A roving mind

And that’s a wrap. We wrap up the production of our first feature-length documentary today, with a scene that humanised a world-renowned scientist. Just a man sharing some laughter with his family. I’ve seen things within these walls that keep my faith in family-love intact. No one exercising their power over anyone in the name of love and care but an easy love that talks its heart out and…

Earth is not a benevolent “mother” in a sentimental sense. She isn’t. She doesn’t love us. But the thing is, she doesn’t hate us either. She simply is. And to love her all the same is perhaps the biggest privilege I feel as a creature with a heart. Somehow, out of magma and tectonic plates and colliding continents and deep time, she has produced forests, birdsong, whale calls, puma tracks,…

Two years and two months of exploring filmmaking as a medium of storytelling, along with years of love affairs with poetry, prose, essay, songwriting, singing and translation among other things. We are just kids. We are only getting started. Our hearts throb with dreams and hopes for the human and more-than-human stories we have had the fortune of witnessing and chronicling. We have our share of…

Artemis, goddess of wild places, the hunt, the moon, untamed nature. She stands, more than a décor, in an abode of an Indian scientist who spends his days studying majestic forces beneath our planet’s crust that can move mountains and redraw coastlines.  I look at the goddess, belonging to myth, and the scientist, to measurement. I see myth speaking to science, the huntress’s intuition speaking…

ಸುಸ್ತಾಗಿ ಸೋತಾಗಿದೆ.

I remember gasping and bursting into tears when I entered a particular room in Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum. On a huge wall, next to darling Theo’s image were two words: Dear Brother. After reading all the letters the brothers had exchanged, and a few others that dear, dear Vincent had written to others, I made this video for my YouTube. I’ve missed being this chirpy version of meself. Not…

Sir. SIR. That man. That wounded, soulful, fiercely tender man. MAN. A man who had every reason to harden and yet chose gentleness. A man who saw a woman not as an ornament, not as a possession, but as a soul. And showed what he saw in action, not just words. A man who stayed. Who would not leave her. Not for anything. Dear, dear D. H. Lawrence, I have gifted Lady Chatterley’s Lover to dear…

The email thread about this is suddenly active and I’m loving everyone’s enthusiasm about the August Padayaatre episode, which will be the 100th! What a milestone for this deeply enriching journey of Kannada poetry! I was a but concerned in May, but I’m so relieved and thrilled to see all the emails! My inbox is going crazy! We might have zeroed in on the location and I can’t wait to discuss it…

I am proud of this already even as we await the results. I will tell more stories. I will work harder and learn the craft better to aim for excellence in whatever I do. I am happy today.

Cher, I could kiss you for this, my lady!

Google Photos just brought this memory back from 2016! I was in the Himalaya for a good half month, with Ladakh being our gang’s primary location. My friend Vidya was part of this journey, too (I adore her!). This one trip had made me capable of so much literature that my first and second books (Silkworm Slumbers and Moontime Soliloquies) contain a lot of prose and poems on and from the…

Photograph by Santosh Saligram I’ve had so much fun with my Fujifilm camera on my US trip, especially in NYC, a city I’ve me tally and emotionally lived in for many years. I’m dying to process my photographs and print them as postcards for my loved ones. I am no burst-mode, photograph-everything kinda girl and I use the tool like it’s a film camera. Happy enough with my work to pat my own back.…

So many friends and relatives (cousins, mainly) writing from the US, pretty much pissed that we didn’t meet them. Haha, interesting to know so many wanted to, across the country. Perhaps next time. This means that we will be able to see most of the country over a few visits pretty well, considering the different locations. Promising!

Around 250 people showed up to see our story on the big screen for the first time at one of Bengaluru’s most sought after cultural hubs: the Bangalore International Centre (BIC). Those who couldn’t make it (including a couple of celebrities like Mr. Javagal Srinath) apologised to me later and managed to watch it in the following screenings. We continue to screen it across Karnataka and more…