Terrie Samundra, 46, Director and Screenwriter
Los Angeles, CA
Terrie, sheltering in place in Los Angeles
Aside from your creative work do you have any additional source of income?
I'm in the middle of finishing a film and developing new work, so all of my efforts have been focused on that which means I have no income coming in right now since everything is on hold. This past year I intentionally streamlined my work so I've said no to teaching gigs and other jobs. I couldn’t have predicted this happening but of course on hind sight maybe it wasn’t the best move. In the meantime, I've applied for unemployment.
I didn’t grow up with money so luckily I learned to be resourceful and make do with little. I’m grateful for what I have - A warm and safe apartment and healthy food. I don’t know what’s going to happen next month or six months for now but I’m doing my best to not panic and keep it simple and focused on the basics, and open to innovation as a storyteller and filmmaker.
Who do you live with and how do you feel about that?
I live with my spouse who is also my co-writer, co-creative, and co-parent. We live with our ten-year-old, Yamuna, and our 3 cats, Wolfcub, Warrior and Hamilton. My mother was also here up until a couple of weeks ago. She was eager to go home because she had been here for almost three months. She's a writer and wanted to get back to her work and to be with her plants and garden. I was really nervous to let her leave but we helped her get set up at home, and I'm in touch with her every day. Our older son lives up in northern California, and we try to talk to him every day.
We live in a tiny apartment, on a busy thoroughfare, without a lot of green space so things can get crowded but luckily we like each other's company, most of the time. Sometimes we drive each other crazy so we've found little nooks to hide in. I spend time sitting on the kitchen counter tucked in a corner to read or drink coffee or stare at my phone. I'm on my phone way too much. I've also started sitting in the car as a makeshift office to make phone calls and write. Yamuna has literally just been covering herself with a blanket in this middle of everything. She'll just set herself down in the middle of the room and throw a blanket over her head. It's like a little ghost lives in the house. She's a bit feral and does a lot of projects which make huge messes but I just pretend like I don't see them. She needs the space to be free and experiment. She’s found a new love, archery, which is not really conducive to a small space but she’s somehow making it work. And then Walter has one chair, that he's claimed, which he's placed in a tucked-away corner.
How are you spending your time?
We're crisis schooling, as Yamuna's teachers call it, so part of the day is spent doing that. I'm up a lot around 4 am so I take that time to write, but a lot of times I just sit in the dark and daydream. I chalk it up to it being a part of my creative process. I love the silence of the dreamy world before the sunrise. I'm trying to work on my lucid dreaming skills. I've lost a lot of that which I had when I was younger. Also back to reading a lot of poetry and science blogs and listening to comedy.
There's a loquat tree outside our door that we've been harvesting. Yamuna does the tree climbing and harvesting, Walter preps, and I figure out what to make. It's become a bit of an obsession to see how far I can exhaust the recipes. It’s a nice meditative use of time and process. I made a fish curry with the loquats which was surprisingly yummy, put some on a pizza, made a jam, a few crumbles, and tarts along with a jar of loquat pickles. The tree has been a humble and generous friend and representative of the times. I think I may write an ode to it when this is all over.
I'm craving a lot of food from my childhood, typical Punjabi village food, and old family recipes. I call my mom for bits of info here and there but no one in the family cooks with exact amounts so it's a lot of guesswork. I made huge batches of spicy Indian pickles with the lemons from the lemon tree out back. I plan to give it out when it’s ready. I’ve also been making homemade yogurt every night which is a comforting family ritual.
My headphones are saving me. I put on music and read and go into another space. Alice Coltrane is on constant rotation right now. I’m always looking for new music, or new to me anyway. Right now I'm obsessed with John Carroll Kirby's work, he's a jazz composer from LA. I'm also listening to a lot of qawwali and old Punjabi music which is transformative and puts me in a good space.
I've been following along with Yamuna's piano lessons because I've always wanted to play but I don’t have the patience or fluidity that she does.
I've got a list of classic films I've always meant to watch. Last night I watched Color of Space by Richard Stanley who is a weirdo, which I love. I finally saw Border which was so incredible and insane and beautiful. The same writer as Let the Right One In, which is one of my favorite films. Portrait of a Lady on Fire was a gorgeous feast and I cried too much. I'm revisiting classic Indian cinema like those of Guru Dutt. Finally catching up with Schitt's Creek which is hilarious.
I luckily checked out some books at the library before it shut down. I'm finally reading On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous and finishing Parable of the Sower and Wizard of Earthsea. I'm always searching for feminist speculative lit and great science fiction, but it’s also hitting a little too close to home right now and not easy to take in. Last week I read Isabel Allende's new book A Long Petal of the Sea. She's a comforting writer for me and has been a part of my inner story life since I was a teen. I needed her voice right now.
We're a little wild in our apartment and although it's important to have structure and keep a schedule for children I'm also letting Yamuna play and be free to experiment right now. She loves being outside and she’s a true naturalist, so she’s really heartbroken to not have her normal outside world.
But a lot of times I just like to find a patch of sun and sit in it, like my cats.
How is the pandemic impacting you?
My days are a patchwork of emotion but have also become annoyingly predictable. I’ve lost track of time and days and what season it is. But every day around 2 pm I go through a wave of grief and depression and need to get fresh air and sunshine. I drink way too much coffee and worry too much, and let my anxiety take over. I'm a news and political junkie and I've had to be really careful with how much news I'm consuming. I’ve intentionally started to shut things off - strict days without social media, and news briefings. The fringe of selfish assholes who live in cognitive dissonance in this country is so enraging and the daily barrage of political idiocy is maddening. The satirical absurdity is sometimes too much to believe. The lack of respect and understanding of science and medicine is frightening. I can’t believe the lack of scientific knowledge so many people have that are in positions of leadership and policymaking, or their refusal to trust in doctors and scientists.
I know someone who died last week from the virus, and it’s hard to process it. There's so much grief and pain, and I'm desperate to help and comfort people. I'm also incredibly angry and I don't even know what to say half the time. I'm finding it hard to form sentences and words that make sense or that I can commit to because I'm constantly moving from one emotion to the other. I’m checking in on friends and family regularly. In the middle of the night, I’ll get really anxious and fear will start to creep in so I’m pulling all the tools out. I’m keeping close tabs on friends in NY. My heart breaks for NY and Queens. But in many ways, I’m incredibly inspired by all the communities that have come together to support each other. So many friends in India acted quickly to get food and basic supplies to day laborers and migrant workers. And here in LA friends organized to donate PPE and food delivery for health care workers.
I'm thankful for technology and all the options of zoom calls, lessons, and interactive events, but I also feel exhausted by them and can't get myself to join too much. We had a fun online birthday celebration for my oldest. I really miss exercise. I need it for my mental health and my body needs it but I can’t get myself to do online classes. I dream of running but also crave silence and stillness.
What do you want to accomplish personally and/or professionally during this time?
Professionally we're developing a new script and doing research, and I'm doing a rewrite on another script. My agent is saving me these days. We have a great relationship and I'm on the phone with her all the time. She’s single parenting two small children while trying to get all our work out to be read so I'm deeply indebted to her. I would be so lost without her.
The film and tv world is all up in the air. I keep hearing different projections of what’s going to happen but I really have no clue. I love how easy it is to get films and shows and work in front of an audience, so I think it’s not time to be precious with work, just get it out and share it.
And this has been a huge lesson in patience and priorities for me. I was in the middle of one of the most significant projects in my work but it went on the back burner as caring for my family, my community, and my basic needs became paramount. I had to reign it all in. I went from working in Mumbai with an incredible team of artists every day to heading home on a last-minute flight. I had just gotten ready to fall asleep when I got a call telling me that my work was booking me on a flight which left in a few hours because shut down orders were going into place and things were shifting by the hour. That week India went into lockdown and I came home to a city where shelter in place orders went into effect. We all moved into focusing on the essentials; family, friends, community, and making sure our elders most importantly were safe and healthy.
What kind of world do you want to see on the other side of this?
I want basic human rights such as medicare for all and income equality such as a true fair living wage for workers. I want the same things I've always wanted such as racial and economic equality and justice. The pandemic is not the great equalizer but more of a magnifying glass onto inequality. The fact that the majority of people and communities affected are poor, black, brown, and indigenous is no surprise. We have to vote in officials, who we have to remember work for us and get paid by us, to support workers, to tax the wealthy, to take action to shift the vast economic disparity from corporate welfare to support of people. These include the workers who have kept us alive; nurses, hospital and nursing home staff, day laborers, migrant workers, truck drivers, grocery store workers, teachers, and so many more. I want a world focused on worker's rights, on local community sustainability, on implementing on a local grassroots level and thinking and working on a global level. And I want us to take the knowledge and actions that have been put into place right now such as group effort, strict community policies, and economic support, and apply them to other crises like global warming. We cannot come out of this without radically shifting, because that's already what had happened. But we have to decide what that radical shift is because we're not going back, this has and will affect us and our children for a long time. This is a profound opportunity for all humans. We can choose to shepherd our profound cognitive abilities of innovation, science, civics, and engineering for deep transformation and good, or they will become a poison chalice. We have that choice and we must choose wisely.
I want a world that believes in science, and respects and supports logic and thought. I want funding for research for actionable green energy and sustainability. I want true secular government and leaders, whose religious belief systems do not interfere with funding for medicine, civil rights, and environmental policy.
I'm drawn to vulnerability and honesty in artists and I hope we can work towards more of that in our creative spaces. I also hope for radical compassion because we are all fluid in our deep complexity. Failures and mistakes are opportunities to grow and experiment. I hope that we can tap into our collective grief to get to this place. I have to work on compassion for myself. I have a lot of anger. It's an anger that I know fuels my work but I'm constantly working to shift it so that I’m not only reacting and only confining myself to boxes and spaces I create for myself. I hope we can keep shifting to find true radical compassion four ourselves and others as we move out of social distancing.
I’m back to committing to a weekly CSA box and supporting small local business in a serious way. I hope everyone keeps their ‘victory gardens’ going, and keeps up the bread baking and local love.
How can people find you and support you and your work?
I have a personal website terriesamundra.com, but for the most part, it’s static so right now the best way would be to connect on social media so we can support each other, find some levity and common sharing through all of this. I love other artists, thinkers, poets, writers, scientists, and filmmakers and I'm always curious about new work, and ideas I don’t know about. I'm on all the platforms @terriesamundra If you have work to share, please send and connect with me. My film Kaali Khuhi/ The Black Well will release sometime this year on Netflix and of course, I can't want to share it with you and the world so be on the lookout for it.