A Fractured cultural identity?

Nirage Mirage: you my culinary connection to Fiji and generally a whole is, you know, it starts with my grandmother. had, ⁓ she ⁓ known Mithainani. She had some confectionary carts that she kind of took over little business in Fiji and she would have these market stalls and she had two or three carts.

Neha Lamba Grover: Welcome to No Forks Given. I am Neha and today I have on my podcast, Neeraj Singh, also known as Neeraj Neeraj. Neeraj is a London based costume designer working across film and television who is shaped by a global perspective. He is of Indian origin, born in Fiji, raised in Australia and now based in UK. Neeraj brings what he calls a fractured cultural identity into his storytelling, using it as a powerful lens Mitai Nani.

Nirage Mirage: by the end and she would be going to the festivals and creating these sweets and then catering functions and having food stalls at markets. it was again, this way of measuring. think when I was ⁓ last back Fiji, my mom was me how to make barfi, which is ⁓ of my favorite. I love barfi. And there's a...

Neha Lamba Grover: to uncover character, nuance, and emotional truth through costume design. His work has featured in critically acclaimed projects and received a lot of recognition. His most recent work, Hamlet, is just out in the theaters in UK and soon to be in the US. Welcome, Neeraj.

Nirage Mirage: Hi, thank you for having me.

Neha Lamba Grover: Barfiya ya Allah barfiya. Neeraj, you're that the aim of this podcast is to engage in conversations about identity ⁓ to explore the complex layers of identity through food as a metaphor. This is a milk burfi, right? The dairy with so many variations.

Nirage Mirage: Yes, yes. It's a milk paraffy. And then in Australia, we have this kind of topping called hundreds and thousands. It's like confetti-colored little like sugar little drops. And I think it's so distinct to me to have that from Australia in that way. But my mother was teaching me how to make sugar syrup that gets folded in this particular way. But ⁓ style of measuring was like...

Neha Lamba Grover: And the first time we met was over a meal that you had created, right? You had made this amazing fish and shrimp curry. And I was pretty blown away by it because when I realized what your background was from Fiji to Australia to UK, I have to be honest, I was not expecting ⁓ the dish to taste so authentically Indian. ⁓ that got me really about ⁓ following those breadcrumbs and trying to look at Okay.

Nirage Mirage: taking the sugar syrup in your hand and separating it to see how many prongs, to see how many prongs, if three, you have three, it's too much, if you have two, it's just enough. You know, like things like that, these ways of intuitive measuring and stuff that have, you know, passed down through by hand and orally, you know, I thought that was fascinating.

Neha Lamba Grover: Yeah, to see if it's ready. Yeah, the consistency. Indo-Phegian history and since you mentioned it was a recipe that your mother had given to I was pretty fascinated by the fact that the je ne sais quoi of Indian cooking was still retained in it over four or five generations. ⁓ And ⁓ found between 1870 and 1917, about a million and a half Indians ⁓ were taken out of India as labor by the British after ⁓ slavery was abolished and about 60,000 of them went to Fiji. And by 1940, they were about 48 % of the Fijian population that made them the largest. And by 1970, Fiji gained its independence. And by late 1980s, there were a lot of tensions between Indo-Fijians and native Fijians, which led to a lot of riots and

Nirage Mirage: is the one place I think, you in the kitchen, like ⁓ when finish a big project, or I have had an intense period of my life or in work, the way I reset is always in the kitchen. It's always cooking some meal that's, you know, elaborate or, you know, ⁓ that just a lot of concentration, but it takes me into a place and resets me.

Neha Lamba Grover: Yeah. emigration of Indo-Phegians to New Zealand, Australia, and other areas there. I want to start with you. You were born in Fiji. At what age did you leave Fiji?

Nirage Mirage: And I feel very comfortable in being intuitive in a kitchen, you know? I never feel full of whether I have enough or not enough, because I know I can balance. It's one of those places, few places that I can really feel like I have complete ease and control. But I wanted to tell you, because I didn't know if there was any particular Indo-Fijian dishes that I recalled, but I know that we had like... Yeah, so I was born in Fiji in Suva and I was three when we emigrated to Sydney.

Neha Lamba Grover: Yeah, that's, that's what. So what was what was food like? mean, I mean, obviously, if you were three, you don't remember what food was like in Fiji. But what was food like at home for you in Australia as an Indo-Fijian?

Nirage Mirage: I You know, I have this, I do have, I have one memory ⁓ of smells, you know, I was at my father's side of ⁓ Punjabi on my father's side. And I remember that, you know, they had a big farm and I remember the smell of boiling milk. That was one smell that I really, that's etched in my memory from Fiji. You know, I think that's, that is a... you know, like making a curry from tinned mackerel, know, we all tinned fish ⁓ or canned, you know, mutton. There was these canned, which were kind of like, you know, staples, but affordable, the tastiest meals, you know, that would, that were devised. And I don't know particularly if that is in DefuGN or if that is global, but it-

Neha Lamba Grover: Mm-hmm.

Nirage Mirage: Yeah, that's one memory I have. Other than that food, I don't really remember cuisine. But what was my food like in Sydney, in Australia? At home? Yeah, so at home predominantly we ate ⁓ Indian food, Indian dishes. And, you know, it was all types of curry, meat curries, veg curry, kichidi, certainly they were some of the tastiest curries and very, very budget. But I also remember ⁓ my mother had adapted. She'd made one of her favorite dishes actually is a tuna samosa. Yeah, so it's like a tuna fish curry in a samosa. and so.

Neha Lamba Grover: Yeah, at home, yeah. ⁓ wow! Wow. Samosa is one of the most adaptable concepts and it's not originally Indian. It's just now become so Indian. It came from Persia or at least some sort of concept of a pastry that is rolled up with the stuffing inside came from Persia and it had a name Samosa. you know, ⁓

Nirage Mirage: you know, we had, yeah, it was varied, it was predominantly ⁓ curry and was Dhani food. Right.

Neha Lamba Grover: Yeah. So see, this is fascinating to me that the food that I ate that you had cooked, which was being made in your house in Australia, is Indian food that I would also eat in India. And this is skipped about, I don't know, five or four generations of being in Fiji, where the recipe has retained itself. When I was at business school, we were launching the South Asian Business Association and we'd invited at the launch party a lot of other students from different backgrounds. And two of my Israeli friends looked at the samosas being served and said, oh, why are you serving an Israeli dish? And it was the samosa. And I was like, hey, this is samosa. This is from India. It was a very interesting conversation then to realize that they had never, they didn't realize that Indians have samosas because they knew the Israeli. See the Indo-Phegians, when they left India on those boats, the caste system was very rigid in India. And so at least the Hindus would have had to compromise on much of the do's and don'ts. Even crossing the seas was one of the biggest taboos. If you went overseas and came back, you were already untouchable, so to speak. So to get over that and then go to a new area where ingredients must have been restricted, though historically wherever the Indians version of it. But yeah, and then when I followed the story, I realized some of these, know, samosa with tuna, I'm not surprised at all. Yeah. And after, I think Lisbon is also famous for a lot of samosas because of the, after the Portuguese left in 1967, they left Goa in 1967. Many of them emigrated to Mozambique.

Nirage Mirage: Yeah.

Neha Lamba Grover: did go, whether it was Mauritius, Fiji, or the Caribbean, they were followed by Gujarati traders traditionally that open grocery stores. So lot of the ingredient was available. But food has also become a metaphor in Fiji for some of the tension that was brought up between native Fijians and Indo-Fijians. Because I was reading about George Spade that you and I talked about, who was a national radical. And he which was also a Portuguese colony. And after that was freed, many of them double emigrated to Portugal and took samosas back with them. The streets of Lisbon are famous for it. And then again, they've been adapted. But yeah, that is, I'd to try the tuna samosas one day. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. ⁓

Nirage Mirage: Wow. Yeah, we need to adapt this into a cooking show. I I'm so intrigued see how that we have, you know, I think things like Baal, you know, that are so stapled yet they're so different depending on where in ⁓ the world they're made, you know. And I find that quite fascinating.

Neha Lamba Grover: commented on the fact in the 1980s that the Indians need to integrate more and he alluded more to their food given that he himself was known to enjoy a good curry. I mean, have you ever heard conversations like that from your parents about what it was like in Fiji? And do you even eat traditional Fijian food in your home? Yeah. Yeah, and every day we can, I mean, my husband and I these days are empty nesters, we're concocting different recipes. We feel like making a dal. We don't want to follow the recipe because it's a lot of effort, but whatever we end up doing is intrinsically Indian in its treatment, just by instinct. You know, there'll be some ginger, garlic, something, something with a little pepper because I want a shortcut and it will be on top like a Tarka, but it's and now, you know, it's probably the first time we've made it that way, but it's still going to taste Indian. ⁓

Nirage Mirage: We do actually, ⁓ there are pollination dishes, which I actually up until recently thought that they were Fijian Indian or Indo Fijian food cuisine, but actually they're pollination food where they have, there's a lot of ⁓ and cassava and root vegetables and, ⁓ coconut milk. And so those are the bases. Thank kind of lovo's where things are cooked underground, which I knew ⁓ was more Polynesian. But there are certain dishes which I was actually talking to my mother about asking her, was like, well, what about this Fijian Indian dish? She said, no, that's Polynesian. So these had been adopted ⁓ culturally for us. But I think what's really interesting ⁓ what you said about, know, the ⁓ of people from India to Fiji, what strikes me so much is, you know, it's such a perilous journey. Yeah.

Neha Lamba Grover: And that is the thing about Indian cooking. It isn't set recipes. It takes a lot of other ingredients, but there's a core in it, which too has evolved with Persian influences, local Indian influences, and even Central Asian influences with the Mughals that were very fond of food coming to India and the royal kitchens also pandering to their desire for ⁓ fine and such.

Nirage Mirage: across the seas and many didn't make it, but I loved that the priorities somewhere was a spice. That they were leaving, hoping they're not going to leave their spices.

Neha Lamba Grover: Yeah, it really, you know, I... And about one third, only one third of the one and a half million actually went back to India after their contracts were over. But the rest of them are said to have lost all contact with India, which is why the fact that they were clinging on to their food and their recipes and being accused of not integrating. Though, mean, in Fiji, a lBritish divide and rule would have aggravated this concept of, these are Indo-Fijians, and all the policies were, you know, were treating the Indo-Phegians from what I understand as temporary there. And so as they decided not to go back, didn't know where to go back, ⁓ it aggravated that divide, leading to some of the tensions coming over. But again, defined by the food. The Indians were being defined by the food. And I was also reading about the divide, North Indian and South Indians in Fiji among the population that would you know jokingly refer to each other as Katapani which is sour water for the Sardinians because the sambhar and all the tangy curries and whereas the South Indian ⁓ Indo-Fijians would refer to the North Indian as kuris which meant they were mingy. and not as liberal on the spices. So it's just funny to me that it continued. And of course, there were Muslims and Sikhs and people from Punjab. Your father, you said, was from Punjab also. So there must have been a melding of cuisines which turned into Indo-Fijian. But when you're talking about these Polynesian dishes, are you talking about Polynesian ingredients getting into the food? Or is it that the entire recipe is Polynesian? Because Areas like Tonga and Samoa, mean, traditionally they don't even have a history of seasoning their food from what I understand, and I'm not an expert. And they are now starting to eat a lot of Indian food, even in canteens and cafeterias, where it's becoming popular. And Indian curry powder is also being sought after to season some of the food. So do you think it's an Indianization of ingredients or is it a pure Polynesian recipe?

Nirage Mirage: I think they were mostly Polynesian dishes because even though they felt to me, because my mother had made them, that they were Fiji and Indian, they didn't have spice, yet they felt like a good... But you know what's interesting also is even growing up, even if we were to make a pasta sauce, the pasta sauce, there's nothing subtle about cooking with an Indian hand. our pasta sauce can taste like a curry or have the consistency of a curry.

Neha Lamba Grover: We didn't have spice powder, okay. Yeah. in India.

Nirage Mirage: I think it's a style of cooking which is by Indian hand, which kind of just default makes a curry. I can't make any, I can make very little in a subtle way. I don't know subtlety.

Neha Lamba Grover: And so what was it like then? What was it like in Australia? Were you being seen as Indian or were you being seen distinctly as Indo-Fijian? ⁓ You know, because I find that, you it's almost like losing your home twice. First India with your ancestors and then you're losing Fiji and you're going to Australia. So what did that feel like?

Nirage Mirage: You know, I can speak from like, from my experience because for my experience, I felt very othered in Australia because it didn't feel, I knew that I wasn't from there, you know, whereas in Fiji, I didn't feel a lack of feeling Indian. It was more like I wasn't, I was Indian in Australia and I wasn't from there, I was other. And so, yeah, I guess, you know,

Neha Lamba Grover: Yeah. Yeah.

Nirage Mirage: It was, you know, and it manifested in ways where, you feel your differences, you know, even going to school, if I had a roti wrap with bindi in it, it was like a little bit, I knew that, you know, again, you know, there were the smells, there was like, it was just something that was different when everyone was having sandwiches and you're having bindi roti. And, you know, I didn't do that very often because I just wanted to assimilate really. ⁓ And it was a big difference.

Neha Lamba Grover: Yeah.

Nirage Mirage: It was a very noticeable big difference if you weren't having what, there wasn't that much diversity in cuisine and in lunch boxes like that.

Neha Lamba Grover: And it's interesting that it's identical to the experience that my kids have had in the United States. And I'm a first generation Indian who moved here in my late 20s. And my kids went through the same consciousness about the food and their tiffin that you're experiencing. The meal was probably identical too. And how would that experience in Australia compare to your experience in UK though?

Nirage Mirage: I feel, you know, there's a very, there's a, ⁓ arrived in the UK, strangely enough, I felt more connected to ⁓ when I moved to the UK than I ever had in Australia. And almost ⁓ a sensory way, I felt something that I hadn't felt since maybe early childhood in Fiji. There was something about ⁓ way the gardens are, the roses are. ⁓ the buildings are in the UK, which somehow just gave me this sensory feeling of being back in Fiji and also being more connected to my culture. Because there are so many second and third generation established communities of Indian diaspora in the UK, and the food is everywhere. We're very much, know, maybe not accepted, but very much integrated into life here. And ⁓ yeah, I really connected, I really connected in this way that it wasn't just, I guess, whereas in Australia, we would have been first generations going to school in Australia, but the majority of the community were very sort of segregated and contained culturally, whereas... you know, in the UK, there was just so many, the population is so great that you don't feel, you feel like just another person.

Neha Lamba Grover: what has your relationship with Indians been? Have you traveled to India? ⁓

Nirage Mirage: I have actually, you know, when I traveled to India, I traveled to India in 2010 with my mom. were on a, my mom had been several times before, but we were on a shopping trip for my sister's wedding. And we had done from the North to the very South. We were from Amritsar all the way down to the very South. Then we went to Chennai, then we went to Bombay. We did Bangalore. We did this incredible journey.

Neha Lamba Grover: Yeah.

Nirage Mirage: ⁓ all through India and it was really special. think it was like eight weeks and we had gone, we were doing things culturally, going and seeing the sites whilst we were shopping. So we were engaged and had some ⁓ function that we had to, some function to our purpose to our trip. And then also like experiencing things in a culinary sense, you know? So it was really, and then also there was that first time of feeling like you, like I've never felt this this feeling of, wow, I really feel like it's mine. I belong here. You know, I felt anchored. Unlike in a way that I hadn't felt in Australia or the UK or Fiji, I had never felt that sense of being anchored ⁓ going before going to India, you know, and I think I think also in turn what that does, the positive, I guess,

Neha Lamba Grover: Yeah.

Nirage Mirage: that I take away from that is also that I have had this fluidity. I guess when I talk about, when I describe myself having a fractured cultural identity, meaning that I'd never quite felt that I fit or I belonged or I was from Australia or the UK, I always felt sort of this other. And also in our ancestry in Fiji, we this four generations in Fiji. But we never thought to delve, to research, to try and find this ancestry. We just existed. Up until now, now I'm very intrigued to find out what my roots are. But before that, just really merely not existed. I think we were surviving and providing, and those were the goals. And the goals weren't to figure out where our roots came from. But so I had this fluidity with I never felt ⁓ claim on anything or feeling this patriotism or or feeling like I, you know, you know, I had some strong allegiance. But going to India, I really felt this connection in this really palpable way. It was amazing.

Neha Lamba Grover: It is quite fascinating, right? When it comes full circle four generations later and you feel a sense of being home. ⁓ know, Naipaul was also a product of the diaspora. I was born in Trinidad and Tobago. ⁓ He's written a lot, as an insider with an outsider's point of view of Indo-Caribbean ⁓ ethnicity. But he often talked about how Indians see the world in such a hierarchical manner. And he almost put a mirror to me. The first time I became self-aware of how we talk to people and how we want to place them before we start talking to them way back in the 90s, it sort of blew me away. And I think it was right to some extent how the first few questions are about placing you in this complicated grid that they have in their head. And did you feel that? Like they're not, you know, there is an ownership when it fits that grade and it isn't depending upon where you are vis-a-vis where that person's own perception is of being on that grade, which is complicated. I'm not judging it, but it just is. Did you feel judged? Did you feel accepted and acknowledged or was it different based on where you were with the Indians?

Nirage Mirage: ⁓ I think, ⁓ Yeah, it was always, was different. think the UK is extremely accepting. ⁓

Neha Lamba Grover: Yeah, but that's because UK has such a deep relationship with India, right? ⁓ Going back 300 years, it's complicated, but it's there, right? And they understand the nuances of Indianness, including taking Indians to Fiji, they're responsible for that, right? Yeah.

Nirage Mirage: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But then also I think there's an acceptance and also an acceptance of the differences within the diaspora here as well as the collective, you know, so that, you know, whereas in Fiji, I think no matter where you came from, even though there were these kind of somewhat derogatory terms for where you came from in India and the divide in Fiji, I think eventually it amalgamated, you know, I don't see a a South Indian, Fijian Indian and a North Indian, Fijian Indian. I don't see the differences.

Neha Lamba Grover: So it's melted. It melted. I mean, I hear about an integrated Indo-Phegian cuisine as well, though I have not eaten anything other than what you cooked for us, which was fabulous. ⁓ Now that you've been in UK for about 23 years, What do you think about... So the UK's relationship with India and Indian food is also very layered. And I've alluded to the long relationship, but it is often...

Nirage Mirage: Yeah.

Neha Lamba Grover: The English adoption of Indian food is often not necessarily a sign of multiculturalism, it? Because it's almost like a fight to own it. And I might be wrong. It's about ⁓ we created the chicken tikka masala. It's about owning it. ⁓ The Birmingham ball tea. ⁓ it isn't about.

Nirage Mirage: Yeah.

Neha Lamba Grover: necessarily accepting the Indians that come along with it. There's a separation between the food and the people. The same person who loves the Indian meal may not necessarily like Indians in the country or like Indians themselves and on the other side they may love both. I mean I'm not saying each person is the same but I'm just talking about how those two trends could be separated.

Nirage Mirage: Yeah. Absolutely. think that does... I can't say that I've experienced this, I know, I think in the general ether it exists.

Neha Lamba Grover: Yeah. And then now recently the food is going beyond. is, you know, as the world is becoming smaller, on one hand, we're all, you know, you can't avoid co-optition. You are going to absorb from each other. People are going to start doing yoga and then doing goat yoga and hot yoga and doing whatever. And, know, we can be,

Nirage Mirage: Yeah.

Neha Lamba Grover: dismayed by what yoga is becoming and we can fight about our cultural appropriation. But you know, it is exactly just an accelerated form of what has happened in the past as you move around and you adopt and you absorb. And even the Indian food in different places is now starting to evolve and try to cater to a different audience, right? Or a consumer base. In America, the second generation ⁓ is starting to own it. But what is happening is that there is a core set of dishes that are becoming accepted, whereas maybe those nuanced dishes that you had that were very local to the place that your family came from, those are not necessarily being adopted as much, but something new might come out. And in England, hear of, you might have butter chicken in a sandwich, or you might have something, also fusion and things like that. And that is also how identity is evolving is you're thinking of yourself.

Nirage Mirage: ⁓ right, yeah.

Neha Lamba Grover: maybe not so much fractured as much as milded over time where you can own all of it, right?

Nirage Mirage: Yeah, true. Yeah, and I mean, this is the thing. It's like, I think that there's such a, there's a power in diversity and things melding together. You know, I'm a really big fan of Thai cuisine, but my Thai cuisine again has my Indian hand that makes it. So it somehow becomes Thai and Indian, but you know, that's the same as Malay curries, you know, and places around the world and the way that Indian cuisine changes globally, you know, and becomes its own, has its own identity.

Neha Lamba Grover: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Nirage Mirage: which I think, know, I Fiji and Indian cuisine, it has its own, it does have a very distinct flavor that I haven't, you know, having traveled throughout India a lot and several times, I had never come, I couldn't place where in India I tasted most like the food in Fiji, you know? I mean, this dish that I made when we met, actually, there's a, you know, there's a romanticized,

Neha Lamba Grover: Yeah. Yeah.

Nirage Mirage: way for me to look at it because it really encapsulates the bit of Fiji and the island because it has this coconut cream in it and it also represents Australia because we have such good prawns there, so shrimp. It kind of is this culmination of my history and then a meal that when I make, you know, takes me back to my heritage being Australian and then Fijian.

Neha Lamba Grover: Yeah, cool. thing about Indian food is when you're saying this particular recipe represents your heritage and history, it'll be true that I may not have eaten the exact dish or we wouldn't have eaten that exact dish, but there is something core to Indian cooking that is reminiscent of other dishes you've had. In India, restaurants were not a thing till very late because of the caste system where different groups don't want to eat with other groups. My son is a student at the University of Chicago and he met somebody of Indian origin from another country.

Nirage Mirage: Bye.

Neha Lamba Grover: You know, they go back and forth between India and there. But they very proudly talk about how their grandfather, when had to move outside the country, took Brahmin cook. You know, so if you want your food also to be cooked by somebody who is from the same caste as you, and if some people are holding on to that, that you can imagine how difficult it is for a restaurant culture to emerge.

Nirage Mirage: Yeah, right.

Neha Lamba Grover: You know, I was born in the 70s and then even in the 80s, I mean, it's not that restaurants weren't there, but it was slowly coming about and the food was still the restaurant food was a certain kind of food and South Indian food had a certain repertoire. The Udupi's were the first sort of fast food chains, but they would have a dosa and idli and a few expected dishes. I had no clue till the 90s. about even the diversity in the South. If you went to the South and I traveled around with my parents, I could not find a, there would be one restaurant all of Trivandrum with North Indian food and would taste nothing. Like, you know, the Holy Grail of North Indian food, all those rules would be violated. Like, there's no whole wheat in our rotis. We use maida and you're like, ⁓ can't have this stretchy bread. So it's now that everybody's celebrating regionalism in India as well, you know, and ⁓ Even in the US, I talked about the second generation and a core set of dishes becoming celebrated and preserved, Indian cooks from India, chains are opening up that are really going away from a standard Indian menu. And there is restaurants like the Dharmaka that had suddenly 1,500 people on the wait list that you had never heard of from Indian food. So again, that regionalism is coming about at the same time, celebrating very unique stories of, ⁓ this is snail curry from Tamil Nadu. And so that circles back to what you were saying about your heritage and your specific dish. But there is something core in the way they cook it. That keeps the Indianess. And that's why when you're saying, when you make a thai curry, you add that Indian touch to it. The evolution is what it is.

Nirage Mirage: Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. you know, and yeah, the fish that I'd made, I think this again, the fried fish reminds, you know, it takes me back to Fiji and how my mother would prepare it because we used to go fishing a lot. And so, you know, it would be the particular type of fish that they caught and make it in this kind of dry spiced marinade. And that particular masala that I was using was, you know, when I would go, when I go and visit home,

Neha Lamba Grover: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Nirage Mirage: usually, you we get together in the kitchen. And I think it was a time before last that my mother had actually was teaching me how to make masala. So she was warming, you know, heating up the whole spices before crushing them. And she was telling me how much to add. And, you know, there was such an intuitive way of how much, how to measure.

Neha Lamba Grover: Mm-hmm.

Nirage Mirage: the amount of spices, but also how to measure these intuitive ways of knowing when things are ready, when it's not too brown or just brown enough, when it's just popping or not popping. And in turn, hearing the stories as they're making this food, I thought that was really... ⁓

Neha Lamba Grover: And that point that you made, that is why the Indian curry powder is something no self-respecting Indian will use, because the spices cannot be lumped together. There's a sequence to how they have to be put in, and something has to be roasted more, something has to be roasted less. Otherwise, it won't taste the same according to people. And they'll always talk about how it's made in their home versus somebody else's home. But ironically, ⁓

Nirage Mirage: That's right.

Neha Lamba Grover: all the ingredients that the diaspora wants to hold on to as theirs. Like even in Fiji, I read that if there's an authentic curry, they will want to use their own ⁓ ingredients. if potatoes are being used, they will wait for the potatoes before, you know, replacing it with taro or something or any other ingredient. But ironically, potatoes, tomatoes, cauliflower, green beans, red chili powder, all these ingredients came to South Asia. were brought either by the British or the Portuguese. ⁓ And many of these recipes themselves are not that old. So that begs the question of authenticity because some of them just arrived, the ingredients came to India in the 1800s. And then you have the diaspora taking it all over the world. It evolves a little bit, but there's also this holding on to some of the core values and. along with it, your recipes, because it, you you identify with it. And it's just such a beautiful story of how things will continue to evolve and you give and you take and you hold on. ⁓ And identities will keep fracturing and building. ⁓ So tell us, you know, before I end, tell us about Hamlet. ⁓ What's the reception so far? What was it like working on it? I'm super excited to see it when it comes to the US.

Nirage Mirage: That's right. ⁓ wow. thank you. Yeah, I'm excited. I'm excited for it to be out in the world. ⁓ I mean, that ⁓ ⁓ South Asian adaptation of Hamlet and it's set in London ⁓ ⁓ in ⁓ a company called Elsinore, which is like a property developing company. Riz Ahmed plays Hamlet and it's directed by Neil Carrier and ⁓ And it's, yeah, it's ⁓ set within a, it's so interesting because I know, we all know the story of Hamlet. I've known about it for years, but when you put it in an Indian setting, in a South Asian setting, all of a sudden it makes complete sense. The melodrama makes so much sense that a brother has killed his brother to marry the brother's wife and the son is gonna try and take revenge. know, like the crux of the story makes so much sense in this interpretation.

Neha Lamba Grover: Ha ha!

Nirage Mirage: And then also, know, visual, like visually to use, just to use, you know, the Indian wedding as the ceremonies and the Indian kind of funeral, you know, having it interpreted in this way was really like, it was so special because it was, again, seeing this classical text, you know, evolve, know, like cuisine evolves, you know, to see it with an Indian hand cooking it up was something so incredibly ⁓ amazing to me to be part of and, and also to be, you know, part of, again, reconnecting on another level with with my culture in that in that sense. Yeah, it was truly, truly special. And then also, I think that Neil, the director, the gaze that he that you see this film through

Neha Lamba Grover: Yeah, yeah.

Nirage Mirage: It's, it's, it's, there's this beautiful restraint to it. You know, it's really elegant ⁓ presentation of Hamlet.

Neha Lamba Grover: Yeah, so, and it proves that all these universal themes that you see in the classics the moment you transplant it in another culture, you realize that it's common to everybody. You just ⁓ need apply a different lens to it, right? ⁓ Yeah, and it ⁓ just it even more true. ⁓ hopefully, ⁓ so I'm super excited. I've seen the trailer. ⁓ I wait. I think it's coming out in April ⁓ in US. ⁓

Nirage Mirage: That's right.

Neha Lamba Grover: people dead. Perfect. Looking forward to it. Thank you so much. Best of luck for the movie. Can't wait to see that and much more work from you, Neeraj, and looking forward to meeting you soon somewhere. Over another meal, yeah. Thank you so much.

Nirage Mirage: Yeah, great. Another meal.