservationists. So, it was a defiance that came out of this struggle through the dissatisfaction through what you felt was a process of dehumanization,

Sanjeev Chatterjee: 18:40

for audiences of this particular conversation, many of whom have lived in the assumption that English isn't universal language, can you kind of explain the difficulty of living in a multilingual country with 15 official languages, how one language becomes the gateway to success,

Unknown: 19:09

if you look at the hegemony of power, it also lies in languages. And in India, there are two languages which people would say have power, they are the ones that will open the gates. So one is English, and one is Hindi. And, but through the years, we have seen that Hindi can only get you so far, why English has become so important or why English is an Indian language is also something we have to look at through the history of colonization and the coming of the British and then creating a middle class that would be able to further their expansion, but then they have to speak the same language. So when you have this middle class who soon became upper class, it was all through this education that was imparted in English. When our constitution was framed, it was English. So our laws and rules are all written in this language. But if you look at what this language does, as opposed to what I would say, formal education does so one to get this power, you have to speak English, but you have to speak English in a certain way. That comes from a certain kind of education. And that is the kind of education I got. But for me, and my Adivasi people, I would say this, that my formal education has not made me immune from discrimination. This formal education will open doors for opportunities and jobs, that is all it can do, it can not prevent you from being treated adversely or discriminatory in these spaces,

Sanjeev Chatterjee: 21:10

what work remains for you. In this life,

Unknown: 21:14

there's so much I want to do, I somehow got stuck with being called a publisher, because I started with books, but I just wanted to be like this cultural documentarian, cultural advocate, because it's so hard to do work I do with almost no support. And my ambitions have to do with people understanding who really the indigenous peoples are, we have to challenge why the Indian government has refused to accept us as indigenous peoples, how they refuse to endorse the UN Declaration of indigenous peoples, though they have signed it, but with the caveat that there are no indigenous peoples in India, everyone is indigenous. So that is a way of shirking responsibility of, or towards the people who are primarily, let's say, the first citizens of this nation. So for me, I want to be able to advocate for all of that nationally and internationally. So that's where my work wants to kind of move towards when it comes to greater advocacy.

Sanjeev Chatterjee: 22:34

What does it take to create a dream out of adversity? How can we see a closed door as an opportunity in Ruby story, as far as I can see, the steadfast support of her family definitely played a role in helping her find her passion and a path forward. where she is today is clearly not a destination. Like so many of my guests following their dreams. It's all in the progress they are making. Maybe the dream is a journey, rather than a destination. Today's episode was edited by Scott album for media for change. I'm Sanjeev Chatterjee