REDEMPTION
Is every human equal here? Who am I? Who are you?
After a certain point in history, humankind was divided into specific categories based on their physical and geographical features which created a significant imbalance — adding permanent senseless caste structures into this worsened inequality. Of all the regions of India, Kerala (Southern India) had and have the most rigid and elaborate caste structure.
During my trip to Kerala, I visited Parasinikadavu Muthappan temple in Kannur, a city in the Northern part of Kerala. Irrespective of caste, creed or religion, everyone is welcomed there to share the place to experience the spiritual comfort and relief and to have the offerings together, which was once (and still, in rural areas) restricted in the name of Untouchability (a practice of imposing social limitations on a person by the reason of their birth in particular castes). Muthappan is the deity worshipped at Parasinikadavu. In a society where discrimination and violence against the marginalised are viewed as usual, Parasinikadavu Temple goes against the ''traditions'' and the ''culture''.
I consider Muthappan and the Parasinikadavu Temple as a shrine that is thriving testimony of secular harmony, which I consider as a form of Redemption of hope and belief. Along with the video, journal and the prints, this project act as a protest against the casteism that still exists in India.
Is every human equal here? Who am I? Who are you?
After a certain point in history, humankind was divided into specific categories based on their physical and geographical features which created a significant imbalance — adding permanent senseless caste structures into this worsened inequality. Of all the regions of India, Kerala (Southern India) had and have the most rigid and elaborate caste structure.
During my trip to Kerala, I visited Parasinikadavu Muthappan temple in Kannur, a city in the Northern part of Kerala. Irrespective of caste, creed or religion, everyone is welcomed there to share the place to experience the spiritual comfort and relief and to have the offerings together, which was once (and still, in rural areas) restricted in the name of Untouchability (a practice of imposing social limitations on a person by the reason of their birth in particular castes). Muthappan is the deity worshipped at Parasinikadavu. In a society where discrimination and violence against the marginalised are viewed as usual, Parasinikadavu Temple goes against the ''traditions'' and the ''culture''.
I consider Muthappan and the Parasinikadavu Temple as a shrine that is thriving testimony of secular harmony, which I consider as a form of Redemption of hope and belief. Along with the video, journal and the prints, this project act as a protest against the casteism that still exists in India.
Is every human equal here? Who am I? Who are you?
After a certain point in history, humankind was divided into specific categories based on their physical and geographical features which created a significant imbalance — adding permanent senseless caste structures into this worsened inequality. Of all the regions of India, Kerala (Southern India) had and have the most rigid and elaborate caste structure.
During my trip to Kerala, I visited Parasinikadavu Muthappan temple in Kannur, a city in the Northern part of Kerala. Irrespective of caste, creed or religion, everyone is welcomed there to share the place to experience the spiritual comfort and relief and to have the offerings together, which was once (and still, in rural areas) restricted in the name of Untouchability (a practice of imposing social limitations on a person by the reason of their birth in particular castes). Muthappan is the deity worshipped at Parasinikadavu. In a society where discrimination and violence against the marginalised are viewed as usual, Parasinikadavu Temple goes against the ''traditions'' and the ''culture''.
I consider Muthappan and the Parasinikadavu Temple as a shrine that is thriving testimony of secular harmony, which I consider as a form of Redemption of hope and belief. Along with the video, journal and the prints, this project act as a protest against the casteism that still exists in India.
Is every human equal here? Who am I? Who are you?
After a certain point in history, humankind was divided into specific categories based on their physical and geographical features which created a significant imbalance — adding permanent senseless caste structures into this worsened inequality. Of all the regions of India, Kerala (Southern India) had and have the most rigid and elaborate caste structure.
During my trip to Kerala, I visited Parasinikadavu Muthappan temple in Kannur, a city in the Northern part of Kerala. Irrespective of caste, creed or religion, everyone is welcomed there to share the place to experience the spiritual comfort and relief and to have the offerings together, which was once (and still, in rural areas) restricted in the name of Untouchability (a practice of imposing social limitations on a person by the reason of their birth in particular castes). Muthappan is the deity worshipped at Parasinikadavu. In a society where discrimination and violence against the marginalised are viewed as usual, Parasinikadavu Temple goes against the ''traditions'' and the ''culture''.
I consider Muthappan and the Parasinikadavu Temple as a shrine that is thriving testimony of secular harmony, which I consider as a form of Redemption of hope and belief. Along with the video, journal and the prints, this project act as a protest against the casteism that still exists in India.
THE WALLS
A PERPETUAL DEPARTURE
Whenever I reminisce about my past, I always think about my identity before and after migration. Migration involves loss. It felt like all the things that rooted me to my existence lost their shape and floated away — leaving everything behind; family, friends, home and everything you once owned. Migration created a sense of emptiness which held me back from familiarising the new world. “Sense of emptiness” was the representation of the impossibility of showing “how things were”. Between this journey of connections and alienation my constant attempts to correlate the reasons and reality crashed. But, here I am today leaving this journey open and incomplete to displace the very idea of the “authentic”.
Everything you do, every choice you make echoes into eternity. People often say about starting a new chapter. But they don’t say how hard it is to close one. To close something that you will never be able to rewrite or edit, and then to start a new chapter amongst a civilization with a difference of hundreds of years of evolution, is brave. But, you can’t close a chapter without embracing it.
​
Migration is settlement into mobility.
Migration is embracing the past.
Migration is envisaging the future.