After illustrations, this artist is exploring love and romance through podcast

Two panels by Harikumar. Pic Courtesy/@induviduality

Indu L Harikumar, an award-winning artist, author and educator, has been illustrating stories of love, sexuality, and relationships for nearly seven years now. These stories have been peppered across, as she terms them, people-powered projects where readers contribute snippets of their dating lives, relationships, ideas about intimacy, and experiences of sexuality. Through these projects, she has held space for nuances that these experiences bring with them - whether those are feelings of vulnerability, joy, curiosity, tenderness, and even carved out a safe space for people to open up about abuse and violence in intimate relationships. Over the years, with every story and taboo topic, Harikumar has created a body of work that has helped shed the tag of shame and ‘dirtiness' from these delicate experiences. No wonder then, the author has amassed a large community of readers to engage in the realness of these relationships.

The Navi-Mumbai-based artist has nearly 11 such projects, including her 2016 series of 100 Indian Tinder Tales which looked into the online dating life of people in India; My Abortion Story in 2019 attempted to destigmatise abortion and explain the law and procedure of obtaining an abortion in India while in 2021, Let's Talk Consent was about seeking, giving and respecting consent in intimate relationships. The most recent one, Cock-a-doodle, illustrated people's relationships with their lover's penis. All of these projects were illustrated and shared over Instagram. For her ongoing project - Handmade Love, the author switches to a new medium, podcasts.

The bi-monthly podcast will gather stories of love across avenues that break stereotypes and conventions, whether of self-love, platonic love, work bestie or love within a community. The author explains, "I wanted to explore a broader understanding of love and what it can be. Mostly, love is a term thrown around casually or reserved for a heightened experience with someone special; also, romantic love is given so much importance in society that if you don't have it, you are lacking something. But I wanted to open it up and understand what are the various ways people love, where they go to find love, and what is love."

Avoiding marital and parental love, the stories will include epic romances as well as investigating different areas and ways in which love manifests itself. The first episode, released last week, holds two love stories - one that transcends religion and another that speaks of friendship. These stories have been gathered from contributors and read by volunteers. A few will be documented through
animated illustrations shared on Instagram.

Explaining how stories are carved, the author notes, "As someone who has worked with personal stories, I have some idea as to how they can connect [with the reader]. To bring this out, I often ask people to explain how something made them feel because that is a window for others to be a part of your story." This way, the podcast helps us to be sensitive to a love we might otherwise overlook. "As humans, we learn from each other's experiences; it also gives us an entry into someone else's life, while also [helping us connect to our] own or similar experiences,"
Harikumar concludes.

Log on to: Handmade Love on Spotify