2026
I care more than I can say
Recently I've been thinking about books that have subtly and privately changed me this summer, but which I never found a way to place inside a letter. It’s difficult to describe that gap between beloved book and letter. Even after all this time, the process of writing is something of a mystery to me. I do know that every story I read/notice deserves its own kind of poetry. So for now, I'm taking my time with the words.
I've also been reading Edmund Wilson's magnificent book To the Finland Station. The opening chapters introduce the French historian Jules Michelet and his extraordinary approach to writing. What a whirlwind of a process...trying to gather centuries of French history into his own works of art. I was both deeply impressed and comforted after reading about Michelet's work. It transformed the way I think about letters and that delicate tie between observation and creation.
Flowers for long days of reading
Flowers! As a silent audience for reading aloud poetry, and as a reminder to seek out beauty wherever you can find it, because life is short. The presence of bouquets was a small luxury that provided much comfort to me in college.
Somewhere along the way, I began to see flowers and reading as parallel acts of becoming. The petals unfurled toward the sunlight as I myself was unfurling towards language.
Preparing for graduate school, writing poetry
A short research update...snippets of some mantras I have been repeating to myself while preparing for graduate school.
Reading Emily Dickinson, Thinking of You
In this fast-paced digital age, where so much quickly becomes obsolete, I have come to see letters as a precious landmark of humanity. This video is about my enduring love for reading and writing them; they anchor me across time, connecting my past, present, and future. There is, also, something mysterious in the act of putting pen to paper (which I don't get to do as often as I'd like), always beginning with the mantra-like words “Dear you...” It calms me, and gives me the courage to be fully myself. I am especially inspired by Emily Dickinson’s letters, as well as the poems written in my great-grandmother Bessie’s autograph book. I have sprinkled scenes of my favorite pages throughout the video.
The sunlit life, from a small room in New York
We live in a political climate right now that seems to be increasingly turning against difference and diversity. I’ve been thinking about this a lot in my room. Even here, in solitude, I’m reminded how utterly dependent I am on people I will never meet just to survive. Time and again it occurs to me that the secluded comfort of one’s own room is not a product of pure self-sufficiency. Quite on the contrary, it is held up by a vast, supportive network of strangers.
I’m constantly struck by that crowd of people who make my life so lovely, and the poetry that arrives with their distant company. Walt Whitman’s poem "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" came to mind while journaling about this. Whitman wrote over a hundred years ago, and it is interesting to think that what moved him back then, moves me now as well. We are both drawn to the interlaced workings of humanity, the understated miracle of countless lives moving alongside one another.
A vlog about writing letters
This is a long-overdue update video reflecting on what I’ve been up to over the past five months, including my research curiosities for graduate school. I’ve always been drawn to letter-writing (both in my academic studies and personal life), and I’m especially fascinated by the idea of framing a video essay as a letter to the collective. Letters come from a time before modern technology and were usually meant for just one person. But videos on YouTube, on the other hand, are hyper-modern and open to anyone who happens to click on them.
The mystery you seek is already here
This video is based on a journal entry I wrote on New Year's Eve. I was thinking about starting this new year on Earth, and the excitement of finding new habitable planets and extraterrestrial life. While I understand that fascination, part of me has internally always felt a bit puzzled by it.
As I’ve grown older and as I’ve learned more about history, I’ve become increasingly aware of how profoundly mysterious our own planet already is. Just looking back on Earth's past is a vastly complicated task. The remnants of human history found in old letters, books, and recordings are endlessly compelling to me; they convince me that the sense of wonder we often project outward already exists here. It's woven into the past we live with everyday, close enough to reach.
2025
We'll always find our way back to each other
This piece isn’t about just one friend, but about all the friends who have lifted me up along the way — the ones who believed in me, even when I couldn’t believe in myself. They’ve shaped me more than they probably know, helping me become the person I am today. I know I probably don’t keep in touch with each of them as much as I wish I did, and even when I do reach out, the words "thank you" never feel like enough. But, I take comfort in the thought that, no matter how much time passes, we’ll always find our way back to each other.
Preparing for an expansive year
A video-essay from the beginning of 2025, when I set the New Year's Resolution to keep my eyes wide open and spread myself as thinly as possible. Time to read without limit, look around and up, up, up!!
2024
Gentle Days at Oxford University
This is the first video I ever made at Oxford. I look back on it fondly because I think it captures a moment when my thoughts were expanding in new directions. The video starts with a vision from my meditation, but shifts into a conversation about some reading I was doing at the time (specifically, my findings in Indian history.) I explored Nehru’s ambitious post-independence vision and how entrenched caste hierarchies, corruption, and lack of funding undercut his development plans.
My big dreams of supreme inner strength
A video-essay from my summer trip to Italy. This was a very interesting time in my life. I was obsessed with mountains, swimming in lakes, and the idea of ‘supreme inner strength.’ I also watched myself more closely than usual, pausing in the mirror to straighten my back and underlining passages in Sogyal Rinpoche’s The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying in my free time. I noticed shaky political situations in the news, like America’s looming debt crisis, and traced them back to my own personal insecurities.
My obsession with the future
This is perhaps my proudest and most vulnerable video on my channel. I made it at a time when I felt lost about which career to pursue, yet filled with a deepening curiosity about foreign policy. The video captures my desperate attempt to be less naive about adulthood, with a nagging inner voice that constantly shouted ‘grow up already!’ even though I barely knew how. At the same time, I was rereading Robert D. Kaplan’s Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power, with its argument that the ocean is a center of competition over maritime routes and resources. I was struck that such global rivalries could endure across the most fluid parts of nature. It felt as though my awareness of the earth and my thoughts about the future were growing together, each feeding the other.
This film was also featured in the Kyoto Historica International Film Festival.
What I read on a two-hour train ride
In summer 2024, I spent my train rides to New York City rereading Rana Dasgupta’s book Capital: The Eruption of Delhi. It is a stunningly written portrait of a city in upheaval, where dazzling wealth exists alongside people surviving in barely livable conditions, crammed into makeshift housing and navigating polluted air and broken infrastructure. Dasgupta’s book sparked in me a profound sense of care and curiosity, which I found myself connecting to my own Sanskrit studies.
Don't call it pointless
This video is called "Don't call it pointless," but ironically, I almost called this entire project pointless and scrapped it. Rather unexpectedly, it became my most popular video to date, with over 22,000 views! I'm glad I persevered and managed to publish.
2023
Photonic Beings - A Short Film
A short film about unconditional love for the individual and collective.