When Anninna Vivian moved to India three years ago to marry Vivian Verghese, a musician, Kerala’s ways were hardly alien to her. “But India, to many people back home in Finland, was a place where everybody wore turbans and what not!” she exclaims with a laugh. As the couple set up their home in the city, welcoming a baby girl, Ava, into their lives, Anninna also found herself answering the same set of questions posed by people she met here. That is when she considered the idea of a vlog. “I was always answering the same set of questions, whether to people in Finland or here.”
‘My Sweet Dharma’, the vlog, is an unassuming glimpse into Anninna’s ‘everyday’ in Thiruvananthapuram, from weekend visits to Vivian’s family home where Anninna is seen feeding Ava lunch – Kerala style, posing for selfies, explaining her favourite Malayalam film comedy clip, answering a round of frequently asked questions – which includes if she speaks any Malayalam, practising yoga –sometimes alone, other times with Vivian or a student, as Ava fiddles with her toys in the forefront and other endearing episodes.
Since little Ava has practically grown up with the camera peering over her shoulder every often, she never finds its presence suspect. Vivian forms a silent but essential part of the narratives as he goes about his real life roles as musician, husband, father and son. The vlog also has an episode about how the couple met – a story best heard from Anninna herself.
In focus
The vlog has 2,600 subscribers since its launch a year ago. Till date, some of her first vlogs, on settling into life here and the couple’s love story, have garnered the most views. “It was my way of reaching out to people and slowly, I started getting an audience. I wanted my family and friends in Finland to see that life is as normal here as it is anywhere else.” She now includes vlogs on motherhood and her tips on how she takes her vegan lifestyle forward.
Anninna’s fascination with India goes back to her post-university days when she first visited India in 2007. She says it was Kerala that she liked the best even then. So much so that when she went back to Helsinki to study international business, she chose to return to intern with a start-up in Kochi. But no, she did not meet Vivian then either.
Cut to the present, life as a stay-at-home mum also had Anninna rekindling her long-time interests like art. It recently paved the way for her own store on Etsy, also called My Sweet Dharma, featuring prints and stickers.
“I have made art for as long as I can remember, all through my childhood, since the time I was able to hold a pen,” the self-taught artist says. After Ava came along, Anninna found herself at home with her baby for long periods of time while Vivian travelled on work. A member of a group online for Ashtanga yoga practitioners, she posted an illustration for the members to see. It received more than 300 ‘Likes’, surprising her. “I loved how someone liked what I was doing. It just started from there,” she says.
Anninna Vivian
The art is heavily yoga-inspired, consisting of a peaceful, cherubic lass posing in yoga asanas surrounded by dreamy auras and the occasional experimental illustrations when something strikes a chord with her.
Comparing art to meditation, she notes how it empties her mind at the end of a long day. The art is also Anninna’s path to healing as she comes to terms with a case of PTSD after the couple found themselves in Nepal during the severe earthquake that struck the region in 2015. Even now, the slightest vibration or anything that resembles a tremor can send her into a tizzy.
Anninna already feels encouraged to explore more avenues that will combine her skills. “I am planning a line of minimalist design yoga clothes for mums and children that are comfortable to wear and ethically made.”
In the meanwhile, art and yoga offer much-needed succour to understand herself as she builds her life and family in a new place, coping with something as unpredictable as an earthquake, being confronted with identity issues to becoming a mother. “Social media, if used the right way, can bring in a lot of friends. People message me saying the way I have adapted inspires them, that they too will seek out tools like art or yoga as therapy,” she says. My Sweet Dharma, the name that Anninna continues to use for all her social media handles, resonates with her own stint of soul searching, as much as she hates to call it that. “Hartals, loud festivals, cockroaches, there are all sorts of things that challenge a Finnish girl here,” she adds with a laugh.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/ UC5bb6rxrUy0Z-dqqyvMgW8g
