Category Archives: Well-being

Dear Friends, I’ve been sitting with two words for a few weeks: well-being. For one, as it’s the theme we’ve chosen to speak to this September as we come to the end of Season 1 of The CurioCity Collective Podcast. It’s the place where the journey began for all of us—the need to reimagine ourContinueContinue reading “The Commune: A Question of Well-Being”

Dear friends, We are mid-way through August and with the end of this month it will be five months since the first lockdown came into place in India and social distancing became the ‘new normal’. When I chat with my nephews on the phone, they tell me that they have barely left home through thisContinueContinue reading “The Commune: Children & the new normal”

Dear friends, A friend and I were talking at the beginning of the pandemic about the compulsory wearing of masks. She was nervous about having to wear the mask every time she went out. So she began to wear it for short bursts of time at home. First five minutes, then ten minutes and slowlyContinueContinue reading “The Commune: No Child Left Behind”

Dear Friends, In 2005, I got on a train from Mumbai to Vaitarna with a few classmates from the media course I was pursuing at Sophia College. We travelled north on a two and a half hour journey, armed with apples and sandwiches. It was an early morning departure to ensure that we could makeContinueContinue reading “The Commune: Zen and the Art of Rainwater Harvesting”

Dear Friends, We spoke a bit about home in our episodes last month. Home is a complicated idea and I have been thinking about what home means to me. Travelling down memory lane, I landed at the memories of me running up and down my grandparents small house in the outskirts of Chennai during thoseContinueContinue reading “The Commune: The Frugal City”

Dear all, In the last few weeks our news has been inundated with the terrible plight of the migrant labourers through the period of the lockdown. Narratives and images have poured in of the poor – men, women and children – walking, cycling or hitching rides on cramped lorries and buses, travelling hundreds of kilometersContinueContinue reading “The Commune: Longing to Belong”

Dear Friends, A few years ago I was working in a job that required going to districts with a high incidence of child harm to work with local communities and build safe spaces for children. I loved the work and the transformations we’d see. Over the course of a few months, girls would hold themselvesContinueContinue reading “The Commune: The Invisible Work of Care”

Dear friends, “The food on our plates, the rings on our fingers and the wooden furniture in our homes: all too often there is a violent reality behind household items we use everyday.” These are the opening lines of the report ‘At What Cost?’ by the international NGO Global Witness which works on the intersectionsContinueContinue reading “The Commune: Hitched to the Universe”

Dear friends, In my late 20s, it so happened that I spent an inadvertently enthusiastic amount of time sitting in a garden near my house. My feet have always wandered towards the green but spending large stretches of time in a public garden was different from the wilderness I preferred. I expected the tamed, tightenedContinueContinue reading “The Commune: Keeping Quiet”

Dear friends, I was scrolling through Instagram one day when I stumbled upon this new piece that Johanna Hedva, a disabled activist, had written titled ‘Get Well Soon’. In my early years of being sick, it was what everyone said to me – Hope you feel better soon. It is such a well meaning andContinueContinue reading “The Commune: Building webs of care”