ABEER KHAN

Home is so sad. It stays as it was left,
 
I listen intently perhaps a little too much. Sometimes my meetings are delayed, and the phone keeps flashing,
but I maintain eye contact with the speaker. Each year the ratio of listeners is falling short of keeping up with the speakers. But 2022 made me transform myself from a listener to an active speaker. I could talk to anyone, from the vegetable vendor to the auto driver, to my friends who really listened, to my strangers and primarily to myself.

I lost my parents in a span of 5 months. Suddenly there was a galore of grief. I was mourning my father, my mother, their marriage and my childhood but what I grieved the most was the loss of-Home.

As days passed, I realised the words simply failed,  so I started making photographs, some new, some old. 
I looked at the collapse of my childhood. My own sorrow lurked in the corners of this home.

The title of this series is based on the opening line of Philip Larkin's poem.  Through this, I intend to locate a home. Which stays the way it is left. The drowning, the essence of belongingness and the loss of it.
This will also be an exploration of bodies, death, and regeneration if any, and acceptance if any.   

Quoting the great Indian poet, Ghalib,
घर में था क्या कि तिरा ग़म उसे ग़ारत करता
वो जो रखते थे हम इक हसरत-ए-तामीर सो है
-मिर्ज़ा ग़ालिब

What did we have in our house that your sorrow could wreck,
All we had a desire to create and that is still there.
~ Mirza Ghalib