Tejasvi Momaya

Hey,

I felt seriously lost as soon as I read the post by Briana. All I could think was, "There is nothing that reminds me of my home here. Everything is different, everything is new, even though this is my 4th year in the city." But as I looked around more intently i suddenly noticed small things that did remind me of home.

Cotton candy all time favourite since childhood till today.

As kids me and my siblings use to play on these carts used in our office for carrying heavy loads. We use to all gather and sit on them as one of us pushed the cart off a slope with speed.

This tree reminds me of all the times I had climbed a tree in our farm back home and used its hanging branches as swings.

These two little girls reminded me of me and my cousin sister who were inseparable as kids and did everything together. Both of the girls have hair which was similar to ours and that bright back all the memories I have with her.

Dad use to always carry me around as a kid in crowded places and I felt oddly comfortable in his arms as oppose to my mother's.

We have our festival of Paryushan and I miss being part of it because I am in Mumbai. There is a Jain temple right next my PG here that celebrates it and takes me back to my roots.

Tejasvi Momaya

After reading up on the Gaza conflict situation and distilling what little I could register of the horror that is going on in people's lives there I kept on thinking "How does all this matter in the end?"
All I could see was death and sorrow all across beyond the differences between Palestine and Israel.

A major part of Independence for me has to do with the Right to Exist. Something that I became aware of after reading up on the issue. I have the Independence to Live, breath and exist something that is often

taken for granted. A basic right that has been taken away from people living in the Gaza strip without their consent.

The ones who suffer the most are the children and the women. These thoughts inspired me to write the lines in the picture, a plea to stop the violence and let you all know that we feel your pain, we feel the hurt and I agree with my other friends when they say, there is always hope. Hang on to it, hang to our prays and do let me know if
I can do anything in my little ability to strengthen your hope.

Tejasvi Momaya

Childhood picture

I choose this particular picture because it’s candid and really captures a true emotion. Most of us as kid were fascinated by mom’s make-up and jewelry and I always tried on all her new lipsticks and sandals. I remember I had insisted that my mom give me all her bangles because I wanted to wear them. She gave me her entire bangle box and I wore the select few I liked the best and was further happier when  she clicked my picture. I was always a stubborn kid and that is something that I still carry on from my childhood but I feel that I have also left a lot behind. As a kid I loved spending time in front of the mirror and dressing up with matching jewelry while now I rarely look in the mirror. When I looked at this picture it made me wonder what happened to that part of me and whether I would ever be able to bring it back.

Self- portrait

Confused, raw, scribbled and incomplete is what I feel I am right now. There are so many gaps to be filled, so much to learn and so much I don’t know about myself. I chose this picture because I still feel I have just explored half of me and there is a lot left to be explored. It’s a rough draft, a pencil sketch that lacks its final touches. I see a hope and ground for improvement in me through this picture and that is how I intend to approach experiences to discover more of the world and me. I want to push myself to get out of my comfort zone to see how much of me I can understand and get to know.

 Future

I read ‘The Bell Jar’ by Sylvia Plath a few months ago and this particular dialogue struck me the most in the entire book. As a kid I wanted to be an underwater swimmer so I learned swimming but failed so I thought I’d be a teacher. Over the years I had wanted to be a million things in a million ways. I could  relate to the line in the book because even today I want to be everything an Ad film maker, a camera person, a criminal psychologist, a book shop owner, a travel journalist and the list just goes on. I chose amalgamate the line and the picture to create a feeling of uncertainty and multiplicity. I don’t want to restrict myself right now by aiming for a single life goal in ten years but rather keep myself open to all the opportunities I get to experience different things. Even if I do end up doing one particular profession 10 years down the line I would like to give my personality multiple tangents so that the work I do isn't polar in its approach.