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Female Firsts: Minnette De Silva · Stuff Mom Never Told You

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Smitha.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: I'm welcome to stuff I've never told you a production
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: of iHeartRadio.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Today.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: Once again we are here for an addition of Female First,
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: which means we are once again joined by the excellent
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: the Ernest Eves. Welcome Eaves. Hi.
• 0:29
  Speaker 3: Hi.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: We were discussing off mic that even though we do
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: these once a month, it feels like it's been a
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: long time since.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: We've talked to you. Yeah, what have you gotten up
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: to since? In this one month?
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  Speaker 4: Eve has been.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Kind of boring.
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: I haven't been even doing my normal routine things, but
• 0:51
  Speaker 3: I've just because I've been going back and forth between
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: writing and reading and writing and reading and then every
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: odd time like watching a film or I want one, like.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: To the theater the other day. But yeah, like I
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: have not been getting up to lunch.
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: I mean, if, like, if writing is interesting to you,
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: then there's that.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: But that's it.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: Sometimes you need those times, I think.
• 1:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it's honestly been It's been a welcome situation.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: It's not for lack.
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: Of like having things I want to do, because there
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: are things that I haven't done here that I'm like, like,
• 1:32
  Speaker 3: I'm like, I really want to hike, and I've been
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: like forcing myself to stay inside because I have a
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: tendency to be like to reach out to people. I'm
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: a reacher outer, like I will reach out and be
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: like do you want to do this thing? Or like
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: I've found out about this thing, do you want to
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: do it with me? And the other day I was
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: talking to my husband, I was like, yeah, I'm staying
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: in sick's all I'm doing YadA, YadA YadA. And then
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: I was like, you know, if this person invited me out,
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: then I would go somewhere with.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: Them and lo and behold.
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: It was because I spoke that person up, they reached
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: out to me that night and were like, do you
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: want to go to this thing with me this week?
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: I was like shit, shit. I was like, this was
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: my doing.
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: Like if I hadn't said that, wow, they wouldn't have
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: reached out to me, because in my mind, I was like,
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: it's not until the end of May that I will
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: be doing anything, So I'm not going to reach out
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: to anybody until June one or after.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: So yeah, my lack of updates.
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: About things I've been doing since I last spoke with
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: y'all is is a positive thing because it means that
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: I've been disciplined and the boundaries that I've created about
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: around my creativity and work.
• 2:49
  Speaker 4: It takes a lot to actually be committed to that.
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it does, especially when like I wake up every
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: morning and then I go open my curtains and I
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: see this like huge mountain and I'm like, I want
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: to go climb that.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: Outside the window, Like yeah, hike would be great.
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: And it's not like I can't have those things. It's
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: just like, you know, there's a little bit of for me.
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: I mean, this is a whole other story, y'all. I
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: won't even get this is a different topic. But like
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: I do partake in austerities purposefully, like often, like there
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: are things I commit myself to and it might be
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: a little overboard, but it works for me and how
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: my brain works and how I like to like boundary
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: set and create rigidity because I need rigidity in a
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: lot of ways. Because there's a lot of y'all. I mean,
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: y'all know we've we talked a month after month. There's
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: a lot of things that are also very spontaneous and
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: like just weird and frolicky in my life.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: So yeah, it can be.
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: Hard but I find that it always pays off.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, And I've always appreciated that about you, Eaves.
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  Speaker 2: I feel like you're somebody who sets goals and then
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: accomplishes them.
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  Speaker 1: Thank you. I was.
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: I'm fanning myself now everyone because I was writing about
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: this in my journal. I have some thoughts about this
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: about myself, so I'll save that for my diary.
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  Speaker 1: But yeah, I will say it's a trait for me.
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: I think sometimes for better or for worse sometimes, but yeah,
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  Speaker 3: it's definitely a lifelong part of my character.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I can see that.
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  Speaker 2: I also I am very like I have a strict schedule,
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: and there are pluses and minuses to it, because on
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: the one hand, I'm usually never the person who's like, Okay,
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: we I didn't make the deadline. But on the other hand,
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: sometimes it would be better for whatever I'm working on
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: if I was just trying to get it done, yeah,
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: to meet the deadline. So yeah, I totally get that
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: that makes sense. I wanted to ask, this is a
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: silly question, and then the answer might be nothing, okay,
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: but what is it? I was thinking about the person
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: we're talking about today, and I was trying to connect
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: to my own kind of experiences, and I was thinking
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: about those projects in like middle school and high school
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  Speaker 2: where you had to build like a bridge with only
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: toothpicks and glue, or you had to make it a
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: cage for eggs only out of straws and then drop
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: it off a roof and.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: See if the egg made it.
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: Did either of you have something like that and how
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: did it go for you?
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  Speaker 5: So I do remember doing this our industrial arts teacher,
• 6:00
  Speaker 5: which is what it was called when I was taking it,
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  Speaker 5: he had us do the bridge with the It wasn't
• 6:07
  Speaker 5: tooth picks. It was definitely those what are those sticks? Anyway,
• 6:12
  Speaker 5: it was specific to architectural like designs like we had those.
• 6:16
  Speaker 5: My bridge did not last I did. It did not
• 6:19
  Speaker 5: do well. It didn't hold a lot of weight. However,
• 6:22
  Speaker 5: we also had to do an paper plane thing to
• 6:24
  Speaker 5: see who's plane.
• 6:26
  Speaker 4: I wanted mine in a ball and it fell it
• 6:27
  Speaker 4: wait very very far. I won that.
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  Speaker 5: You know, I was not good at anything else, but
• 6:33
  Speaker 5: I'm very creative in that way.
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  Speaker 3: You wanted it in a ball, and that's why I
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: went farther because yeah, mass and all those things. Yeah,
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: I feel like this is one of those. Yeah, this
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: is one of those. Do you know those like challenges
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: that people will put on social media that they'll go
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: to some sort of public place and they'll have some
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: like you gotta grab this from the box or like
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  Speaker 3: pick up this weight, and it'll be like some some
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: trick to it.
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  Speaker 1: Essentially like this reminds me of that.
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  Speaker 5: Oh yeah, he appreciated my creativity, like he didn't disqualify me,
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  Speaker 5: So I'll say.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: That, Uh that's fun.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I I don't remember doing I remember them being
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: class projects, but I don't remember how I performed in
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: any of them. Like I don't remember ever building the bridge.
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: I remember those toothpicks being around.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: Samantha. You sound like you went to a rich place
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: because y'all had the real architecte. I feel like we
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: had those.
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  Speaker 3: Not only were they toothpicks, they were like the colored ones,
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: which is like they would add the color and it
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: would be like wearing off of the toothpicks.
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  Speaker 5: Wed there was only one high school in our whole area,
• 7:47
  Speaker 5: in our whole county.
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  Speaker 1: I like it.
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  Speaker 5: Well, they also only put money in like sports, and
• 7:53
  Speaker 5: the only sports we had were basketball and football and uh.
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  Speaker 4: Baseball, So they really they just didn't like we had
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  Speaker 4: like three.
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  Speaker 5: Ap classes, so they just dispersed money in odd places.
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  Speaker 4: And apparently one of the most industrial.
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  Speaker 3: Arts that was gonna say was that which if if
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  Speaker 3: if that's the case, was that y'all school thing like
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  Speaker 3: industrial arts?
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  Speaker 4: No, it was our school thing. Was the f f A.
• 8:21
  Speaker 5: Actually that's what I just remembered, Like they put a
• 8:25
  Speaker 5: lot more money in the f f A and ah,
• 8:28
  Speaker 5: you know for equal rights and all.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, tender right, sure, ye justified somehow.
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  Speaker 4: Any did you have to do this?
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  Speaker 2: Yes, I'm shocked Eaves that you either did well enough
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: that this left no impact on you and you don't remember,
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: because I feel like they either go really well or
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: really really poorly. And that's been my experience, and they
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: cause you a lot of pain. With the toothpick bridge,
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: I would destroyed myself if I could at the end,
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: I could care less about the grade, I would have
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: destroyed it myself. The egg saying that costs like a
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: town uproar because all everybody was going to McDonald's and
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: stealing all their straws, I guess, so they would have
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: no straws left. I still think I was robbed of
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: a win for that one. But they were stressful experiences
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: is my main takeaway. Uh that bridge, man, I know,
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: so no, no, no, that made me remember. I don't
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: know why this triggered my memory in this way. This
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: might be a met life crisis thing because this happened
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: to me the other day when I remember something randomly
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  Speaker 2: from my childhood that I did in school that I
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: totally forgot about. But we did do those rue Goldberg machines.
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  Speaker 3: I remember doing that once in a class, and I
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  Speaker 3: don't remember how it went or if it was like
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: an entire class team building thing or if it was
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: because I feel like this is probably my gift to
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: day class, so it could have been because it was
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: like a smaller group, or if like it was like.
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  Speaker 1: A singular person doing a thing.
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: But I do remember that being a thing, So that's
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  Speaker 3: also similar in the way it's like building a thing
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: with being resourceful using materials, simple materials.
• 10:28
  Speaker 4: We didn't have that. I just remember doing a task
• 10:33
  Speaker 4: about roller coasters, but I think that was for physics.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: We did that to potential kinetic energy.
• 10:40
  Speaker 4: And then we went to six Flags as a field trip.
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah we did.
• 10:43
  Speaker 4: That's the only reasons.
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: It's such a Georgia. It's such a Georgia thing to put. Yeah,
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: put that in quotes.
• 10:53
  Speaker 5: Because we know why. We were like, again, what did
• 10:56
  Speaker 5: we really do? We had a paper and be like
• 10:58
  Speaker 5: do this math. We're like, okay, the ones market. I
• 11:01
  Speaker 5: was also also triggered a memory that in industrial arts
• 11:06
  Speaker 5: I was partnered with someone who I knew was really
• 11:08
  Speaker 5: good at things like that.
• 11:12
  Speaker 4: Uh huh, So I used that to my advantage. I
• 11:14
  Speaker 4: was so odd kid.
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: Apparently, no, that's how teams work, Samantha skills.
• 11:23
  Speaker 4: I relied on my personality a lot in high school.
• 11:27
  Speaker 3: I think and about that that is a great skill
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: to have in the contemporary day.
• 11:33
  Speaker 5: So yeah, oh man, memories any to be pulled up
• 11:40
  Speaker 5: something for both of us.
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: Apparently this is fantastic because I was trying to specifically
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: focus on like because we could go on and on
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: about or at least I could about projects at school
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: when you had to build something. But I was trying
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: to think about more architecturally relevant projects. But I do
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: love yeah, that this has opened up some some thoughts,
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: some memories.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: Idea build a house. Oh yes, yes.
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: In my Gift to Day class, we we that was
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: one of our projects was to build a house. Like
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: we had they took us somewhere and they showed us
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: how to put the wall up and how to put
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: the roof up. It wasn't it was a small house
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: like a shd Like they were showing us how to
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: do the small like tasks that were required of the thing.
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  Speaker 3: But that's totally relevant, isn't it like.
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  Speaker 4: Skills?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a good skill. And so I vividly remember
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: that day and going to do that.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was.
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: It was fun like to do something hands on like
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: that too, to like actually get out there.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: And as a team do that.
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: That is fascinating. We never did anything like that, but
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: that sounds really cool. Well, that does transition into the
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: person we're talking about today, who Architecture is not even
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: like the main thing, I would say, but a big
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: part of what we're going to talk about. Who are
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: we discussing today, Eves.
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  Speaker 3: Today we're talking about Minette da Silva, who was the
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: first Asian woman to be an associate of the Royal
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: Institute of British Architects and generally she's just been kind
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: of called Sri Lanka's first woman architect, like right after
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: British rule ended, she was one of it was already
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: not that many architects there, and she was one of
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: the first to be practicing right after the end of
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: British rule in what was then called Ceylon which is
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: now Sri Lanka.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, and she she really did quite a bit. And
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: I found I liked, I found some differing accounts on
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: like her personality that I found really interesting.
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, we'll be able to I feel like, yes,
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: about women that happened often seemed to have been applied
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: to the way people treated her and spoke with her
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: and spoke about her. And I do think it's interesting. Yes, yeah,
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: So shall we get into it, Yes, let's do that.
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: So.
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  Speaker 3: Manette de Silva was born in nineteen eighteen in Candy, which,
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: like I said, was then called Ceylon at the time
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: it was colonized by the British. And Manette was the
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: fourth of five children. Her father was George da Silva,
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: who was a Senileese journalist and lawyer. And I mean
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: he was he was up through politics like he was,
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: had these connections and you know, he he worked his
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: way up to become a member of the Legislative Council
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: and things like that. And her mother was Anya's Da
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: Silva and she designed the family home that they call
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: Saint George's.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: And you know when a home has a name, it's fancy.
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: Saint George's was the name of that home, and that
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: was on the outskirts of Candy. Now they seemed too
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: they were doing fine. And the mother was a so
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: called Burger and so she had this like Eurasian descent.
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: So that's that's her ethnic background. That's Menest' ethnic background.
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: But it didn't seem like it was like it wasn't
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: like total silver spoon in the mouth situation.
• 15:34
  Speaker 5: It was like.
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: They were doing fine, and she had a lot of
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: opportunities based on who she was around. And there were
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: a lot of people coming through the house, like there
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: was talk about Gandhi and later she was friends with
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: Darra Gandhi and the Nahrws and all these things.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: So there were names around for sure.
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: They were connected to all these big shots, and that
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: included the politician side, but also some of that artist's
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: side too. And when her parents went to London to
• 16:06
  Speaker 3: have meetings with politicians, they brought Manette with them and
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: they put her in the boarding school there and she
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: went to school in Brighton from nineteen twenty nine to
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: nineteen thirty one and fast forward. By nineteen thirty nine
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: she had told her family that she wanted.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: To be an architect.
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: There are a lot of things she could have been
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: inspired by. Obviously, she was already seeing a lot of
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: the world and was around these like you know, big
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: shot artists. But she might have also been inspired by
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: her sister in law Esme, who studied at the Slade
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: in London, which is this art school and visited the
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: Boo House. And her sister in law, es Man, also
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: designed her own house in the late nineteen thirties. Yeah,
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: so her inspiration could have come from a lot of places,
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: but it it seemed like her parents weren't really into it.
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: But they still actually support her and told her she
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: could go pursue her dreams. And so they let her
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: work with an architect in Colombo, which is in what
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: was it in Ceylon, then to enroll in a private
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: school of architecture in what was then Bombay now Mumbai.
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: So she was at that private school and then she
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: went to a government school and she was expelled from
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: that school apparently for being involved in the Quit India movement,
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: which was against the British Raj so she ended up
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: being a student there in Bombay from nineteen forty to
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: nineteen forty three. Then she went to Mysore. After that
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: she worked under Otto Koenigsberger, who was a refugee from
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: Nazi Germany, and under him she worked on the planning
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: of Tatanagar, which is a city in eastern India. And
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: she and her older sister Anil ended up being founding
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: members of the Modern Architecture Research Group or MARK for short,
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: and they were instrumental in establishing this journal for the
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: organization that was about modern architecture. And we'll talk in
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: a minute about like she wrote stuff for the journal,
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: but it continued on after she wasn't, you know, involved
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: in anymore. But she left India and she went to
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: London in nineteen forty five to study at the Architectural Association.
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: She had an apartment when she was there in Seville Row.
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: And there has been mentioned, I mean, I mean the
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: whole exotaization, that's a difficult word, exotaization, that thing, exota
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: sizing of her. She's like this thing, that thing, yeah,
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: y'all know what I'm talking about, orientalizing, fetishizing, kind of
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: just putting her on a pedestal for you know, her
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: being different kind of being, this this Eastern princess essentially
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: seemed to kind of come into play here because she
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: would do things like wear flowers in her hair and sorryes.
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: And so I've seen some quotes from some articles that
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: we're talking about that kind of juxtaposition of cultural identifications happening,
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: this like post war idea of the color being sucked
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: out of everything, and you know her being the one
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: to bring this colorful easternness. I mean, and if I
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: mean colorful, the idea of colorfulness is always like a signifier,
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: a signpost for the other ring of people.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: And the things that they do.
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: So yeah, I was, I was having a lot of
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: those visions when I was going back through her her legacy.
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: But I mean she did she You know, if you
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: go look at you can see photos of her and
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: you'll see her wearing her sorry isn't working. But yeah,
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: So she had her apartment there, and in nineteen forty
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: six she visited Paris and she met the architectural designer
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: Le Cobrusier Le Corbusier.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: I'm having difficulty with See.
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: My name is French, but I am not, so I
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: always have to qualify that I'm just pretend French because
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: my name isn't even pronounced correctly. But yes, So she
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: finished her studies. Well, I will say about him though
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: she had she had this correspondence with him over time,
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: and there was speculation about their relationship being something more
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: than platonic, but he never admitted to that. She never
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: really talked about that, but they did continue their like
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: friendship over time and their correspondence with each other. And
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: it's just kind of like an indicative of the connections
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: that she had with these big names and who she
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: was in rooms with and who she was like, you know,
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: able to cut network so cause she has been said
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: to be like a great networker and that was really
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: helpful for her in her career. But she finished her
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: studies at the Architectural Association in nineteen forty eight, and
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: it was at this point that she became the first
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: Asian woman to be an associate in the Royal Institute
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: of British Architects. So Manette she really wanted to stay
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: in London, but her parents were.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: Like, no, come back home.
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: She came back to Candy and she continued her practice
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: there from the family home and from nineteen forty eight
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: to nineteen fifty one she was working on her first
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: commission project, which was the Kurunaratana House in Candy and you.
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: Can see the for this house.
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: There were also there are also pictures of the house
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: that you can see, and it was meant to be
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: designed for this like modern Buddhist Sinhalese family, so to
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: make room for their Buddhist traditions that they had, but
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: also like it was meant to be lived in like
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: in the modern times. So that house has since been destroyed,
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: but it was like this early example for her outlook
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: on architecture, so that there could be this like synergy
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: between the modern design and the traditional concepts and practices
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: in the context of.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: The environment that they were in.
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: And in nineteen fifty three she wrote this article in
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: Mark talking about the house as so called modern regional
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: architecture in the tropics, and that's where this idea. If
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: you look up Manette Silva, you'll see her highly associated
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: with this idea of modern regionalism and it was an.
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: Idea that was ahead of its time and.
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: Speaking of and is a tale as old as time
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: of the woman having ideas and oftentimes it wasn't even
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: like this where it was documented, where it was cemented
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: in this magazine. It was just kind of like she
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: said it or she you know it was. People knew
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: who this idea came from, this concept came from, but
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: we don't have proof of it. In this case, we
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: can see Manette da Silva talking about her ideas about
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: modern regionalism, and later on there were other men who
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: were in architectural profession who kind of expounded on this
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: same idea, but she was already talking about it a
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: decade plus before. This idea later became known as critical regionalism,
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: but it was based around her concept and just intimation
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: around how in her design she would use this mix
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: of modern construction materials and local materials, so you know,
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: there would be cement, but there will also be would
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: and she would incorporate like local artisans working, and then
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: she would have artists from the area. There were murals,
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: and then there was bamboo incorporated in the design. So
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: it was a mixture of these materials, but also there
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: was thoughtful design around you know, how a home was
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: built to allow drafts to enter, to allow cooling to
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: happen in the house, and there was in some of
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: her projects, talks about what kind of material the roof could.
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: Be made out of or should be made out of.
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: So it was a lot of interesting mixes between the
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: traditional and the modern, and that was a big part
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: of what she was is about. So the first house
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: that she designed in Colombo for the pieris family that
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: had an open courtyard and that was influenced by earlier
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: Sri Lankan architecture and that showed up in her later.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: Designs that she did too.
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: In nineteen fifty seven, she also designed the Sanenayake Flats
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: in Colombo, which were ten apartments and each one had
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: its own garage.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: And that one, if you.
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: Look at the architecture, is like a lot of cement
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: like curves, and it was just about how to bring
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: this modern element into the way people were living in
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: Colombo at the time, and she thought about things like cost.
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: She kept things in mind like indigenous building techniques. And
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: her practice grew a lot during the nineteen fifties, so
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: a lot of it was private homes, but she also
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: traveled a lot and that had a negative effect on
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: how she was present for her clients. And so this
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: is where this is where we were getting to what
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: you were talking about Annie Yeah with how yeah, how
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: people spoke about her like they would say that she
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: was abrasive, that she was hard to work with. A
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: client would want something and she would be like no,
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: like I don't want that, so it's not going to happen,
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: Like she's been stubborn about certain things being done if
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: the request was something that she wasn't into, and that
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: she could be kind of unmoving on those things.
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: So there was that element of it.
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: And then there was also people talking about how she
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: would be in Europe a lot. So while she was
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: practicing her practice was in Sri Lanka, she was off
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: in Europe. And there was one article that I read
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: by author Sheromi Pinto that I think provided other perspective
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: on that, which is just that Europe was kind of
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: a refuge for her when things got overwhelming. So I mean,
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: I'm just imagining her being in this male dominated space
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: that was architectural design in Sri Lanka and then having
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: all this community that she built up in England that
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: seemed to be a support network around her that wasn't
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: just about.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: The share glitz and glam of it all.
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: It was like she had artists that she could talk
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: to and that she corresponded with lovingly that seemed to
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: provide like an emotional support system for her. On top
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: of you know, there were industry meetings that she was
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: going to there as well, of course, but you know,
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: it wasn't just about that, And so I think it's
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: it might be fair that a person's experience with her
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: is that they might not have thought that she was
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: as president as she should be, But it's also unfair
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: for the people who around her, who aren't even necessarily
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: her clients, talking about her just going off to Europe,
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: because it was something that was a support to her,
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: that was clearly meaningful and probably helpful to her. And
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: when we get into our legacy, I'll talk a little
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: bit more about that too, because I feel like that's
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: there's a broader conversation just about like how women are
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: spoken about and regarded because they're women in this kind
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: of industry. So we'll get back to that. But David Robson,
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: who was a profession of architecture, and he had met Manette,
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: and he lived in a house that she designed, and
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: in his lectures and in his writings, he's talked about
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: Jeffrey Bawa being kind of this like foil slash adversary
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: to her. So if you're like, if you're reading her,
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: if you're looking at her life as you know, as
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: this fictional story, it would kind of seem like that's
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: who Jeffrey Bawa is, Like this is an antagonist in
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: the story in a way. So that that's for a
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: couple of reasons. Like, for instance, one of the architects
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: that she hired, his name was Orric Pleasner.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: He worked with her.
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: He wrote this, apparently I haven't read it, but this
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: weird book and she was mentioned in it, like he
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: detegrated her in this book, and it's some weird accusations
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: and rumor stuff happening in there. But apparently it's this
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: like fantastic autobiographical situation. So take that as for what
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: you will. But this guy, Orrick Plesner, left to work
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: with Bawa in Colombo and they became quite successful. So
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: even though he had spoke down on her, Pleasner and
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: his book he wrote, it was clear that he had
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: learned a lot from Manette, and so also Pleasanner and
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: Bawa were undoubtedly influenced by her designs based on the
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: work they were doing, and her writings about this modern regionalism,
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: and they were clearly influenced by that and Robson that
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: professor I mentioned. He also points out how during one
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: period she kind of watered down her work and drew
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: influence from Bawa before returning back to her confidence style.
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: But like Bawa also.
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: Drew influence from her, So there was this like, I
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: don't know if I would call it a full on
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: like friction, but there was some back and forth, like
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: some ping pong action happening there. So in the nineteen fifties,
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: Salon was also this hot spot for filmmakers, and she
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: connected with people like Laurence Olivier, his wife, Vivian Lee,
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: and David Lean and all these people. So she's continued
• 31:00
  Speaker 3: to bump shoulders and elbows with these names, and she's
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: also continuing to speak out about her theories. In nineteen
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: sixty five or nineteen sixty six, she expounded on them
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: in her writing again in another essay call Experiments in
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: Modern Regional Architecture. But around that time, so the mid sixties,
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: she was already facing illness and depression because her mother
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: had died in nineteen sixty two, so her career took
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: a downturn in the nineteen sixties. Clients let her go
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: and new clients didn't commission her, and by the end
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: of the sixties her projects had really really seriously slowed down.
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: This could also be connected to the fact that it
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: was private homes for the easiest commissions for her to get.
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: She did.
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: She got a lot more private homes to and then
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: to be built. Then she did some of the commercial
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: projects that she could have worked on.
• 32:09
  Speaker 5: And so.
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: In nineteen seventy three, she after a series of events
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: and connections.
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: She ended up moving to London.
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: She got a job as a lecturer at the University
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: of Hong Kong. She went there lectured for a time,
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: and then nineteen eighty she ended up going back to Candy,
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: and she wanted to go back to her architectural practice
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: because in that period, you know, between her lecturing and
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: her career taking a downturn in Sri Lanka, she wasn't
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: really like her practice wasn't as robust.
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: So when she went back.
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: To Candy in nineteen eighty, she got back into her practice.
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: She wasn't working at the pace she used to, but
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: she did design three more buildings, and I just want
• 33:05
  Speaker 3: to It's a very specific point, but it's just something
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: I noticed when I'm going through these biographies about people,
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: and it's even more apparent when I'm reading these biographies
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: about women. But just there's this positioning of things that
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: are happening later in life, like but she couldn't do
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: as many more in the end. It's kind of like
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: a unfortunately she wasn't working as much anymore in the end.
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: And I just want to say to everybody who's reading
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: these biographies and they get to a point in somebody's
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: history and they see something like, oh, by the end
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: of her life, or like, you know, once she got older,
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: like you know, she couldn't operate at the pace, she
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: couldn't produce at the pay she did anymore. And I
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: just I want to highlight that because I want people
• 33:57
  Speaker 3: to think about that when they're reading it and see
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: how that like placed from a standpoint of thinking that
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: people's value is lessened when there when their rate of
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: production is lessened, also kind of makes it seem like
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: that wasn't their choice to decrease their productivity later in life.
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: It could just be like I didn't want to do
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: that much anymore. It's not because I've failed to do
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: that much anymore, or I failed to do this many things.
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: It's nothing wrong with not being prolific. If you know,
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: if you're doing what you want to do, then that's fine.
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: So that's just some like kind of a semantic like
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: a language thing that I think can be important to
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: point out for people. Since we're talking about all these
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: women's biographies, it's probably something that people run into when
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: they're going back into these histories. But she did design
• 34:50
  Speaker 3: three more buildings, and her last building was the Sarah
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: Wartna House, and the man who owned the house was
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: part of the Peer family, which I talked about earlier,
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: because they had commissioned her work for houses before, and
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: she designed that home, but another architect built it. And
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: at this point in her life she's in the Saint
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: George's Home and it was in disrepair though, so oh
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: that was still a house with a name. She wasn't
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: able to take care of it as well. Because throughout
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: this time, it's not like she's rolling in the dough.
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: She is, you know, she doesn't have that much money
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: at this point, but she is thinking about her legacy
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: and her family is also thinking about her legacy, and
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: she does have some support and like the pursuit of
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: documenting that legacy. In nineteen ninety three, her sister and
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: Neil got three postcrad architecture students to take pictures of
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: Manette's buildings for her autobiography, but Manette in the end
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: she got them to hand over the film and before
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: they left it disappeared. It was gone, never to be
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: seen again, so no record of that. But in nineteen
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: ninety six, the Sri Lanka Institute of Architects awarded her
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: as Gold Medal finally because they had already given it
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: to Babwa more than a decade prior.
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: And she died in.
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: November of nineteen ninety eight. She was eighty years old.
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: She died in Candy and man I really don't just
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: when you see her story, you'll see how kind of
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: sad it feels at the end of her life because
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: of how it's spoken about, how she felt kind of forgotten,
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: like or just not that well attended to at that point.
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: And there was a quote from Manette.
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: Where she talks about how she wants people to like
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: visit her while she's alive rather than like coming to
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: her funeral, but she was in the hospital leading up
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: to her death, and at that time apparently people had
• 37:05
  Speaker 3: like taken things from her home and from her studios,
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: so some family members getting some things, but also apparently
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: neighbors getting things, so art works by you know, famous people,
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: and drawings and letters and furniture and even like structural
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: parts of the building like doors and things like that
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: were taken. But the project that she had been working
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: on leading up to the end of her life, that
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: the Postgrast students had came to help her work on,
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: she did write stuff for it, and she did choose
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: images for it, and that turned into this scrapbook style
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: work that is called The Life and Work of an
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: Asian Woman Architect. But that was published right after she died,
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: so she wasn't able to publish it before she died,
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: and unfortunately it wasn't really edited much so, and it
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: was also volume one with an intended volume two, and
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: the volume two is nowhere to be seen. So yeah,
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: there's a lot to be desired, as you could imagine.
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: And you know, it's sad because over the course of
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: her life she created many, many designs, and out of
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: those designs, it was only so many, so not every
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: design actually comes to fruition in terms of turning into
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: an actual building. But she built over a dozen homes,
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: apartment built, she built a couple apartment buildings, housing development,
• 38:25
  Speaker 3: and some public buildings. And today, even though she had
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: all those designs, that's one huge chunk. And then that
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: gets narrower in terms of what was actually built. That
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: gets even narrower in terms of what's still standing today.
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: And even if like in some cases there was what
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: was still standing and what was destroyed, it was only
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: pieces of it that was still standing Saint George's as well,
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: that home was also destroyed, land was sold. But there
• 38:54
  Speaker 3: are efforts today to continue to document and research her life,
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: legacy and preserve her works.
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: So that is.
• 39:06
  Speaker 3: That is Bennette de Silva's life, And I guess now
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: would be a good time to bring up the whole
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: kind of like commentary about the commentary about her abrasiveness.
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: Of course, if a woman is taking an authoritative position,
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: if she is the head of something, if she's hiring people,
• 39:29
  Speaker 3: if she's in a male dominated feeling, she's early on
• 39:32
  Speaker 3: in it. Like this is post war and post British
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: raj like it's just so much that's happening, and then
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: conceptions of like what women should be doing, can be
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: doing and are doing, and all those colliding at once,
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: and with the background of these huge societal pressure points,
• 39:57
  Speaker 3: it makes sense that people will be like abrasive. But
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: Manette herself did also talk about how she remembers specific
• 40:08
  Speaker 3: instances of like she was like, yeah, I can't remember
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: what the what the actual job was, but she says
• 40:14
  Speaker 3: something like, yeah, they wanted this kind of roof and
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: I didn't want this roof, and like, I remember I
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: said that, and like I really probably shouldn't have said that.
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: I was probably being a little more harsh than I
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: should have been.
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: I think it was Robson who was talking and electro
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: I was watching and talking about how she was like
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: like somebody came up to her and one of her
• 40:35
  Speaker 3: clients asked her, Yeah, this thing is like there are
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: holes in this so there's water coming into the house,
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: and so what do I do about it?
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: You need to change this, and she was like, well.
• 40:45
  Speaker 3: Get them up, And you know, that's kind of how
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: she could be with some people. So there's also an
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: argument to be made about like her that kind of
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: authoritativeness is a necessity when you're a woman in general,
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: especially when you're a woman in a male dominated field
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: and building this like new lane for yourself to not
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: equivocate and to be certain about the things you're doing,
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: to make sure that people take you seriously, to make
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: sure that people know you know what you're talking about.
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: It's a protective measure. And I don't you know, I'm
• 41:29
  Speaker 3: always going to be weary when I see that, even
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: if there is truth to that being just somebody's personality,
• 41:35
  Speaker 3: because that could be anybody's personality, no matter what year
• 41:38
  Speaker 3: it is and no matter what gender you are. So yeah,
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: but I'm sure y'all have come across a lot of
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: commentary like that and everything that you research to Oh. Yes,
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: I mean, when I was just glancing over who we
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: were talking about today, there are certain words when I
• 41:57
  Speaker 3: see them used to describe women immediately like I don't
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: know about that.
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: I don't know about that.
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: And she had a lot of accounts of her being
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: abrasive or like not friendly enough, things like that, And
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: I mean, this is a huge conversation, but two of
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: the main points that stood out to me with this
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: is one one of my most hated tropes, but the
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: myth of the male genius, who we allow to be
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: a complete pole, but we praise him because.
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: He's a genius.
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: Well he can, he's right, whatever it is, and usually
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: white male genius. And when women try to do that,
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: they are punished, they are unfriendly, they are abrasive.
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: It's the same.
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: But also on top of that, women get advice that
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: is so contradictory of you should be more friendly, you
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: should do like X, Y Z when you go to negotiate,
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: here's what you do, and it's usually to act more
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: like men. But when women do it, like the traditional
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: male yeah, like yeah, when women do it, it is, Oh,
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: she's abrasive. I don't don't work with her.
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: It's just frustrating.
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: It's one of those things that yes, I immediately was like,
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: I bet he's just gonna tell us about this situation.
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: And with Bawa, it was that was kind of like
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: a thing.
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: No nobody complained if people would have any sort of
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: experience with him where they felt like he was being
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: a little too direct or a little too harsh in
• 43:43
  Speaker 3: his language. And that's just kind of accepted as as
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: what he does. But I think that also kind of
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: just you know, highlights a little bit of that that swing,
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: that ping pong situation that happening because he was kind
• 43:58
  Speaker 3: of on the up and up as she was as
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: her career was slowing down, and so he was just
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: a little bit younger than her, but he was more
• 44:06
  Speaker 3: like a decade behind in his actual schooling. Oh that
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: made me remember something, But I'll put a pin in
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: that because it had to do with time. But the
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: other point I want to make about that is that
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: I think there's also an ethnic and cultural layer added
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: to this, because I think there could have been some
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: expectation of like for her to be that is even
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: more enhanced for her to be like ingratiating or subservient
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: because of how they perceived her. Outsiders perceived her because
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: of her dress and her ethnicity. So I think, you
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: know that that can be an added layer to how
• 44:46
  Speaker 3: how you meet someone's expectations when you show up and
• 44:49
  Speaker 3: you say no, I'm not doing this, and they're like,
• 44:52
  Speaker 3: but you should say yes to everything I say, or
• 44:55
  Speaker 3: but you shouldn't speak to me like that, like tell
• 44:57
  Speaker 3: me a little softer.
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: So yeah, I do think that's interesting.
• 45:03
  Speaker 3: But the other thing I wanted to say is that
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: she's started, you know, her career kind of started after
• 45:12
  Speaker 3: her thirties and you know a little bit later. And
• 45:14
  Speaker 3: so often we'll see this.
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: Atwo eye.
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: I'll speak for myself. I know we've talked about it before,
• 45:21
  Speaker 3: but just like you're like, dang, you did so much
• 45:23
  Speaker 3: and you're only twenty two, like you did all of
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: this and your legacy so long, and you know, and
• 45:29
  Speaker 3: that can often be the case in these female first
• 45:31
  Speaker 3: episodes that we do. But I just appreciate it seeing like,
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: you know, she got support from her parents. She was
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: able to make use of her connections even though she
• 45:43
  Speaker 3: didn't have all the advantages in the world. So another
• 45:46
  Speaker 3: thing about this Bahwa guy was that he had an
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: advantage of where he could kind of pay to play
• 45:52
  Speaker 3: a little bit. Like he he got immediately into a
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: firm in Colombo, and her she didn't really have that,
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: Like she you know, worked with these local artists and
• 46:01
  Speaker 3: she wasn't able to immediately kind of skip.
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: Some skip these steps. And so he had access in.
• 46:08
  Speaker 3: A kind of more in a larger way right from
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: the jump that he had an advantage. So she was
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: really working against a lot, like you know, she was
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: really like the context of the time, her gender, you know,
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: the schooling, all of these things.
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I once again I think this would be a
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: fantastic HBO mini series. Oh yeah, because you've got so
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: many like the cast of characters she was interacting with,
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: You've got a rival, like, you've got a potential maybe
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: maybe not love interest.
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: I mean no, seriously, I could see it as a
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: limited series at dramatization of her life. As a limited series.
• 46:55
  Speaker 3: She's she's I mean, come on, strong female lead. Come on,
• 47:00
  Speaker 3: I'm waiting for Manila folder to be slammed on somebody's table,
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: like please, maybe we need we need to take action. Yeah,
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: there's a real situation room picture if you go look
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: up of like her in the middle of a bunch
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: of dudes like chatting it up, talking about a thing,
• 47:22
  Speaker 3: handling business. It's good, it's good. And I mean the
• 47:26
  Speaker 3: sets would be great, yes, because of the homes that
• 47:32
  Speaker 3: she built were so wonderful.
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: Yes, And like you said, you can find pictures of
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: her and some of the stuff she's done, so you
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: can start visualizing this mini series for your self. Listeners,
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: you would like yes, yes, Well, thank you so much
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: as always Eves for bringing this story to us.
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: Where can the good listeners find you?
• 47:59
  Speaker 3: Y'all just go directly to my website, which is Eves
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: jeffcot dot com. I will spell it y V E
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: S J E F F C A T dot com
• 48:09
  Speaker 3: And from there you can get to all the other things,
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: sign up for my email list, you can get to
• 48:13
  Speaker 3: my YouTube channel. You can also find my Instagram on there.
• 48:16
  Speaker 3: But if you want to go directly to that, I
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: am at not apologizing, and you can connect with me
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: there and tell me how you felt about Minetta Silva story, Like,
• 48:26
  Speaker 3: tell me something if you're going to connect with me
• 48:28
  Speaker 3: over there, about any other other women that we've talked
• 48:31
  Speaker 3: about on Female First here on Sminty where we talk
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: about women who had pioneering accomplishments in history. Yes, if
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: you haven't done any of that, listeners, go ahead and
• 48:43
  Speaker 3: do it.
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: I will.
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: I have to tell you Eves is a wonderful conversation partner.
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: I'm assuming digitally as well. But yes, I think it
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: would be an excellent conversation if you reached out with
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: your thoughts about any of the Female First So go
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: do that.
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: I recommend it.
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: If you would like to contact us, you can our
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: email us Hello at Stuffmenever Told You dot Com. We're
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: also in Blue Sky at mom Stuff podcast and on
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: Instagram and TikTok and stuff We Never Told You.
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: We're also on YouTube.
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: We have some merchandise ac cop Bureau, and we have
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: a book you can get wherever you get your books.
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: Thanks as always to our super producer Casey and our
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: executive producer Maya. Thank you, and thanks to you for
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: listening Stuff Whenever Told You instruction of my Heart Radio.
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, you can check
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: out the heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: listen to your favorite shows,