“I feel like I should tell you something,” says Anita Chhiba, lowering her voice to blend in with the morning hum of busy eatery Amano in Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland’s Britomart.

The London-based founder and creative director of Diet Paratha — a global community championing the work of South Asian creatives — is back in Aotearoa for the summer, splitting much of her holiday between her home suburb of Pukekohe and the bustle of the city’s waterfront.

For the first time during our interview, the candid 33-year-old pauses to take a breath and nervously looks over both shoulders to make sure no one can hear what she’s about to say next. “I really need you to not say anything. Can you look me in the eye?”

We’ve met a month out from the launch of one of Diet Paratha’s most significant collaborations to date, and Chhiba’s project is embargoed. “It’s called Bold Steps… Can you please, please try to keep this as quiet as possible?!” After I solemnly swear, Chhiba continues. The news is big: Diet Paratha has partnered with whisky label Johnnie Walker and actor Simone Ashley of Bridgerton and Sex Education fame to support emerging South Asian creatives in Great Britain.

A short film titled Bold Steps celebrates Ashley’s barrier-breaking success and marks the launch of a competition to foster and mentor up-and-coming South Asian talent with Diet Paratha mentor and art director Manu Pillai. Directed by Diet Paratha’s all-South-Asian team, Bold Steps is a compelling call to action to embrace identity, smash cultural barriers and create social change.

“It’s not often we’re told we’re brown and brilliant and to live out our dreams, but our brown pushes boundaries — from the people, it beams,” says Ashley on screen, walking through a crowd in a bejewelled, butter-yellow two-piece ensemble. And Chhiba is beaming. It’s a reflective, emotional moment for her to share a project that’s so undeniably aligned with Diet Paratha’s mission. “It feels really good,” she says. “I’m just so grateful to have the support of RanaVerse [Johnnie Walker’s Indian-owned agency], who saw the value [in me] and knew that I was doing the work, that Diet Paratha was the place to come… and it’s so amazing to have the support of someone like Simone.”

Chhiba founded Diet Paratha in 2017. “I started sort of documenting cool stuff [on Instagram] that South Asian people were doing,” she recalls. “Initially, what that looked like was people in traditional clothing wearing, like, Nike Dunks. It wasn’t as curated [as it is now] because I hadn’t seen South Asian people do cool things before. We weren’t big on the silver screen, but on our phone screens we could really start to discover different types of people and communities that you could see yourself in, and that was so powerful,” she continues, as her iridescent chrome talons tap away at her phone.

… To be continued. 

Words: Courtney Joe
Portrait: Apela Bell