Asia Society India Centre had a chat with Mandovi Menon, part of Asia 21 Next Generation Class of 2022. Menon is a writer and creative director, her work stands at an intersection of culture, storytelling, and social impact. As co-founder of EgoDeath, her creative practice has expanded into designing culturally conscious strategies for brands and institutions. Mandovi’s work, whether through her independent writing or as a curator of ideas, delves deeply into shared South Asian narratives, coalescing her personal artistic exploration with cultural advocacy.

Let's start with an introduction. Could you tell us a bit about yourself, your work, and how EgoDeath has evolved as a studio?

Hi, thank you for inviting me. Asia Society has been an incredible network for me personally, so it’s always a pleasure to interact with this community.

My name is Mandovi Menon. I’m a writer and creative director. I've always struggled to succinctly explain what I do but these two words contain my world quite well.

I have a long history of work in magazine-making, which has probably been the most public-facing aspect of my career. Currently, I’m building a creative practice called Egodeath (it’s been almost two years now) with my partner Hriday Nagu. It’s a strategy and design practice, and we work with brands and institutions primarily interested in culture-building and social impact. These are two areas where we have natural interest and expertise, though we’ve been quite industry agnostic from the get-go. Maintaining that flexibility has served us well because it’s allowed us to bring a different set of values and perspectives into spaces that might not have been considering their potential for impacting culture, environment, or society otherwise. This is how I make a living so it’s where most of my energy and time goes these days, though my personal and professional creative worlds do blur quite a bit.

The other side of me operates as an independent artist exploring fictional storytelling across all kinds of formats. I write children's books, poetry, and short stories. Everything I make begins with the written word, and then evolves into whatever medium I feel is best suited for the story whether that’s film, animation, design, curation or even physical experiences.

How did you find yourself entering into the creative space?

It was a very organic, largely unplanned entry but once I was in, things happened very quickly. I didn’t consider writing a viable career option when I was starting out–a sign of those times I suppose. I was given the opportunity to write a freelance article for MidDay (the brief was to write 500 words on some underwater headphones!) via a college friend and given the subject matter it sounds silly to say, but I really couldn’t believe how fulfilling it felt. From there, I ended up in music, arts and culture-related journalism for various publications because they were natural interest areas for me personally, though I don’t consider myself a journalist anymore.

After a few years with Times of India, MidDay, etc., I decided to start my own magazine/ media company, Homegrown. There was a lack of independent media and spaces for the kind of storytelling we wanted to see in the world, so we took a leap of faith. We might have thought twice had we not been as young as we were, but it was a major learning arena for me. I built and ran that for six years and from there, my work kept expanding into all kinds of interesting formats and spaces under the umbrellas of storytelling, curation, and culture-building. Some of my other projects since include The Dirty Magazine, Apalam Chapalam and The Minor Project.

A lot of your work is rooted in the experiences and upliftment of children, what led to your passion to contribute your work to this field? How has your experience in this area shaped your work and creative process?

I wouldn’t say it was conscious but I'm happy that this is a theme that emerged in my work. It’s a bit of nature and nurture both I think. On the one hand, I've always had a natural inclination towards world-building for children. I find a lot of creative freedom in this space and from a fairly young age, much of my writing was already taking this shape.

On the other hand, my mother has been a huge influence. She’s worked in the social sector–specifically in child rights and development–for most of my life and a majority of her work has been rooted in deepening the public understanding, perception, and engagement with the issue.

It gave me a front-row seat to some very complex ideas and work in this space that one wouldn’t ordinarily have access to. She ran Childline India (the largest emergency helpline for children in India) through most of my student life, which involved a lot of field work and bridging the gap between government organisations and grassroot realities for children across the country. She ran our home with the same values as she did her work so topics like juvenile justice were commonplace at a young age.

Many of my formative memories involved witnessing how she put her values into action in challenging situations. When the Nirbhaya case was ongoing, one of the perpetrators was a juvenile and she had the incredibly tough task of holding strong on the age limit of prosecution. Understandably, there was a lot of public rage (mine and my sister’s included) but watching how she navigated that dialogue publicly, maintaining both principles and empathy, definitely impacted me over the years. There’s a commitment to the kind of world I want to contribute to through my work, ideologically speaking, and a concerted effort to stay open-minded when challenged that I’d credit my mother for. 

Has your mother been a mentor for you in your career?

Not in a direct sense. We have completely different interests, skills, personalities and work in very different sectors, but from the lens of values, yes. It has been interesting to see how much of my creative work has ended up intersecting with what she does though. I think she has learned that through storytelling, you can deepen understanding of issues that technical approaches couldn’t fully address and I've been able to layer my own storytelling towards more meaningful ideas and impact; so that exchange has been expansive for both of us.

Growing up in nurturing and kind environments, where children have the space to imagine and express can be key to a healthy creative journey. How do you feel your environment and community growing up has contributed towards your work?

When I think of what I do as a larger body of work, both the personal and professional, it has been about documenting or reflecting culture in some way; and environment and community are crucial parts of that. So I would say the contributions of both have been immense.

Bombay (Mumbai) in particular has been a huge influence and inspiration for me. I’ve spent most of my life here, and still find the representation of viewpoints, lifestyles, crafts, industries and cultures to be incredibly rich. The personal community I’ve been able to build out of here reflects this and that’s allowed my work to take on shapes and forms I could never have imagined alone. Storytelling has always been at the heart of this city, so I consider it a true privilege to call this place and its people my home. 

Speaking of community, are there any contemporary South Asian creatives who inspire you or give you hope for the future?

That’s a great question, and the list is long! I’ll just highlight a few people I’ve worked closely with, as seeing their process and approach has inspired me even more than the outcomes of their work.

Mriga Kapadiya and Amrit Kumar, who run Nor Black Nor White, are incredible artists who have stayed true to their values in everything they do. They’ve built a community with a real sense of belonging, prioritising the voices of women and people of colour long before they became buzzwords. I’d say they are the closest thing I have had to mentors despite the fact that we do very different things.

Another duo I admire is Shiva Nallaperumal and Juhi Vishnani, who run a design practice called November. Their approach to graphic design is atypical, and they use their expertise in typography to spotlight culture and social issues they have a natural interest in. There’s a lot of power in creatives who understand how to use their skills towards the spaces they want to have an impact. 

Then there’s Sanaya Ardeshir (Sandunes Music). Full disclosure, she’s one of my closest friends, but I like to think there’s zero bias in this statement and I've been able to understand the breadth and depth of her work via music because of this. She’s able to bring together her interest in ancestry, composition and sound through very varied work that fits everywhere from museums to music venues.

Finally, Kshitij Kankaria, founder of Dirty Magazine. We often have very different approaches and ideas, but it’s been both fun and fulfilling to see how our points of view can live together on the print publications we’ve worked on so far. We’ve built a lot of mutual respect and learning through this process.

The one thing all these people have in common is their dedication to always pushing beyond the traditional scopes of their mediums, and staying true to who they are. 

Your work across platforms, be it The Dirty Magazine or Homegrown, has an incredibly definitive voice with provocative and moving views on the complexity of life and experience in South Asia. What are some of the challenges you’ve faced when making sure to stay true to the stories you tell?

Thank you and I'm glad it’s landed that way for some people! The evolution of the media industry itself has been the biggest challenge. It’s incredibly fragmented, and we’re definitely at a point where some serious changes are needed. When I started Homegrown, digital media was just beginning to take over, which was exciting because it was a complete blank canvas. Now that canvas is totally cluttered and algorithm-driven, and creating a sustainable model is incredibly hard to achieve. Balancing important stories that need to be told against the constant prioritisation of hitting numbers via ‘what works’ remains a consistent challenge.

Additionally, the political climate has definitely contributed to the industry operating from more fear than ever before. Even with a platform as innocent as Apalam Chapalam (which was primarily a regional storytelling platform directed at children during lockdown) certain explorations of mythological stories made us targets of some vile internet mobs and threats. The details are too much to go into, but there are so many instances of targeted attacks online and threats to safety which are forcing creators to consider what they are putting out into the world through unnecessary filters; all of which waters down the impact of our work in the long run. Journalists and storytellers have different responsibilities but both need to be able to operate from a place of freedom to be able to reflect society back at us. 

Personally, I’ve had to create a clear distinction between media work (which I do out of passion now) and the work I do to make a living so I can operate from a little more freedom when I’m making decisions about the stories I want to tell.

All this being said, I still have a lot of hope for the industry. We’re at an interesting transition point, and I think we’re going to see a lot more independent and citizen-led media emerge which may allow new systems to emerge and co-exist with the mainstream machinery.

Starting out can be daunting, especially with resistance. How did you keep going?

I don’t think anybody can escape these challenges regardless of what they pursue, but honestly it comes back to the community (this includes the Asia Society network) I've been lucky enough to be surrounded by in this lifetime. The support and shared values, even when it’s been in the minority, has offered enough strength to persist in all kinds of situations.

I’ve also made concerted efforts to engage with viewpoints outside of the echo chambers we all exist within today. Approaching resistance as an opportunity to learn and expand my own thinking has made it feel less daunting. I’ve found it to be a great catalyst for growth, and motivation to improve the quality of my own work. Ultimately, both media and storytelling is about trying to connect with people so if that’s not happening then it’s up to me to go back to the drawing board and find new ways.

What’s next for you professionally?

My friends will laugh at this question because I always have 72 projects spinning in the air at any given time! But I'll do my best to share a few.

One is Apalam Chaplam (Instagram Channel and Youtube Channel), a multilingual storytelling channel for children that I hope to build up again. It was designed for urban, underprivileged children during lockdown, however it very quickly also became a repository for regional storytelling so there’s a lot of potential still left to realise with it. I have so much love and value for any kind of archival work; especially when it comes to regional poetry and oral stories that haven’t been recorded.

The other is a feature-length animated film for children that I'm already in the process of scripting and storyboarding. It’s a long-term project, probably five years out, but I have big dreams of seeing it on a big screen one day.

Then there’s an anthology of short stories (I recently had one of them published in The Bombay Literary Magazine— “Watermelon For One.”) and one poetry collection I hope to publish at some point in the near future.

Finally, there’s Egodeath, which is still in its early stages but is very close to my heart. We have a lot in the works, and I look forward to sharing more about it as it grows. It's a much less visible part of the work that I do, but is actually the largest body of work. So, I hope to spotlight more of what we’re up to there soon.

You’re also writing children’s books. Anything for us to look out for?

I have around 10 complete children’s books and have had exciting conversations with publishers, but I move slowest with this side of my work because I’m a bit of a perfectionist here (and not in a good way). It’s something I've always done with a lot of love, so I’m ok with taking a bit of time for now.

Your work seems to be done with a lot of love. Does that perfectionism apply to everything you do, or just certain projects?

It does apply, but thankfully, most of my other work is much more collaborative, which gives it the momentum to keep things moving. It’s the completely personal projects (mostly fiction writing) where impostor syndrome creeps in though I like to think I'm in the process of getting out of my own way! 

Explore more of Mandovi’s work:

• Apalam Chapalam: Instagram Channel and Youtube Channel
• The Minor Project campaign with Unicef India and Leher NGO - Instagram Channel and Youtube Video of PSAs created around child sexual abuse, online bullying etc.
• Watermelon For One - Mandovi’s first published short story.
• Dirty Magazine: Issue# 3.
• Egodeath Services Deck