Kala, Curated: Wild Wishlist with Rohini Kejriwal from The Alipore Post

What does it mean to surround ourselves with things that hold memories, stories, and a piece of who we are? In this conversation with Rohini Kejriwal, the curator and creator behind The Alipore Post, we explore the beauty hidden in the mundane, and the magic of bringing nature into the spaces we inhabit. Through her curation of Kala Curry's wildlife collection, Rohini reflects on why she is drawn to objects that feel alive.

Absolutely. I think I've always been a bit of a hoarder and a forager, especially when it comes to the objects I keep close to me. Over the years, I've collected little things that feel like emotional anchors - they have backstories attached to them, they speak to me on a deeply personal level.

I've always been drawn to things that feel lived in. A handwritten note or pressed flowers tucked inside a book, a chipped ceramic coffee mug, LOTS of little critters and birds peeking out from corners of the house... I think that what draws me towards work that carry some sort of emotional weight is that they become reminders that beauty quietly exists in the everyday, in the mundane routines, in half-baked memories and ordinary moments.

Objects absolutely carry stories. They hold memories, associations, people, places, moments, entire worlds within them. They become part of our emotional landscape over time. That emotional weight can come from something very simple — who gave it to you, the particular day you chanced upon it, or the phase of life it has witnessed alongside you. My cat Haiku's toys haunt me yet still belong in the tiny basket by my desk, even though she is no longer in this world. The pigeon figurine I found at a flea market in France was my best find in years, and manages to startle me anytime I come across it. So many small trinkets, lost paintings, dangling, beautiful things, all containing entire worlds inside them.

So yes, I do think the things we choose to surround ourselves with should carry some sense of story, intimacy or intention. Not necessarily in a grand way, but enough for them to feel alive to us. I think when we buy more consciously, we also begin living more consciously.

Ever since I went to boarding school and discovered how nurturing nature can be, Mother Nature has always felt like both a refuge and a teacher to me. I think the natural world constantly reminds us of rhythm, patience, impermanence and coexistence, things we often forget in modern life. I can spend days at end consuming nature poetry, going on long, meandering walks with no destination, foraging along the way, smiling with every step. I genuinely believe I am most myself in nature, and turn to fellow writers, poets, scientists, naturalists, researchers who go looking for answers in nature, who see nature as a collaborator in their work.

I'm endlessly inspired by how alive and interconnected everything in nature is. The changing colours of the sky and the shapes in passing clouds, the joy of birdsong as language, the innate curiosity to know the name of a blooming flower, the wonderful notion of crown shyness in trees: there's poetry everywhere in nature. Even the smallest observations can feel profound if we pay attention long enough.

Through wilderness walks and spending time in nature in the hope of one day calling myself a naturalist, co-existence especially reminds me that there are entire worlds existing parallel to ours, quietly and beautifully. It slows me down enough to notice.

Poetry has shaped the way I observe the world more than anything else. I often return to writers like Mary Oliver, Linda Gregg, John O'Donohue, Mark Strand, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Wislawa Szymborska, Kala Ramesh and so many others because their writing carries both intimacy and expansiveness.

I'm especially drawn to writing that notices small things deeply: poems that make you pause and reconsider something ordinary. Mary Oliver's line, “For me, the door to the woods is the door to the temple,” has stayed with me for years because it embodies the sacredness of the natural world. I think nature poetry in particular teaches us how to remain tender in a difficult world.

Since childhood, I've also been a big, big fan of Gerald Durrell, who instilled in me a deep reverence for and curiosity towards nature. There was something so pure and joyful about his relationship with wildlife…the humour in the myriad interactions drew me in rather early.

Since the very beginning of The Alipore Post, there was a genuine need to platform and celebrate others: a curiosity in holding space for unknown faces, unknown strangers, their writing, their art, their choice of expression. Being able to call myself a curator is a special thing in itself. To have a community that's actually stuck around for over a decade, reading poems, consuming art, responding to open calls, growing alongside me through my multiple experiments and meanderings…that's rare, and I don't take it lightly. Most of the work has been driven by personal curiosity, not just curation for its own sake.

But curation can become so outward-facing that you forget to check in with your own inner world. There have been real phases of feeling creatively exhausted, even invisible to myself, because I was constantly consuming, editing, sharing and platforming other people's work, holding space for everyone's voice except mine. Over time, I realised making space for myself had to become deliberate, almost stubborn. I started returning to slower, quieter practices — poetry, collage, cyanotypes, analog photography — mediums that didn't ask to be shared, didn't owe anyone an output, didn't need to perform.

Lately, that's shifted into something more visible: exhibitions, carving time to work on photo books I've dreamt about for years, and in general, a lot more Rohini for the world to see. I feel the need for my own distinct voice and way of seeing the world to find new homes, beyond the newsletter, beyond the role of curator entirely. It reminds me why I started writing or making things in the first place.

I think one of the most radical things we can do today is create privately sometimes. Not every photograph needs to be posted. Not every poem needs to become content.

Something has genuinely been damaged by how digital and superficial everything has become. I feel for artists and creators who feel forced to make reels about their process, to narrate every step of it on YouTube or Instagram, until nothing is a secret skill anymore. Even galleries aren't spared. Every artwork gets photographed and shared before you've had the chance to stand in front of it yourself, and that will never be the same as encountering something firsthand, with your own eyes, in your own time.

I've personally started pulling away from algorithms, in my own small way. My newsletter has slowed down a lot over the years, and I post on Instagram maybe once a month now, if that. There used to be something instinctive about how I'd cross-post: finding a poem, finding an artwork from the public domain, putting them next to each other so they could speak to one another, because there was an actual community on the other side reading them. Honestly, I don't recognize what Instagram has become anymore.

Algorithms want repetition, speed, things that are instantly consumable. Real creativity has never worked that way for me: it demands slowness, it needs room to fail...I think protecting joy means giving yourself permission to make something badly, with no outcome attached to it. Curiosity comes back the moment you stop performing for anyone. Some of my most honest creative moments have happened when absolutely no one was watching.

It was a mix of storytelling, emotion and memory, more than pure aesthetics. The Bee Eater and Baya Weaver magnets, for instance, drew me in because of the leather punching work, yes, but also because they're using craft to quietly create awareness around birds. The Neel Songbird glass desk buddy pulled me in for a different reason entirely; it's not really an object so much as company, a little bird to sit with while I work.

Wildlife, for me, also has a way of pulling in everything else I love about nature. So naturally there were some flowers in the mix too. I run a flower-lovers page called Hoovu Finds, and the Malli earcuff made me smile, because I tend to pick up flowers and tuck them behind my ear anyway. The floral-dyed bucket hat had the same pull, a little piece of nature you get to put on your head.

I was also genuinely curious about the use of natural materials in some of these pieces, like the Jade Diary with its handmade paper and wooden stick spine. There's something about seeing materials so close to their original, unprocessed form that I find forever fascinating. It feels like the object hasn't travelled too far from where it began.

What I loved about the collection was that the pieces didn't feel decorative alone. They felt alive. They carried personality and narrative. Wildlife has this incredible ability to make us feel connected to something larger than ourselves, and I think that emotional bridge is what drew me most strongly to these works.

Yes, several pieces felt that way to me, but the Mini Post Office pen stand stopped me in my tracks completely. I'm a big collector of all things postal. I already own a pen stand issued by India Post itself, and a stranger once sent me my own life-size postbox simply because of The Alipore Post. So finding this on Kala Curry felt like one of the most special discoveries on the whole site. It looks so classic, so beautifully made, right down to the little service window and the red postbox.

I'm always moved by objects that feel intimate: things that seem to hold traces of the maker's hand or invite a memory beyond their utility. This one did exactly that. It reminded me of writing letters at Rishi Valley School, of waiting for replies, of an entire emotional infrastructure we've quietly let go of in favour of instant messages. The best art objects carry memory inside them like that, and this one carried mine almost too well.

I love seeing Indian crafts move beyond the idea of preservation alone and become part of contemporary daily life. What excites me is seeing younger artists and designers reinterpret craft with freshness and playfulness while still respecting its roots. It's the whole idea of pushing the boundaries of something like leather craft, or figuring out how to turn the bark of a tree into an actual diary. There's something special about coming up with these whimsical ideas and actually giving them form, breathing life into objects that evolve and go beyond traditional motifs entirely. It creates accessibility and continuity at the same time.

Suddenly, craft isn't something distant or ceremonial: it becomes something you live with, use, touch and interact with every day. That's what goes a long way for craftsmen too: thinking of new ways for these crafts to live alongside us, rather than being viewed as just decorative items. They find utility and meaning and a place in our lives, in our homes. I think that everyday intimacy is what keeps traditions alive across generations.

Definitely. I think many of us are experiencing a kind of digital exhaustion, even if we don't always articulate it. We spend so much time consuming things quickly that slow, tactile experiences begin to feel incredibly grounding.

I also think we've almost forgotten what it's like to be bored. It's become normal to clock 6-8 hours of screen time daily and just idle our lives away without registering it as a choice. Annie Dillard wrote: “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” And that's stayed with me, because so much of our identity now lives in this digital, virtual space that it's genuinely confusing to know what's real and what's 'reel'. We're constantly negotiating between the two.

I think slowness is how we find our way back to what's real. Something like making a cyanotype… the ten-odd steps before an image even appears, mixing chemicals in the dark, never quite knowing if it's going to form, has nothing virtual about it. There's real chance involved, real curiosity, with no outcome guaranteed. That unpredictability is what I think we're actually craving. Not control, but the opposite of control: the feeling of being present for something you can't fast-forward or filter.

Writing by hand, painting, gardening, playing traditional games, cooking slowly: these acts reconnect us to our senses and to presence itself. They remind us that not everything meaningful has to be efficient. I think people are yearning for rituals again, for experiences that ask us to participate fully rather than scroll past. The hard part is holding onto that once the moment passes, letting it become a habit rather than a rare escape.

I think the poem that came to mind as I wrote these responses was Picking Up Pinecones by Mary Ruefle. There's something in it about a life spent quietly noticing things, gathering small objects, looking up at a ceiling you've stopped really seeing, and being startled by what's actually been there all along. It captures that same forager's instinct I think runs through this whole wishlist: the wonder of an ordinary, accumulated life, and the slightly unanswerable question of whether that gathering, that noticing, will ever stop, or whether it even should.