Tamizh is an ongoing project that begins in my ancestral village in Tamil Nadu, a place I carry through stories as much as through memory. Growing up in Bangalore, the village was where I returned each year to visit my grandparents. It felt different from the city, slower, rooted, filled with gestures and traditions that spoke of another rhythm of life.

 

What draws me most are the continuities I see, how traditions live in small, ordinary details and the way they make the present feel rooted. In today’s rush, such ways of life are often overlooked. My father’s stories of childhood games, running barefoot, and the taste of 50 paisa sweets still live on in the children I see today. They play in the same fields, share the same innocence, even as they also hold pieces of the modern world. The village lives between past and present, doors open through the day, neighbors close as family, traditions treasured and passed on to every generation.

 

This project is my way of honouring them, a beginning of a larger body of work that I hope will be my love letter to Tamil Nadu. Through Tamizh, I want to document how heritage, culture, memory, and everyday life keep flowing forward, simple, elegant, and timeless.