Roots in India: A Journalism Graduate Student's perspective on her new life in the States

By Nerissa Pacio

For Priyanka Sharma-Sindhar, "exotic" is a loaded word.

"I was actually at an Orange County mall one day when a saleswoman asked me, "Dahling! Are you from India? Oh, just look at those eyes. You’re sooo exotic!" said Sharma-Sindhar, mockingly flipping her long hair over her shoulder and fluttering her eyelashes. " I just thought to myself, if an American walked into a store in India, I doubt an Indian would say, "Oh, an American, how exotic!"

A former producer for a segment on "Good Morning India" in New Delhi, Sharma-Sindhar is now a first year graduate student at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Having lived in the United States for less than a year, Sharma-Sindhar is quick to note the way some Americans and the American media portray her native culture.

"I have a problem with the fact that the media here, when reporting on another culture, always compare it and try to Americanize it," said Sharma-Sindhar. "It’s important to understand the culture you’re reporting on. Something that they find ‘exotic’ may actually be very reasonable in that setting—in India, or anywhere else."

Sharma-Sindhar vividly remembered a story she read two years ago while vacationing in Nebraska about American school children visiting a poor area of India. She said that the reporter assumed that the Indian villagers were walking around barefoot because they could not afford shoes; after all, in the States, only poor people go without shoes. She said the reporter painted a distorted view of Indians, failing to provide the context.

"The story made it sound like all Indian people are poor, barefoot people on the beach who are really excited to see foreigners," Sharma-Sindhar said. "It was so stupid."

Sharma-Sindhar moved to the U.S. last year to join her husband, who is a Silicon Valley technology consultant. Twenty-five-year-old Sharma-Sindhar lived in India her whole life, but she has had her own wealth of experience with cultural difference. Because her father often relocated for his job, throughout her childhood she lived in many metropolitan cities like New Dehli, Patna, Madras, and Calcutta. She learned to appreciate India’s diversity and adapt to distinct regional communities.

After graduating in 1995 from Shri Ram College of Commerce at the University of Delhi, she studied film and video production at Xaviers Institute of Communication in Bombay, India’s arts and entertainment capital. There she met Cannes-winning filmmaker Vikas Desai, who saw her work in a film class and asked her to co-write the screenplay for "Madhura," a film about a classical singer’s struggle to find inspiration after her husband’s death. Although Sharma-Sindhar became emotionally attached to her work, the obstacles of filmmaking discouraged her.

"You sleep, walk, talk, eat, and drink film," said Sharma-Sindhar. "You need that kind of commitment, with the possibility of never seeing your work materialize."
Shifting to a journalism career as an arts, entertainment, and culture reporter and producer for the international morning show "Good Morning India" seemed a natural choice.

"There’s just so much to see, so many different kinds of people," Sharma-Sindhar said. "I’d like to know more about them."

From 1996 to 1999, she worked on a 10-minute segment that aired on a channel she calls "India’s CNN." She reported on art exhibitions, films, and pop culture awards shows headlined by big name stars. Her favorite project was a 50-year historical retrospective on Indian cinema.

Sharma-Sindhar is still a film buff who watches movies in Berkeley when she has time, but she also notices a difference in attitudes. Films are popular in India because they are a form of escape and the only affordable forms of entertainment, she said. In India, people go to movies to "get away from their boring, mundane lives," and audiences shout and applaud when they enjoy a scene, unlike the mostly silent crowds in the U.S.

Working on a short film during her 1996 post-graduate study at Xaviers College led Sharma-Sindhar to another passion, which she hopes to pursue in her journalism career. While filming a project about the "girl child," or poor girls living in Indian slums who are mistreated, she discovered her urge to advocate for women’s issues. Seeing abused women living in poverty opened her eyes to issues she had not experienced so directly before.

Sharma-Sindhar said she has never come across any differences in treatment between men and women journalists in India, and said her newsroom at "Good Morning India" had a female to male ratio of five to one. But in the poverty-stricken areas of India, she has seen "widespread abuse," which women tolerate because of their economic subordination and lack of education.

"Women accept that because they think, this man’s my husband, and since I was a little kid they told me to love him no matter what he does," Sharma-Sindhar said. "But this is not our culture. I’m from the same culture, and I don’t think that." Because some people do not realize abuse may be class-based, they stereotype all women, she said.

Although Sharma-Sindhar is not sure where she will live or what she will do after graduation, she does know that she wants to help erase cultural stereotypes, like images of the victimized Indian woman, through her work as a journalist, both in her native India and her new home.

"There is so much myth, so much misinterpretation of our traditions," she said. "I would love to have one foot here and one foot there."