A Creative Arts Education Approach to Cultural Storytelling
Tamil Girl Things
Uncut Cord
I am interested in bodies.
Mine, yours, and our stories.
The Grandmother of All Folktales
All it took was one village, one grandma, one vadai, one foolish crow, and one sly fox to leave a lasting impression on one little Tamil girl.
"What? You ate eesal with kezhvarugu puttu? Isn't it a kind of poochi?“
"Poochi for you. Satthu for us."
Eesal – Winged Termite
Kezhvarugu Puttu – Breakfast dish made out of steamed finger millet
Karupatti – Palm jaggery
Poochi – Bug
Satthu – Nutrition
Dindigul Dreaming
Are the skies all that aspirational?
My gods do not live there.
They reside under my feet, on the land.
It is with the grace of my ancestors that I even walk.
Every step, an unbroken thread spinning a life so mundane. A miracle.
Unimaginable that the Earth turns on its axis, invisible is that which has turned the world on its head.
So strong is the desire to return to my feet. They are not just mine but of so many who have walked before me and for me to come this far.
My gods are not entirely Vedic.
They need no chants to exist.
Instinct is primal, primordial.
My gods sit on the unschooled tongue of my grandmother.
I probe for stories and learn of victories I will never witness.
They hunted and gathered knowledge.
They ate bats, lizards, cranes, and winged termites.
My history is not unsavoury. This might has got a bite.
Soft mounds of flesh house vocabulary constructed, set, and still in motion.
Language and its shape shifting forms course through the veins and flow out of channels, voiceless sometimes but still heard through words written and gesticulated.
There is grammar in bones strong and broken.
Its conventions stand erect in toned muscles and syntax holds fort in sinew.
Dance is language exploring its physicality, its aim to graze the plains and planes of the metaphysical.
Studying bodies, I seek to give shape to our stories waiting to be imagined and show respect to the ghosts of and skeletons in our past histories.
Puttu with Poochi
Stand Your Ground
Abundance
Body Language
Rebirth
Back to Sustaining the Body
Come Home to Sambar
If my life were a cookbook, it would be called
Come Home to Sambar.