etc.

The Killing of a Tiger (2019-2023) is a literary memoir tracing my relationship with the world–natural and otherwise. It is also a craft memoir of the process of writing it.

Through my own experiences with gentrification, literature, video games, and disability, I tell a story about  human-plant-animal-resource relations – hybridizing cultural criticism about human and tiger sexualities, the economies of desire and dispossession, and the relationship between colonialism, conservation and climate change. I examine literature and other texts (like Shrek, The Matrix, The Jungle Book, Tiger King) to glean truths about how we have organized ourselves and controlled our environments and told ourselves stories about our superiority, while also holding room for the richness and texture of our relations with non-humans. Like my dog, who’s a rabid little shit I would die for.

It is a work-in-progress, as they say. Manuscript is out on submissions.

“Grace us with your presence” (2019) a short play performed as part of Tonya Pinkin’s Truth and Reconciliation of Womyn series, April 14, 2019

Inherited Trauma (2017), Art

Curator

“Inherited Trauma” was an exhibit and event during LIC Open Arts Festival with cross-cultural, multi-media meditations on the meaning of memory, the inheritance of loss, and concepts of time at Local Project. Featuring Danni Lin, Zain Alam, Hanna Edizel, Zorica Colic, Ten Izu, Hira Jafri, Vikrant Chandel.

Hometown Browns, Radio Show

From 2015-2016, Hira Jafri and I were co-hosts of a free-form radio show for three seasons on WESU 88.1 FM. Every week, we tuned in with the latest on desi culture, humor, and a lot of music. Also a tad bit of gupshup.

“Reflections on Tirhut” (2016): Co-author of essay with Dr. William R. Pinch on the water history of Mithila. Forthcoming publication in The Power of Bhakti: Social Location and Public Affect in India Religion of the Heart (University of Washington Press). Research presented at “Exploring Bhakti: Is Bhakti a language of power or protest?” conference, South Asian Studies Council, Yale University, May 2016.

Oral histories (2015-2016) Collaborator on a book/media project with Dr. Indira Karamcheti, building narratives of the South Asian immigrants who found a way to the US before the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act.

“The First Americans” (2015) Researcher for Dr. Karamcheti’s project on 19th-century seamen who might have been from India, and the treatment of race and difference in the Seamen Protection Certificates.

Madhushala (2011-2012) Translated a large portion of the neo-romanticist Hindi book of 135 quatrains.

Rubbing Eyes and Rings (2011) Wrote a play performed at CultureHub NY upon invitation to the “Verbally Challenged: Digital Dialogues” where Manchester and NYC used telepresence to create a hybrid analog-digital performance.

paused or incomplete projects

(because to err is human, to own one’s fails is divine)

“Authentic Yoga?” (2018): A comedic audio documentary in pre-production.

“Honey Darling” (2018): A fiction short involving race switches and drowning milk baths.

“Nostrand Ave” (2017): A documentary short on protests on two sides of Nostrand Ave: one against a restaurant with bullet holes memorialized in a wall for rich patrons, and the other, in support of a small business owner being evicted.