Discovering India in Chicago

Anuradha Behari, founder and president, Eye on India, talks about how her annual festival aims to unite the two continents through cultural resonance.

The city of Chicago offered a very healthy ecosystem for our festival that brings the current India closer to Chicago and takes a piece of Chicago to India

A lot of India that we see abroad is either just Bollywood or a very archaic representation of our culture. We need to show the contemporary India to the world

A platform like Eye on India would not have been possible in any other city. People in Chicago have an affinity towards various traditions and organizations are very welcoming to other cultures.

For Anuradha Behari, it was a trip to India that she took many years ago that showed her what was so wrong about the representation of Indian culture not just in Chicago but also in the U.S. As an attendee at the Jaipur Literature Festival, the world’s largest annual congregation of authors, artists, scholars and intellectuals that is held in the Pink city of India, Behari saw the real, contemporary face of India. A trend that was sadly not much talked about abroad. Behari says, “I came to the US some 20 years ago and have been a Chicago resident for 12 years now. I noticed that despite an ever-increasing Indian presence here, no one was bringing the current cultural scene of India here. There were two extremes between which the popular perception about India rested – people either knew and recognized it through Bollywood or were relating India with the classical and ancient culture. There was so much that happened in the cultural and performing arts field in India in the past two decades which was so relevant and relatable for the western world that it was important to give it a platform.”
Behari recalls, “I was there with my mom, who is an eminent Hindi writer and I met the producer of the event and spoke to him how its so important that a festival like that comes to Chicago. I explained not only is Chicago, the festival city of the US but also people are extremely receptive of great content and cultural variations coming from across the globe. And hence the idea of Eye on India was born.”
Today, the festival that was initiated in 2011 along with collaboration from Team Workarts in India has grown into a three week long annual festival in Chicago. Eye on India, organizes not just events, workshops, dialogues and performances during the festival but also smaller events through out the year. It also connects both artists from India and from America to a wider audience spanning across two continents.

CHICAGO SHOWED SUPPORT
For Behari who had until now worked in the corporate segment, taking a leap to the art and culture world was a big move. However she noted that the Chicagoans offered more than just encouragement and support. She says the people from ethnic media affirmed their faith in the idea. They felt that something like this hadn’t happened in Chicago before and were glad that someone was thinking about it. This aside, she adds, “ I remember getting in touch with all the cultural organizations in the city. Everyone I met seemed interested in knowing more about India and discovering this exciting and current side of our culture that fits so seamlessly amongst the artisans and literati in the Western world.”
Behari says, “In Chicago if I ever met someone who could not help me, they referred me to someone who might be more useful in my endeavor. Thus through a network of artist, organizations, cultural centers, museums, universities and art hubs we created an umbrella where there were people willing to bring about this positive development.”
I repeatedly tell everyone that Chicago was the best place to bring about this event because of the creative synergies.

INDIA IN CHICAGO
As an organizer, Behari is extremely clear that Eye on India, is not a desi event in Chicago. For the organizers the mission is about presenting India in its present context to Chicago and taking Chicago to India. The process is organic and it is about discovering richer nuances of each other’s cultures. Behari says, “Every year we work with a set of extremely talented artists and many experiences have been eye-opening for me, as a Chicagoan of Indian origin. She relates a particularly emotional experience, saying, “A few years ago, we were able to take 40 American kids from Chicago Children’s Choir to India to attend the Jaipur Literature Festival where they performed and also toured a few cities in India. Looking at these children from Chicago in India made me so overwhelmed and made me realize how much of Chicago I really carried in my heart. In our everyday lives while living here we miss India, the idea and the memories so much but that experience taught me that as we build our lives here there is so much of America that grows on us and we become equally attached to both these worlds.”
Perhaps, it is this emotional collision that is the aim of the festival. For the organizers it is more about coming together as two countries and starting a dialogue on how much we can assimilate and appreciate from each other’s cultures.

MORE THAN THE PERFORMANCES
But before you thought that the festival is only centered on performances and entertainment through culture, a look into the previous years’ calendars confirms that the artists connect on a much deeper grass root level. Behari informs that they have worked with all the important cultural organizations in Chicago such as the Field Museum, Columbia College, Chicago Children Choir, Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, University of Chicago and so many more. The organizations pay special emphasis on how the touring artists can benefit the local Chicago population too and Behari and her volunteers also plan the itinerary likewise. She says, “When music group Rajasthan Josh visited Chicago for the festival we also took them for outreach program to a black neighborhood in Chicago called, The Little Black Pearl where kids from violent families live. The idea is to create a beneficial environment whether it is by creating Bollywood dance classes in schools and universities or through dialogues about India.”
The fact that the cultural scene in Chicago may be more accepting of Indian crafts also came to Behari when The Chicago Shakespeare Society selected to showcase Piya Behrupiya, a Hindi play inspired by Shakespeare’s works. Behari says, “It was a gratifying moment to know that the society found a common ground in a Hindi play and 50 percent of the attendees were non-Indians.”
For Behari and her team there are moments such as these that confirm that their attempt to create a platform for exchange is getting it due recognition. The way Behari would like to describe her festival is that it is a Chicago festival with a focus on India. The efforts are paying off as the team informs that now there are so many local American artists who have worked in and around India who are approaching them and they are only too happy to help their works reach India.

GRATIFYING MOMENTS
Behari who had a background in supply chain management before she got involved into Eye on Chicago says that along with her husband and owing to the nature of his job she had been a part of a lot of civic events in America. She says, “I always felt that India was never represented the way it deserved to be because the people were not bringing the attention towards so many great things that were happening. There was so much talent and so many young new artists with dazzling ideas but still the representation was lacking.” She says, “I always draw the analogy from an Indian restaurant. While people in the West go to an Indian restaurant for food, no one wants to explore it for an experience and that is the perception I wanted to change.” Along the way, Behari realized that so many organizations were looking forward to collaborate on Indian events but they didn’t know whom to approach.
Also to move beyond the obvious the festival tries and engages in out of the box ideas. Behari informs, “Some time ago, we did an event called Conversations with India, where we invited four regular families to just talk about India. The session that was supposed to be an hour extended beyond it, as people got so interested in finding out about India. Last year we also did a workshop on Kolam, an art form practiced by women in Tamil Nadu and its mathematical connection. We also did a sari project with Columbia College and let the local students interpret and understand the traditional Indian garment. We are interested in showing what is common between India and Chicago and also to help Indians realize that how wonderful a place Chicago is to live. There is so much of India in Chicago, we only need to discover it.”