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MFA Project Report by Roomani Kulkarni


Maria Hanson

Frazer Hudson


Reflective statement

My blog started with storytelling as a main theme. I have always been interested in how stories (visual, oral, memories) are a big part of our personality. I wanted to explore storytelling through images / pictures / illustrations. During the process of exploring storytelling methods, I got attracted towards graphic novel style of telling a story. I am fascinated with the effect graphic novels have on reader’s mind. Mixture of words and images, storyboarded in very attractive way leave an impact that is so similar to the impact that is created after watching a film. From graphic novels, I took a step back and gave a thought to what exactly involves storytelling and its narration.

When I decided that as part of my MA project, I want to tell a story, I started thinking what story should I tell? Options were 1. Tell my own story. 2. Narrating P.L. Deshpande’s (Indian author) stories in a graphical form as all his books mainly have text and no images. I started thinking of what kind of story should I tell in order to connect with people from allover the world? This is when I started developing the concept of memories. Since couple of years I have been very fascinated with how I recall certain memories at unexpected times and how I remember them so graphically. I want to explore this concept in my project and get to know what other people think of memories. Are memories important to everyone? Do they connect to them as strongly as I do? What about people suffering from memory loss?

My current plan is to get to know what people’s perception about memories is. Later explorations could involve creating a platform where people can share their memories and appreciate memories. Basic idea is to illustrate memories.

Reflective statement

A man is a sum of his memories!

Why is it so important to record memories for me? What about people suffering from Dementia and other related diseases? These are few of the questions bothering me since my discussion with Frazer Hudson. I started thinking of the closest example I could think of, my grandfather. Recently he was diagnosed with alzheimer’s and his behaviour kept getting strange since then. My grandpa, who used to keep himself busy by watching television, reading news paper, playing card games, going for walks, chatting with his friends circle has now stopped doing most of these things. The fascinating fact for me was that he stills remembers certain old memories but he can’t remember if he had lunch after one hour after having lunch.

The quote “A man is a sum of his memories” suddenly made sense. Memories are stored so deep within us that even when suffering from dementia, my grandpa could remember small details of his past.

A man is a sum of his memories!


While I was thinking about Frazer Hudson’s suggestion during our discussion day before, about different perspectives in storytelling, I got reminded of an assignment I worked on during my undergraduate studies. The assignment was a part of ‘Illustration course’ where I was given a story to illustrate in three frames. There were three characters in the story and I had an option to select one character to illustrate the story from his point of view. The three characters were,

Rehman – a wealthy man

Abdul – a servant of Rehman

Death – fictional character (villain)

I had chosen Rehman’s point of view and the result was as follows. It was very interesting to see other point of views and I realised how a single story could be told in different ways just by changing perspective.
pov 1pov 2pov 3

The gist of the story is,

 Abdul spots death in a market. frightened Abdul runs away from it as fast as he can.




He goes to his master (Rehman) and asks for his help.





Rehman, a kind man gives money to Abdul and asks him to leave the town and save himself.






Relating this to my current project, it will be really interesting to see different people’s take on memories in general or on a particular type of memory from childhood; For example, “my first day of school” or “my first love”. Since memories are very personal and individualistic, it can be a good exercise for me to test if my illustrated memories (that I feel are very rich with feelings, contents) make sense to other people, see if they can relate to it. It will also be very interesting to make a collection of different people’s memories and try to look for connecting threads.



What is a memory?






What is a memory?