A Potter's Story...

Meet Ronita Sengupta, who began her pottery adventure in 2018, testament to the fact that it’s never too late to find your calling.

She began her career in sales and marketing, then moved on to academics, but she was always drawn to pottery and ceramics. She claims it has been “one of the most rewarding journeys of her life”

The studio, where she plans, kneads, and creates.

Welcome to the studio, where all the magic happens. Here, we see her past and ongoing projects, her kiln, her pottery wheel, and her cleverly organised set up with paints and tools all laid out, perfectly mirroring her own colorful and methodical mind going into every project.

The station is all set up

She begins her projects by cleaning out her workspace, scraping old clay and dirt of the base. Of course, this physically cleans up the station, but I like to think of it more as a mental cleanser; swiping away the remnants of old ideas and creations to make way for fresh, new ones.

First, “Wedging” the clay is important to rid it of air bubbles. She starts off by repeatedly pressing and folding the cool, stretchy clay in a rhythm, something I find to me meditative and satisfyingly fulfilling.

Soft silicone on slippery clay

Compressing the clay to remove air bubbles and smoothen it.

She tells me that everyone prefers different tools during this process: some prefer wooden ones, some silicone, and some steel, which I find a fun way to personalize the pottery experience, even though it may seem like a process flooded with rules and difficult techniques to a third eye. My favorite has to be the silicone.

Carving clay, no different to baking a pastry, although it may even be better smelling. The fragrances of the earth consume the room.	Fixing up the edges with a few dabs of water to finish up the base.

A process known as slipping and scoring, fixing all pieces together to keep the structure as intact as the story behind it.

A wiggly outer rim is pressed on, a small touch to give the piece its organic and natural feel.	A bowl is added to give the piece its purpose.

That concludes the chip and dip bowl, an object that started off with a few squishy, grainy blobs, now turned into a full fledged, usable structure that has many more memories to live through.

Aunty says clay has memories, that it can tell how you were feeling that day, that with every fingerprint, imperfect, stroke, you get to know a little about the person. This object is not industrially perfect, but it is indeed perfect.

Aunty’s safe space for ideating and executing

After washing, scrubbing, and packing up the new creation safely into a plastic sheet, another session is concluded, and the studio is shut off until another bright new day.

Written by Ruel Khadilkar, Grade 9, Neev Academy, Bangalore

Ruel wrote this photo-story as a participant of the Media-Makers Fellowship's Nov'25 cohort.