I am Aakriti Thatal (she/they), a poet and photographer from Gangtok, Sikkim, India. I am a postgraduate in Media and Cultural Studies. Loneliness, a universal phenomenon, assumes distinctive contours for different people. Although I come from an upper-middle-class family with privileged access to the English language and urban spaces, I experience loneliness and isolation in the situational inclusions and exclusions that my being queer and Dalit entails. Navigating this loneliness and my place in the world around me, I write and photograph, often combining the two formats, as an active practice of taking up space, also responding to my curiosity and inquiry of philosophies of marginality and exclusion. As I contemplate what it means to truly belong, I have recently shifted my focus to the idea of home and family, aspiring to capture the essence of my journey towards this understanding and acceptance through my writing and image-making processes. My fields of interest are Gender Studies, Culture, Religion, and Identity.