About

I am a doctoral student at the South Asia Studies Department at University of Pennsylvania. In 2019, I defended my MPhil thesis in Theatre and Performance Studies at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. I have a MA degree in Performance Studies from the School of Culture and Creative Expression, Ambedkar University, Delhi. In my previous life, I have studied Computer Science. 

My MA dissertation was on Tiatr – a popular theatre genre among lower caste and working-class Goan Catholic communities. It was an attempt to understand how marginalized communities engage with popular culture to disseminate counterdiscourses and organize themselves into counterpublics to facilitate subject-formations and political actions that challenge the dominant rhetoric of Indian nationalism.

My Mphil thesis was on Marathi plays based on Maratha rulers such as Shivaji and Sambhaji, performed by village collectives in 20th century Goa. In this project, I look at the performances of popular plays revolving around Maratha history and their political significance in Goa.

I was awarded the DD Kosambi Research Fellowship in the ‘Junior Research Fellowship’ category for the period 2016-2018 by the Directorate of Art and Culture, Government of Goa, to carry out archival research to study the genealogies of Maratha and Marathi identity among Hindu communities in 20th century Portuguese Goa.

I occasionally write poems in Marathi, which are published here. I am also a playwright, and my maiden play Avyahat, based on the English novel ‘A Spoke In The Wheel’ by Amita Kanekar, opened in 2018. I was also awarded the Tendulkar-Dubey fellowship, awarded to young theatre practitioners in India, for the year 2020 by the Vinod and Sarayu Doshi Foundation. My second play, Bhawal, opened in December 2020. My third play, Sangeet Mativilay, opened in December 2023.