Episode 3: Khayaali Pulao, Burnout & queerness with Hari Chakyar

The host, Shreya has a conversation with fellow advertising professional Hari Chakyar who calls himself a drawer. They talk about burnout, exploring creative avenues outside of work, and how drawing comics lets Hari tell stories he hasn't told. The conversation takes us through masculinity - the softer sides of it, Hari's coming out journey with his zine about cross-dressing and what support systems look like. 

Hari's zines are linked below:
Burnout: https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/17956871252017525/ 
Man like Damu: https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/18229499641040648/
Sometimes I lie: https://www.instagram.com/p/B4zZsrpJZmc/ 

Hari draws inspiration from public comedy outfits whose work "No pants subway ride" is linked here: https://youtu.be/wJjEcVl6PqY 

Hari is on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/harichakyar/

Podcast At Odds on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/podcastatodds/

Transcript

Episode 3 of Podcast At Odds. 

Released on Date: 21st June 2023

Guest: Hari Chakyar

Episode Title: Khayaali Pulao, Burnout, and Queerness with Hari Chakyar

Transcript:

Shreya: Hi! Welcome back to At Odds. The weather in chennai where I stay has taken a turn from being an oven to absolutely gorgeous rainy and dreamy. It is aweather for many cups of chai, staring out the window and just being. Thoughts like these I couldn't entertain when I worked in advrtising and corporate, but now as a freelance consultant I dare to allow myself nature days. My guest today is Hari - a drawer, advertising creative and a very eloquent speaker - this episode needed the least amount of edits. We talk about burnout - the most common thing to happen to advertising professionals yet barely spoken about, we talk about how Hari pursues creative projects outside of work, how he uses comics and zines to tell stories about less spoken sides of masculinity and his queer life. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did when I recorded it. This episode has been produced with the help of Bound - they have removed the dread from the editing process by making it super easy. If you would like to follow us on social media - please look up podcastatodds on instagram. 

Shreya: Hi. Hari. Welcome to Podcast At Odds. I am glad we are finally able to do this. Would you like to introduce yourself to the listeners if there are any?

Hari: Hi, Shreya. Thank you for having me on your podcast. I am grateful and I think I am a little jittery because this is also my first-ever podcast recording. I am excited to be here. To your listeners. Hi, I am Hari Chakyar. I am a writer and a drawer. I live in Bombay with my wife and my cat. 

Shreya: Now, you mentioned that you are a drawer. It is not a term we hear very often. I mean, I say it because I like to talk weirdly, but what is a drawer?

Hari: It is a way of telling people that I'm teaching myself to draw. I have a dream that I want to be a graphic novelist one day, and I make tiny drawings and I want to build up to being able to form a bigger piece of work that I can someday publish.

Shreya Okay, but is drawer what you do to earn money full-time? 

Hari: No, my day job is in advertising. I am an advertising creative. I work as a copywriter. I've been a copywriter almost all of my work life. Right now I'm a creative director with a digital advertising agency. 

Shreya: Okay, so I have known you now, I think, for about three, four years. Doesn't seem like a lot in the grand scheme of things, but I'm just happy to have actually met you, thanks to your partner. But one of the few things that struck me when I was obsessively stalking you and scrolling through your Instagram was that as a person who has also worked in agencies. Which is me and who has worked with a lot of creatives. You are actually one of the few creatives I know who likes to explore creative projects outside of work as well. So which was your first project?

Hari: This is actually hard to put down because I remember being very good at crafts, even in school, and I didn't think of it as something that I'm doing on the side. It has always been something that I do, and work just happened to grow on the side. That is how it has been.

I've always been good at cutting and pasting paper. And when people saw me do it, they were like, oh, okay, so you are good at this. I'm like, this is just something I do. This is fun for me. And people used to call it collage art. I didn't want to label it then because I was just having fun cutting and pasting paper. When people started asking, hey, would you like to make something for me that I can frame and maybe give someone or put up on my wall, I was like, okay, maybe I can make something out of this. And that became something called paperwala art. I gave it a name and yeah, I made a bunch of those. There is still a Facebook page that I go and look at sometimes. Yeah, that was, I think, the first thing that I did that grew alongside work.

Shreya: Okay, so one of the things which is up on your Instagram and as a person who is from Bombay, I was instantly drawn to was this. I don't know if calling it an installation is the right word, but you called it Khayali Pulao. It is a term that we say very often, almost every week, I would say, if not more. Can you please walk people through what it is that the concept was and what did you actually do?

Hari: All right, now, it's been a while, so I don't remember where it came from. I don't remember the origin story. But I thought it would be funny if someone was out in the public and literally making Khayali Pulao. Khayali means imaginary. So I'm miming the act of making something in public. So I got a stall made. I was in Bangalore. When I started doing this, I called it “Khayali Pulao world famous in Koramangala”. And I put it up outside a very famous breakfast place. People used to line up outside it. So I had my captive audience. I was across the street on the footpath. I put up this stall. I tied a tort. It's like this Malayali towel on my head. And I stood there waving my hands and smelling the pulao as it is getting ready and all of that. And it was hilarious. One auntie came and said, hey, you can't do this here. And I'm like, what am I doing here? Food delivery guy stopped in front of me, and he's like, Ready, Jose? It was good fun.

Hari: I am usually inspired by this. I don't know what they call themselves. It's a comedy outfit in New York City called Improv Everywhere. What they do is the founder actually Todd something his name is his name escapes me, but he believes in organized chaos. He makes flash mobs happen, and he'll do hilarious things. Like, one of the things they are famously known for is called the no-pants subway ride. Okay? They get groups of people to ride the New York subway in underpants. Something like that is not really possible in India. 

Shreya: Yeah, I mean, as a woman, I'm both horrified and excited by the idea. Both of these exist. 

Hari: If you go to YouTube and look at searches for no pants of the ride, you will find videos of this thing they do. So I'm inspired by these guys. They put up shows in public in order to draw attention, and it's a way of having fun in public spaces. I'm interested in this idea of reclaiming public spaces. That okay. So what that auntie said about, hey, you can't do this here, it means that people believe that public spaces

are somehow not your property. You can't claim ownership to it. But it feels like somehow we have gotten into our heads that it is only our home, that is our space, and the public spaces are not really ours. In a way, I think I'm challenging those ideas. 

Shreya: Have you heard of this project called Why? Loiter. It's also a book. 

Hari: Yes.

Shreya: It's mostly Indian women existing in public spaces and like, just walking. Okay. Loitering. Why I want to say loitering as opposed to walking is loitering is without purpose. And it talks about spending more time in a space as opposed to walking, which is usually from destination A to B. Though I understand how that appeals to women because I think public spaces as such are so dominated by men and masculine figures that it is almost threatening sometimes to actually take space and exist in them.

Shreya: So while you were doing these things, and especially Khayali Pulao and except that auntie who came, did that thought ever occur to you about a space being daunting to enter into?

Hari: I don't think I was thinking about it as much while I was doing it. I was doing it because I wanted to do something like this and I was curious about what kind of response it would get. All of this is an afterthought, right? I'm trying to think of, okay, if she reacted that way, why did she react that way? So thinking about all of these things led me to do more of these things. Another thing I want to do is I want to put up a stall somewhere with a collection of rocks and I'll label these rocks and outside I will close it up like a museum space. Outside I want to say, welcome to the rock show.

Shreya:  Nice. This is something that you want to do? 

Hari: I want to do, yes. It's on the cards. I will someday do it. I also want toplay a bad magician. You know how there are these street magicians who go around doing magic tricks? I want to dress up like a magician. I want to go to people and try to show them tricks and fail at it. I want to see what the response is like.

Shreya: It'll be so good to do it in Bombay. Local trains. 

Hari: Oh, yes. I'll probably get beaten up, but I'll try it on streets first and then see where it goes. 

Shreya: Okay. I mean, which is I hope you don't get beaten up in the trains because at least the impression as a person, as a commuter also, is that it's a very communal space. They may all just laugh at you.

Hari: Yeah. I'm very tickled by this thought of entertaining people in public. It is like theater, but it is not in closed space, it is in the open. It is like comedy, but it is very unlike stand up comedy. There are no jokes that are set. I'm constantly improvising. I'm having to think on my feet. The first thing that I did in this series was I stood outside this restaurant in Bangalore and the same place where I put up the Khayali Pulao stall. So I painted my nose red with my partner's lipstick and I stood there with a placard that said “Hit this”, touch this button. No. “Press this button and I will make you laugh”. Response to that was also interesting because I realized if someone wants to make you laugh, people approach you with the intent of laughing. So no matter what I did, they would instantly start laughing. So I didn't have to really come up with a joke or anything. What I found challenging was this dad walked up to me with his four year old or five year old kid and he propped up the kid to my height and asked him to touch my nose. And I made some Donald Duck sounds, which I'm really good at, but I realized the newest generation has no idea who Donald 

Shreya: oh, no.

Hari: Yeah. So that fell flat and the father walked away saying, yeah, that's what I thought.

Shreya: This sounds like such a Koramangala dad, though. 

Hari: Yeah.

Shreya: Okay, so now you have mentioned as a drawer and I'm really sorry because I have trouble pronouncing r sounds, so I'm sure when I hear the recording I'm going to cringe. But as a drawer, how have you taught yourself to do these things? Because drawing okay, I'll tell you my experience. I have always felt very alienated from taking up drawing, even when I was younger. And now as an adult, I'm terrified of it. Mostly because it now that when you're in your thirty s it feels like if you do something you should automatically be good at. How have you ensured that you keep learning and you keep at it over and over again?

Hari: Okay, so there are two things to this. One is it is okay to suck at drawing. So I follow this artist just called Linda Barry. She is an artist and an art educator. She keeps going back to drawing like children. And she's like, when kids draw, they don't worry about what things look like. They just draw something and believe that what they have drawn is a car. Okay? So it is only us adults who have started putting filters onto and judging our own drawing, telling ourselves that what we have drawn is not good enough, when that shouldn't really matter. It is the joy of drawing that is actually supposed to be put out as drawing. So the joy is worth more than the output of drawing. So she does these experiments where she'll get a group of adults together and she'll tell them, okay, now we are going to make a self-portrait in three minutes. And she'll throw you into an exercise like this and she'll play music for three minutes. So you have the music in the background, but you are not really listening to it because you have to now draw yourself in three minutes. So you draw a circle for your head first. And that is what people draw first. Always draw another big circle for the body. You draw noodles for your arms and your legs. You draw eyes, nose, hair, and you draw an ear. One thing she said about how children draw ears is you draw the ear. You draw this C shape that is attached to your head and then you draw a little question mark or the number five inside it. Yes, that is how children see shapes. That is how children have registered the shape of a ear. And that is all there is to it. You have made a self-portrait of yourself in three minutes. 

Hari: Next, what Linda Barry does is, okay, so now that you have your self portrait, imagine this self portrait as an astronaut. You have three minutes. And she goes on like that. Imagine yourself like an astronaut in three minutes. Imagine yourself as a monster in three minutes. And you see how people just instantly start drawing without worrying about. What it looks like because, hey, I only had 3 minutes to do this and this is the best I can do in 3 minutes. That is how this is just one of the exercises Linda Barry does to get people over the fear of drawing. So once that fear is out, you are just putting out the thoughts that come from your head straight to your hand and onto the paper. 

Hari: the other thing is, I think I'm trying to find ways to tell my stories and drawing is one of the ways. So I'm not really bothered about what my drawing looks like as long as what I want to say comes out in picture and word form.

Shreya: Okay. So I'm going to skip back to something that you mentioned about experiencing joy. So do you experience joy when you draw?

Hari: I do. So my creative process in a lot of ways is about ruminating about something or thinking about something over and over again in my head before I even start. This happens to my drawing also. This is a process I use at work for advertising ideas because you have to think over a brief and you have to think of various possibilities before it comes out asidea for an ad or something that can be seen on social media. When it comes to drawing, suppose I'm working on a comic idea. I think about it for months before I even start. But once I start drawing, if I've made, say, one single panel, it puts me in the groove. Okay. Now I have something. And yeah, I think it's the joy of finishing that we keep delaying. Once you have an output, it gives you a rush and that takes you through the entire process. So it's like edging sorry for adult content.

Shreya: Okay, so do you find similar joy in work?

Hari: I feel like, okay, right now in my role, I find joy in bouncing ideas off people and. And listening to their ideas. And I had this moment sometime last month where I said something and it instantly sparked an idea in someone. It turned out to be a bombastic kind of an idea. It is a brilliant idea. And seeing the joy in them gives me joy. That is the kind of joy I have. 

Shreya: Now. You have fully transcended into creative director role. 

Hari: Now I'm trying to be a decent creative director. 

Shreya: Okay? So while this kind of joy does exist in co creating, in advertising, there also exists Burnout. And I know that you have been through Burnout. Are you okay to talk about it a little bit? And specifically also, how did you keep in touch with your creative project and did you continue to draw when you were in Burnout?

Hari: I do want to talk about Burnout because I feel this is something almost every other creative person goes through at some part of their life. And if only more people spoke about this, I feel it is important for people to talk about this because creative people need to know that this is not the end of life. Because when you are going through it, it feels like you are in a very dark, enclosed space and there is no escape out of it. I feel like creative people, we put a lot of self worth. We attach our self worth to our work. And when you aren't able to get the kind of desired output, you beat yourself so much that you feel like you don't matter, like you feel like you are not good enough. You feel like life is worth less because you have given so much of your own time and mental space and bandwidth to work that nothing else left to look forward to. Correct? That can feel very daunting. When it started happening to me, I felt like I was running out of words. It was scary. I mean, it is still scary to think that, okay, so my work is about words. I'm supposed to think of ideas and distill it into a few words that can be used in. So when it hit me, I felt like, okay, words aren't coming to me. And I panicked. And this wasn't like one quick bout of panic that came and went. It just lasted for weeks, months, more than a year. And I just didn't know what to do. I was beating myself up for not reading enough. I felt like I was working too much. I had worked weekends. I had worked national holidays. And this is what working in social media does to you. You have no personal life left. You are always on your phone because most work happens on WhatsApp WhatsApp is always pinging. You are constantly talking to people. You have no breaks. It led to a point where I felt like, okay, I have nothing left to look forward to. It was dark. It was, I think, because of this space that I started drawing. And I told myself, I put that in words. I said when words stopped coming to me, I started drawing. And that is when I thought, okay, maybe I should in a way, let's see where this goes. And I realized I had stopped doing things. That gave me joy. This is something that came out of therapy. And therapy helped a lot. And if there are any creative people listening to this, I would like to tell them that therapy does help. if you are feeling burnt out, if you feel like you are running out of words, therapy helps. Because my therapist told me to do things to come out of this. Like, if I can. Just read out of. I have my zine ready here. 

Shreya: Yay. 

Hari: So, five things I can do to feel like myself again. This is according to my therapist. First one is get 8 hours of sleep every night. Eat things I like it. Get some exercise every day. I'm still not doing this. Do things I enjoy. And I have drawn a little pencil and an eraser and a pair of scissors here. And the fifth thing is do all these things mindfully. Mindfully. I don't know how to still do things mindfully. But I found a hack. My hack for doing things mindfully, is listen to the sounds of whatever you are doing. 

Shreya: Yeah, tell me more about this.

Hari: Imagine that you are making chai. What do you do? You take whatever vessel. Mostly it is steel. Now, steel, you pick it up using you pick it up with your hand. You touch the hand, you take it out from wherever it is, but it is bound to bang into something. When steel bangs into something, it makes a clang. And then you put that on the stuff and that is going to make another sound. Depending on how hard you put it there.. Then you take water, you pour water into it. The water is going to gush out of a tap into your cup. And when you pour it into your pan, it's going to make a sound. If you like spices, you take those out. So remember to remind yourself to listen to the sound of everything. You take something out, you crush it, that is going to make a sound. Pour milk into the water, or however you like your tea. You put your chai, pati your tea powder into your chai, you light your stuff. That is going to make a tiny blast of a sound. Just basically listen to the sounds of everything you are making and that will keep you in the present.

Shreya: Nice. So I have read all the Zines that you have put out publicly and I noticed that this motif of sound also recurs in it. Because in a lot of the Zines, you have written down the sounds that would occur in that panel.

Hari: So that also. It is like reading a zine can be a very 2D experience when you're just reading, and others may not their brains may not work similarly to mine, but for me, I need to imagine everything like it is happening. So the sounds really help because then I feel like I'm also able to hear it.  I think I read something about how JK. Rowling has done this in the Harry Potter series. So when she's writing the book, she's also telling you about the sounds and the smells of those places, which helps you really be in that space.

Shreya: That is very aptly put. Actually, I'm not a big fan of JK. Rowling, so my brain just kind of went on a tangent about how I just read an article this morning about how Daniel Radcliffe is hosting a roundtable on trans kids and something like that. She must be really upset about it. But anyhow segue aside so you said that you started drawing as a result of burnout because words wouldn't come. So did you explore different mediums? Because in your work, I can see the exploration and the usage of different types of art.

Hari: I think I might have Googled this at one point of time. When I started drawing, I came upon the term illustrator. And there are illustrator roles in advertising as well. These are people who draw, and these are people who are capable of drawing in different styles. So it's not like an artist who has an established personal style of work in commercial art, in advertising. These are people who are able to draw in various different styles and an illustrator who is someone who is able to create images. And it doesn't have to necessarily be about drawing. It is about using various kinds of materials in order to create a visual. So illustrators are people if you look at illustrations for The Economist or The New Yorker, there are people who do crazy things, who do different kinds of use different materials. They use gosh, they use paints. Paper cut is also a way of illustrating. So this is something I really I like how something I used to. Do in the past is not obsolete. It is still something I can use. So that is what I'm trying to do. As someone who's teaching himself to draw, it's not just drawing. It's about creating various images. So one of the Zines, like the Burnout Zine, for example, I have imagined myself with a thumbprint that is my character. And when I thought about it while I was doing it, I was doing it to minimize effort. I didn't want to create, like, a human figure of myself, because that would just impede my process, which is already slowed down, because I think about the comics for way too long before I start. But this way, when I use my thumb so I would press my thumb into an ink pad and press it on paper. And then I would draw hands and squiggly hands and feet and tiny eyes. Dots for eyes. Yeah. So I think I keep using different styles and techniques for my illustrations because I'm also learning how to do different things and see if those can be used to make Zines and comics.

Shreya: So do you want to tell me briefly what are the different styles you have explored so far?

Hari: I usually draw with a black pen. It is a black steadler drawing pen. I think they call it pigment liners. Color pencils is something I do, but most of my output is digital, and color pencils look very faded on paper, unless I use photoshop or something to increase the brightness, which I don't really do. Thumbprints is something I do. Paper collage is something I have used in one of my Zines. The Zine is called Tight, and all the frames in it are made with paper cut and paste. That technique my zine called man called damu. I'm experimenting with Cyanotype printing. Yeah, I think that is all of it. That is four styles right there. 

Shreya: Okay, so why do you take me through the. Journey of the different mediums. 

Hari: All of them are also kind of connected to a story that you have told in a particular zine. 

Shreya: So do you think there's a relationship between you exploring a medium and also exploring the kind of story that you want to tell with it?

Hari: Um, in the case of man like Damu, I think it it had some sort of a relation. So man like damu I think I made in the while I was in recovery from burnout, I had just taken a workshop in Sinotype printing. I was experimenting with the medium. Let me tell you about cyanotype and how it works. Yes, please. It is a very slow process, cyanotype printing. It is also called blueprinting because this is what architects used to use in the olden times to make their architectural drawings. Blueprint comes from cyanotype printing because blue. 

Shreya: Yes. Oh, my God. Beautiful blue. I was today years old.

Hari: I keep forgetting the name of the chemicals that are used in this. Let me just read it out. It is ferri ammonium citrate and potassium ferri cyanide. Okay. So these are the two chemicals that have to be mixed with water in order to make a solution. Now, this solution is light sensitive, so you need to do it not necessarily in a dark room, but somewhere there is no direct sunlight. Okay. You take this solution, you put it on any surface. I have been working mostly with paper, and for me, watercolor paper has worked best. 300 GSM. So you take that paper, you coat that sheet of paper with this solution, and you let it dry away from sunlight. Once it has dried, you put the subject that you want to print. Say, for example, it needs to be something flat like a feather. You put the feather on that sheet of paper, and you put that out in sunlight. So you expose it to sunlight for, say, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, and you bring that back in. You remove the feather to see that the imprint of the feather has stayed on that sheet of paper. Okay? So the sunlight has worked on. A UV. Rays in sunlight have worked on that sheet of paper, and it has exposed the shape of the feather onto the sheet of paper. This sheet of paper then has to be washed in water. Once it is washed, you'll see that the beautiful cyan color has come out. 

Hari: So what you said about the subject matter of the story and the process, Man Like Damu, the comic is about my father. Damu. Is Damodaran, my dad. And I feel like he's someone who has a lot of patience. I don't know if he's artistically inclined to try something like cyanotype photography, but I felt like if I want to tell my dad's story, it'll be best told with a process like this, because he's someone who meticulously does something and that felt very apt.

Shreya: So I'm also going to quote one of the things that is part of the larger PDF that you had put out called Man Like Damu, which says that for years I have thought of being mild-mannered as a weakness. Like somehow it is not man enough to be this way. I was 34 years old when I realized the world has and needs all kinds of men and that alpha male is not the only male. Acha taught me that just by being who he is.  I mean, this is clearly also defining how your idea of masculinity has changed. Do you want to talk a little bit more about that? How does it allow you to do the things that you actually want to do in life and not play the same roles again and again as a man?

Hari:  So pop culture will tell you that a man is someone who takes charge of things, who will lead a certain way, and the man is, you know. A man is someone who has trouble sharing. The man is someone who will keep his emotions to himself and will not talk about it, will not cry in public or in front of anyone. I think these are super outdated as roles. There is more to being a man. And it's not just this. I mean, every time there was an angry young man Amitabh, there was also an Amol Palekar. Right. It coexisted even in cinema. And yeah, I think I fit in the Amol Palekar zone more. I might get angry sometimes, but I'm not Amitabh angry. 

Shreya: So I'm going to ask you another question. Having grown up with a father who wasn't a typical alpha male, did it allow you to accept more? You have mentioned that you are more like Amol Palekar but did it also make possible the fact that it is okay for a man to not just be heterosexual? It is okay for a man to not just want to dress in a very particular way? 

Hari: Of course it is okay. I mean, who makes these rules? I think the older I grow, I'm like you are responsible for your own life and no one else is. You are responsible for the good things that come out of your actions. You are responsible for the consequences of not-so-good things that you do. Okay? So you are responsible for your life and no one else is. You have the agency to live your life the way you want. Nobody should make rules for anyone else. So you be the kind of man you want to be. That is where I am at now. 

Shreya: And coming to this process wouldn't have been easy, right? It takes a lot, a lot of time to, I assume, shirk off what society. Has been telling you what you see reinforced day to day in pop culture. And also, as you have mentioned, you like to ruminate on these things for a really long time. So it may not have been an easy journey to come to this kind of an acceptance.

Hari: It's not. I mean, even while I was working on this comic and this came after a lot of thought, lot I have been mean to my dad in a way that and I haven't expressed it to him in any way, but I just kept comparing him to other men. He has taken charge of the family in his own sweet way. But he's not someone who's impulsive or he's not someone who'll do things angrily and then apologize for it. He's just been gentle throughout. And he's punished me physically once in all of life. He's not a beater. And I remember that one beating that I got. It stands out because it is the only one. So, yeah, it's taken me a while, and it's taken distance because my dad, he lives in Kerala, and now I'm here in Bombay. It has taken multiple visits to see what a person is like. See, it's only in the 30s when you start seeing your parents as people, then they are mom and dad who brought you here. In 30s, when you start questioning your own life, you start looking at your parents as individuals who are flawed humans themselves, but who might not have had a plan for you or for themselves. They are just someone who figured things out as they went. And when you put that in perspective is when you start seeing the little things that they do as humans, what are the kind of things they like? What is it that they don't like? And then you look back at situations from your childhood. You might be able to. Join dots and think, okay, so this is why they reacted that way, and things like that. And this is very interesting. A lot of these things now make sense. A lot of things that my father does make sense. My father is a walker. He likes walking. I always wondered, why do we have to walk so much? But I have realized it gives him joy. He likes walking. He's someone who will find shortcuts to places just by walking. Walking is also a way of slowing down and observing the world. Yes.

Shreya: In one of the panels in man like Damu, you have I think there is a picture of your father holding a seed pod.

Hari: Yeah. The one with the feathers which Blow away in the wind. Yeah. In Malayalam, we call it apupantadi. It is nature's amazing way of dispersing seeds. So yeah. He's holding one of those things he finds joy in small things. I'll be lying if I say I have started doing this, but I really want to see things the way he does. He'll stop to talk to stray cats. He'll pet them if they let him pet them. In the zine I wrote, he likes to collect sunrises and sunsets. And every time I visit, I make sure that we go on a walk and he'll show me things. He'll take me on a new route that I haven't seen yet. Yeah. He'll stop to look at some tree that is flowering. That is such a purposeful way to live. It is. And it is slow. It is gentle. And yeah. I would like to grow up to be a man like him.

Shreya: Okay. What are you looking at in the Zine? Is there something that you want to read out? I was just flipping through it, and I arrived at “he picks up fallen flowers, smells them, even though he can't. He lost his sense of smell. He had asthma, but he won't quit trying. He'll still pick up flowers on the floor. He'll make sure he's not plucking flowers from trees. He'll pick up what has fallen, and he'll put it to his nose, sniff and try to smell. He won't smell anything. He'll pass it on to me like they could if you can smell something, he makes time to stop and talk to unloved cats. He laughs at silly stuff in restaurant menus and public signages in this thought bubble, in the speech bubble I've written, what is the matter with this pullao? There's probably something that says Matter Pulao.”

Hari: He's someone who enjoys a transistor radio in 2021. Oh, wow. This is two years old. Yeah. If Father still has a transistor radio, I know he just visited home. I keep buying him radios. 

Shreya: Newer radios? 

Hari: Yeah, newer. Smaller ones. He likes doing stuff around the house. They have some space around the house where they live now. And he's a grass plucker. If you let grass grow too much. There will be snakes who come around. And I have a nephew now, so snakes around the house is a scary thought..

Shreya: Okay, so moving on to another of your scenes which talks about your desire to dress up, and it is something that we have spoken about in person quite in detail, but I wanted you to talk about that desire and also answer this question. Does actually putting down what you have been feeling for many years and also have been practicing, does putting it down on paper make it easier to talk about it and also at large to the world and to express this desire in a way that you hope can be understood?

Hari: Right. Okay. So I started cross-dressing or wearing women's clothing. There is no gender to clothing. We assign gender to clothing. I started when I was very young. I would To stay at home, stay back at home on purpose so I could wear someone else's clothes and because it would turn me on, I would masturbate and then I would feel super guilty. There was a lot of guilt associated with it. I felt like was doing something very wrong. And it felt all the more wrong because I didn't know of other people who were doing it. And I had no one else to talk to about this. It felt like something that only I was doing and I was doing while hiding. I was hiding this part of me for the longest time. And this guilt is something that I've carried for a long time. I'm 36 now, and yes, I've carried it for most of my adolescent age. Drawing and writing about it came after a lot of spending time on the Internet. The Internet has been a blessing because I discovered that there is a term for it, cross dressing. If there is a term for it, it means there are more people doing this. And that put me at ease, because then I felt I wasn't okay, this is something that other people are also doing. So I'm not alone in this. But it did nothing to my guilt because I was still carrying it around. I found other men who liked dressing up like women. I found men who were into makeup. That felt good. But a part of me is still wary of seeing hairy male bodies in feminine clothing. That is still a barrier that I'm dealing with. Writing and drawing about it was it came after, I think I was 32, 33 when I made that comic. It came after what I mentioned about how life being your own and you take charge of your own life and you deal with the consequences and gifts of your own actions. Right? I realized I have no one to report to. I am manager of my own life. And I was like, okay, so I don't need to hide about this. And. Anymore. I don't need to lie. This is a part of me, and I'm just going to tell people about it. So I made a comic. It is called Sometimes I Lie. And the response has been interesting. The people I thought were my friends didn't react to it at all. And a lot of people who were acquaintances on Instagram reached out to say really sweet things. I don't remember what you said, but two people, one of them said, hey, if you want to go shopping for makeup, I'll take you along. Another person said, I have Nath, like a collection of heirloom nose rings. At home that you can come and try anytime you want. I haven't taken up these two offers yet. Maybe someday I will. But it felt really nice that some people are accepting of this, and both of these are women, so I find it easier to talk to women about this. And yeah, that has been my cross dressing journey.

Shreya: Okay, how has this informed work, the ability to create outside of work and consistently tell stories that are so close to you? What does it make possible with respect to work? And I'm saying not just to the kind of your own output, but also your interaction with people as a person now, who has people reporting to them in a supervisory capacity?

Hari: It is believed that things that you do outside of work fuels your creative juices, which can be then used at work. I don't have live examples of this really happening. But what does happen is when you need references for design, for art, because I'm looking at a lot of other things I am able to tell people, okay, there is another way to do this. What if we do it like this? So that has been happening for a while now. Okay, so just bringing in alter it. 

Shreya: Has it changed anything to do with how people interact with you, for example?

putting these comics can be considered putting a certain part of your own personal, private life out there in a way that a lot of people in advertising don't necessarily always do. So has it changed the way that people interact with you because you're giving them access to this kind of slice of life?

Hari: Not really. Nothing has at work. Nothing really has changed because of anything that I have put out in comics. And I think this is the big mindedness and openness of advertising and marketing, because we are used to ideas that might be outside the regular, because that is what is celebrated. The unusual is what makes for interestingness.

Shreya: Okay, so we spoke about Linda Barry. We spoke did we speak about your journey with respect to Cyanotype through all this and also the journey of discovering cross dressing and then becoming comfortable enough with it in order to write about it? Has there been one person who has kind of been there through all of this?

Hari: Yes. And I should have mentioned her earlier and coming out, as in I'm also dealing with yeah. Understanding my own sexuality. I realized recently that every time I tell someone this, I am almost whispering because I don't think I have told myself this enough yet.

Yeah. And I also start all of these sentences with I think and I'm just going to continue with that trend. Yes, I think I am bisexual. Okay. And I say it like this because I'm caught up in labels. I have had sexual experiences with men, and this wouldn't be possible if it wasn't for a very supporting partner. I have been married to her for ten years now, and we have known each other for 15-16 years. It is only because of this kind of support that I'm able to come to terms with who I am and tell the world this, it wouldn't happen. I'm very grateful for a partner like her, and I think I got really lucky early in life because of which we are now having this conversation. 

Shreya: Yeah. I mean, I have told you guys in great detail about how your relationship journey is too good to be true in these days, and I'm just happy for both of you. But my question is, what does a small act of support look like? Can you give us an example?

Hari: For the longest time, when I told her about my, you know, my cross dressing, she wasn't okay with it. She said, you can do it in your own time. I don't remember the words, but she just said she doesn't want to see me like that. And I understand, as a wife, you want your husband to be a certain way. You are not imagining your husband to be dressed like a woman. I understand, but that and I kept it hidden from her for the longest time. It, but she's also grown as a person and she's also much later she said, hey, okay, it is so cool that you are able to do this and I would like to see you. So that is definitely support. I've been on Grinder for some time and I keep telling her horror stories of what men on Grinder are like. She is someone I can tell these things to. She is always here to hear me out. If I'm having doubts, if I'm having down moments, she's always here. I don't have an anecdote to tell you, but this is what support in the everyday looks like.

Shreya:  Okay. So as a last thing, I want to ask you two questions and the first is if they are people who are going through burnout and are trying to discover ways to express themselves and start from scratch like you did with drawing, are there any things you would like to say to them?

Hari: Yes, I think the first thing anyone who is going through burnout is to identify what is stressing them out. If it is work, see if you can take a break from work. And by break, I don't mean I was able to quit my job and take off and not do any work because I have a supportive partner. She said, it's okay, I am working. If you want to take a break, you take a break. I understand that not everyone will have that kind of support. Identify your stressors. Find ways to minimize that stress. If you are working too much, see if you can. Not work that much and do things that you enjoy. The five things that my therapist said get enough sleep, because sleep is a huge regulator of everything. It regulates your mind and body. Get enough rest, eat what you like and find newer things that give you joy. When you start doing something new, newer things will follow. Okay, I'm trying to sound profound here, but it's not. Yeah. So drawing was something new that I started doing, and it did give me joy. It is important to go back to your hobbies, the things that gave you joy as a child. I think that is a good way to get out of that is a good door to exit the room called Burnout.. 

Shreya: And what would you like to say to someone who is just starting or starting to question their sexuality and who are just trying to start out on their queer journey? Because I feel like social media paints a very particular picture of what queerness looks like and it can be very disorienting and you feel like you have to confirm.

Hari: Yes. So every time there's a pride march, I wonder if I am really proud I am on the journey. I've said it out loud on my first podcast today. And I don't know if I'm proud yet because there are still some people I might be hiding from and I don't know if they want to know. I don't know how they'll react when they hear this. But I think it is very important for your people to find their safe spaces. Start out in your safe spaces. Be yourself in your safe spaces. Find people who you can talk to and be yourself with. That is the first thing you should do. Make your support system first and everything else will follow from there.

Shreya: Yay. Thank you, Harry, for coming to your first ever podcast. Yay. And I'm so happy it could be me. take care. Thank you and I hope you enjoyed being here. 

Hari: Thank you so much for having me on your podcast. This has been fun.

Shreya: I hope you liked the episode. The dominant theme so far seems to be prioritising rest on this podcast - which is something I am slowly learning to allow. Please reach out me with comments and feedback on Podcast At Odds on instagram. See you in 2 weeks! Bye!