Mallika Dutt - The Bitch and the Bag Lady | S1 E01
Mallika Dutt with Annie Lennox
Mallika Dutt, 55 years old, is a leading innovator in human rights, multimedia, and culture change. She is the founder, president, and CEO of Breakthrough and shares her cutting-edge approach to transformation through speaking, writing, commentary and game-changing multimedia campaigns.
Born in India and based in the U.S. since she was 18 years old, Mallika is now forging a new path on her life journey: she’s been exploring energy medicine and healing as a way to transform individuals and the old myths that constrain us.
As Mallika says, her passion is to work with others to create entirely new stories that dream new worlds into being.
For more on Mallika see www.mallikadutt.com
Check out the first music video that Mallika produced, Mann Ke Mannjeere. You’ll get goose bumps!!
+ TRANSCRIPT
Joanne And Idelisse: Welcome to two old bitches. I'm Idelisse Malavé and I'm Joanne Sandler. And we're two old bitches we're interviewing our women friends and women who could be our friends. Listen, as they share stories about how they reinvent themselves.
Joanne: Today, we're talking to Mallika Dutt. Mallika is a leading innovator in women's human rights and culture change around the world. She was the founder and is currently the president of breakthrough, an organization that uses pop culture to make violence against women unacceptable. And Malika is a lawyer like you Idelisse.
Idelisse: That's right. And she's a lawyer who's been disrupting the status quo her entire life. Just like me,
Joanne: just like you. So it was no surprise. When in about 2001, she decided to make a music video about a domestic violence survivor in India who becomes a truck driver. And that video won tons of awards, including best indie pop music video in India.
Idelisse: I am wondering for you with this age now, what's calling you forward. When you think about the future and what's going to make life worth living in the future. What speaks to you? What's your passion now?
Mallika: So, you know, Ide it been a couple of years of sort of some major transitions happening for me, I, uh, started to explore the world of energy medicine. And, uh, you know, I had this dear dear friend whose name was Raphael, who was somebody that I actually met at a music. A healing circle. I love music. And, you know, I was introduced to him by a dear friend and Raphael used music as a, as a form of healing and as a form of engagement. And he became a dear friend, a coach, you know, almost like my younger brother, he would come and stay at my apartment in New York city whenever he was here.
And, you know, I never really quite thought about this until after he died very unexpectedly last year. But in some ways, I feel like maybe he planted some of the seeds that led to my exploration of energy medicine as a way of being and doing in this world.
Joanne: At least I think one of us is going to have to explain what energy medicine. Over to you.
Idelisse: Thank you so much, Joanne. I think many of us were in the dark for a while. What is energy medicine? Energy medicine is a therapeutic practice that draws on traditional practices, not Western traditional medicine, but things like shamanistic, yoga, you know, practices like that, alternative practices. Many of us find actually can heal, um, on all sorts of levels, you know, the physical, the emotional, and maybe even the spiritual,
Joanne: is it what keeps you looking so young?
Idelisse: It is absolutely a key part of the secret of my incredibly youthful feelings
Mallika: he was killed last year. Um, when the Egyptian, uh, army decided to bomb this group of Mexican tourists who were in the desert and they had stopped for lunch, the army claims that they thought they were surgeons... just bombed, uh, these folks. And Rapha died literally the day after I came back with my little certificate in energy medicine, um, from the four winds, which is where I decided to study.
So the last year or so really has been about stepping into that part of who I'm becoming or who I've become rather, it was really hard for me to say that I was studying shamanism. It would stick in my throat when I said I'm a healer. Um, I was petrified about how judgemental everybody in the social justice movement was going to be about, you know, this new dimension, um, of what I was exploring.
And I got a fair amount of flack, even when I produced my music album and my music video 16 years ago. It was funny that even though I had done that, like this time around, I had all this nervousness and now I'm just like, yeah, Hello, I'm a healer. How are you doing?
Idelisse: And it has the reaction that you received shifted?
Mallika: It's been fascinating to see the range of reactions that I have gotten, whatever my own hesitations were around owning that part of myself have really evaporated. And I realize now that some of the fear that I had about how people are going to react to me were still my own judgments about this work within myself, even as I was pursuing it.
So as I have come to really understand and integrate this dimension of who I am, and also found a way to connect it to my very still deeply political advocate self, um, it's been a powerful process and of integration at, at multiple levels. For me,
Idelisse: Is there a way that when you look back now, some of the things that helped you make the shift to, so that you did get more comfortable with yourself in this, so that it's easier to confront the world and say, yes, this is who I am now.
Mallika: You know, you grow up. As female in multiple contexts. And certainly in my context, I grew up in a home in Calcutta, which was a joint family, my grandparents, my uncle, my aunt, my parents, you know, my two cousins, brothers, myself, all lived in the same house. I had three boys and I was the only girl. So it kind of started when I was very young about what they were allowed to do and what I wasn't allowed to do, what they were entitled to, what I wasn't entitled to.
Some of it was a superficial in terms of. You know, who was expected to go to the kitchen and cook and who was going to play cricket, what time we were supposed to get home tonight at night from parties. I mean, so some of it was that, but then other manifestations of it had to do with who is going to inherit the business and who was going to inherit the property.
And so my grandmother left the home that we lived in to the three grandsons. They were the ones who were going to join the family business. Um, I was supposed to get married and go to quote unquote my own home. I always loved snakes. I always wanted a pet snake and my parents would be like, when you go to your own house, you will have a snake.
Um, you know, I saw all of the ways in which women in the family could not do or express so many different parts of themselves. You know, there was alcoholism in the family that was violence in the family. So by the time I was, um, in high school, I was pretty clear that I was going to walk a different path than the women, at least in my family.
And quite frankly, even the men, because I wasn't particularly enamored with any of the role models that I was being presented. So it started out with, you know, I'm going to go study abroad and I was going to make that happen. And, you know, there are sort of these moments in your life and you kind of attach yourself to an idea and you have no idea how it's going to manifest you just go for it.
And I did. So I, I came to Mount Holyoke in 1980 with a scholarship. So I'm just sharing that as an example, because this whole question of sort of stepping into the unknown is not unfamiliar. I think the difference in stepping into the unknown now is that I'm tired of all of these having to step into stuff as a warrior, you know, I don't want to always have the sore neck. I don't always want to be in bitch mode. I don't always want to be like, don't mess with me or I will like, you know, eat you up or whatever. I mean, I really want to, I am now at a place where the showing up or the exploration or whatever it is that I want to do.
I want to come more from a place of. you know this is what we want all the world's to have this ability to just step into whoever you are without drama, without bullshit, without a fight, just really explore the fullness of who you are. So that's, that's the thing that's different for me now than has been. You know, all of these previous years when I've done plenty of things that were unexpected or out of the box, or
Idelisse: It's almost as if the nature fierceness changes, right.
It's you know, that being the combative fierceness is one kind right sword drawn, willing to take on and fight your way to where you want to go versus something that feels more sure footed more. I'm I'm entitled to this. I can do this, but I still have a question about the past. And the question about the past is that one can imagine being confronted what you were confronted with that one could have a very different reaction than the one had not one of defiance and I'm going to go abroad. And none of these roles works for me. It's there. When you think about yourself and the source of what's to me is beautiful defiance and willingness to claim what's yours do you have a sense of what enables that in you? Where, what is it about you that allowed that to come forward?
Mallika: No, it's interesting that you think about that as sort of a beautiful side, right. And certainly, um, whatever it is that has driven it has enabled me to do all kinds of amazing things. As I reflect on it now, though, I, I think that really some of it, a lot of it was really just about terror. It was about fear.
And so how there are so many different ways in which we deal with fear, a world, a culture, I think, oh, patriarchal culture. Pretty much around the world, which is built on the principle of fear and scarcity as sort of the bedrock on which then all, all of the institutions and processes and systems and relationships are built.
You know, that, that sense of fear, it gets played out in many, many different ways now, instead of hiding, instead of falling into depression instead of, I don't know, committing suicide instead of just of getting married and going off to find my home, that was supposed to be my home. Once I'm not going to have a snake I'm would have my snake.
Exactly. Um, the way in which my fear manifested itself was. Don't fuck with me.
Joanne: you're talking about fear and fear as a motivator, and I think we see you. Certainly I do as loaded with power, so much power. So a question that, that we talk about a lot is what's the source of your power. What's the source of your power now. And has that changed over time?
Mallika: The source of my power, um, before it came from the fear that led me to a place of courage, of very outward facing courage, um, and that courage, which was combined with, you know, a gift with words and gift a gift with brains you know, smarts like there's a whole kind of set of things
Idelisse: Creative, I would say.
Mallika: Well, yeah. And at the same time, you know, all of those traits that are about being an extra word in the world are the ones that we value you know, the, the, these are the things that we create primary value around in our society and in, and in some ways, I mean, I hate to use the word male and female. Sort of being in warrior mode, perpetually is certainly a very masculine modality in this world, which I'm not at all trying to see that women are not warriors, but this constant need for everyone to - you know, to be in battle ready mode is I think a part of a patriarchal society that makes that the way in which we kind of have to navigate everything around us.
So I think that my power in an earlier incarnation came from that, understanding that and being able to work with it and stand in it and use it, whether it was to challenge violence against women, whether it was to challenge, you know, injustice against immigrant communities and take on detention and deportation issues, whether it was, you know, the criminal justice system, whatever it was. But that was where I sourced my power from. I think where I am now is really, um, in a very different inquiry, which is about not just dismantling patriarchy. So not just the power that is needed to meet patriarchy, where it is to make sure that it doesn't do more destruction, but really from a place of, is it possible for us to really just create a whole set of new ground rules?
So we're not doing something in reaction to something, but we really are stepping into the creation of something. Right. And that sense of power, that sense of curiosity. And that sense of inquiry feels very different in myself and in my body than where I stood before.
Joanne: So given all of that, given that, that realization of what you have access to and what you've always had access to, when you think about do overs is there anything you think I could've done that differently. And I'm going to think about how I do that differently in the future?
Mallika: Oh, my God, a million of them. Yeah. You know, I, I would never have given up my music. You know, I studied Indian classical music. When I was in school. I met my ex-husband at a music party. The pickup line was let's practice together sometime, um, yeah, we were married for 20 years. Yes. Um, and you know, somewhere along the way I lost my music. I, I disconnected from it. I stopped singing. I stopped that form of expression. So, um, I find myself now singing all the time. I'm sure my friends, um, are often startled
Idelisse: You know I love this because I think there's, I think we were both getting, I was about to ask a question too, and mine was more about the do now, not the do over, but I think they're so related the do-over and the do now.
Mallika: It's so interesting because I went into a place of a lot of mourning and grief around all of the things that I lost or I didn't access or, you know, and they had to do with things like music that had to do with relationships. They had to do with miscarriages and not having children. They had to do with, you know, ideas and notions of family and community.
I mean, there, you know, the list is so long in terms of the whatevs you know, that, that, that part of my life and, oh my God, you don't have to like, not drop it. All I have to do is make sure that music plays a part in whatever I'm doing on a daily basis and I, I made that commitment to do that. And it's like that with a bunch of other things, you know, I was sort of in this place of had five miscarriages, um, you know, all of the drama that you go through and. And, you know, as a feminist, then you're like, you're not supposed to be feeling bad about this because this is not supposed to be such a big deal. On the other hand, you know, your hormones are like making you feel like you're ready to go jump off a cliff. I mean, all of this stuff is happening. And then of course your overachiever self is like, God dammit. You know, I'm such a loser. Everyone can have babies. You know, I, I can't even have a baby. Right. And so much of the, even the feelings and the emotions that I had suppressed and not even allowed myself to feel around the grief of those five, uh, miscarriages kind of like started to come out.
And this is what I mean about like where this stuff sits in your body. You know, you're, you're literally like carrying these things and they get in the way of so many other things. And then I kind of saw that in my life. I have these amazing young people who happen to be the children of my friends with whom I have these beautiful, extraordinary relationships but I probably wouldn't have had if they were my children and I'm just incredibly grateful, you know,
Idelisse: you, you just reminded me. And I was thinking of this when you were talking of when, um, the other day we were talking and then the fear of being a bag lady, right. That many women carry and then. For those of us who find ourselves unattached when we're in our fifties, sixties or older.
Right. I think, you know, it, it's where there's a resurgence of the, the fear of being alone and what it means. But you told us this wonderful story of a son, uh, one of your friends, could you share. Yeah, I love that story. It was so sweet.
Mallika: Sure. So yeah, the bag lady syndrome, you know, it's the paradox of the old bitch and the bag lady
So, you know, I was going through this whole, uh, this was, I think, last fall and so I was having dinner with, uh, A friend of mine, Sumeria, who also happens to be the son of one of my closest friends, Beano and he's, um, you know, this really cool young man who is, um, a techie, also an artist. So we were having dinner and we were on our second bottle of wine.
When I have no idea why I sort of shared this oh, I think he wanted advice on whether or not he should be buying an apartment, or I don't know if we got into the subject of housing or something somehow. And I shared this. You know this fear with him, that I have, that I'm going to be a bag lady and he reached across the table from me and he took my hand and he looked at me and he said, Mallika Mausi - mausi the way in which we refer to aunt, you know, sister of mother in India. So he said, Mallika mausi I promise you that as long as I'm alive, you will always have a home so I snuffled into my glass of wine
Idelisse: So, Mallika mausi um.. I am wondering energy medicine , Music what else, what else has beckoning? I know you're someone who I always wish will write books and blog and do all sorts of things.
Mallika: Well I did start writing a blog, so, um, that's a commitment that I've made and I really, really, really want to work on a book, which is something that I'm also working on. But I think in, in terms of sort of some of the other things that are percolating in my mind, You know, the whole idea of storytelling for change is, is something that is really important to me and it's part of what led me to creating breakthrough and the whole music video and the music album that I created that I produced was all about taking stories and shifting them and taking stories and shifting them in ways in which that really engaged people which moved people from some one story narrative to another story narrative, right.
So for me, it's not just about that. You tell your own story of transformation. It's how do you tell stories that dream you was into being, and that's the shift that's happened for me? Right? So what I mean by that is we're surrounded by mythology archetypes, and quite frankly, the old myths on which so much of our world is constructed. are dead. They're over there done for. I mean, patriarchy is collapsing all around us. And so the stories that we need to create for all of us to find these new pathways, I think need a different level of creativity and thinking about new mythology, like new, it's not just, you know, not just, um, shifting the old mythology from patriarchal to equality for women, click a whole frigging new story altogether. And there's something about new technology. There's something about the way in which the internet space technology allows us. The means for creation, production, dissemination, and connection that can come together with sort of the ancient traditions that I've been studying, like what's the alchemy of the ancient on the modern that can create us completely something else.
Idelisse: Mallika inspires me with her optimism and her belief in the change that's coming for more information about Mallika please visit our website to twooldbitches.com
Joanne: Tell your friends, go to iTunes. Subscribe to us, give us a five star rating and a great review. That really helps!
Joanne And Idelisse: And don't forget, nurture your bitchy self! .
