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culture shock
archives of ink and flesh
no more mangoes

archives of ink and flesh

on tattoos as archival objects

Pranay Somayajula's avatar
Pranay Somayajula
Mar 05, 2023
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Photo by C M on Unsplash

I got my first tattoo in September 2021, at a small shop in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington, D.C. The design is simple—a plain black outline of the Hindu-Urdu word आज़ादी (azadi), meaning “freedom,” in the handwriting of one of my closest friends from university. The tattoo is about an inch tall and two and a half in…

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