A letter to mumma
I realised you were my mother since always. All my existence I have known you as the woman who birthed me. My brain cannot quite process that information. If I could, I would make friends with the 25 year old Suman. Newly married and pregnant with a child. Sounds frightening to me. But somehow you managed through, maa.
I would come see you in the evening and we'll walk holding hands talking about your day and have golgappas together. You can tell me all about your frustrations and fears. I know I wouldn't be able to fix them, how I cannot even now. But I would try. I would listen and be a woman with you.
I'd borrow your clothes and you could borrow mine. And for a change you could too get mad at me and throw a tantrum like I do to you now.
Maybe I could help you find time for a hobby or we could take a sewing class together. I'd sew pretty handkerchiefs for you to put in your purse.
Oh how I long to meet you as someone who's not my mother. As a young baby who is figuring out life for herself. Unmarried, innocent, dream-like. I love you maa, and more so, I love the woman you are.
Be kinder to yourself and do whatever you like. Let the world go to hell. It's okay. You don't have to show up everytime. I'll stand up for you, hand in hand. Like a friend. Can I be your friend. Hmm?
Yours,
Vasu.
a personal journal.
about grief, about longing, about mumbai, and the beauty of life that moves on despite the heaviness one's heart carries.
mumbai 2025/26 :)
written and narrated by yours truly
love,
vasu
"To live with child-like wonder". Well, I wouldn't want it another way. To live with a sight of glimmer in your eye of irrational innocent hope. To act on impulse. Ask questions, stupid ones. Get amused at little things. React to small joys with a full heart. To dance like no one is watching. Oh, to skip around rather than walk and giggle at your own thoughts. I hope that wonder stays, I hope.
Children
Jharkhand, 2025
The feminine softness of giggles while a group of women peek at a film shoot happening. There is a hesitance in enquiring, but an innocent curiosity that still makes them look from a distance.
Draped in saturated sarees of every colour on the rainbow, with small babies running around or clung to their waists, they sit at the verandah together. Smiling and hiding when I point my camera at them.
I got a beautiful flower at one instance and a sugarcane at another. For what you ask? For smiling at them and calling them beautiful. My heart felt full in that moment. A moment with women, just like me.
Women and their pink
Jharkhand, 2025
Cinema was always very attractive to me. I wanted to be an actor when I was in school. Maybe because that's the only thing I tangibly saw in a film. I didn't know what a director exactly did, let alone knowing a person called a cinematographer even exists.
There was a magic I saw in that world inside the television. A magic that made me believe that films just conjure up themselves. There's people behind it, sure, but definitely not people like me. They are different people, from a different world.
The closer I get to understanding the process of cinema, the more the magic disappears from it. Now it's a very real process, with heart and sweat. With risks and losses. With success and failure.
But every now and then, when I see people crowd around a camera peeking and waving at it in awe. I see that magic I once believed in. Maybe I've slowly come closer to those people who I thought were different from me. Maybe I am becoming the magician myself.
Letters to myself
07.08.25
Somewhere in Satara
Excerpts from shoot with @navagat_p sir
First film roll and its salvageable clicks
Everything under, but still super close to my heart
Ilford Delta 3200 (expired)
Thanks to @harsh.rkives <3
Home at FTII and everything in between / July 2025
