NDTV Indo-Japan Summit: Japanese Odissi Dancer, Indian Entrepreneur On Feeling Of Belongingness
One is a Japanese dancer who has lived in India for around 15 years. The other is an Indian who has spent 24 years in Japan. At an NDTV Indo-Japan Summit session titled "Life, Culture and Belonging in India and Japan", Kaori Naka, an Odissi dancer, and Nupur Tewari, founder of Connect India Japan, spoke about what it means to belong in a country other than the one they were born in. Naka said Odissi is her life. She also spoke about her early doubts. "Odissi is my life, but I have already known that I'm not Indian or Oriya, so I always struggled the feeling that, oh, I never dance like them, because I'm Japanese and my eyes are too small to express Abhinaya," she said. She added that she has since accepted who she is.
