I am writing this as I hurtle fast toward to my first show in Mumbai City, the place where I was born and grew up. I've been thinking a lot about what this means to me and why I even am attempting something that is so fraught with risk. Ceramic is heavy, and breakable and we all know that the baggage handled at the airports is definitely not handled with care, even if it has a fragile sticker on it, or several warning labels, maybe even a hidden threat, and definitely several rounds of mumbo jumbo spells, positive intents and a liberal sprinkling of universal protection in place- it does not mean it is safe!
However, having my work in Mumbai means something, something so worthwhile, that it is ok to risk all this. I remember my first few installation pieces, made while I was a student, studying away from home. I was researching the notion of the immigrant, first generation, mostly farmers that moved from Punjab in India, to settle as farm helpers in the bread baskets of North America. They carried with them packets of earth from their homes as reminders and links to their roots. Like trees that need soil to grow, these farmers carried their own soil to transition into their new lives. It was a memory, a link, and a reminder,that they could touch, smell, feel, and maybe even taste. Earth, soil, mud... home- it is a powerful thing.
As my own work progressed, I created my own packets of mud, wrapped in muslin cloth, some large, some small and hung them from the walls and ceilings of galleries. As time progressed, clay seeped through the small pores of fabric. Memories faded, 'home' grew smaller, a new reality created itself on the floor of the gallery. It was layered, clay over concrete; the patterns and directions of the spills and falls changing as the elements of motion and space acted around it, both deliberate and accidental.
This time around, Mumbai will not see these early experiments in using clay in an unconventional way. It won't see the nuanced drama of gallery presentation or the abstracted ideas and inferences of an installation format. I hope there will be a time when I can bring these to Mumbai as well. But for now, it will be a humble offering. Something concrete and perhaps even practical. In my head, I see Mumbai as a wise, old, crone, with black, sparkling, all-knowing eyes. She may ask, 'Wahan ja ke, tumne kiya kya?' And then I can show her my mud pots and plates. 'Iska kya hoga?', she will reply, because she knows there are tons of plastic alternatives available, and for the financially gifted, silver and gold too. I will have to ask her to hold these pots then and feel their grooves, experience their birth upon my wheel and know that the idea of their existence came via my mind, but in reality from somewhere in her own distant past- a place that maybe she can visit in her memory. And then, maybe, like a long lost grand child, she can finally take me into her arms, knowing that our pasts are tied together, we share some history, and even though it is for a short time, I am coming home.
