Sanskari Hoe - by Pallavi AKA Fijiana and MadStarBase
Sanskari Hoe is a modern day interpretation of Bollywood’s narrative on sexuality that has been heavily patriarchal and male-centric. Today we are witnessing artists like Pooja Pallavi AKA FIJIANA (iamfijiana) who are re-telling the tales of romance and desires through the lense of a woman. As a South Asian artist, Pooja is breaking notions that were laid down by cis hetero man on an international level.
Picture Credit: Mary Huynh
This journey began as a collaboration when Pooja recieved a batch of beats from MadStarBase about two years ago and one of them had the intro of “Dhak Dhak” song from the Bollywood movie Beta (Edited out of the final track) and started thinking about what a modern take on a song like that would be. She wanted it to be sexual like the original video, but have the narrative and sexual autonomy in the woman's hands as she noticed sexuality in Indian media to be heavily catering to the male masses. The song almost has a witty element like how she spins “Dhak Dhak” into “Dhak Dhak he just wanna f*** f***”! One day she was on facetime with her friend Ruhi, while writing the song when they soon began craking jokes with each other which landed her the hook of “billi ke bhook lagi”, After the song was made Pooja posted it on TikTok and Instagram and it got very popular, she soon realized then that this song is special and more people probably wanted to hear brown women make this kind of music. (Pooja also mentions, “I’d like to pay homage and recognize that taking back sexuality through hip hop in this way is pioneered by black women, I am absolutely not the first to do it.”)
Picture credit: Mary Huynh
Picture Credit: Mary Huynh
Q: Take us through your process of the video and a little bit about your team-
Pooja: So in my head I thought there should be a dance piece to such a high energy song and that's when I connected with Veenu, a choreographer from Modesto. It was both of our first time doing something like this and we learned so much on the way. I learned how much discipline and consistency it takes to be a dancer and to really commit and be open to trying things if you want to succeed. Pretty soon we onboarded Raven, then Tanu and Symone and now we had a group of us dancing for Sanskari Hoe. As we would practice we knew how big it is for us all to be openly in something that displays our sexuality and how that affects us as well as people around us. But everyone was so committed and passionate about bringing this vision to life.
Picture Credit: Mary Huynh
Picture Credit: Shotsbygatsby
Q: What was your experience during the direction and editing of the video?
Pooja: Hunter was the director of the project and really understood the goal of what we wanted the video to do. Just like the song we wanted the video to make clear that this is not performed for the male gaze. After filming and editing the video me and my team were made aware that our lead male in the video is accused of being an abuser. When I found out it put me in a pretty confusing spot because I didn't want to let my team's hard work go to waste especially considering we're all independent freelance artists but we also didn't want to give a platform to this person out of respect for anyone harmed. So for a solution we blurred him out of the video and also tried to greatly reduce his screen time which was still difficult considering most of the video was shot with me and this lead. I also would like to add that I am an advocate of restorative and transformative justice and don't believe in disposing of others but also believe in accountability.
Picture Credit: Shotsbygatsby
Picture Credit: Shotsbygatsby
Q: What would you like to say to other upcoming female creatives through this journey -
Pooja: To any creatives out there I'd say take it one day at a time. You really don't know what comes up in life and it's important to be grounded and ready to deal with it all. None of us are perfect and we're just trying and that's the best you can do.
Click on the link below to watch Sanskari Hoe Full Video by Pallavi AKA Fijiana