Aryaman Kakkar's Archive

Sitting bathed in pink light, I think about how every moment of anger, painted nail is a constant rebellion, ebbing and flowing as the tide. The word 'cruel' comes to mind when I think of 'truth'. Aletheia. Sach . Different names, same aftermath. Teeth loose, having released beasts caged in the fold of my throat and doubled neck. The feast is not slow and savage. It is instantaneous and absolute, Light wishes it was as eager and bloodthirsty. The way truth infiltrates and colonises every speck of dust your skin is yet to become, it will not burrow, not dig, but be absorbed. Unify. Unity is often described as a utopian goal in a world torn apart. How is it that becoming only one became such a beautiful thing? To lose boundaries. Co-existence never meant losing a sense of self. Truth, becoming one with your being, violates every order of it. Reconfigures synapses, rewrites DNA, and suddenly you can't be in the same room as the people who raised you because the truth i...

  I will be focusing on the resistance movement that was established against Voldemort in the British Wizarding world. While the movement was primarily focussing on defeating Voldemort and his followers, they did not necessarily take a stand against the ideology which was Voldemort’s tool in gathering followers and social momentum - his xenophobic politics and planned genocide of Muggle-born and half-blood wizarding people, as well as Muggles themselves (Muggles here means people who are not born with magic). Instead, we see a resistance movement (Order of the Phoenix) which primarily focuses on espionage, intel, and infantry movement to combat Voldemort and his followers. This xenophobic sect of society gained power earlier on in the Wizarding World’s history as well, as we saw with Grindelwald and his followers. This is the question we must ask ourselves: how can the same ideology of xenophobia be perpetuated in two different points in time and achieve similar amounts of success,...

  “Waves” and how it invites a voyeuristic study of the self through its structure.  Malati Maithri in “Waves” masterfully explores the restricting and voyeuristic nature of caste through the construction of a framed narrative. The framed narrative is constructed through the image of the house whose windows open out to the sea, and everything the reader can see is limited by the window-frame. Maithri describes everything going on outside, always drawing attention back to the window, the house, and the sea with the refrain between each new verse of description. This refrain of “This is a house whose windows / open out to the sea.” has damning consequences as she ends the poem with the line “you and I / are fish in a glass bowl.” This image of the poet and reader in the glass bowl shows how the caste system limits its constituents and practitioners from the openness of the sea, limiting them to a space that looks out, and can be looked into; a voyeuristic viewing in which the re...

  It is perhaps anachronistic to visit a gallery and view visions of death. For some, it is an expectation, a challenge. How many times can works of art make me question my mortality, my existence. Give meaning to life, to everything. They watch, pupils are missing but the elements are there. Reflections, side-eyes. Scribbles and monkeys and sepulchral films. The lonely sound of water. It is made, curated to interact, engage the senses. Lap at you like the baby waves at the foot of idyl beach. Do you see how the high tide eyes you from the horizon? Walk, walk, don't notice the reflections. Notice the absence of footsteps, noise is gobbled up. There must be absence. X-Rays and the radiation they use are harmless in small quantities. Yet done often enough, they are fatal. That's why doctors stand behind blast doors. Ever wonder why people say they feel stripped before a work of art? To be seen through again and again to the barebones of you, wavelengths that we didn't know ex...