“What an endlessly fascinating and complex country India is, I feel so lucky,” says producer and presenter of RNZ’s podcast, Voices, Kadambari Raghukumar, of her birthplace.
“I can’t think of another place where the language, its script, culture and geography, are all entirely different from one state to another. It still boggles me!”
Though raised in the seaside state of Goa on India’s southwest coast, Kadambari says that her upbringing, closely connected to family in the south, was “pretty Tamil”: “Looking back, it’s been really cool and useful to have those influences and awareness of two distinctly different cultures.”
She recalls her childhood days spent collecting fruit with her best friend Ruku, practising karate, ocean swimming, and drinking coconut water by the roadside – something Kadambari especially misses, along with the “neighbourhood street dogs all with names”, and, of course, her mum and dad. Her parents, she says, described her as a curious and social child, characteristics that, along with a burgeoning interest in anthropology, hinted towards her future career path.
“I came to New Zealand to study and the plan was to leave after the one-and-a-half years,” she says. “But life happened, and I stayed back happily. I continue to spend a lot of time in Goa and in fact was living there for more than half of the year for a few years up until early 2020. I consider myself fortunate to have been able to do that.”
How did you come to be offered the role for Voices?
“I got offered the job over a year ago while I was working and living in between countries, which was then India, Kenya, New Zealand and the States. I’ve worked in television and documentaries pretty much since the start of my career, and the opportunity to join some amazing folk at RNZ and produce Voices seemed to come at the right time. It was a nice amalgamation of things I’ve done, was doing at the time, and directions I’d like to explore.”
Your skills are wide-ranging, is presenting your favourite discipline?
“I love all aspects of my work when it comes to telling stories, be that with television, video, podcasts, or photography. The research, the interviews and conversation, the post-production, and the presenting, I see them all as integral to each other and really find them equally enjoyable.”
Her impressive resume includes stints with TVNZ (as their Asia Downunder reporter, presenter, and director) and Fox Life (as assistant director for Masters of Taste). Voices, she says, enables her to merge many of her passions like music, culture and human rights through showcasing people and topics that span cultures from around the world, all present in Aotearoa. Also for RNZ, Kadambari has recently completed ASIA – Art Stories Aotearoa, a video series about diverse artists from an array of fields.
“We wanted to widen the lens on art stories and delve into narratives of art and artists that represent people like myself living here – those from Asia, immigrants and people of colour – who all play an integral part in shaping Aotearoa’s exciting artscape. It’s being produced by my lovely friend Arani Cuthbert, and I’ve directed the interviews and present it.”
Kadambari tells Verve that it’s “been a hell of a journey”, meeting artists such as Seung Yul Oh, the band Imugi, playwright Ahi Karunaharan, and Yuki Kihara, with filming across Wellington, Dunedin, and Auckland, disrupted by a couple of lockdowns.
Looking back, it’s been really cool and useful to have those influences and awareness of two distinctly different cultures.
“It’s been really fascinating and frankly, an honour to be invited into their worlds and getting to hear their takes on things like cultural identity, gender, design, and art in the context of their respective practices in a contemporary Aotearoa.”
I finish up by asking if there are any stories that have made a particular impression on Kadambari over the years, but there have been so many, she says, it’s a tough one to answer.
“If I were to keep to recent memories, before I came back to New Zealand last year, I was in Khartoum, Sudan where I did some photojournalism for TRT World during the height of the coup and protests. I met some of the loveliest, most hospitable people in the midst of what was such a tough time and it blew me away. It’s a beautiful country and I can’t wait to go back when things get better.”
Voices airs on RNZ every Monday at 3.30pm. ASIA – Art Stories Aotearoa will be on the RNZ web platform in around a month, and will also appear on Freeview and be cross-shared across other platforms such as Spotify and iHeartRADIO.
