Desi Outsiders

English Medicine' is a term a lot of you may have seen or heard before. But what does this really mean?

We discuss the serious impact of myths being passed down from generation to generation with regards to modern medicine. Ankita especially has seen this in her home town in Trivandrum and Meenal has seen family members on their death bed due to ignorance and lack of self-education. We also touch the surface on the science behind Ayurveda and herbal medicine - is it a scam or real science?

If you have any of your own 'English Medicine' stories, do share it with us!

It’s been a month since we last virtually greeted you and as bad as this sounds, we didn’t plan for four weeks to go by before we could show up and say hi.

We don’t have set weekends anymore. Hell, we don’t even get two consecutive days off in a week with our new commitments. And as you can imagine, speaking to guests based in different time zones has been a little inconvenient, if not completely impossible.

But here we are, and we’ve decided that no matter what happens, we’re going to show up every week and have a blast recording our episodes! We explain why all of us at the DO HQ needed a hard reset, and we couldn’t leave without discussing the Serena Williams controversy.

Your thoughts, feedback and even ideas as to what we can discuss mean everything to us! Drop us an email to [email protected] or DM us on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.

Thank you for all your feedback so far - you have provided us with a continuous drip of inspiration to show up every week. #MedicalJoke

After almost half a year, we bring you another Braindump! We use this episode to explain why we've been off the radar for some time, and you'll also hear about why some of our episodes have been released on random days of the week. Both of our lives have changed quite drastically. 

Thank you all for being patient with us as we settle into our new lives. After we recorded this episode, it reminded us how much we love doing these braindumps! If you agree, comment below!

This week we have something different to share with you! Recently, we were on Awaz FM, Scotland’s Asian station, with Lehar Laghmani. We shared the journey we’ve had with Desi Outsiders with over seventy episodes so far and also got to play our chosen music for the 17,000+ listeners who tuned in live. This was the first time we had a full 45 minutes to talk about our project and vision. In every other digital appearance we’ve made, we’ve had to squeeze in a lot of information into a very short space of time. It also makes us happy that this time, Shane got to join in on this conversation too so you’ll get to hear more about the gruelling editing process behind our episodes. Enjoy!

This week we’re honoured to share our conversation with Major Archie Acharya, a communications engineer from JNU who now serves the Indian Army. She’s has been posted at the Line of Control, RAPID Battalion as part of Strike Corps and Electronic Warfare Units and Formations.

Archie talks to us about women in male-dominated workforces, the challenges she has had to overcome and the backward mentalities she still deals with on a daily basis. She shares thought-provoking and often hilarious anecdotes from her training and also delves into the importance of having a stable support system while being out there, conquering your fears and chasing your dreams.

This week we’re bringing you our conversation with Natasha Scripture, a mixed desi author, poet, activist and former aid worker. As a spokesperson for the United Nations, Natasha covered humanitarian crises around the world, including conflicts and natural disasters in Ethiopia, Haiti, Libya, and Pakistan. Before the UN, she worked as a writer, producer and editor for a variety of organisations, including the BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera English, TED, and National Geographic.

Natasha has also contributed to the New York Times, The Telegraph and The Atlantic, among other publications. She has lived in several different countries and travels extensively. Yet no matter where she is in the world, she seeks to inspire and empower women with her writing and storytelling. Today, we discuss her new book ‘Man Fast’, her identity as a half desi (her mother is Pakistani/Indian and her father American), the timeline society imposes on women based on biological clocks and the need to “settle down”, and her journey of coping with loss and reinventing herself.

Show Notes:

Natasha’s website: http://natashascripture.com/

After watching Dangal a few months ago, both of us were very excited to speak to Sally Roberts from Wrestle Like a Girl. Sally’s upbringing wasn’t easy and she had to resort to antisocial behaviour to deal with all the complex emotions she was facing as a young teen. But ultimately, she didn’t let any of that get in the way of her dreams. She joined her school wrestling club and was the ONLY girl wrestling at the time in her region. With the support of her coaches and teammates, she persevered and got into the national and world championships medal table. However, life hit her hard again when she didn’t make it to the Olympic team by just one place. From then to Afghanistan to everything she has achieved today is an outcome of her perseverance throughout the difficult circumstances life threw at her. Enjoy!

Now that the royal wedding fever has died down a bit, we want to take a step back and present to you our detailed conversation with Suhani Jalota, the founder if Myna Mahila Foundation, which was the only Indian non-profit to be invited to the royal wedding.

The Myna Mahila Foundation is an Indian organization which empowers women by encouraging discussion of taboo subjects such as menstruation, and by setting up workshops to produce low-cost sanitary protection to enable girls to stay in school.

We spoke to Suhani about how this amazing journey started and discussed the intricacies involved in running such a sustainable and cost-efficient organisation which came into the global spotlight within just three years of its founding.

Aranya Johar is a 19-year-old poet and activist based in Mumbai. She started writing poetry at the age of 11, started performing spoken word poetry at 13, but the world knows her for her viral performance of ‘A brown girl’s guide to gender’ - a spoken word poem she released last year.

In her one year of activism following that, Aranya has proved to be one of the smartest minds of our generation, both talking about and creating content pertaining to topics we all need to be paying attention to. We discuss feminism, gender, mental health, hard work, privilege and a milieu of other things with her in this episode!

This week we spoke to Shreya Nallapati, an activist, entrepreneur and high school senior. Like many of us, Shreya watched Emma González’s speech after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in February of this year. But instead of using tech to send just thoughts and prayers to the victims and their families, Shreya decided to use her tech skills and knowledge to build a product that uses predictive analytics and artificial intelligence in order to both predict and prevent future school shootings in America.

What started out as a one girl team with a big dream, soon grew into an organisation with 200 enthusiastic contributors - most of whom are female teenagers, just like Shreya. She talks to us about the future of this project and the milestones ahead of her and we couldn’t be more proud to share this conversation with you!