Mine All Mine: A Room Tour with Shreya K

Join me for a special-edition CHERRYPI post featuring my childhood bestie Shreya Karthik and her wild, messy, wonderful room.

"I’ve had the fan since we moved here. There used to be a glass dome that covered the light but my boyfriend

accidentally punched it while taking his shirt off."

SHREYA

"I love pottery because it makes me feel very human, like a caveman. I could be doing this on a riverbank before the wheel was created. It’s very tactile, and my hands are the body part I identify with the most."

"Beary used to have a shirt but I don’t know where it is. It was green and purple and red.”

“Mr. Bamboo (right) I got at a birthday party in the 4th grade. We all decorated them and put hearts in them, and I remember there was a birth certificate thing and I wrote ‘Mr. Baboo’ by accident. For the rest of my life my mom called him ‘Mr. Baboo’ to mess with me. 

I made it a habit to keep him next to me when I slept cause I always wanted a bear to have, like in books and TV. I wanted an item that I could identify as mine and it could identify me as its. It’s like marriage. So Beary (left) was kind of the other woman. I was gifted him on a birthday by my parents and he was a “proper teddy”, so he would occasionally be the one I held when I went to sleep. In the last couple years he made a huge resurgence and recently when I was booted out of the house I took him and not Mr. Bamboo. It just brought me more comfort in that moment. I’m still thinking about that.”

"This is my dream desk. I think it’s the center of the room, other than the bed. I got it from a very old person for a very low price, and I hope he knows it went to someone who loves it very much. It’s a rolltop desk, so I could lock it with a key, but there’s always too much stuff on it to close it. It has a million drawers and only I know what they are."

"They’re organized based off of vibe. I could easily tell you where things go but not why they go there."

"This is like a town. I sit at the desk very often, so I put these things here so I would see them often too. It’s sort of like a backdrop for my mind. Like, it’s contextual for me. Sharks and wizards are important to me. Lived-in places are important to me. And so is repetition."

“This lamp is the main light source in the room. I barely turn the lights on. I love this lamp and I think it will go to hell with me if I ever go to hell, which I don’t think I will because I don’t think hell is real.”

“I got this loom a really long time ago. I have this habit where I get really fixated on a type of art-making, and I want to make something so encompassing and honorary that I don’t make anything at all cause I can’t think of what to make. So the loom collected dust for a year until more recently.

Now I’m doing my first “real thing”... it’s become something I can easily sit down with and add to and move away from and come back to, because it’s different from before (now that the first try is over with.)”

“My cameras used to live all together on one shelf but we’ve sort of had a falling out over the last couple years. I think we’ll reconcile though. I recently had an epiphany that my cameras can’t talk, so they can’t ignore me, so really I’m the one ignoring them and they’re innocent.

My first camera was a Vivitar 3800N. It was the first film camera I ever shot on in my high school photo class and I got so attached to it I bought it off my teacher. After a while the light meter broke and I had to put her away, which was heartbreaking. I love this Minolta (above) but it’s like having a new dog. I can’t love either one of them more or less than the other, but they’ll both live in my heart forever."

“I love puzzles. I love that I can sit down and then I look up and it’s been 4 hours and the puzzle is done. It does feel like going somewhere else but I don’t want to be too cliche.”

"I don’t want to give anyone sepsis. I’m not the kind of person who would give someone sepsis and it’s important to me that people know that."

“My friend Beatryz made this of me in art school. She said I was the perfect model because I was so intently focused on what I was doing. I was looking at pictures of Megan Fox on my iPad.” 

“I don’t wear a lot of things in here. I have a hard time letting go of fabrics.”

“I use these for stick and pokes occasionally. For myself and for other people sometimes, but not without lots of safety precautions. I don’t want to give anyone sepsis. I’m not the kind of person who would give someone sepsis and it’s important to me that people know that.” 

"His name is Chandler and he was an impulse buy. He’s an 18-inch stuffed frog."

“This book reminded me how fucking important books are to me after I had my “gifted kid meltdown” and convinced myself I was illiterate. I didn’t consider myself a “reader” anymore but I couldn’t stop reading this one. It was a book that allowed me to read again."

"We had an SUV when I was younger so we could fit all seven people who used to live in my house and they named it SHREYA1 when I was born. When my parents experienced their Major Schism, neither my dad or mom could have it because one owned the car and one owned the plate. So I took it because even if my parents can’t have it it’s still mine."

“Stitch is my guy. I just feel like we have so much history together. My parents always compared me with Lilo which I do agree with. He was my Disney-odd-creature-underdog-posterboy. It’s a gift anyone who knows me could give me.”

“When I was a kid I went to a neighborhood friend’s house and she had wooden blinds. I was awestruck by how gorgeous they were with the light coming through them and I thought, 'I need to have that in my life.'" 

“We have all the Tintin comics except for the last two. My mom named her first dog after Snowy. My mom’s first ever paycheck she spent on her parents, but the first paycheck she spent on herself she used to buy these books.”

"It used to live downstairs but then it broke so I took it that way nothing would happen to it. A little bird used to come out and tweet every hour."

"Nagini is a stuffed snake I’ve had since I was young. A long time ago we had a dog named Arjun that ripped out her tongue. It feels a little disrespectful to have her mounted on the wall- it feels a little gazey in a way I don’t love- but I wanted her back in this space. I do feel a twinge of guilt every time I look at her for using her as a decoration like this, though."

"I feel like a lava lamp is an important thing to have in a young adult’s bedroom."

"A friend made this doll of me. And I think a jam jar is a really aesthetically pleasing place to put tubes of paint."

"I’ve had the fan since we moved here. There used to be a glass dome that covered the light but my boyfriend accidentally punched it while taking his shirt off. His hand was bleeding and everything. But don’t worry; he apologized."

"This is my favorite pencil case I’ve ever had other than one I had when I was a kid named Ella Cheesecake."

"This is one of my most beloved items in my room. It was a high-relief sculpture of an intertwined couple but it broke. A lot of my objects break, and I’m happy to put them back together but I did like that this one wasn’t broken. When I heard the crash I think I knew what happened but I didn’t go back and find it for a few days. "

Thanks for reading, CHERRYPI enjoyers. Check out Shreya at @shreya.karthik_ on Instagram. XOXO!