I’m Hima Batavia, an artist, writer, community designer and futures thinker based in T’karonto.
Some people know me as a person who is always up for a prank and feels a lot, and others know me as a person who can’t sleep because I’m thinking about something. Either way, it’s chaos up in here and Mirror Mirror is a place for me to look at reality/culture/inner worlds to process who we are, how we are changing, and what we are becoming. After all, God is Change.
If you need some cred badges to parse through the crowded Internet, here is my Linkedin.
In short, let’s hang out, spiral and ask the big and small questions, even if let’s be real, there are no actual answers.
What to expect
Every week I will publish something - whether that is an essay, a list of things piquing my interest, an advice column, a casual chat with a friend about what we are processing and thinking about or a thread for conversation. Sometimes there will be doodles. Variety is my dopamine and vital to my well-being and capacity to stay the course.
In whatever form - I hope this newsletter thoughtfully helps us understand ourselves, each other and the world more clearly, and inspires us to remember what we are collectively capable of…even if that means being absolutely horrified in the process. I also hope we can laugh about how absurd it is to be alive in the first place.
Even though I’ve given myself permission to write about anything, some topics I gravitate toward are: pop culture and pop-psych, existentialism tech and no tech, art and creative process, cities and urban life, post-capitalism, progressive politics, ethics, community care, inner life, friendship, relationships, domestic life and going into silence at 50.
Positionality
I identify as a South Asian, medium brown skin, cis-gender, able-bodied, straight woman living as a settler on the Indigenous lands, T’karonto. I was born in Scarborough, raised Gujarati-Jain, middle-class, with English as my first language. My father is an accountant and my mother was a domestic engineer but ran a flower shop and side gift basket business for some years. My parents immigrated by choice via London and East Africa and are still together. I have two sisters and no extended family living locally. I experience symptoms of ADHD, anxiety, insomnia and hypervigilance.
I share this to let you know that what I write is likely consciously and unconsciously informed by some of these lived experiences.
My DMs are open
Write me! Tell me what resonates and what doesn’t. I’m here for productive love, feedback, dialogue and new friends!
Otherwise, if you’ve found your way here, thank you. How cool is it that we get to share our thoughts and have others actually read it? Wild.
Grateful to be seen by you,
Hima
