Kaushikee Gupta

Dear reader,

I hope the following voice will give you a sense of my concerns.

The exact smell and taste of home which I very well know is slipping away from memory; and this inability to recreate it. Cardamoms which aren’t the exact shade of green, my eyes recognise. Saffron-always either too much or too little. Never quite right. Burnt taste of the supposedly lukewarm milk. The hunt of things that were once familiar - that keeps changing as we migrate/move/leave.

Draping, pleating, stirring, folding, packing narratives that end as abruptly as it begins while still adapting in every new city. Navigating space and the notion of home through plates of food and the secrets of the spice box.

Texts becoming more than documents and files in folders in my Drives. Not letting myself and the audience get intimidated by them. Engaging and conversing and finding the most appropriate means to translate the texts out of my laptop. How to get intimate with them and the variations with which it is encountered?

Fleshing out language and structure; the need for voice and why my voice; the choices regarding performance and performers. To dig a bit deeper into how the dynamic changes or alters from the text in print and via live narrations. Along with the not so subtle differences in moving houses and leaving home.

The need for “liveness.” The value of the text - the listener/audience/witness - the narrator (witnessing the witness?)

Always questioning authenticity (in) and theatre and performance. The need and absurdity of my presence when the setting and the frame changes. (encountering it live and through the screen)

A constant and persistent query of being a writer, a performer, and/or a storyteller?

-Kaushikee Gupta

 [an Artist nonetheless]