Prapti Kakati

Stability, particularly in terms of geography, has been an elusive concept for me since childhood. From living with various relatives to finally settling with my parents, I've experienced a constant shuffle of homes. This lack of a fixed space to call ‘home’ isn't unique to me; as I've interacted with more people, I've realized it's largely a common experience. This begs the question: is 'home' purely a geographical notion, or, as any generic literature grad might argue, is it more of an abstract, imaginary space?  In my first literature class, we were taught to deconstruct societal constructs, including language, names, and even nations. Keeping that in mind, how does one deconstruct the concept of home? What criteria define a space as such? Having shifted cities and houses all my life, I'm left questioning whether I should dismiss every previous space I've occupied as "not home" now that my parents have a permanent residence.             ...

 I’ve been home for almost 3 years now (wow that’s a lot of home), except for a few months in Delhi now and then. I have always hated small towns like the one I live in – they are too crowded; everybody knows everybody and there is an absolute lack of privacy. Also, people gossip a lot- news here travels faster than the BBC morning broadcast. Imagine a Hollywood movie’s portrayal of the Middle-East – a sepia/yellow filter, dust all around, dilapidated buildings and noisy streets, with some form of “exotic” background music playing. That is always how I imagine small towns like mine – with a permanent yellow filter on my eyes. Being here these past years have made me realize how sheltered I have been all my life – it was only in 2020 that I started going around the town and interacting with people other than my school friends. I also recently started going to the gym. All these years of stress-eating, PCOS and horrible body issues culminated in this impulsive decision. It will be ...

Been thinking of updating the blog for quite some time now. What was once intended to be a weekly or at least monthly blogging endeavour has evolved into a biannual affair. Nevertheless, this year has been one of introspection, giving me plenty of opportunities to think things through, and even start coping with certain experiences. Healthy mechanisms or unhealthy ones, the important thing is we are coping.   Last week, we sold off our Maruti 800. It is as old as I am and was my parents' first joint purchase (except for me of course). Everyone in the entire extended family has been on hundreds of road trips in this thing. 800 was the first car in the family, and has witnessed everything - it has seen me grow up, my cousins grow up, even my aunts growing up, getting married and starting families. We all cherished it even though the entire dashboard stopped working around ten years ago and the engine began to have troubles to the point where we often had to embarrass...

My dad is the only one in our family of four who knows how to cut and peel a betelnut. A betelnut is called tamul in Assamese. My mother does not know how to peel one, and neither do I, and it is something i have struggled with all my life - because either the tamul is too tough or too soggy, or too husky, or I can't seem to cut it into four equal parts.   But my father peels it, cleans it, cuts it and presents it with such dexterity and grace, even when he is so sick he can not seem to get out of bed, give him a tamul and he starts working on it. He has been blessed with this rare ambidexterity (ability to use both hands), and often uses his left hand to carry out these intricate tasks, like screwing a nail or cutting the tamul. A sturdy, unripe shell is easier to crack and peel, while the dried up ones are husky and difficult, and I always wonder how he peels the dried ones so effortlessly. Removing the tough nut, he cracks it with the kotari banging on the marble slab i...

  Tw // death, suicide Bulbuli was my cousin. She lived in the village bordering mine, and we met every other day, or atleast once a week till I lived in the village. We remained fairly close even after I shifted to the town. Trips to her house were frequent. We were in the same class, I studied in the fancy convent - courtesy of my working parents, while she was left in a half-walled broken school beside my house, because her absentee jobless father and a dead mother could not afford much. She used to come over to our place after her school was over and we used to play all sorts of games. We had a small mandir, called "gukhai-ghor" in Assamese, which had a small verandah. One of us used to take the verandah as a make-shift house, while the other used the concrete slabs attached outside our living room. The leaves of the money-plant near the gukhai-ghor served as currency. We made small pots and pans from mud which often cracked but we played with them anyway. There would be ...

The Indian Film Industry is no stranger to scantily clad women in sarees erotically gyrating while keeping the tag of a ‘Sanskaari’ woman. This was precisely what Raj Kapoor was criticized for, in his movie Satyam Shivam Sundaram . While trying to negate the shallow outer appearances and propagating the notion of inherent beauty in one’s soul, the movie accomplishes exactly the opposite, with most of its views coming from the libido of men going to the theatres to watch Zeenat Aman with little to no clothes on. The film became a semi-vulgar display of semi-naked curvaceous bodies, victimization, and helplessness of women, loss of all female agency, and some very problematic display of tribal culture. While watching the movie, apart from the unnecessary victimization of Zeenat Aman and a lot of tears, two questions kept recurring in my mind – does she possess absolutely no agency? How is this blatant exoticization and Brahmanisation of tribals and Adivasis allowed? The opening monol...