Hope is the thing with Feathers

‘Hope is the thing with feathers’, title inspired from Emily Dickinsons poem of the same name began from a space of memory and storytelling. In my ancestral city, my grandfather had a bird ‘Mithu’. Mithu was a part of everyone’s life and stories. Growing up, my father would tell me the story of a Fakir whose soul was trapped in a parrot. This was a powerful metaphor for love.

When I travelled to Makardah in West Bengal for a residency, the town oddly felt like home. It reminded me of my ancestral house left long behind. One of the things that surprised me when I was there was the number of people who kept birds in their homes. I was moved by the idea of why, what does the birds mean to the people and what is the life the birds have in these homes.

Over the two months of the project I was witness to the nuanced relationships that exist between people and the birds they keep. Birds that have grown up with them, that share meals with them, chased strangers, and sometimes even flew off only to return. In my journey through the project I also started noticing how deeply embedded birds were within the world of the people.

The deeper I journeyed in this relationship, it truly felt that the souls of people were actually within their birds, holding onto them meant they could hold onto love, nostalgia and most importantly hope.