Photo by Subrata Biswas

Growing up in the idyllic countryside of Bengal, I have often found myself caught in unease while inhabiting urban cityscapes. After being compelled to move to the city to study further, the sights and sounds of rural life — the uninhibited firmament, expansive farmlands, the sudden termination of daylight marked by the speckled luminescence of fireflies, the clutter of pigeons — became an obsession, a set of familiarities I found myself resolutely clinging to. Time has not undone much of that, and over the years the need to express my predicament has grown. I was never good with words; hence the present undertaking captures the nostalgia and longing that has come to define much of what I am — a perpetual misfit in the stark brilliance of urbanity.