Together Forever | Sarthak Kathuria

Together Forever – A nation that hates to let go, of people, emotions and traditions.’ When I first read about this theme, it somehow called out to me. I’m not surprised though, as I am currently living in a place that is 8000 miles away from my ‘together forever’. I study here, in the notorious brain-drained USA, where the kids are raised in their separate rooms until they finally move out as soon as they turn 18, where long distance calls are made only when it’s an emergency and where families eat together not more than once a year. It’s needless to say how much I miss home. This poster is an ode to joint families, a concept which is almost a legacy to India. That good old melodrama, which finds itself in every third corner of India’s family structure, and where it is really about respecting that tiny sliver of personal space everyone deserves (but remember, only a sliver). I have tried to show this through typography in a modernized devanagri typeface which reads the theme title in English, and which semiotically speaks about the conflict between westernization and yet our inability to let go of our innate values, our inherent utopias and our language. The vibrant hands dance to the rhythm of the goings-on of any normal day in a joint family home—those incessant fights for space, attention, and the remote, the unbridled love of mothers and their rotis, and those little fires in the kitchen (and elsewhere). We know it can get crowded, and we do seem to become more and more modern with every passing day, but I, with this poster, with my life here in the USA and with all the love to my own people, ask you : will we ever get over that overwhelming drama, those real-time Ekta Kapoor plots, the sweet and sour and bitter and eclectic and absolutely delectable mix of not only spices but personalities, and of course all that unbridled love and food in binge? Dear god, I hope not.