The Appalam (poppadum) project focuses on creating an environment of nostalgia through visual and audio stimuli. It incorporates the technique of screen printing to convert poppadums into a vehicle for the narration of a folktale. Inspired by memories of printed popaddums at weddings, it reads and speaks of the story of Thenali Raman and the elephant.

Thenali Raman is a popular South Indian fable, retold across generations of families in my micro-culture. As a child, the particular episode of Thenali Raman and the elephant was told & retold to me by my mother and grandmother as a bedtime tale. The moral of the story, however, goes beyond cultures - the ability to think of an out of the box solution for any problem.

Having experimented with screen printing before, applying this to a flat surface like a poppadum was theoretically easy. The practical difficulties included the fragility of the poppadums, the inks used as well as minor details like residue flour existent on all poppadums. The illustration used was inspired by the style of prolific South Indian artist Gopulu, whilst the final invitation poppadum design is an adaptation of 80's Tamil wedding invites.