In the beginning

This project began a little vaguely for me.

For our first week when we had to come to class with a memory that we shared with our family and represent it in some way.

I picked a memory where my parents my brother and I had visited a beach during Diwali. I have always been scared of sharks, and as we went further into the water I was scared of being attacked by sharks. Suddenly as we were fooling around we felt cold water at our feet. My mother was extremely paranoid and thought the world was going to end. My father on the other hand told us that it must have been the sharks peeing that is cold, so that I would freak out. Strangely enough this memory stood out cause it was one of the most random conversations I had had with my family. It was Diwali (A festival) and we had visited a beach and went pretty far inside the water,  was afraid of sharks which the three of them were laughing about. Suddenly the water below our knees got really cold, it was strange to have half the water warm and the other cold. We started making up stories about what it could be. While my mother thought the world was ending, my father was trying to scare me by saying it was sharks pee that was making the bottom half extremely cold. 

Our next assignment was to desegregate a memory. But all I came up with was a poem and a different memory.

 I had found it a little hard to think of memories being represented in terms of my family. So the new memory was a journey from a school trip in Rajasthan back to school. I was looking out of a window in the train and missing my previous school while the rest of my friends sang a song from their previous years. At that moment a friend of mine called out to me and dedicated what they were singing to me. It was one of those moments where I felt included in a group. It was enough to make me feel loved for the rest of my time with them.

I still had not managed to 'desegregate' my memory, and it had to be done for the first exhibiton.It was made easier for us by asking us to bring an object to class that the memory can be expressed through.

At that moment two objects came to mind; a window representing the train window itself but also the idea of looking outside my life and seeing things pass by, and a toy train representative of my journey and my countless other journeys and transissions.
Finally I had a window with a toy train behind it going around in circles and the poem read out loud by me. My concept note helped explaining the idea ;'It's a memory where every representation of it, has symbols that mean something to my life on a larger level. 
A window I looked out of from a train, a window that feels like me looking at my life for the past 7 years, a train journey that made me feel belonged, the countless journeys I have made. They are layers that say much more, than I had intended too. ' .