One of my favorite terms here, which I know has been written about quite a bit, is “jugaad” or “jugarh”. Jugaad is essentially another word for improvisation, or making do with whatever resources one can muster. As resources are often hard to come by, it seems as if these solutions are quite temporary (however ingenious). […]

Since my last post, I have been traveling around Karnataka – settling for the past two weeks in Bangalore. Most of the guidebooks tell tourists to skip this “center-less” capital of Karnataka but I have been pleasantly surprised: Bangalore –minus it’s traffic- is fantastic. On my first weekend here, I met up with artist Jasmeen […]

While traveling through Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, last week, I was reintroduced to Raja Ravi Varma’s  (1848-1906) “Ravana, Sita and Jathayu” at the Sree Chitra Art Gallery. I hope I know better than to express an opinion about one of the great Hindu epics, the Ramayana (i.e. no comment here on Sita’s version vs. Ram’s or the […]

Hello all!  My name is Sascha Hughes-Caley and I’m a graduate student in Penn’s School of Design. I’m originally from the DC-area, but spent a large chunk of my adult life in California and British Columbia before relocating to Philadelphia last summer. With a background in both the visual and performing arts, I am working towards […]