Just like every writer out there, I too maintain an irregular blog by the name

'Lekhak Pathak'

on Wordpress. Here is a blog piece from it.

Behance is not letting me embed the link, so I am putting it here: https://purvapathak.wordpress.com/2020/08/10/a-day-in-a-cab/ 

Interviewing Padma Awardee Moozhikkal Pankajakshi was no less than an uphill battle. The biggest task was getting her contact for the interview. As she is based in a small village near Kottayam in Kerala, it took me a series of journalists to finally reach out to her. After failed attempts of 3 days, my editor told me that I have one last day to contact her and if I do not reach out to her in the next 24 hours, the story will be taken from me.

I couldn't risk giving away a story I have been researching about for song, so I took that Roadies challenge of 24 hours and made it! Reaching out to my friends and professors from Kerala and then finally getting the lead of a journalist in Kottayam who had Moozhikal's contact was how I spent that last day.

The next big task was communication gap. Moozhikal only understands Malyalam, so it was a two hour long interview with Moozhikal's grandchildren translating her answers for me in their broken English.

Finally jotting down all the notes from the interview, I went out for a movie (great pre-COVID times) to celebrate my small victory.  Felt like I deserved it!  

Link to the article: https://swarajyamag.com/culture/the-story-of-padma-award-winner-moozhikkal-pankajakshi-who-inherited-the-puppet-art-nokkuvidya-pavakkali-and-kept-it-alive

Veerangana is a non-governmental organisation based in Haldwani, Uttarakhand. While volunteering with the NGO in 2019, I wrote content for its website. The brief was to write basic, uncomplicated content with details about the organisation, so that anyone visiting the website can understand what is written.

For some reason, Behance is not allowing me to embed the link. Hence, I am putting it here for ease: http://veerangana.org/about.html