As a little girl, Kanaka travelled in a bullock cart to the Somnathpur temple with visitors who came to her house. She would run around the stone figures in the temple; sometimes she would stand and wonder why she could not make such figures. In the village where she lived as a child, she waited for the servants to clean the front yard with cow dung paste, and over that dull green colour she would draw with white powder the rangoli designs she had learnt from her mother. In a family with so many children that it was like a nursery school, Kanaka alone carried in her heart the yearning to create something with her hands; something akin to the grandeur of the sculptures she had seen at the Somnathpur temple.

One can truly say that the first fifty years of Kanaka's life are all about the way her dream became a reality with the support of her mother and the immense love and knowledge that her guru Vadiraj gave her so generously. The rest of her life as she lived it until her death on 13th May 2021, was about creating through stone some new forms, forms which would not take her away from tradition but which, would emerge as different expressions of her imagination. These notes taken from her dialogue at the SPARROW visual history workshop represent the flights in stone that Kanaka continued to take all her life.

Written and presented by Sound & Picture Archives for Research On Women (SPARROW).

Voiced by Shruti Bhola.

Produced by OfSpin Media Friends.

Learn more about SPARROW here: https://www.sparrowonline.org/

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