O n w a r d

We were both young When I first saw you I close my eyes and the flashback starts I'm sitting there At my computer in a wicker chair... I can't quite recall exactly how I first came upon Taylor Swift's music. I know I was in college, in Delhi, and it was either through watching Faith Hill on Oprah and finding the song Taylor named after her husband; or it was the collaboration " Breathe " with Colbie Caillat, whose songs I listened to rather a lot at the time. Either way, I was quickly enamoured by this young woman, a kindred spirit the same age as me, with the curls and dresses and boots, and the ability to tell entire stories in a single song.  She wrote of love and youth in words I thought I'd use if I were in a world like hers. " Love Story " and " Teardrops on My Guitar " were inescapable on MTV. But it was "Tim McGraw" that spent weeks in the sidebar of my blog, which was really as big an honour as being on any music chart. I...

CAST OF CHARACTERS: Elsie, my great-grandmother Patience, my nani (maternal grandmother) Suzanne Neve, actress, as Emma Carleton Hobbes, actor, as Sherlock Holmes In a letter to her daughter Patience dated 4 July 1970, my great-grandmother Elsie wrote about enjoying BBC plays on the radio: "Do you all hear the BBC plays on the transistor? Did you'll [sic] hear the 'Conquest' by Somerset Maugham the other day it is a lovely interesting play & acted so well really — BBC is tops & we hear all this on that small Phillips radio we bought from [?] for Rs 100 — we play our records on the other radio — we made the Gram elec. — the other radio we have to play on a battery — Batteries have become so expensive now eh!" I was dreaming of connecting with my great-grandparents by listening to the same things they once listened to, but... does W. Somerset Maugham even have a story called Conquest ? I tried researching more about the BBC Radio in India — most likely the p...

From an inside pocket of his black overcoat he pulled a slightly squashed box. Harry opened it with trembling fingers. Inside was a large, sticky chocolate cake with Happy Birthday Harry written on it in green icing. – J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, chapter 4 This scene, occuring immediately after Hagrid's arrival and the Dursleys' comeuppance (which included phrases such as "yeh great lump" and "yeh great prune", hmm), marks the first nice thing that anyone has ever done for Harry's birthday since his parents died. Stunned and confused though he is, Harry is still able to see this gesture for what it is: someone made an effort especially for him, to make him happy, because they care. The feeling is so unfamiliar that it confuses him, and he isn't even able to formulate a "thank you". Well, that, and a giant just broke down the door. I started reading the Harry Potter books when I was 13, immediately after the ...

Winter, even without the cold, is a special time of the year. As a kid in Delhi, the months from October through December were rife with family birthdays, anniversaries, Diwali, Children's Day, annual visits from our grandparents, and Christmas – all of which involved food and cake and people. It's different now; I've moved away, and things changed, but the seasonal feeling of warmth and cosiness and taking stock of the year remains. I'm going to start watching and reading and baking Christmas-y things soon, but this year, there's one more thing I'm adding to the traditions: uplifting podcasts. I'm new to this. For some inexplicable reason, I had never listened to a podcast until a couple of months ago, when I read on a friend's blog that she uses them to brighten up her chores. Cooking and cleaning can be repetitive and dull, and though I sometimes listen to music or make a call while doing them, it always felt like they were taking too long. But storie...

My obsession with Greece began ten years ago, when, in my second year of college, I opted for Greek and Indian Classics as one of my papers. I borrowed a book on Greek mythology, avidly discussed Homer and Euripedes and Aristotle's views on friendship, and made a wonderful Greek penpal, Sophie – my first friend from this beautiful country. From her, I learned that there is an island in Greece just like my name*, and about Yannis Markopoulos' Liturgy of Orpheus , based on Orphic poems and possibly my favourite character from Greek mythology. I did not write that I travelled to Greece seven years later to finally visit Sophie, who is a singer, among many other things. Every drawing of Orpheus and his lyre stood out to me, whether at museums or on a set of coasters (I bought the latter). I attended a concert in the awe-inspiring Odeon of Herodes Atticus theatre. And while visiting Santorini, I had the luck of being there during the Caldera Arts and Literature Festival ...

I was recently commissioned by the Camden Council in London to respond to Sarat Maharaj's text "Pidginy Linguish" for Camden Kalā, as part of the UK-India Year of Culture. Below is an excerpt from the resulting essay, which was a reflection on walking, anthropology, and my time as a student in London.   Highgate Cemetery, London, 2012 Migrants are not churned out uniformly: they have varying status, staying power and agency determined by the legal machinery that processes them. How they are tagged makes this apparent: exile, émigré, expatriate, refugee, asylum seeker, detainee, deportee, alien, other, illegal, clandestini, sans papiers, removees, non-subject, non-citizen, job snatcher, benefits-tourist and equivalents [...]   - Sarat Maharaj (2003)  And then the category that described my own experience, but doesn’t quite fit any of the above: the international student. The non-EU international student, to be specific, whose status once the post-study work visa...

I've been working on this photo series for the last few months, though really the images that went into it represent my life and its wanderings over a span of a quite-eventful five years. The travel aspect - the photos were all taken in different places - also reflects the journey I've taken during this period, in many ways a formative phase of my life. It was exciting and liberating to develop a new visual language after feeling a bit stuck; this series is unlike anything I've done before. It comes from duos: the style combines the self-portrait (what better way to express vulnerability and the performative self?) with double exposures (but a certain kind of double exposures , a co-mingling of me and my environments in a way that make it obvious that these are two different images meant to exist separately but that could come together and collaborate in unusual ways). The inspiration is twofold as well: partly the work of Jena Malone, whose feed I follow and admire...

I’ll begin at the beginning. I met her in 2009, when we were asked to be co-editors of the International Press of the Model UN conference at our college in Delhi. Those were the days when an MUN was a big shiny exciting event in most people’s lives. A few months after this big shiny event, I was to graduate. Being a sentimental and somewhat cheesy person, I asked my friends to write down a few words for nostalgia’s sake in a notebook as we parted ways. Dear Kriti, it is most unfortunate that I got to know you only a few months before Fate was designated to tear us asunder...  Her opening sentence goads me to this day, because: a. it seems terribly prophetic, if slightly belated, and b. it drips with her trademark sarcasm at the entire exercise, continuing thus: I really wanted to draw you a cartoon or dazzle you with some linguistic cleverness that adequately expresses the friendship between two people who have also edited newsletters together (a truly...