LIFEFORCE

Poet and educator from Toronto, Kenya, Kutch and Gujrat, Sheniz Janmohamed talks about how we receive reminders as travelers on the path of life and how these reminders - whether we perceive them as beautiful or ugly - can bring us wholeness. We talk about her most recent collection of poetry, published by Mawenzi House: Reminders on the Path (2021).

“What do I need to hold onto and what’s holding me down? What are the inheritances that I need to release, that are no longer serving me as I move forward my own path? And also, with that, there’s this disorientation because once you’ve released those habits, ideas, beliefs, ways of seeing the world, you suddenly have to find your own orientation, so you can get lost, you can veer off a path [but] you can come back to a path, you have to remake a path.” - Sheniz Janmohamed

Author, performance poet and filmmaker from Liverpool, Malik Al Nasir, talks about the ways in which we can liberate our minds from society's conditioning, and by corollary, liberate ourselves. He speaks about his book, Letters to Gil, a memoir of his years of abuse in state care and how mentoring by poet, musician, and social justice activist, Gil Scott-Heron, changed his life.

“In Britain we were being bludgeoned into believing that we had no right to be anything other than what they told us to be and sought to make that a self-fulling prophecy. It’s only when you have insight that you can understand the structures of society and how they’re being deployed upon you that you recognize how it manifests itself within you, and you have to do what the Last Poets use to call – dewestoxification. It’s about unpicking everything they’ve implanted in you because if you don’t think freely and independently, then you become a surrogate for their ideas." - Malik Al Nasir

Executive Director Samip Mallick and Special Projects Coordinator Nivetha Karthikeyan of SAADA, the South Asian American Digital Archives, speak about the launch of their bold debut collection: “Our Stories: An Introduction to South Asian America.”

“This is a book that has been a long-time coming. It started with a recognition of a need that young South Asians very rarely get to see themselves reflected in the American story and wanting to make an intervention, wanting to change that.” - Samip Mallick

Director Arpan Bahl and Producer Vijaykumar Mirchandani speak about their inspiration, struggles, and revelations in making the 2021 short film “The Last Jam Jar,” a story of romance and loss, and the sweetness of eternal love. 

“[The film] changed something inside me. It gave me the drive to tell more stories. It gave me the power of conviction in this film. And it told me that maybe I’m on the right path.” - Arpan Bahl

“I believe in making a film, or putting something on cellulite which is going to make a difference and let the people have a conversation or feel it.” - Veejay Mirchandani

Award-winning producer Jane Charles talks about aging, dying, and finding new life in her 2021 film East of the Mountains (based on the novel by David Guterson, author of Snow Falling on Cedars). East of the Mountains is the story of Dr. Ben Givens, a retired heart surgeon and recent widower who learns he has terminal cancer, and his journey back to the beauty and connection of life. “I always believe when you’re telling a story, you end up living the journey of that film…You live the journey and when you finish the film, it’s like giving birth to all those stories and emotions that you went through but we’re changed by the art and the stories that we tell.”

Ruchi Kishore, creator of the award-winning, hip-hop Bollywood musical “Dirty Chai," talks about what it means to be your true self in a family that wants you to be someone else. "Dirty Chai" plot: "Before the start of an arranged marriage set by her traditional interracial parents, Chaya Chandrika Gopi, aka Chai, a rebellious Indian-American bride-to-be falls for a fearless American girl, Ronnie, who is off limits for more than one reason!"

Award-winning author and finalist for the Bellwether Prize for socially-engaged fiction, Jyotsna Sreenivasan, talks about her 2021 story collection, These Americans, inspired by the immigrant experience. She writes not only about the early years of adjustment and raising a family, and conflict with children, and the struggle to fit in; but also the later years of this passage into America, its long-terms imprints, and what it means to die in a country far away from one’s homeland. "What I want to do is connect with the reader’s heart and that feels spiritual to me."

United Nations Goodwill Ambassador to fight Human Trafficking and Oscar-winning actress, MIRA SORVINO, talks about modern global slavery and how we can join the fight to end it. This special episode of Lifeforce aired in honor of the 2021 United Nation’s World Day Against Human Trafficking. We end with the song, “One Light At A Time," from the Rukus Avenue album, "Music to Inspire: Artists United Against Human Trafficking," in collaboration with the United Nations to help fund victims of human trafficking.

"They laughed at us. They thought we were nothing. That this is what we were born for. They thought of us as cockroaches. But we were born for so much more than this." - Mira Sorvino quoting a sex-trafficking survivor.

Writer/director Iram Parveen Bilal talks about her acclaimed feature film I'LL MEET YOU THERE, a dramatic thriller following the father-daughter journey of Majeed, a Chicago policeman, and Dua, his teenage ballerina daughter. This is a story about faith, forgiveness, and meeting in a field beyond judgement, where there is only love. "I’m always yearning to be in that field. When communication breaks down, we can share love. And I feel that love is the answer to everything. It’s important for the conversation to be flowing. That doesn’t mean you need to agree, it just means you need to have some sort of exchange of energy so you can then impart the tenderness, and love, and care that you need to for all of us to continue to evolve.”

Leah Garza, veteran teacher, activist, healer, and practitioner of the Akashic Records, talks about healing through dismantling colonial narratives and through accessing a field that exists in another dimension, but that which also exists within us – what originates in India as akasha - the fabric of existence - and has become translated and transformed in the West as the Akashic Records, a field of unconditional love.