Unfiltered Kaapi

You’ve heard of Bollywood, but If you haven’t guessed, this week we are talking about all things South Indian cinema! Growing up Telugu and Tamil, we were exposed to a whole other world of entertainment from a young age, and it has shaped who we are today. We cover it all, from going to the first showing of our dad’s favorite hero’s movie, our opinions on remakes of our favorite classics, and those catchy songs we can’t get out of our heads. We hope you enjoy listening to this week’s episode, and as always we would love to hear your own stories if you have any!

BONUS: Listen through the episode for some movie suggestions if you’re looking to spice up your life with some South Indian flair ;)

If you’d like to share your stories or have any comments, please send us an email at unfilteredkaapi@gmail.com or find us on Instagram @unfilteredkaapipodcast, we’d love to hear from you!

(CW: body image, body weight, self-esteem issues) 

This week, we decided to talk about something a little more personal and a little more serious: our struggles with body image. Growing up in America while also being brought up as Indians definitely put us in a tight spot in terms of living up to certain standards of beauty set either by society or by our family. Especially as females, we found that it was harder to ignore physical changes in our bodies or think of them as attractive. We hope that listening to our experiences helps even one person feel less alone. Your body is beautiful and you should celebrate it whenever you get the chance - but we realize that that’s not an easy process.

If you’d like to share your stories or have any comments, please send us an email at unfilteredkaapi@gmail.com or find us on Instagram @unfilteredkaapipodcast, we’d love to hear from you!

Episode 10: Dosa and Idli and Naan and Paneer

The title pretty much gives away what we’re talking about today--and it’s bound to make your mouth water. Food has always been such a huge part of our lives growing up and has been one of the ways in which we identify with our Indian background. Whether it’s struggling with weird stares when we brought sambar rice and dosa to school or miserably failing at recreating the Indian dishes we know and love, we talk about it all. This episode is being set up as a precursor to our episode next week, so we hope you all enjoy how much we had to say about FOOD!

If you’d like to share your stories or have any comments, please send us an email at unfilteredkaapi@gmail.com or find us on Instagram @unfilteredkaapipodcast, we’d love to hear from you!

You might be wondering what this title means. We understand “naa pakka local” to mean, “I’m the epitome of local,” where local typically refers to people originating from villages in India. We know this is a super roundabout explanation but we did our best (so please don’t come for us! This week, we decided to take it back to our roots and talk about our lives as South Indian-identifying people living in the United States. We talk about cringey childhood dance performances, how we DON’T speak hindi (contrary to popular belief), and struggling to find our identity through it all. Get ready for lots of ranting and unrelated tangents (but what’s new), and let us know if you can relate to our experiences! Happy listening :)

If you’d like to share your stories or have any comments, please send us an email at unfilteredkaapi@gmail.com or find us on Instagram @unfilteredkaapipodcast, we’d love to hear from you!

We are very excited to be starting up with Season 2! We figured a good way to start was to discuss our good friend: coronavirus. Most, if not all, of us have been impacted by COVID-19 in some way. Being two college students, we can confidently say that we didn’t see any of this coming or the rest of our school years playing out the way they did. In today’s episode, we talk about our feelings surrounding this pandemic, whether it be frustration, denial, or anything else. We hope you all can relate to this episode, and don’t forget to mask up, socially distance, and stay safe!

If you’d like to share your stories or have any comments, please send us an email at unfilteredkaapi@gmail.com or find us on Instagram @unfilteredkaapipodcast, we’d love to hear from you! Additionally, if you have any questions about how to access the educational resources related to Black Lives Matter that we mention at the beginning of the episode, please feel free to contact us and we will point you in the right direction.

Episode 6: Honest and Unafraid

For our season finale, we wanted this episode to be more serious and talk about a topic that is very dear to both of our hearts: mental health. As part of the Indian community, it hasn’t always been easy to candidly talk about mental health, especially because of all the obstacles the stigma surrounding it poses. However, in the past few years, so many people have started to open up about their truth, and we wanted to contribute to and hopefully further this conversation. If you’ve ever felt anxious, depressed, or even just down for no reason, just know that you are not alone. We have mentioned several resources below that could be helpful, and please don’t hesitate to reach out to us if you need to talk.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255

Text “HOME” or “MHA” to 741-741 to reach a Crisis Counselor 24/7

If you’d like to share your stories or have any comments, please send us an email at unfilteredkaapi@gmail.com or find us on Instagram @unfilteredkaapipodcast, we’d love to hear from you. Thank you all for your support on this endeavor so far, we truly appreciate it!

“You’re too dark to wear that color.” “You don’t even look Indian.” “Have you tried a turmeric mask?” Does any of that sound familiar? If so, this episode is for you. This week we reflect on the prevalence of colorism throughout our everyday lives. Whether it’s unrealistic beauty standards, a lack of representation in the entertainment industry, or unsolicited opinions from family or aunties, we know how it feels to experience it! We are particularly proud of this episode, and even though it’s not as light-hearted as the others, it’s an important one.

If you’d like to share your stories or have any comments, please send us an email at unfilteredkaapi@gmail.com or find us on Instagram @unfilteredkaapipodcast, we’d love to hear from you!

Do you spend all your money on food? Is your bank account drowning? Have you thought about putting procrastination as a skill on your resume? If your answer to any of these questions is yes, then you’ve come to the right place! In this episode, we discuss our recent struggles with managing our money and time and how we’ve gotten better/worse at it over the years. We spill some kaapi about our privileges and acknowledge that we seem a lot more put together on the surface than we actually are. Happy listening!

If you’d like to share your stories or have any comments, please send us an email atunfilteredkaapi@gmail.comor find us on Instagram @unfilteredkaapipodcast, we’d love to hear from you!

This episode is coming at you from a very tired, pre-finals Bhav & Vin. But we’re alive! And ready to talk about all things music & dance. Get ready for some childhood memories of being forced into extracurricular activities (jokes, we are very appreciative of these experiences) and our teachers yelling at us for not practicing. Shoutout to the family that we made along the way--thank you for putting up with our bratty selves. We know everyone can’t relate to the content in this episode, but we hope you still enjoy the sound of our beautiful, half-dead voices.

If you’d like to share your stories or have any comments, please send us an email atunfilteredkaapi@gmail.comor find us on Instagram @unfilteredkaapipodcast, we’d love to hear from you!

We’re BACK (no, this wasn’t just a one time thing)! In this second episode, we discuss the various levels of chaos that ensued after the two of us moved out of our childhood homes. Overall, we both struggled immensely, especially with things like maintaining healthy eating habits (more like eating at all), finding the motivation to make new friends, managing stress from school, and missing our hometowns. So if you’ve recently started living alone, or moving out soon, and find yourself having a hard time, we can relate and are here for you! (Also, if you voluntarily decided to listen to our second episode, we are eternally grateful.)

If you’d like to share your stories or have any comments, please send us an email atunfilteredkaapi@gmail.comor find us on Instagram @unfilteredkaapipodcast, we’d love to hear from you!

Our very first episode! AHHH! *DISCLAIMER*: We have NO. Idea. What. We’re. Doing. (Please ignore any shuffling sounds in the background, we’ll fix it in the future, promise.)

Anyways, in this riveting episode, we introduce ourselves as the co-hosts of this podcast and share our experiences with having hard-to-pronounce Indian names while living here in the United States. Whether it’s Starbucks names, silent letters, or being proud of our culture, we cover it all. We are definitely not perfect and we tend to go on tangents (like any human being) during our stories. We hope you all enjoy listening!

If you’d like to share your stories or have any comments, feel free to send us an email atunfilteredkaapi@gmail.comor find us on Instagram @unfilteredkaapipodcast, we’d love to hear from you!