As a journalist, Priya Padma was accustomed to recording and then interpreting what people said. “But there was something much more intimate and much more unique about letting a person tell their own story in their own words, than me or another reporting adding their summarizing,” she says. “Because eventually some bias will creep in.”
Now, as editor-on-chief at the podcast platform Suno India, she hands over the microphone as often as possible.
“I think the power of someone telling their own story is almost unique. Everyone has a unique voice, and a unique perspective, and their reality may not always match with your reality.”
She sees the power of this working for museums and other institutions too, as their digitized collections reach a global audience and spark a desire for fuller, richer descriptions. They want this information, also known as metadata, to better capture the cultural heritage of the objects: their creators, their uses, their significance.
If you haven’t lived an experience, she says, you cannot tell the story yourself.
“Experiences of colonization and independence may seem to some people to belong to the past, but the past affects the present.”
“I think if you’ve not lived through something, if you don’t have the lived experience, just because you’ve written academic articles or done tons of research on it, I don’t necessarily think that gives one the right to tell that story,” she says. “Though a lot of people seem to take that as a right or almost like, you have a PhD so you know what you’re talking about.
“If you’re not living through it, don’t tell the story as if you know the whole story, because you don’t know the whole story, no one knows it. Just say this is not the whole story, this is half the story.”
Experiences of colonization and independence may seem to some people to belong to the past, but the past affects the present, she says. One of the most popular podcasts for Suno India is Beyond Charminar, which has almost become a depository for memories of older citizens of that Indian city.
She believes more museums must accept the reality of colonization and open a dialogue.
“We are talking to older people and we are reliving the past, but they’re telling about a past which is continuing to have repercussions today for us in India,” Priya says. “In that sense they are almost educating and setting the context for the current generation about what happened in, say, 1948 or 1947 when India became independent and Hyderabad was annexed” and religious strife erupted.
“That played out during this time, and it continues to play out now, and it plays a huge role in how the idea of India is being shaped. So for me it’s very important to get these first-person accounts of people who lived through that, and who give a very — some of them are so unemotional when they talk about it, and some of them are very emotional when they’re talking about it. They have the wisdom of the years as they’re talking about it, of what could have been done better, of what went wrong.”
She believes more museums must accept the reality of colonization and open a dialogue “from a place of acceptance and compassion towards the countries that were colonized, the cultures that were almost erased, and the artifacts that were stolen.”
Human stories resonate across cultures.
“I think starting from a place of accepting that our ancestors really messed up and we as a generation are trying to undo those mistakes – I think that’s a great first starting point,” she says.
“And I’m saying this also because we are going through this whole journey within the caste system in India. As a privileged upper-caste woman this is something I struggle with a lot. My ancestors played a part in perpetuating the caste system and passed it down generation after generation; and this needs to be broken; and the only way it can be done is through dialogue, and for that one first needs acceptance that such things have happened.”
And when a museum has rich information, more human information, it’s a more inviting place for everyone, she says. Human stories resonate across cultures.
“I think museums opening up and using these tactics can actually help people connect more to their culture.”
The Weaving a Narrative workshop held by the Übersee-Museum Bremen in Germany, to find ways to add storytelling to metadata, presented a poet who spoke about a textile in a museum that she remembered from her childhood. It led Priya to talk to her own mother about her grandmother’s sari.
“I think that (poem) was just so profound and so deep because you don’t really realize the power of something that you can actually feel, touch, and then there’s a story behind it,” she says. “And for me it reminded me of my grandmother’s sari. I consider it a living thing because for me it carries the memory of my grandmother in that, and that’s the only thing I have of my grandmother, my maternal grandmother.
“And I got it from my mother when my child was born. It’s a tradition in India that the grandmother’s clothes are offered to the grandchildren, and that’s laid in the cradle and then the children are laid down in that. It’s a way of passing on your ancestor’s blessing. And so for me, that was just such a profound moment, it took me back to that connection that you have with something so everyday. You wear it but you don’t think about how deep the connections can be to people.
“I think museums opening up and using these tactics can actually help people connect more to their culture. After that session I actually went back and I spoke to my mum about where this tradition came from, why was it done, how long it goes back to, which parts of India do it. So in that sense it sparks curiosity about your own culture, it sparks curiosity about the world around you, and it makes the museum experience much more enriching and engaging.
“There is a lot of power in that kind of storytelling.”
And the power should stay with the person who lived the story, she says. It can take patience and time to draw a story out, but it’s worth the effort.
“I realized that when I gave them the freedom, people often take a deep breath and then they open up so much more and they are much more willing to go into detail than if it’s a question-and-answer format. If they realize you’re looking at them and treating them as an equal, which they are, and if they see that the power dynamic does not exist – there is a power dynamic between the journalist and their subject, or the museum and the person they’re speaking to –you get much more impactful stories because then you are speaking on a person-to-person basis.”
In some ways, institutions tend to offer content rather than stories.
“They’re thinking about, how do we put up this picture on Instagram and how do we make a video out of these artifacts, but they’re not really thinking about, how do we frame a story around these artifacts? How can we have someone sing a song around an artifact, for example? And honestly the chance of that going viral, if that’s what they want, is much higher than just putting up a bunch of posts.”
She understands the reluctance of museums to handle their objects; their primary urge is to protect and preserve them. “But there’s a fine line between possessing and preserving,” she says. “If it’s truly because you want to preserve it, then what are you doing to involve the communities to whom these artifacts really belong, how are you involving them in your storytelling?”