By joe! She’s seeing Mr wright!

Anoushka Shankar breezes into the room and offers you a straight handshake. Direct and forthcoming, she even quickly bends down to move the couch on her own to a more comfortable position even though there’s help at hand, plops down on it, and says, “Okay, let’s start this!
But the ‘straight to the point’ demeanour sort of slackens when you ask her if she’s seeing someone.“Well, yeah,” she says, “He’s here with me right now.” Further prodding elicits some more info, “We...ell, he’s British, a London filmmaker.” Really, who? She toys with the idea for a while, and then spills the beans, “err... umm... It’s Joe Wright. It’s unexpected and it’s gone really fast, but I’m fully in it.”
But what does Anoushka really think about love and marriage, considering she’s said before that you don’t have to be married to have children? “I do believe in marriage, very much,” comes a vigorous reply, “But I also don’t believe it’s the only route. Love and relationships have to be defined by the people who’re in them.” So what does love mean for her? “Love’s everything. Life obviously has a lot of meaning outside of romantic relationships, but they are, I think, perhaps the most spiritual of all the relationships we have.”
As someone who describes herself as spiritual rather than religious, does she believe in all religions then, instead of following any particular one? “I think when you look at the meanings behind the words in almost any religion, you end up with the same message. So, there is a universality to the human spiritual experience. I do, in that sense, find a kinship with all religions. But I don’t really find a kinship with religion, ’coz I think it alienates people more than it brings us together. It’s a personal route we all take together.”
Anoushka grew up in three continents — she was born in London, studied in California and always shuttled between India and the States. Did she feel uprooted, or was it fun; was it both? “Well, yeah it’s both. As a child, I was given a lot by way of understanding the world, because what you’re experiencing is a much broader palette of life. But it was also very challenging. Any teenager struggles with identity, alienation, angst, and then you also throw in your cultural issues, and loneliness and travelling... there was a period when I went to two schools at the same time, in Delhi and London, and then I moved to the States!
But I wouldn’t change any of it, because it’s what’s made me who I am.” How soon was she aware that she was growing up in the household of a living legend? “I was aware from the beginning, but it didn’t affect my life very much until I was seven. That’s when my parents got married,” she says.
But when she was born her dad (Pandit Ravi Shankar) was much older than other dads. Does she think there’s a part of his life she’s missed out on? “I think there’s an arrogance on children’s parts in general, that we think we know our parents — because we just think of them as mum and dad. But they’ve all had a life before we popped up!” She laughs, “I think that’s universal, whether it’s 30 years or 60 years. There’s a life before us that most of us don’t pay any attention to. In my case, it’s the opposite. I’m lucky
because he’s Ravi Shankar. So I do have experiences of interacting with his life, with his past, with his history — my history. And the age difference between us, yeah, it would have been very challenging, but for me that’s part of the magic of being his student. It gives us a whole separate relationship; I don’t have that with anyone else.”
Having collaborated with her multiple Grammy winning half sister, Norah Jones, in her last album, are the two getting together again sometime? “Nothing is planned. Of course, my life doesn’t revolve around my sister. And the fact that we’ve collaborated together at all is more unusual than not collaborating. I don’t play with every jazz musician or pop star on the planet, do I? People ask the question just because we’re sisters, but there’s more to both of us than that.”
Meanwhile, what does she think about Hollywood values that consider celebrity to be the most supreme achievement? The obsession’s coming here gradually too... “It’s a weird obsession with celebrity that we’ve all been told is the God of this society today. So that concept of going on a reality show just to get your face on TV, just doing something shocking, so that you get written about, all of that is being encouraged. We’re losing some elements of class and integrity along the way. I sound like a really old lady!” laughs Anoushka.
She’s played for the background score of Water, and composed for a few Hollywood flicks, but what’s kept her away from the movies? She answers, “I’m very young and I’ve been performing since I was 13, recording since I was 16, but I’ve only been composing since I was 22 or so. So it’s a progression. Now I feel I’m entering a phase where composing is very attractive to me. There was a film that I almost did this year.”Could she do a mainstream Bollywood flick? “Mainstream is so different now. But, in general, I’d be more attracted to the slightly off-mainstream. I think I’m like that in life anyway.”