Gulshan Mia and Eleanor Whitney

00:03 Hi, my name is Goshen Mia. I am 40 years old. Today's date is June 15th. 2019. I'm in New York-New York and my relationship to Eleanor is that she's my friend writing buddy and Beach buddy, and I'm Eleanor Whitney. I'm 38 years old. Today is June 15th 2019 in here in New York New York with my friend. Call Sean.

00:35 So caution, you're from South Africa and I'm really interested to learn more about what it was like to grow up there and how that's impacted who you are over here in New York. You've lived all over the world, but maybe tell me a little bit more about where you're from. I'm from a really small town in South Africa is called escort. It's in kwazulu-natal.

01:05 It's such a small town that most South Africans don't know it. I say it's close to the bug which is the drakensberg and they're like, oh, yeah, we've driven past there screwing up. There was I think I had a great childhood. It was during a pot Aid and I say I grew up in a pothead South Africa and sometimes I forget that people might not know what that actually means. So I grew up in a very secure gated town at to explain a little bit like especially for me who grew up here in the US. I also was very young. But you have this idea for me as an American may be informed by like segregation in the American South but I think it's very different. So I'd love to hear more about what that was like for you especially also I think many I didn't know there was a large community of South Asians.

02:05 And Muslims in South Africa as well. So I'm curious about how that kind of also impacted. Yeah. So outside of India, I think South Africa has the second largest amount of Indians that were all taken by the British went to work as indentured laborers and then their families may have join them with things like that. I think I'm 5th generation South African Indian and it was before partition. So we don't actually know quite if it was India Pakistan, but my family is Muslim we speak or do we love a good carry a good summer looks like we've kept the culture intact also I get so I was thinking we grew up in a segregated neighborhood. It was just an Indian neighborhood and it was broken up about town is broken up into the white area, which was over the bridge the Indian area which was on the top of the hill in fordville, and then the colored area and cut.

03:05 In South Africa is a race the four main races Indian colored white and black and in the the blacks Africans in my town actually didn't live in my town doing well outside of the town like on farms and townships and they would have to take transport into the town if they were coming into work and then go back out again and was the separation between the areas enforced life. Are you allowed to leave? That's very nice. Well as a kid, I didn't know and I don't think we could I don't think as an Indian you could buy a house in the white area at the time now, I mean you'd want to because the white area had the bigger houses on the bigger the Lawns and they have swimming pools and

03:56 I think I may have told you this but I didn't realize just how little we had until I went to the white school. So in in the 90s kid was slowly being dismantled and if you were black or color Indian, you could go to the white school, which is more of a private school and it was a lot more expensive or if you had good grades. You could go I had good grades we couldn't afford it but they had a Rugby field and a soccer field and tennis court and a swimming pool and all of the separate areas and we had one ground like that wasn't really gross. It was what you called there to you and it was thorny and it was everything we played Cricket. We played soccer we play netball. We did everything on that one sports ground, and it was just fascinating to me that they had so much more and we

04:56 Even realize it were you welcome by the white students or did they resent you coming there or was everyone young and confused about what was going on with the latter, but also one of maybe three Indian kids that we're going to the school. They will not know black kids that were there that way maybe from Botswana or Zimbabwe who had Rich parents who could send them to the school and they may be stayed at the boarding school there. And then maybe I I think from me I felt accepted like I didn't feel any animosity from the kids or anything but I never quite felt like I fit in and then I was studying computers, which of the time was a big deal at computers were a new subject and all of the kids had computers at home. And so they could work on their stuff and I didn't and so I was always behind

05:51 And there's always a feeling of like I don't quite the long and we were talking about imposter syndrome and I think it started then.

06:01 Yeah, I was going to ask how you feel that experiences continue to impact you or how you feel or how you relate to people.

06:12 You know the fake it till you make it same thing. I've been doing that for a lot of my life to you. Then you became an actor cuz I'm not an actor but I feel like it's inside of Faking it at making people believe you are who you are you put on a face you put on a facade you put on a character that is brave. And that is okay with being around a bunch of white people and you you pretended like the knot in your throat and the feeling in your like at pounding your chest you just you breathe through it and you you carry on I think and I still feel that way. I think there's a small part of me that always feels

06:59 A little

07:02 Sorry less than like.

07:07 Do I belong in am I allowed to be here do I deserve it?

07:17 Okay, I'm not going to swear. It's so messed up because I do I do deserve it and I have worked hard and I

07:28 I think there's a whole generation of South Africans who who may have gone through this who came out if a potted and then I'll part of a world where I parked it doesn't exist, but you're still dealing with the demons off that time. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, you can't dismantle years of history in a generation or decade. I mean those generational traumas last for Generations here in the US. The only I can think of course is slavery, which it also comes out of a similar Colonial history. So I just think you know, we still are dealing with the trauma and Legacy even though supposedly, you know, that's over but if it's a nu you carry that trauma with you and it's passed on

08:26 From your parents and from your grandparents and then it's how you learn to deal with it or not deal with it. Is it ever something you speak about with your family?

08:39 With my parents and my immediate family know I speak a lot about it. Would my husband who happens to be a white Pennsylvanian American and it's

08:54 It's so interesting to talk to him about it because he sees it from a completely he's totally out of it. Right and he sees it from the outside and he asks these questions like this. Like how did apartheid affect me and I've never thought about it because I was on the inside right? I don't know if that makes sense. But you don't you don't question things you don't you just carry on and then he asked me these questions. I'm like, oh, right. How did that affect me then? How is that molding mylifenow? How is that? How am I living my life now because of it and

09:36 I'm a community activist with you were part of a community group. I do a lot of in South Africa called protists theater. It was at the time called her to Seattle because it was it wasn't allowed. There was a lot of theater coming out from like black the other companies that wasn't that was about a party and that wasn't allowed.

10:01 And so I think I grew up with in this time. And so now when I look the acting that I do the directing that I do I need to work on projects that

10:12 Matter that make a difference that have a message that I impacting people making them stop talkin like create a dialogue create an awareness.

10:24 And that's a direct link from I think my upbringing and my childhood and did you start acting cuz you were studying computers and were you impacted by the protest theater. Was it just something you're always interested in. Did you see it as a way to express yourself? I've been entertaining people my whole life. I feel I think my family would tell you this I would put on little skits for my sister and my cousins I would impersonate on some uncle's I remember Jingles from advert Swagger advertisements on TV from when I was like five or six years old I can still sing them. What's 1

11:07 Okay, so there were these little choose like not like Eminem So more like I don't even like Skittles called Rascals and the song was there's a rumble in the middle of the Jungle and the home of the Chief Keef Rascals. If it's a fruit from the magical tree and it take get to the factory. Wow, I can see more but I'll still. Are there still Rascals? And I don't know. I don't think so. Quit acting my whole life, but I think

11:48 I I always thought maybe

11:53 Acting wasn't the right path for me. And so I did lots of other things and I don't know if it was embedded. I don't know if it was my own my composing this view on myself, but I didn't think it was Noble. I didn't think it was The Honorable thing to edit. I thought I should be a nurse or teacher or psychologist. But now that I'm doing it like I can't imagine having done anything else.

12:19 And it is Noble you got from your parents or your culture or religion? That acting wasn't Noble. That was something you put on yourself you think maybe it was partly from the religion. I think maybe it's because throwing up

12:41 I think being Muslim or you're learning about Islam. It was very fear-based. And I think a lot of religions have that like you have to be afraid of God you have to do this thing go he'll be angry and then you'll be punished and

13:00 I don't feel that way anymore. I feel like he gave me this Talent. Why would I not

13:07 Follow its why would I not respect him enough to do it, right?

13:15 Allah God my God is a merciful god. He's a forgiving God. He's a loving God like you don't.

13:25 Fear him to do something you do it out of love you do it out of respect. And so I try to live my life that way.

13:35 How did your relationship with God evolve or with your face or how you moved from that fear-based to that more like open kind of loving relationship?

13:49 Oh, so when I was 28, I was living in Taiwan. I was teaching English.

14:00 And I had been there 6 months and I had just moved into a new apartment and I was on a scooter and it suddenly started raining and I got hit by an SUV. I don't remember any of it, but my heart still pounds every time I hear an ambulance, which is funny. It's 12 years later, but I woke up 4 days later, and I see you.

14:26 And

14:29 At first I was really angry.

14:32 I made it. There were wonderful people around me. All my friends came to take care of me, and it was just I felt really supported and I felt really loved and

14:44 It was really straight. I was angry with God at first.

14:49 And then I somehow felt like it was a wake-up call.

14:53 I was like I maybe you shouldn't be in Taiwan. I shouldn't be teaching and end. I don't I can't exactly remember specifics about it. But there was a time there was this

15:07 Epiphany almost that I have the second chance that I should have died. I didn't I have the second chance. It is a gift from God and I should be doing what I love which is acting.

15:24 And I was like, yeah, he gave me this gift of life. Again. He gave me the gift of acting like I've always had it right and it was this new appreciation for all the things that I had learnt about Islam in about God and about what it means to be a Muslim.

15:41 I don't have any of this is making ice.

15:47 And I met my husband. I think that's part of it. I met my husband who is

15:52 Beyond a soulmate and had you met your husband leave before the accident or after it was off to be accident. I had met him once before the accident I met him again after the accident there was a whole brain injury. I forgot meeting him and he's like we've met before. But this happens to me and I don't have a brain.

16:33 Attractive. All right.

16:44 I'm ready.

16:47 So you met your husband you didn't remember until on and he's from a small town in Pennsylvania America and I am really small town in South Africa. And these two like Souls met in a medium-sized town in Taiwan. Like what are the chances?

17:11 And he's not he's not Muslim. He comes from like a Christian background his family's Christian.

17:21 And he embodies all of these things and he encompasses all of these things that I

17:28 Review about being Muslim being kind in good being charitable not judging people all of these things that you that I learned that a good Muslim is and I was like, okay for some Pennsylvania. Is it like at all of these things to a kind explained much about what it is that brought me back to my favorite and I never left it, but I found this new

18:00 Appreciation of it and there's so many things that happened at the same time. Were you surprised to fall in love with someone so outside of your culture or religion or was it not surprising because you are all over the world, but it wasn't that surprising. My family wasn't even that surprised because to give

18:23 Listening is context. I have lived in Brazil. I did a year in Brazil as an exchange student After High School. I worked as a flight attendant in Dubai and then I move to Taiwan and so

18:37 I had met so many people that I never imagined meeting in my life and I had learned so much more about the world and about myself through meeting people from all over and and learning about their values and their beliefs and and all of that and so

18:56 I was a little surprised because I was off men at the time. I was like no, I'm done like men suck through that and that's when the universe is like a little test and now here we are together with 11 years later. Maybe you should give dating advice for all those people who like I can't do it stay office and then see what happens but then also don't ask the universe for signs and then ignore the signs and I think that's what I did for a long time. And so maybe my accident was that big sign that was like, okay you got to wake up to

19:41 How to do was going to Brazil your first time out of South Africa mind blowing out of high school. How did that opportunity come up?

19:58 In my town there was not much to do and okay, so I had gone to the white school and then I went back to the Indian school, but that's a story for a different time. I couldn't cope with the computer studies, but I was a girl guide for a long time. It's like a Girl Scout here.

20:17 And the only cuz I know this the Girl Guides originally were only white or they were segregated right? It was it was first escort, which was the white group and then as apartheid was being dismantled slowly. They one day this lovely white woman came to school and she was talking to us about Girl Guides and I actually got in touch with her through Facebook very recently. I haven't seen her or spoken to her in like more than 20 years and

20:53 I was like, I don't know if you remember me Anna is she said of course? I remember you. You're the one who stood up and said will we get to climb trees like the boys and she said yes, and I was sold as likely get to climb trees and hike and camp and do all of these exciting things. And so I was a girl guide for a long time until I went to rain to guys which was almost like an eagle scout here. It's like the next level outside and hike and camp and go white water rafting and go abseiling and

21:29 All these things that are little brown girl in a small town about a South African needed to just like

21:36 Open up my mind and just I don't know what made me feel like anything was possible. It's interesting to think about how in my mind many people were not from Africa the African continent have this kind of I don't know you think about jungles and Savannah's and animals and I'm having a hard time personally like picturing what that was. Like, I'm also from a really, you know were Larry. I'm from Maine and I also was a girl scout. My mom was the scout leader, but I was kind of dissolution already went camping and Hiking is a kid cuz that's what we did for the summer. That's white privilege is actually this big movement to I know my friend Jenny.

22:36 So does this group called unlikely hikers? Okay, and it's for you know, anybody who special queer people or people with a different size body brown people to say like how we all have a right to be outdoors and the IRS is like good for everybody. But especially in this like colonialist way this like Outdoorsman white male adventure thing to do. So, it's just I just I love the image of you getting out there and doing all this and where their other

23:12 Brown people doing that or were you last she came to school and then we started II escort which was the the Indian group troop and then after a while that disbanded and I joined first escort as I want to see only brown girls with the white Troop.

23:33 And that was interesting because we were friends like every Friday we met and every Friday we got together and we did all these things of the little Hall behind the Methodist Church in Old Town and we went camping together and we went hiking together, but that's was it a relationship beyond that. It was a Girl Guides relationship. And now when I look back and like that's interesting. I don't think we would have hung out if we'd had the opportunity.

24:05 And it was just the mentality like a weed we get together during go guides, but then we go our separate ways. I mean, I feel that same thing happens here in the US, you know that people even with integrated schools, which of course you still have really bad school segregation and things here.

24:27 Yeah, those relationships don't really necessarily indoor outside of whatever that contain are as right, but it can be part of it for me could have been religious and then you can all make like I don't know how I might have been embarrassed to bring them home. And my mother is an excellent cook. I'm sure anybody who came over would be thrilled to eat my mother food, which I now know like friends from all over have visited and my mother cooks for them and puts out the huge spread. But at the time I was like they're going to come over and like the house smells like carrier these silly things that go through a kid's mind and the small embarrassment that we carry with us.

25:12 Daddy and me earlier we're talking about that imposter syndrome. Do you still feel that way a little bit or do you feel like you've been able to work through that feeling? I think I'm

25:25 Continuous leaking through that feeling

25:31 Is there have been doing a lot more assistant directing now and I walk into a room and and I think this is way representation matches also because sometimes I am one of the only brown people in the room and have to remind myself again that I deserve it and that I've worked hard and I have every right to be there but I still get sweaty palms and I still get nervous and I have to take a deep breath and my husband who is like my biggest supporter tells me not to be small because I think for a long time I have a petite person but I try to make myself smaller which is funny because I'm an active but on stage it's different and I think there's the Persona that happens on stage.

26:25 But I

26:27 I think many people do this you try to make yourself small and hide in the shadows and he's always telling me not to be small and I had this morning. I remember that because he told me that about this I was like, so none of them like, oh my God, I'm going to go by myself. This is all I don't be small and

26:49 It's good advice to everyone out there.

26:54 Especially if you think you know we have this.

26:58 This life that really is a gift and you know to minimize that is yeah. It's doing a disservice to yourself too and to the world when you make yourself small, so does you're not sharing like the gifts that you have when you try to minimize so yeah, I love that advice. Yeah. He's so you you got to Brazil through Girl Guides.

27:28 Most of the people that I knew from go guys will also part of the Rotary International and so I had to go a lot of the stuff that I did like I want to be a girl guide. I want to go to the white school. I would have been extension. I would just tell my dad these things and he's like, okay, we'll figure it out. And that is Testament to like the amazing parents that I have who have this precocious little kid who just want to do this thing and they were like, okay where any of your siblings like that do you have I have two older siblings and I think they're also a handful but also they say that they are both older and they paved the way for me so they like slash through the jungle and then I just had this pathway and I stroll through it. I don't think it was that easy.

28:23 But I think older siblings will often say that I also have siblings that are half-siblings that are 18 and 20 years older than me. And yeah, I think I've heard similar their own journey to but I think they want my parents down if there's no pictures of me as a kid. I just have to say the oldest siblings always get the pictures and all the fun times of the grandparents and all of that and then by the time the third comes around then like, oh, yeah. Okay, whatever. We don't need a picture of that.

29:00 So you made your way to Purcell? Yes. It was my so you had three choices in Brazil was my first choice. I wanted to go somewhere where I could learn a new language.

29:12 And Brazil was just amazing. I I don't know if I was shy I think there's a part of me. That is I'm like half extrovert half introvert is very weird. I'm still dealing with it, but I got to Brazil and they were just all these warm open wonderful people that kind of brought me out of my shell a little bit.

29:38 And strangely enough and I when I say this, I feel like South Africans get upset with me, but I felt like I belonged and I don't know what it was and I don't know if it was this Awakening is an 18 year old experiencing a new world, but I felt so at home and I loved it. I absolutely love that year that I was there and I learnt Portuguese and I fit in when I went to school and I made wonderful friends that I still have and then I bawled my eyes out all the way home like on the flight back from San Paulo to Cape Town to Cape Town, Joba Joba to dub and whatever the hell if I flew back, I don't quite remember, but I remember crying all the way back home.

30:29 And this is the Argentinian rugby team like the under-21 Argentinian rugby team was on my flight and they kept singing I get knocked down but I get up again whenever I hear that song. I remember them and I remember me and the feeling is leaving for this weird thing these gorgeous Argentinian. Happy players badly on a plane after you after you came home from Brazil where you'd like determined to keep going out and exploring the worlds or were you afraid like that was it and you wouldn't have thought that was it. I actually didn't think I was going to go anywhere else. I lived in my town again for another couple of years and I saved up to study and then I I finally went to stay.

31:29 And I studied acting and I specialize in directing.

31:35 I took my time with that and then I knew it was what I wanted to do. And then after that happened I still didn't do it. Like I I begin flight attendant. I taught English and at what I did all these other things and again, it was Lee when we got to New York and he was like you have to do it like this is your passion. This is your thing. You're not happy unless you're acting and now I'm doing it and I'm so grateful to him, but it's also such a privilege to say this is my passion and I'm going to follow it not everyone gets to do that. And so I

32:12 I understand that privilege and I didn't appreciate that privilege of being able to live my dream because not everyone gets to do that.

32:25 Absolutely, and how has it been in New York? You know you I think there is

32:32 This I do have like making it in New York, cuz the creative person that has an actor but also as someone who's you know your nurture your relationship here with your husband that you've been involved in your community, you know your arriving in, New York.

32:49 It had a long moment where the people aren't so friendly to Muslim people. I mean, how is all that impacted you do? You think it is to beautiful city and it's so hard and it takes its toll on you and

33:08 We have a backyard which is really helpful because we both come from small towns and we both know how much we need air and space and sky and you have to get out of the city to be able to appreciate it more and I've made really good relationships and I've got some really good friends. Like you are one of them. We have people over we do BBQs. We we have like Interfaith is Stars we've had so many people over for iftar, which is so nice to be able to share.

33:41 Like what it is to me as a Muslim in New York and to have my community around me, which is not just a Muslim Community. But like the Neighbors come over you guys came over V. It's so nice to be able to share that and it's it's it's a hard time right now for Muslims. I feel all over the world.

34:00 And then I'm so lucky to be this Muslim who has such a wonderful supportive Community around me and so many good friends who want to know more and went to learn and went to want to share with other people what they've learned from meal.

34:19 I I feel like I'm one of the lucky ones right now. I can't imagine what it must be like to be. Are you going with them or incident on for Myanmar? Did you know what I mean? Like

34:35 I I am so thankful for what I am and then I try to use the the platform that I have the voice that I have to speak out to help to.

34:50 We could we do community work we do things but it's never never feels like it's enough that we have to start somewhere and we have to do as much as we can write and the resources that we have and I do feel like it is so important to start in our own Community though because if we can't sometimes I feel like we're not going to solve the problems of the world. If we can't, you know solve the problems are be together as neighbors are really lucky cuz we live in such a mixed neighborhood communities and cultures. They are the sort of mix and sort of don't and I liked it.

35:32 We've been able to kind of step over those lines a little bit more right then maybe we had before and that's like we've done Community dinners with the Muslim Community and it's like getting the neighbors involved because they've been people living next door to each other for decades almost who don't know their neighbors and you're right. It begins at home. Of course, it's a New Yorker thing to ignore your neighbors, but I think sometimes we don't right now, I don't think we really have the privilege of doing that.

36:06 Because yeah, it's our neighbors are experiencing so many different things. So I think we really need to be there for them when the threat of deportation are all these things that are just too real and I know for me as I as a white person, sometimes you think that's very abstract, but it's really not at all if it is really happening at our front door right now. And sometimes you can even just to invite a neighbor home like into your home for a meal that is like the sweetest like the nicest thing you could do, but it's such a powerful thing to do and then just share meal and get to know each other and I love that. Yeah, I didn't hear Crossing these boundaries and breaking them down and also at the beginning we talked about like that historical trauma that gets passed on but also the code

37:06 You know that you especially through food. So when you serve us samosas that eats car or on the beach like your your mom is coming in there and all those Traditions. So it's it's actually really beautiful and it's it's I hope it's in a way like

37:29 Starting to heal those traumas break so and it's so wonderful to be able to share like my mother's recipes with people and so I am home sick all the time but to be able to share stories about my family or Tuesday. Oh, my mother doesn't like this and I do it like that like to be able to do that. I am I'm so lucky. I'm so fortunate and it's also

37:54 I am I know there's a t-shirt out there that someone has but it's like I am my ancestors Wildest Dream or something. I feel that way. I can't imagine what my grandparents would even think about my white American husband and like my close friends and the life that I'm living. I wonder

38:16 Like it is beyond it is beyond my like wildest dreams as a kid to live this there days when I turn to lie, and I'm like, this is my life and he's like, yes, baby. It's like, oh my God, and I never want to stop appreciating that and then being grateful for that. I think.

38:43 It's a good place.