Artist who banked on living the dream

Unlike most of us who ponder packing in work to chase our dreams, Supriya decided to do something about it. The result is Manasamitra, a Dewsbury-based company supporting and promoting traditional Asian arts and artists which was established in 2006.

Supriya explained: “I’ve always been a singer, I used to do a lot at weekends and in my spare time and made many informal contacts with people doing the same thing. Then there came a time when I began questioning whether banking was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

“When things started to change at the bank, I thought, now’s my chance: if I don’t make a move now I’ll be stuck here – but what shall I do?”

What Supriya was doing already was acting as an occasional representative for some of the artists she’d met and she realised there was potential to do this on a full-time basis.

“There are many artists who have great skill, and art, but don’t necessarily have the business sense to make the most of it for themselves,” she said.

“They might not be aware, for example, that’s there’s Arts Council money available to help them with funding, or be able to negotiate deals to their best advantage.

“So I decided to set up an organisation to help them, to bring them all together and raise their profile.”

A literal translation of Manasamitra, is “medicine for the mind”, an aposite title for a body which covers the whole cultural spectrum of singing, dancing, drama and visual arts based on the traditions of India and South Asia.

However, right from the start, Supriya wanted her project to be more than, in effect, an artists’ agency – important though that function is to some of the performers under its umbrella.

Her real passion is promoting the culture itself and using the different art forms within, both as pure entertainment and as a means of delivering messages on some of the issues which affect the Asian community and wider society.

“An important theme is education; we work with schools and local communities using dancing, drama, story-telling and art workshops.”

Manasamitra now supports more than 40 artists all over UK and creates and delivers a variety of South Asian art forms from visual arts and Carnatic music to classical or contemporary dance. “I think our most popular event is when we give the audience a taste of Bollywood,” said Supriya. “All the colour, glamour, songs and bright costumes.

“It started out being a mainly Asian audience, probably because it was an extension of what they already knew, but over time the audiences have become very multicultural and I’m delighted with that.”

A high profile concert at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in 2007 with her close friend Bombay Jayashri brought a lot of national recognition in the early years. And a Journey to India, a very successful 15-day residency at the National Railway Museum in 2009 introduced a whole new audience to traditional and contemporary Indian art forms and raised the profile of the organisation.

Under the Manasamitra banner can be found up-and-coming local artists and international performers. Manasamitra is an organization which buzzes with young fresh talents and does not shy away from giving opportunity to up and coming artists.

As for Supriya herself, it might be said she was born to sing. The Bombay-raised daughter of a music graduate mother, she was encouraged to take lessons from the age of five. For 15 years she studied Carnatic singing, the traditional classical style of south-west Indian, under one of her home city’s leading music gurus, TR Balamani, and became a regular performer on All India Radio before coming to Britain where she lives with her husband and young family

Supriya is currently working on an academic paper on ragas, and the sounds and vibration of mantras in the treatment of post-natal depression.

She said: After four sessions the children in our experimental group started to identify the sounds and the mothers were evidently relaxed, their attention span increased and we had good feedback”.

Manasamitra now has a European presence with partners in Holland and Switzerland and Supriya has plans for concerts throughout Europe.

Just yesterday, to celebrate their fifth birthday Manasamitra hosted a huge music festival in Leeds, the first event of its kind in Yorskhire.

It hardly needs stating that Supriya has no regrets about leaving the world of high finance behind. “Oh no, no, no, no, no,” she laughed.

“I’m getting so much pleasure out of what I’m doing these days the 20 years at the bank seem like another life.”