The Summer Season of National Radio starts on Boxing Day and will feature My Karmabhoomi, a documentary series specially commissioned by Radio NZ and produced by Sapna Samant. My Karmabhoomi translates as the land that is shaping my destiny or the place in which I play out the adventure of life.

December 26-30, 2005
11.06 am
101 FM, National RadioThe Summer Season of National Radio starts on Boxing Day and will feature My Karmabhoomi, a documentary series specially commissioned by Radio NZ and produced by Sapna Samant. My Karmabhoomi translates as the land that is shaping my destiny or the place in which I play out the adventure of life.

December 26-30, 2005
11.06 am
101 FM, National RadioSapna has migrated from her home in Bombay to Auckland and her journey home was the subject of last years' riveting Summer Season series The Homecoming. This summer Sapna explores her space in Aotearoa New Zealand and discovers New Zealand as a recent migrant and explores Khyber Pass Road and other Indian place names, the life of the Indian dairy owner and Muslim women in New Zealand.

You can also go to www.radionz.co.nz for more information.

Remember,
MY KARMABHOOMI, a radio documentary series by Sapna Samant
26-30 DECEMBER
At 11.06 a.m.
On 101 FM, NATIONAL RADIO

MY KARMABHOOMI
Lands and cultures shape destinies. Where you are born and where you live make you who you are. Sapna Samant was born in India. It is her janmabhoomi; the land of her birth. She moved to Aotearoa New Zealand in December 2001. This country is her karmabhoomi.

Sapna came to New Zealand with a return ticket and only with the intention of getting a returning resident's visa stamped on her passport. She is still here. It was not the illusion of an easy life that made her stay back but the challenges. Of course she knew she would not able to practice medicine here. Instead Sapna chose to acquire a master's degree in film, television and media studies although she suspected that New Zealand has no place for immigrant, brown-skinned wannabe artistes either. Why did she do it? Perhaps it was preordained. Or an opportunity to write her own destiny because New Zealand allowed her to.

In Sanskrit and many Indian languages, bhoomi means land. Lands offer space; lands bind people and influence them. Aotearoa New Zealand changed Sapna's life in many ways. She learnt to drive, bought her first car, flatted, grew vegetables in her garden and even cooked butter chicken for the first time! New Zealand-made butter chicken made Sapna more aware of the place of food in her life than anything else she ever ate in India. It was also in New Zealand that Sapna realised that dairies sell more than just dairy products; that they are a unique bit of Kiwiana and have stories of sacrifice and love behind them. Just like young Muslim women living in Auckland under the hijab and burkha. How does liberal New Zealand treat them? It is through the eyes of Muslim women that Sapna discovers where she stands on the feminist spectrum in New Zealand. Then there are the old Indian settlers who came to Aotearoa a long time ago and played their part in the history of this land. What they did and how they lived now affects Sapna's life too. Finally she collects pieces of her colonial past as Sapna unravels the history behind Indian place names in New Zealand.

My Karmabhoomi is a quest to explore the space of an immigrant in Aotearoa New Zealand. For Sapna, living in this country is not about a materialistically better life or just a peaceful existence. It is about being able to understand her place in the larger scheme of the universe through those she meets.