About Ohh Folk!!

Growing up in Kolkata, India, meant being raised in a city that never ran out of stories. They lived everywhere: inside old colonial houses, along dingy winding lanes, at addas*, on festival evenings, in family memories, radio voices, books, songs, kitchens, power-cut nights, and in the tiny tales people carried around without even knowing they were carrying treasure. 

Somewhere in that wonderfully noisy, nostalgic, story-soaked world, my love for tales quietly found its beginning.

They came to me from every direction. From grandparents, neighborhood uncles and aunts, Kashmiri shawl sellers, candymen, and even strangers who seemed to appear with a little bit of magic tucked into their pockets. They also arrived through books like the Jataka Tales, Panchatantra, and Tinkle – my favorite companion on long holiday train journeys. Thankfully, I also belong to the generation that grew up listening to the radio extensively and watching the epic tales of Mahabharata and Ramayana on television as if they were woven into everyday life. All of this helped season my story-loving taste buds rather slowly and flavorfully.

My career began in journalism, but it soon wandered, quite happily, into radio. That is where voice became my closest storytelling companion. In Kolkata, I worked as a radio producer, radio jockey, and voice artist for several regional and national brands, building a lively, joyful path through media, production, writing, ideating, communication, performance, and of course, audio storytelling.

Interestingly, stage, performance, speaking, and storytelling have been part of my life for as long as I can remember. I began performing when I was five or six and continued all through school. Along the way came awards, applause, and a long winning streak in regional and state-level debates, extempore speeches, oration, and writing. Some of the significant wins included a state-level writing competition. After that, I also won a state-wide emceeing talent hunt contest and became the official emcee for one of Kolkata’s leading newspaper and magazine brands.

In all these ways, and some more… stories, voices, and people have always sat right at the heart of everything I do.

Alongside my media work, I stayed closely connected to academia. First, as an educator in India, and later in the United States, where I pursued research studies in communication, with an emphasis on intercultural communication, gender and communication, social media diplomacy, and a minor in religion studies. 

Ohh Folk!! is the culmination of this long relationship with stories in all their shapes and forms: my life in Kolkata, my years in media, my diverse academic interest in culture, religion, ethnography, gender studies, history, and folk art, and my deep belief that every culture across the globe holds stories worth listening to.

I started this passion project during the COVID pandemic in August 2021 while juggling two jobs, family and a truckload of other responsibilities. Even today, while I balance a round-the-clock life filled with a full-time career as an education technologist, family, motherhood, errands, cooking, laundry, and all the little-big things in between, stories continue to be my quiet comfort. They are the lullaby to my restlessness, the calm in my chaos, and the anchor when life begins to drift. 

Some tales have reached us again and again through pop culture and popular retellings. But many others are still tucked away, waiting quietly under the carpet. These lesser-known gems deserve to be restored, retold, and shared, so the world can experience their magic too.

And maybe, in our visually overloaded, scroll-savvy world of reels, swipes, and shrinking attention spans, these stories offer something we deeply need. A chance to slow down. To imagine. To listen. To sit with a narrative without needing to tap, swipe, or be visually entertained every second.

That’s where Ohh Folk!! comes alive!

*Adda: an informal, unstructured gathering for friendly or intellectual conversation