SBS Spice

From packing food hampers to going on the road to regional areas, Amar Singh and the team at Turbans 4 Australia provide aid relief to people going through a crisis and communities recovering from natural disasters. SBS Spice visits Amar Singh at his warehouse in Sydney to see firsthand a Sunday relief drive run by the volunteers for a couple of hundred people in need. In a world where scarcity can stop us from lending a hand, where does abundance come from? Spice speaks with Amar in a one-on-one.

Sid Sriram has had a career that's spanned across countries, languages, and industries, yet it's his deeply grounded roots in his own identity that has made him a globally renowned artist. From his independent work where he walks listeners through his journey to his playback tracks in Indian films that make you feel at home, Sid continuously traverses two worlds. It's long time coming to shatter the box we're put in - but what happens once the box no longer exists? Sid Sriram joins SBS Spice in the studio.

Chancing upon his great grandfather’s letters in a shoebox while on a visit to Sri Lanka gave life to Shakthidharan's highly acclaimed theatre production, Counting and Cracking, which follows a Sri Lankan-Australian family over four generations. Growing up in Western Sydney after his family left Sri Lanka, he says his mother barely spoke to him about the war that had broken her heart. And so, his journey of finding his legacy first began - but does a formula for discovering something we carry inherently even exist? Shakthi joins SBS Spice in the studios.

From singing Kirtan at her local Gurdwara to being in a girl band, hosting on radio, and entertaining with parody Bollywood songs online, Punjabi-Australian artist Avneesha Martins has never stopped dreaming. A strong believer in the mantra 'what's meant to happen, will happen,' she gets deep into what keeps her going, even when the algorithm isn't always our friend.

Tamil Genocide Remembrance Day, also known as Mullivaikkal Remembrance Day, is observed on May 18 each year. While the day is not officially recognised in Sri Lanka, the Tamil diaspora commemorates it internationally. Renuga Inpakumar began advocating for Eelam Tamil refugees at the age of 10. Now 21, she continues to use her voice to raise awareness not only about the Tamil Eelam genocide but also to share the stories of Eelam Tamil refugees in Australia.

May 14 is Girmit Day - a day that commemorates when the first indentured labourers arrived in Fiji from India in 1879 under British colonial rule. The term Girmit, or Girmityas, was used to refer to Indian indentured labourers as it was how they would pronounce the English word 'agreement'. SBS Spice's Suhayla Sharif speaks with six Indo-Fijian Australians to shed light on their enduring legacy.

What exactly is South Asian food? In fact, can South Asian food be exact? We are not a monolithic community but our food binds us so much more together. SBS Spice guest, and MasterChef Australia Season 13 finalist, Kishwar Chowdhury, helps us decode the DNA of South Asian food through her Indian-Bangladeshi heritage and shares how a humble rebellion against Daal & Rice kicked off her journey.

The female gaze of Netlix's latest Indian production, Heeramandi: The Diamond Bazaar, has viewers craving to be inside the mastermind Sanjay Leela Bhansali's jewelled universe. We speak with two lead actors of the show, Sonakshi Sinha and Aditi Rao Hydari, about how the show dissolves the binary of "good" or "bad" women and why history has erased some of India's most fearless freedom fighters.

A chance remark by an old friend in Sydney takes a woman back to her teenage years: living alone, by the sea in Chennai. And so begins the story of Nayika: A Dancing Girl, a theatre production mixing storytelling, live music and Bharatanatyam. We sat down with co-directors, Nithya Nagarajan and Liv Satchell, to flesh out how the journey of this performance began, what makes Nayika the "9th heroine" and how one woman's story is somewhere every woman's story.

There’s brown and then there’s eBrown. With the mic firmly in his grasp, the internet is sat for Goan-Australian content creator, Jeremy Franco, who is often seen imitating his mum online. But with the ever-changing algorithm, how much can we rely on culture to feel seen? And more importantly: is it necessary to always do brown focused content as a brown creator?