StreetTrotter

15/02/2021

Untangling the threads of the Toda Tribe for you - now on the blog! 🐃 ⛰ We have been working tirelessly to put this this piece together for the last 2 months, making sure we represent this exotic, indigenous tribe of the Nilgiris in its purest, factual form. Our team has written the piece scanning through documents of secondary research done by known anthropologists to collect the most updated information in the Todas, an ancient pastoral tribe which has been around in India for the last 180 years and more.

But every well researched tribal piece is often left incomplete without photographs and becomes subject to the thin lines of cultural appropriation if you do not back it with primary research. For visual evidence of what remains of the tribe today, I visited the Toda settlements in Ooty, back in 2019. Since then I have been sitting on folders full of photographs that document the Toda way of life, their architecture, their craft and the Toda women. This post therefore is also a visual wealth of credible resource on the tribe.

As the tribes architecture and culture remains complicated, which lots of tiny details that make them truly unique and self sustaining - we went a step further and combined our primary and secondary research with informative graphic artworks that communicate the essence the the Toda Tribe and their structures to its best.

Upcoming are a series of posts that carefully document the tribe and show our process of putting this piece together. We can proudly say, that this is the kind of journalism we believe in, and have been fortunate to be able to put this great resource together on a tribe that is slowly loosing its way of life.

Cheers to the team: Researched and written by Artworks by .roche Trip and photography credits - your truly, StreetTrotter. 🐃⛰

15/02/2021

Untangling the threads of the Toda Tribe for you - now on the blog! 🐃 ⛰ We have been working tirelessly to put this this piece together for the last 2 months, making sure we represent this exotic, indigenous tribe of the Nilgiris in its purest, factual form. Our team has written the piece scanning through documents of secondary research done by known anthropologists to collect the most updated information in the Todas, an ancient pastoral tribe which has been around in India for the last 180 years and more.

But every well researched tribal piece is often left incomplete without photographs and becomes subject to the thin lines of cultural appropriation if you do not back it with primary research. For visual evidence of what remains of the tribe today, I visited the Toda settlements in Ooty, back in 2019. Since then I have been sitting on folders full of photographs that document the Toda way of life, their architecture, their craft and the Toda women. This post therefore is also a visual wealth of credible resource on the tribe.

As the tribes architecture and culture remains complicated, which lots of tiny details that make them truly unique and self sustaining - we went a step further and combined our primary and secondary research with informative graphic artworks that communicate the essence the the Toda Tribe and their structures to its best.

Upcoming are a series of posts that carefully document the tribe and show our process of putting this piece together. We can proudly say, that this is the kind of journalism we believe in, and have been fortunate to be able to put this great resource together on a tribe that is slowly loosing its way of life.

Cheers to the team: Researched and written by | Artworks by .roche | Trip and photography credits - your truly, StreetTrotter. 🐃⛰

10/02/2021

Spotting Student Talent: Makeup & Styling

This month’s Student Talent is a mind-blowing mix of eccentric makeup artists to a visionary filmmaker and an unconventional fashion stylist.

25/01/2021

A Day trip to Mysore: City Guide

Mysore, with its 500-year-old history as a kingdom and a princely state, has a lot to offer, from splendid palace halls, to art galleries, and temples.

19/07/2020

The pandemic is hard. Very hard. Toronto went into lockdown mid February. Now that it is opening up, it’s refreshing to breathe that fresh air next to the waterfront, walking aimlessly through the park in the breezy evenings. Today I realised how much I love blue, the water, how much I love looking at people and observing humans in general. I have had my low days, my own ups and downs throughout the lockdown. Some days I would not even get up from the bed, other days I would cry the stress in the washroom and then show up for a presentation like I am a queen about to conquer. I have had erratic emotions and an even more erratic understanding of myself in the last 4 months. How much I love slow and desire it, and how much my minds fights that slow life with a mad craving to travel, escape, eat and play. I have been questioning if I am loosing it, and if I should vanish, and other days I plan workshops and show up for people and myself. Showing up is as hard as the pandemic today. 🤦‍♀️
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If you have felt even 10% of this in these past months, I want to tell you - “It’s not you. It’s the pandemic. And we all are in it together. Be kind. Show up. Take a shower. Breathe. Call a friend who hasn’t called you in a while - we all are fighting our battles. Remember, people grieve differently, and there is no straight line of grief. We all are grieving in our own ways. Be there for yourself, and for the people you love. Care about the planet and our human race. Make small differences in your choices everyday. One plastic bag less is also a significant change. All you need is a change in perspective. And most of all, show up for yourself. Practice self love.” 🌸❤️
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How are you coping up? 🌻
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14/07/2020

Make a corner that you can call home. Seek calm. 🌸
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09/07/2020

Recently I spoke about 10 years of my design journey, my nomadic career trajectory, and the future of digital design in a podcast by ! 🌈 If you are a design enthusiasts of any age and design field I will be humbled if you could listen to what we tried putting out here for you and hopefully find something inspiring from it. ❤️ You can catch the podcast on Spotify, or the YouTube link in my profile! 🎧
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Gargie, the host of this podcast, and I went to NIFT together, and then we also did our post grad from London. It’s amazing how we reconnected over this candid call, and have been tapping each other’s career and journey for the past 10 years. So much has changed in this last decade in the design space and she thought the future of design as “digital” was important to share especially in our post pandemic world. I am happy I could contribute with my ideas and a candid train of thoughts remembering everything I did in the last 10 years keeping design at the core of everything I did. ❤️🎨🎧
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Do listen and do share your thoughts on how you liked it. Thankyou! 💕
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08/07/2020

Toronto parks are just a happy place to be. 🌈❤️🌻
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I have never been the park kinda girl. I meditate, I like my little reading corners, I travel and trek and sip over my coffee in quaint cafes. But you won’t find me playing in the park or riding a bike ever. 🚲 But Toronto is beautiful. Toronto’s summer and Toronto parks are beautiful. They are strangely liberating, and pleasantly vibrant with people, culture and wellness. It’s a happy place to be and it’s turning me into this morning park kinda girl. 🌞

06/07/2020

Ever felt like you were a revolution? 🌈
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29/06/2020

For the last 12 weeks I was in a career change hole, learning a new skill of UX/UI design. For those of you outside the design industry- UX and UI are primarily design fields for digital design. In layman terms I now design for the web, website design and mobile apps. Considering the pandemic - there is no doubt that going digital will be the way forward for even the smallest of businesses who didn’t look at this opportunity before. Depending solely on organic footfalls in stores and generate business the way it used to before is not going to work much longer. We live in a world that is now connected by technology more than ever, and the quarantine life pretty much proved it to be true and vital. - This is a little snap shot of my project - I will be sharing more about it soon.
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In the meantime if you have any career change questions and wondering where or what to do next - you can ask me anything - and I might be able to share something from my experience with you. After all, we are all in this together - more than ever. 💫💓
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24/06/2020

If life was a moodboard, I would put some bloom behind it like this. 🌸
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In good news, I am almost graduating with a diploma course from in a couple of weeks. I decided to use my quarantine time and build some skills in UX/UI design, because without a doubt that’s the future. Today I am thankful for the mentorship I received from some great educators and TAs like and during this journey. I want to take this moment to show gratitude and thank them, in a world that’s competitive and sometimes hardly cares. 💓
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A while back I saw by and saw a contestant being eliminated even though he has been a brilliant faculty for fashion back in New York. Even at this stage of his career, he was seeking guidance and mentorship to grow as a designer and learn more about his design process. That hit home me, and I was particularly sad that day for his elimination speech. I realised, how often people fail to recognise that learning and being mentored even if you have had a great career trajectory of your own - is all a part of a larger process. Sometimes professors need to be taught too so that they can grow further and teach better. Looking back, I have been a design faculty at one of the best design Institutes in India - but I always felt the need to learn, grow and find my own design aesthetic. For that, we all need constant mentorship, humility and a growth plan. And I am glad to have positively achieved that in Toronto with little blooms hopefully growing in my career further. Thankyou all who have been a part of this learning process. I will be sharing my portfolio soon 🌸❤️
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21/06/2020

Settled for this. 🙈 - Meet my LinkedIn face! 💁‍♀️
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