Plot Twist

The last year has seen our city gutted by constant digging and excavation projects for the ambitious Mumbai Metro and our coast destroyed for the disastrous coastal road project. Both projects promise to destabilize our relationship with the environment and the sea and bring the kind of disaster we got a small taste of in the way of storms and flooding in August.

2020 started with no ambiguity. The fire that was ignited in 2019 kept growing; from imposing the students, activists, scholars, poets, etc with draconian seditious laws such as UAPA, to incidents such as Sabrimala Verdict, Shaheen Bagh and Delhi Pogroms; to exploitation of the natural resources in the name of development.

Even though the pandemic was killing hundreds of thousands from across the globe, our leaders continued with their ever discriminatory and power hungry attitude, claiming lives of many Geroge Floyds and Jayesh and Fenixes across the globe. Another reminder that we most conveniently missed was one year of silenced Kashmir.

We witnessed class discrimination against migrant workers and if that was not inhuman enough, we witnessed the burning dead body of a dalit girl on our screens. As I write this artist statement in my warm room, our bread makers are shivering in the cold fighting for their rights and future against the farm bills.

I’m not sure how the year 2021 is going to be. But I’m still waiting for the giant clouds to appear and quench the thirst of our fire struck earth.

I wasn’t a Hindu subject until last year. However, the small gestures unknowingly made me into a Hindu.

Fault lines/communal tensions arose last year and simultaneously transformed me into a Hindu subject, i.e, discrimination became a fact. My identity would serve as protection against power.

In a strange way, I became the identity I had forsaken. Despite not practicing the religion, my name and the orange thread around my wrist became symbols of my complicitness.

Such revelations require mediation.Thought, not action. They require us to question Hinduism – the fabric of my nation.

How does one exist in isolation, till isolation and one can’t be separated? In the aftermath of staring at a still scene, the scene comes to life and one dies. In this intermingling of perception, of melting experiences, where the inherent language of history where things happen to people, rather than people happening to things, I set out to document what happens when neither happens or both do. When I spend a year in a room, do I become the room? Does an animal caged at birth, recognise the cage as an extension of self or a negation of it?

For people trapped in solitude, there is also a lot of solitude trapped in people. In this dual manifestation at play, things gain a life of their own. Instruments speak to me. I am reborn within a veil. Within the walls, I exist, and the peripheries of the world shrink. Thoughts are my abstract neighbours, whispering from across the walls. A table slides day by day. Dust makes space for itself. There is a map of life, and magic within this room, and within my perception, and the attempt is to document my experience in solitude. Yet, what one sees, is not my life for that is already lived, but the solitude trapped in their lives, through it, thus completing the duality.

The global pandemic threw the world into a disarray – not only was it a shock to the collective system, but also to our personal and professional lives. Plans had to be dismantled, goals rethought and reimagined. Perhaps the biggest blow we received, however, was how our lives came to a screeching halt. Forced to be with ourselves for months, the mind had free reign to play cruel tricks on us. The burning question of this year is very simple – would we allow it to? This piece, titled “Remembrance,” explores the deep personal transformations the artist experienced throughout the lockdown, and, in particular, her coming back into union with herself. Self-love is a phrase thrown around very casually, but what does it truly mean?

Being thrown into a forced period of solitude caused the artist to reevaluate her perspective of herself: if we are alone with ourselves, are we our best friend or our enemy? Through our lives, we ricochet between the two, and often, self-criticism wins out. In the forced solitude brought on by the pandemic, the artist began to gradually fall in love with herself. It began slow and sweet, a mere flirtation with the mirror, but rapidly ascended into a deep and spiritual understanding of simple, yet often overlooked truths. Through a series of intense emotional upheavals, the artist purged years of trauma and hurt, and emerged from the storm as though reborn. This brings us back to the original question: when left alone, will you be your best friend, or your enemy? Is it possible to show ourselves the very kindness and empathy we seek externally?

Growing up, I watched my father dance to Ishq Tera Tadpave with such joy that it was infectious. I started mimicking his moves, and it soon became our song. It also became the song I could dance to without worrying about how I look or if people were looking at me funny. Inadvertently our dance routine helped my self-esteem/image.

He passed away in April this year. Not being able to be there for him before and not being able to see him when it happened has left me with an incredible amount of trauma and guilt. It has made it hard for me to create and work this year. But I remembered something I learnt from him – how to appreciate my life and be passionate about the people around me. This work and my actions since his passing are all attempts to externalise my memories of him.