Two Suitcases

In this episode, we talk with Sana Ginwalla. Sana is a Zambia-born Curator and Photographer. As a third culture kid herself, she explores the politics of identity, home and belonging. Her work, produced in and about Zambia, has consistently focused on showcasing the overlooked and relatable everyday moments from the past and present.

Some of her earlier works include Kunyumba (meaning at the house or at home) and Yaadasht (meaning memory), both are explorations into her sense of belonging, her split roots and her personal identities. Her current projects include Everyday Lusaka and Zambia Belonging – art platforms dedicated to exploring a more considered visual representation of Zambia in order to build a contemporary archive for future generations.

We are huge fans of Sana’s work, and in this conversation, we ask her about her personal story, her various projects, and how her sense of identity is intertwined with her work.

Listen to our conversation with Sana, and find her works on Instagram at @everydaylusaka and @zambiabelonging.

Our bodies do so much for us. They form the first impressions of who we are to the rest of the world, impressions that oftentimes elicit harsh responses. So much of what is around us dictates how we ought to look, and what it says about us if we do not match that image. In some immigrant communities, these messages on body image seem to be magnified.

Having both grown up as big kids in the Indian-Zambian diaspora, we explore how our childhoods in these communities have influenced our outlook on our bodies, the social stigma around big bodies, the trauma around our imperfect bodies that is passed on from one generation to the next, and our personal journeys in trying to achieve a healthy and sustainable lifestyle.

Listen to our conversation. Come unpack with us!

For our season premiere, we unpack a topic that is rarely acknowledged, let alone embraced, in many immigrant communities – Mental Health.

In this episode, we speak with Dr. Shanta Kanukollu, a psychologist practicing in Chicago who primarily focuses on the South Asian community. We ask her about her journey in becoming a therapist, providing mental health services in the South Asian context, intergenerational trauma in immigrant communities and some of the ways we can all better advocate for mental health awareness in our families and communities.

Listen to our conversation with Dr. K, and find her through her website at www.snktherapy.com and on Instagram at @snk_therapy.

Welcome back to Season 2 of Two Suitcases!

After last season, we felt like there were so many topics we wanted to dive into that we never quite got to. Although this started off as an exploration of our personal journeys, we also felt inspired by the guests who came on to share their stories. In the off-season, we set out to engage with more stories and perspectives beyond our own. So this season, we have some amazing guests that share their thoughts and expertise on various topics.

Whether it’s mental health in the immigrant context, exploring third culture identity through art, or dating and divorce as a third culture kid, we pursued conversations that further explore the various layers and nuances of the immigrant experience. Listen to snippets from some of the conversations coming up this season!

Join us for these conversations. Come unpack with us!

Bharat is almost rendered nationless by a pesky immigration officer. Raksha plans on storming off the podcast on a future episode. We both reminisce over the end of a significant chapter in our lives.

From moving to a new neighborhood to moving to a new country. From making the best of the foundations we’ve laid over years, to building new foundations altogether. In the final episode of Season 1, we take stock of the major changes in our lives as another COVID year winds down (01:45), and perhaps more importantly, we reflect on our experience putting together the first season of Two Suitcases (34:28).

Thank you for coming along on this journey over the past year. Stay tuned for Season 2 of Two Suitcases!!

It can be difficult to objectively reflect on our own immigrant communities–it entails being critical of the behaviors and characteristics of the people we love, the people who become like family, the people who lent a hand in raising us. But these communal traits tend to leave a lasting imprint on the rest of our lives, hence, are worthy of scrutiny.

In this last episode of the Balancing Identities miniseries, we reflect on how our immigrant communities are set up, and how we interact within them. There seems to be a running gag in the desi diaspora – Log Kya Kehenge or What Will People Think. We unpack this sentiment prominent in our own Indo-Zambian communities we grew up in. We reflect on the boundary issues in our immigrant communities, unlearning the toxic traits that we carry with us even after moving away, and balancing between our communal upbringing with our individualistic adulthood identities.

Join us for this conversation, probably the most vulnerable one yet.

There are multiple facets of our identities that we magnify or tone down depending on who we interact with. As we dug deeper into this topic of Balancing Identities, we realized a lot of this is heavily impacted by our childhoods in Zambia. Despite being Indian kids in Zambia, we both had notably different experiences. Experiences that required us to pick and choose when to be Indian and when to be Zambian. Experiences that shaped our identities and gave us the skills to perform this balancing act.

In this episode, we reflect on our childhoods, showing you a glimpse of what it was like growing up as Indians in Zambia and balancing the two different worlds.

Our worldly experiences are reflected in how we speak – our Language, Accents & Pronunciations. We are constantly adapting to the society we find ourselves in. The ways we assimilate into different societies leave behind an imprint on our language, our accents, and our diction. The way we speak is probably one of the main ways we either associate or differentiate from those around us – it’s one of the main ways we define ourselves.

In this episode, we explore the phonetic footprints from our journey as third-culture kids. How they came about, and why they define us. As bilingual immigrants, we also unpack our complicated experiences with the languages. What language did we grow up speaking? What language do we express our deepest vulnerabilities in? What is actually our mother tongue?

Join us for this discussion, see if it resonates with your relationship with the spoken form.

What is in a name? For most of us, our names are closely tied to our identities. How the world identifies us, and perhaps more importantly, how we identify ourselves. But for many of us in the diaspora, the names given to us are not necessarily intuitive. We navigate through the world having to balancing the different versions of our names along with the different identities we personify.

This episode is an effort to unpack our complicated relationships with our names. We also speak with some our friends and family to find out about their dynamics with their names.

This episode is the first in our mini-series exploring how we balance our identities, identities influenced by the different cultures and societies we associate with as third culture kids.

Explaining to a co-worker how to say your name correctly, or picking your battles and avoiding that awkward conversation altogether. Failing to express your deepest emotions in your mother-tongue because you can't ever seem to tap into that passionate vocabulary when you most yearn to. Being one version of yourself with your co-workers, and a whole different version with your family, with neither group having unfettered access to your true self. We've all performed this balancing act on some level, an act that seems exponentially more convoluted if you are an immigrant.

If you're like us, you've had conversations about this balancing act with your friends and family, people with this shared experience. We created this Balancing Identities mini-series within this season to put some of these conversations on the record.

Over the next few episodes, we'll talk with some of our friends about their relationship with their unique names, we'll talk about our experiences as multilingual adults having to interact with the world through different languages, and we'll explore our experiences as Indians growing up in Zambia.

Check out the trailer for snippets and join us in unpacking these conversations in the upcoming episodes!

As third-culture kids in America, we see life from our lens – a multi-generational journey, each generation gambling on the ultimate dream of reaching the promised land. The promised land, a short list of havens conjured up in our dreams and hopes for future generations. America, England, Australia. In this episode, we explore a first-generation immigrant’s journey to a place that, for many dreamers, is probably not on that shortlist.

Once a travelling salesman, Hrishikesh Rajan followed his dream of starting his own company and has now found a home for his beautiful family in Sweden. We pick his brain as he reflects on his life in India, the various factors in his decision to move out, and embracing the Swedish Dream.  Comparing our own experiences as Indo-Zambian immigrants in America, we found it intriguing how he balances his identity as an Indian and Swedish citizen, and how he is translating this new hyphenated identity to his children.

Join us in unpacking this immigrant story, a story that some of you will hopefully resonate with.

Death. COVID wedding. New “normal”. Car crash.

We are back from our summer break, one that was filled with ups and downs, jubilation and sorrow, congratulations and condolences.

Before getting back to business as usual, we take some time to reflect on our summer. Join us as we unpack the emotional rollercoaster of the past few weeks.

In today’s fast-paced society, it is so easy to get drawn from one moment into the next without time to look back. We have both considered different ways to hit pause, different ways to take a step back and look at some of our joyful and traumatic memories along our journey.

We wanted to take this opportunity to document some of our cherished memories before they get too blurry. Particularly, those memories most impactful to the trajectory of our lives. From those that define us as immigrants to those that define us as more than just that. This episode is an effort to compile and unpack some of these significant memories.

We take a break on the mountain and take in the view. With an uncertain journey still ahead of us, we reflect on our intergenerational family immigration narrative. We discuss the conversations we had with our parents and how their journeys are intricately woven into ours. With a better understanding of our family's meandering and complicated path thus far, where does this path take us from here?

This episode is part of a mini-series where we dig deep to better understand our personal and family immigration stories.

Join us in unpacking these intimate personal stories, stories that some of you will hopefully resonate with.

In the third episode of our Family Immigration Stories mini-series, we share our story of growing up in Zambia, the consequential decision to move out, and the struggles and opportunities we experienced in the US. From our first impressions of college life and finding the right group of friends, to the constant indefinite state of our immigration status, we unpack our differing experiences and perspectives.

This episode is part of a mini-series where we dig deep to better understand our personal and family immigration stories.

Join us in unpacking these intimate personal stories, stories that some of you will hopefully resonate with.

In the second episode of our Family Immigration Stories mini-series, we talk to Raksha's dad, Rajagopalan Srinivasan, about his story. We pick his brain as he reflects on his childhood in Chennai, the various factors in his decision to move from one place to the next, seeking the next big adventure. A lifelong adventure taking him from Chennai to Indore, Kinshasa, Dar es Salaam, and finally, Lusaka.

This episode is part of a mini-series where we dig deep to better understand our personal and family immigration stories.

Join us in unpacking this intimate family story, a story that some of you will hopefully resonate with.

This episode is the first in our mini-series where we dig deep to better understand our personal and family immigration stories.

In this episode, we talk to Bharat's mom, Sukanya Natarajan, about her story. We have a candid conversation about her childhood in India, marrying into a new family, making the decision to emigrate to Zambia, and all the joys and challenges along that journey.

Join us in unpacking this intimate family story, a story that some of you will hopefully resonate with.

One of our motivations to start this podcast was to explore our families' immigration stories. We wanted to spend some time to better understand how our parents grew up, why they left home and what their challenges were along the way. We put together a mini-series within this season focusing on our family immigration narrative. Over the next few episodes, we'll have conversations with our parents about their journey, talk about our personal stories moving out of Zambia and coming to the US, and reflect on how these narratives weave in together.

Check out the trailer for snippets and join us in unpacking these conversations in the upcoming episodes!

The whole world turned upside down in 2020. The COVID-19 Pandemic changed all our lives and forced us to adjust to a "new normal". We take some time to reflect on the past year of the pandemic. Where were we when we first heard about the lockdowns? How did we deal with the isolation? What steps did we try to take to overcome the multitude of challenges? Join us as we unpack the crazy COVID year we've all been through.

Welcome to the Two Suitcases Podcast. As teenagers, we came to the US with just Two Suitcases and a heart full of hope. A story not too different from that of our parents, when they moved our families from the only home they knew in South India, to a distant land in the heart of Africa. As third culture kids we will go on a journey of introspection into some of our personal experiences. We will unpack immigrant stories and explore topics transcending borders and cultures, topics that seemingly have little room in our social discourse within immigrant communities. Come unpack with us!