In Her Own Way

“Growing up in Bangalore, there were trees to climb, and we were forever playing on the mud road outside our house – the Auroville roads remind me of my childhood. My parents are very traditional, but they are also the most progressive human beings I have come across. My father expected me to wear a bindi and long skirts during puja time, but he also bought me my first jeans and taught me to ride a motorcycle, at a time when there were no girls riding motorcycles!

My first theatre role was when I was in sixth standard at school. In tenth standard, I started performing plays from the syllabus for people writing public exams. We always got the feedback that students understood the plot better and could write their exams well after watching the play. It made the whole effort meaningful. 

I was doing a diploma in psychology in college, and I needed pocket money. I started doing market research, interviewing people and asking why they chose the toothpaste that they chose. I’m still doing this work, at a qualitative level now. It’s fascinating to understand the thought process behind the choice. I also help the report writers do ‘insight mining’ into people’s choices.

At 18, I went ahead and married. My upbringing had instilled in me a loyalty and trust towards my parents. 

I fought tooth and nail with them about many things, but I wouldn’t do things without telling them. So when this man proposed to me, I said, ‘You have to talk to my parents, and then we’ll see.’ And my dad, the beautiful being he was, just looked at it as the flow of life. He said, ‘If this is what destiny has for you, if this is god’s will, so be it.’ And he got me married!

Evolving character in theatre and life

When I was carrying my first daughter, I joined a theatre workshop for college students, run by theatre pioneer KV Nagrajmurthy, who brought youth theatre into the foreground in Karnataka. I was the odd one out amongst the college students, married and with a child in the stomach! It was great fun. My first play with that group was Thank you Mr Glad, about a jailor and prisoner, where I played a pregnant woman. It felt very natural for me. That was when I probably learnt that I myself don’t go on stage; it’s the character that goes and does it. Rashmi becomes nothing. What they now call the emptiness or the zero ground came to me at that point unknowingly. 

I went on to do many plays with Nagrajmurthy; a lot of street theatre, educating people about drug addiction and drinking habits.

I gave birth to my older daughter at the age of 19. I wanted the best for my daughter and to build a better life for her; I would do everything under the sun for her. Because I come from a traditional set up, everybody said ‘Accept your life’. And I thought ‘No! I’m made for better things! This is not how it’s going to be!’ So, I decided to raise my daughter alone. Again, the beautiful facet of my parents came forth. So my parents took care of my daughter, while I earned a living and supported them.

Then, I worked with an NGO to help street children rebuild their lives. I’d say, ‘If I can do it, you can do it too’. Now my [mentored] boys run a printing unit in Bangalore, which has a monthly turnover of 35-40 lakhs. So, I think we all built our lives together – me and my boys.

And then in a play, I did the pathbreaking role of a tribal woman who gets violated by police. What connected me very strongly to this woman was that when the police say ‘Where are your clothes?’, she said ‘I’m not ashamed of my nudity. I’m nude because you people violated me. If anybody needs to be ashamed, you need to be ashamed.’ For me, that was an insight into strength, and I did that role for seven years.

I then became an associate theatre director with Professor CG Krishnaswamy, known as CGK, who helped me learn a lot about theatre. He did many women-centric plays and played with notions of gender. In his Shakespeare’s Othello, Iago was played by a woman, as he felt that only a woman could bring out the nuances of subtle manipulation. In another play, he asked me to portray the character of a male mythological snake, saying ‘When you go on stage, you are what you portray.’ So that was pathbreaking casting and a beautiful learning for me. 

All those plays were in Kannada. I wrote and staged a play in English about Kannada culture for Bangalore Little Theatre – the first time this theatre group brought non-English culture into English theatre. The play got a stupendous response. 

Meanwhile, I did the first mega TV serial in Kannada. I was acting and doing associate director work with the director, TN Sitharam, who asked me to assist him on the script and oversee the editing. My character was a girl who falls in love with a man, marries him, and has a child. And one day, he disappears and she loses her mental balance and goes in search of him, only to discover that he was already married. She regains her stability, and pursues a case against him. People still sometimes recognise me as that character, after almost 20 years!

Life went on, and when my daughter was eight, I met a wonderful person and I remarried. And people’s view of me suddenly shifted. I was now in a frame that was acceptable to them, even though I was breaking taboos – in the context I came from, remarriage was not known. And I inspired others. When a cousin lost her husband and was raising her daughter alone, she was inspired by the way I lived my life. A few years later, she also remarried. Her mother said to my mother, ‘Seeing you get your daughter married again was an inspiration, so I also got my daughter married again.’ I was unconsciously being a role model.

In between all this, I went and bought myself some farmland!  At that time, I was becoming conscious of the poison in our food and the damage of pesticides. I thought I had to do something. I had this friend named Nagraj, who said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll buy you farmland’, because I didn’t have the money. This is the beautiful being whom I eventually married, and with whom I had my second daughter. I still remember the commissioner who gave me permission: he said ‘Lady, you really have guts. Why don’t you start a petrol pump or do mining?’ and I said ‘No, I want to do organic farming. Give me permission to buy the land.’ And today my organic farm is 21 years old, and I have 51 cattle of native breeds and grow organic produce. [Laughs].

I was also doing rescue and rehabilitation of women. I give them social support.  Often they come and live in my home, until I find them a lawyer or schools for their children. And thanks to my training in NLP (Neuro-linguistic Programming), I help them regain their balance. These women would come with their children to our house because they needed a safe space. In Indian society, going to an ashram or institution means you’re no longer fit for society or you’re no longer a family woman. So Rashmi’s home became like a transition space for them. 

Life in Auroville

I knew that Auroville existed, but I didn’t know much about it. When our second daughter was in 10th standard, we gave her the choice to study the next two years in an unstructured school, but we asked to her to find a school where parents were allowed to be part of the growth. So, she got in touch with Future School in Auroville, and came for an interview, and she and I landed here. 

In Bangalore, my days had been hectic as I was juggling four, five, six things: theatre, the farm, rescued women, and qualitative market research. And when I first came to Auroville, I had nothing to do, except drop and pick up my daughter. My life slowed down, and that was the first time I learnt to calm down. I learnt to sit and meditate, which was impossible for me before. That brought me a lot of focus. 

In Auroville, I started exploring mudra chi and tai chi. I started working in a volunteer role with Auroville Art Service, and life went on beautifully. We at Auroville Art Service saw a hierarchy in communication between Auroville and the villages, and we came up with an idea of horizontal knowledge exchange. We had a beautiful interaction with village groups on the topic of water, and we’ve also been doing storytelling. I also work with the film festival group, putting up structures and talking to anyone necessary. I’ve always been interested in art as a medium to influence society and to encourage the individual to introspect. I have used art and theatre as my tools to work with prisoners, state police and rescued woman. 

Dr Saif at Mattram [Auroville’s psychological support unit] invited me to participate in research to explore cancer survivors’ personality traits.  I was to interview the survivors, and I thought this is a lifetime opportunity. Why people behave in the way they do is a magical world to me. This work enables me to use my diploma in psychology and my training in emotional balance. So here I am. 

I started providing social support to women and the elderly in Auroville. I don’t call this ‘counselling’ – it’s more life quality coaching. We all have a debt to pay back to life, to improve the quality of life. Some of this work is in Tamil, and some in English. I speak Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, English, Hindi, and I learnt Nepali and can understand some Malayalam. [Laughs]. It’s my time to boast! It’s my Sanskrit background that helps me to understand languages. 

I also offer a workshop in Auroville and Bangalore for youth to refine their life purpose, using my training in communication and emotional balance and lessons from my life. What I’ve seen is that emotions play a dominant role, and can have a high impact on our decisions and life quality. So, it’s important to look at the conditioning and consciousness we’re operating from, and consider how to move out of this. I offer youngsters support to break patterns and re-create themselves, and self-launch – that’s what I call the workshop – into the world for the kind of success they’re capable of. I started assisting my mentor Kichu Krishnan in this kind of work in 1996, and I’ve been doing it on my own for the last seven years. In Auroville, we can find more acceptance of other viewpoints through communication, which aids harmonious living. 

What draws me to Auroville? The openness to explore. That’s the way I have lived my life. And this is a place that actually celebrates that. There are many small beautiful things, like the fact that this Mattram cancer research is unconventional and progressive.  This place is a coming together of two worlds; the east and the west, the future and past. This draws me here, keeps me here. And I still go back to Bangalore and my farm – I shuttle between these two places three or four times a month.

I’m very fond of the holistic method of education that Mother and Sri Aurobindo speak of. That is so much in line with my own belief system. It’s not about just being a great scientist; it’s important to be a great human being too. It’s not just about how far you can see, but how deep inside yourself you can see. My day starts and ends with yoga, my meditation. As much as I go out, I also go in. That’s what Auroville is for me. 

I’ve been staying in a private housing compound in Aroma Gardens for more than three years. I want to live on Auroville land, and when I saw Siddhartha Forest, I loved it. Before corona virus, I made up my mind to become an Aurovilian. I saw that I could continue the work that I do and live with the highest level of integrity here. And then corona hit, and everything took a back seat. I have to start the Newcomer process again. I want to work with the cows on the farm in Siddhartha Forest, and grow some food. That’s the plan. And I will continue with my Mattram work and Auroville Art Service work.”