By: Uma Attreya
The Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre (NMACC) opened this past week in Mumbai, India, within the Jio World Centre. The center is named after the founder, Nita M Ambani, most commonly known as an Indian philanthropist. She founded the cultural center in hopes to showcase Indian arts and culture, and to me, she has succeeded. This center is a safe place to preserve Indian culture, with artifacts or costumes from famous Bollywood (the Hindi version of Hollywood) movies, as well as promoting new talent. The new talent has the space of a theater, an art house, and a pavilion, among other spaces to create either an intimate or expansive environment.
Hollywood stars such as Zendaya attended the opening of this culture center, wearing Indian cultural garments, like saris, or representing Indian designers. There is a picture of her with a famous Hindi actor, Shah Rukh Khan! Being able to see the culture I grew up with, Bollywood, mesh with the culture I have grown to love, Hollywood, was comforting. I feel as though the two sides of my identity, American and Indian, have been separate. This center was a way to equalize and merge the cultures, rather than making the South Asian culture seem more distant and unrelatable. It elevated South Asian culture to be one that is respected and admired, enough so that our celebrities from the western world would fly out.
I know I have been mentioning culture and art in India. If I were to describe every single act of culture or art, this piece would span the entire page, and then some. However, I did want to acknowledge a few. Carnatic singing and Bharatanatyam are two main forms of art being showcased, along with the instruments (such as a veena or sitar) accompanying such performances. There is also textile or fashion design, which I highly recommend looking into (Rahul Mishra has been amazing in the fashion game recently!). Just think of any type of creativity you see here, and then imagine that sort of creativity for the population of a billion people. Crazy, right?! It is hard to keep up with American pop culture, much less the culture of a country across continents and oceans, but if you are looking for vibrancy, and passion, I encourage you to explore the NMACC website and see where it takes you!
Overall, to all the Indian Americans out there, wondering when their culture would get a chance to shine or when they could, I would say the NMACC is their chance. Whether it be costumes from movies or the finest blossoming talents, this center, now open to the public, shows that India’s rich culture deserves to be on a pedestal and a global radar.