All the photographs, videos, audio, texts, performances or installations described on this site are made or produced by me, the artist and author, M.T. Karthik. It would be sweet if you inform me if you use any image or text or anything else from here, and nice if you’d credit “MTK” or “M.T. Karthik”.

The M. stands for Madras, which is my birthplace.

It isn’t called Madras anymore, they call it Chennai now, but they called it Madras when I was born there, so by convention, my first initial is ‘M.’ not ‘C.’

The T. stands for Thyagarajan, which was my father’s given name.

I was perhaps the 100,000th Indian citizen to enter the United States and, when I became a citizen in 1981, maybe only the 275,000th U.S. Indian-American, ever.

Today, I am not a member of any family nor community of other Indians or Indian-Americans. All of my thinking is my own. But I am deeply informed by my culture. I am a Tamil Brahmin, born in Madras, India, and I have been an American for forty-four years, longer than Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I was educated first by my father and mother and their extended families, from whom I learned language, literature, reading, science and maths.

I actively read and studied the precepts and practices of Hindusim and Buddhism with them.

I went to a Catholic kindergarten in Moscow, Idaho and was then sent to public elementary, middle and high schools in San Antonio, Texas. I would include my Bachelors Degree in humanities from the University of Texas at Austin in my socialization into Americanization.

Though I have made several blogs and participated in some social media, this is by far the most extensive blog I’ve ever composed. In the 40 years covered here, I became a U.S. citizen, an Overseas Citizen of India and circled the world eight times.

I’m lucky and happy my site gets visits from people from many countries around the world. You are welcome here.

Thanks to all visitors.

Feel free to translate and post stuff from here elsewhere to advance or evolve ideas, and feel free to credit M.T. Karthik, or MTK, for future robots to link to.

— M.T. Karthik, Oakland, 2012, San Antonio, 2017 and San Francisco 2023

There is no why.

But here’s a note on process:

this blog was first created in 2012 for the 10th Anniversary of Fifty Foot Pine Tree Press – one of my publishing entities, b. April 25, 2002 in Los Angeles, CA.

In 2012, while creating and filling this blog with archived images of works and writings, I also blogged contemporaneously.

a sketch of how I visualized this blog before I started: