Life goes on

“On November 26,I was roaming the city,visiting and revisiting the sites of the attacks. I saw the dome light up. I heard the endless rounds of gun shots and met the living corpses in the hospitals,” says photographer Ritam Banerjee,who was on a 60-hour shift clicking snaps for Getty Images many of which were published in The New York Times and The Washington Post. A year later,Banerjee wants to bring to light the resurrected beauty of the city in his exhibition titled The City That Talks To Me at Gallery Art and Soul from November 19 to December 2— a series of photographs,whether it is a BEST bus or the Asiatic Society of Mumbai—which capture the throbbing pulse of the city. Incidentally,Banerjee is being awarded the Karambeer Puraskar,a National Award for Social Justice and Citizen Action on November 26 this year,an honour he terms as “ironic”. If Banerjee’s is a message of hope,installation artist Subodh Kerkar’s take on 26/11 is a stark and gritty,if abstract,spinning of reality. His exhibition consisting of 13 photographs,two paintings and four objects,at Gallery Beyond,is titled Of Donkeys,Demons and Diabolical Death because the “terrorists were brainwashed automatons programmed to move from point A to point B and destroy everything in sight”. Ergo,the term ‘donkeys’. “If I could describe the present world in two words,” says the artist,“it would be terrorism and telecommunication which is paradoxical because it’s the lack of communication that gave birth to terrorism in the first place.”

To venerate one year of the terrorist attacks,accessory designer Malini Agarwalla has designed a collection of bags called Mumbai at the Altamount Road boutique,Aza,in which sepia prints of old Bombay have been woven into the bags and embellished with tassels,fringes and leather trimmings. “This collection is a remembrance to all those who have lost their loved ones in the attacks,” says Agarwalla.

In a video titled Six Degrees of Separation,artist Ravikumar Kashi downloaded the image of Kasab from the internet and screened it on TV. He photographed and re-photographed the image and in each stage,the definition of the image gradually got distorted. “Through this exercise I’ve attempted to raise a few questions,” says Kashi. “How does news get distorted by the media and how do we respond to such distortions?” In Prasanta Sahu’s painting titled Mock Practice,he explores the brutality that humans are capable of. The painting portrays a herd of kneeling humans with the artist drawing parallels to animals. “There is a beast in every man,” says Sahu. Both Six Degrees and Mock Practice will be showcased at an exhibition of 13 artists titled Nothing will ever be the same again at Hirji Gallery till November 16.

So will things ever be the same again? Maybe not,says curator Jasmine Shah Varma. But life moves on. Soon,we are occupied with other concerns. Like the pressing business of living.