She dons several hats and that is what sets her apart from others. ARUSHI NISHANK tells MUSBA HASHMI how she got interested in social work and how she is using her dancing skills to give out a social message
At an age, when most people focus on their career and yearn for name and fame, this leading lady thought of giving it back to Nature. When children are busy playing around with mud and building sand castles, this young heart realised the importance of preserving and respecting Mother Nature.
Meet a 33-year-old social activist, environmentalist, youngpreneur, film producer and dancer, Arushi Nishank. It is not easy for Nishank to don several hats, it took years of effort, hard work and not to mention eternal dedication.
Having been born in Kotdwar, Uttarakhand, Nishank always feel that she has a moral responsibility towards River Ganga, and that is how she came on board as National Ambassador of Sparsh Ganga, a campaign that aimed at restoring and conserving the holy river.
“The Sparsh Ganga Campaign was started by my father, Ramesh Pokhriyal, in 2009. People hailing from Uttarakhand realise that it is their duty to protect and conserve Ganga ji. The whole world looks up to the river as moksh giver, they see it with a lot of aastha and a whole lot of feelings are attached with the holy river. This is what got us thinking and in 2009 under the guidance of Dalai Lama, several dharam gurus and Hema Malini ji we started the campaign in Rishikesh. At that time, my father was the Chief Minister of Uttarakhand at that time and the campaign was a Government project. However, there was no surety that the next Chief Minister will have the same feelings for the campaign, so we privatised it. And now, more than 5.5 lakh people from around the world are associated with this campaign,” Nishank tells you.
What is even more interesting is that people associated with the campaign do it out of free will and without any pays or funding. “All these people organise a weekly sunday cleaning drive. This has now become a ritual. This doesn’t mean they only clean River Ganga, instead they get together and clean any river that is there in the proximity or for that matter even colonies and drains,” Nishank explains.
This is not it. In 2016, she also boosted the Clean Ganga Initiative through her Kathak shows Ganga Tujhe Salam in Dubai and UAE. The purpose of these shows was educating the NRI’s about the importance of River Ganga and its cleanliness. Even, her compositions and choreography like Ganga Avataran, a story of Goddess Ganga coming to earth, and Sajda, a classical Kathak dance performance are based on the Sufiyana theme.
“Being from the young generation, I know that the best way to give out a social message is to do it in an entertaining way. I have studied in Toronto, and have had a lot of friends from India and abroad. Whenever we conversed, I realised that it is not like our generation isn’t concerned about anything, they do care about our culture and environment. But the fact is they don’t want to see it in the old traditional way. This got me thinking and I started walking on this road. I tried utilising my dancing skills and came up with several compositions that talked about our culture. Also, I am a trained Kathak dancer and if I started doing typical Kathak, no one would have understood it. Therefore, I experimented with it a lot and came up with the compositions,” she says.
Her passion for Kathak came from her mother. “My mother was a Kathak dancer. She left all of us at an early age. Seeing her photos where she is all dressed up in classical attire and performing Kathak, I got interested in the dance form and started pursuing it when I was in Class VIII. The thought that some day I would also look that beautiful in the classical attire, excited me a lot. Also by God’s grace, my family has that values and virtues that we are automatically inclined towards Indian culture,” she tells you.
Nishank is also associated with various social reform programmes aimed at uplifting women all over the world. Off late, she chaired the International Women Empowerment Program (IWEP) in Dubai, and for her contribution to social work and women empowerment, she was featured in Forbes Middle East. She is also globally active to promote Beti Bachao Beti Padhao, a Government initiative to save Girl Child. She also founded the Himalayan Ayurvedic Medical College and Hospital in Dehradun, Uttarkhand in 2006. She took the step to educate the youth about the benefits of Ayurveda and to create employment.
The sense of empathy strike Nishank at an early age, all thanks to her being the eldest daughter of the family. “I have two younger sisters, and everyone knows that the eldest in the family is automatically more responsible towards the family. That was the case with me. As I grew up, I became responsible towards my career and when I achieved that, I realised that I am responsible to bring in good things to our society as well. That is how I started doing all the social work,” she tells you.
What made her play an active role in women empowerment, she says, is the reason that a woman’s greatest enemy is a woman. “We all have heard the saying once in a while, but somehow we never understood its depth and essence. Gradually, when you grow up and face a lot of politics in your respective fields, you realise how true it is. I faced a lot of difficulties in my life. Sometimes when you are pretty, you are bullied, you are pushed around by other girls and people are judgemental about you because of who your parents are. Having faced all this, since a very young age, I always had this thing in the back of my mind that one day I will create a society where women will be creating synergy with each other and where one plus one will not be two but 11,” she says.
She adds that in Uttarakhand women are the bread earners of the family. “These women are the best example of women empowerment. They are so mentally and physically strong that no one can even dare to touch them. To help these women even more, we with the help of other women from different countries came up with policies at IWEP in Dubai,” she tells you.
With the help of NGOs in Uttarakhand, Nishank also helped in generating more employment opportunities for these ladies. “We used Vimal tree’s bark to make a fabric out of it. The bark was also used by these women to make baskets. This not only created employment opportunities for 800 women of Uttarakhand, but also acted as a substitute for plastic. Then we used the flowers and petals that were drained into Ganga to make scent sticks, this further gave employment to around 200 women. The numbers are small but we plan to grow even more,” Nishank tells you.
She recalls a story that she says was the introduction of women power to her: “It was my school days and I was in Rajasthan. One day, I saw a member of the hostel staff who lived nearby, she made her toddler sit on a charpayi/khat and placed a tub underneath it. She then bathed her son and utilised the water to wash her clothes and gave the remaining to the animals. She didn’t waste a single drop of water. We have been using the ornamental words like reuse and recycle for decades now, but the real essence of these words is known by our women who are doing it since eternity. That was a wake up call for me to understand a woman’s brain.”
Being a film producer, there were certain Bollywood films on Nishank’s cards which are now on hold. “Keeping in mind the current situation, all those projects are now on hold. But we are eyeing the digital space at the moment. We shall come up with something soon,” she tells you.
