Del Mar resident launches new online interview series

With a new online interview series, Del Mar resident Amrita Gandhi wants to show others how to “look beyond their own community.”

The series is called “So What’s It Really Like?”

Amrita Gandhi

(Courtesy)

Gandhi said she started the show, which is available on her website and Instagram account, to “really connect with people in the way that you or I might want to ask them what their lives are really like at a particular point.”

In the first episode, she interviews two Black and Indian interracial couples about their relationships and the cultural pressures they faced from their own families when they decided to pursue a relationship with someone of another race.

“What the viewer wants to know is what it’s really like,” said Gandhi, whose great-grandfather was Mahatma Gandhi. “I feel this way you get a human perspective, you get a really subjective perspective. It helps you connect with people better.”

She added that the subject matter of her show aptly fits in with the social justice issues led by Black Lives Matter and others who have been making more of an effort to address systemic racism.

“It’s a good opportunity for people to look beyond their own community,” Gandhi said. “So if you’re an Indian American, you don’t need to only be looking out for other Indian Americans as people you need to support, or for your own cause. You need to support everybody.”

Gandhi also said that in large, diverse regions it’s important for local residents to realize that “communities can support each other.”

“We have to equally be there for each other, and we find our common ground,” she said. “And I think that’s a really important perspective. Minorities should not be boxed in separately, but should look out for each other as all communities, not just minority communities (should).”

Gandhi has written a book called “Live Like A Maharaja: How to Turn Your Home into a Palace,” published several years ago, and has covered lifestyle, cultural and other topics as a freelance writer. She’s also worked in television, including serving as the host of “Royal Reservation” on NDTV Good Times.

“I’ve always loved interviewing people and talking to people,” Gandhi said. “It’s something that I’ve always done since my 20s, that’s been my work.”

Gandhi, who splits her time between Delhi and Del Mar, where her husband was born and raised, said her long-term goal for the show is “to reach a lot of people in America and outside America.”

She has spent most of this year in Del Mar due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I also feel the pandemic has, in a strange way, allowed me to connect wider and beyond just where I am, because everybody’s available to speak on Zoom,” she added. “If you can’t physically reach somebody, it doesn’t mean you can’t reach them, you can still reach them and tell their story.”

For more information about the series, visit amritagandhi.com or @amrita.gandhi.31 on Instagram.