Coming Home: Kala Bagai Way

Coming Home is an illustration created for the South Asian Digital Archive (SAADA). It is inspired by an organizing effort that successfully renamed a section of Shattuck Avenue in downtown Berkeley as “Kala Bagai Way”, in honor of community builder and South Asian immigrant Kala Bagai. The winding street in the illustration is lined with the involved organizers, a mailbox full of public letters of support, abundant public housing and transit, blooming indigenous golden poppies, and the Bagai family. All show what the naming of the street means for the greater Berkeley community, a future of belonging and inclusion beyond just representation.