Act I // Now, in spaces such, I seek.
In migrations of staggering magnitude, an entire generation had to leave, what was once, their home.
As a child, among those countless drives,
along farms of gold, where the eucalyptus rise,
I watched a thousand tree trunks white,
painted in an evening light.
And landscapes familiar,
from tales in the night.
Whilst Nana recalled his places of youth,
his days of might.
Their long walks to school,
through choppy terrain.
Punctuated by orchards,
berries sweet and ripe.
Act II // Herald of the May Queen.
Ingress
Egress
Path
Fence
Node
Undergrowth
Memorial
Axis
Auditorium
Ration
Military Hospital
Alternating in threes,
from plains to hills and hills to plains,
though all fields and trees.
All getting to know usually proved in vain,
acquainted with some, though not a friend to thee.
Act III // Troubled waters, I made for the shore.
Grandparents’ home.
Staunch believers.
Having spent never more than a few days,
at my grandparents’ place,
it really wasn’t home.
Home was much closer, always.
In the olive green camouflage,
and the soldier’s gait.
Mom: ‘दीपावली पर रजत घर आ रहा है। इस बार काफी टाइम बाद हम चारों एक साथ होंगे।’ (Rajat’s coming home for Diwali, after a long time the four of us will be together.)
Dad: ‘फ़ौज में जब घर आओ तब दीपावली।’ (In the Army whenever you come home it’s Diwali.)
Act IV // Distant echoes.
Shake your head girl with your ponytail
Takes me right back (when we were young)
Throw your precious gifts into the air
Watch them fall down (when we were young)
Lift up your feet and put them on the ground
The hills were higher (when we were young)
Lift up your feet and put them on the ground
The trees were taller (when we were young)
Lift up your feet and put them on the ground
The grass was greener (when you were young)
Bryan Ferry - Roxy Music
A need to belong,
a shame to conform.
Growing up as the son of an army officer in India, my family and I moved around a lot, shifting base almost every three years. My father too, through his formative years, had been switching houses owing to his father’s appointment as bank manager. The origins of this peripatetic lifestyle can be traced back to the Partition, an event which uprooted my grandparents from Western Punjab and forced them to settle in the freshly carved Indian Union. The result was an identity that has since been in constant flux.
The question of ‘where I was from’ had always plagued me and steadily grew into an internal conflict. A part of me consciously rejected the idea of home, and revolted against it, while the other part longed to belong. This idea of a belonging, the concept of a hometown, which develops naturally in most people, never really took root in my mind. This lack slowly grew and became a void, an empty space accentuated by the diversity of our land where regional and ethnic identities continually occupy the foreground. When I entered my twenties, I felt this strong urge to reclaim that void, to rediscover lost ties and to reimagine the space called home.
The stories my grandparents narrated—along with the cantonments, schools and spaces I’d grown up in—had, in time, become a part of me. Therefore, I decided to revisit the places of my youth. The focus of this project was to create a visual record of the self, insofar as any notion of selfhood is mediated by the geographies, spaces and objects that accompany it.