meera devidayal

WHERE I LIVE
by
Meera Devidayal

27 - 3 May 2009
at Hirji Jehangir Gallery

show continues at Chemould Prescott Road
4 - 9 May, 2009

Where I Live

I live on a wedge of land
reclaimed from a tired ocean
somewhere at the edge of the universe.

Greetings from this city
of L'Oreal sunsets
and diesel afternoons,
deciduous with concrete,
botoxed with vanity.

City of septic magenta hair-clips,
of garrulous sewers and tight-lipped taps,
of '80s film tunes buzzing near the left temple,
of ranting TV soaps and monsoon melodramas.

City wracked by hope and bulimia.
City uncontained
by movie screen and epigram.
City condemned to unspool
in an eternal hysteria
of lurid nylon dream.

City where you can drop off
a swollen local
and never be noticed.
City where you're a part
of every imli-soaked bhelpuri.

City of the Mahalaxmi beggar
peering up through
a gorse-bush of splayed limbs.

City of dark alleys,
city of mistrust,
city of forsaken tube-lit rooms.

City that coats the lungs
stiffens the spine
chills the gut
with memory

City suspended between
flesh and mortar
and foam rubber
and delirium

where it is perfectly historical
to be looking out
on a sooty handkerchief of ocean,
searching for God.

-- Arundhathi Subramaniam

Where I Live

For several years, the city as 'Dream-World' has been at the core of my paintings. How hapless migrants from across the country get lured into its neon-lit web of seemingly limitless opportunity-without seeing its swampy underbelly. Though the 'WELCOME' shining gold from afar turns to rusty iron as they draw near, they manage to survive the ever-present hostility of the cityscape, by living the waking dream of success, in a city filled with promises.

This ability to transfer reality into dreams, the 'spirit of an urban imagination', is what turns a sprawling abysmal landscape called a slum into an 'inner-city village', pulsating with aspiration, enterprise, resourcefulness, and above all, resilience---albeit in precariously-perched homes created from recycled tin sheets and blue plastic. Interestingly, the structure of these dwellings creates its own style of interior décor. The city is also a space where vastly different lives merge, overlap, enmesh, and get inextricably entwined with each other.

The space between these contradictions is what I'm exploring.

The works in this collection grew out of my interaction with people close to home, but living very different lives from mine, who graciously opened their doors to me and my camera. The photographs, digitally printed on galvanized steel sheets, form the base of my paintings, the starting-point for each work. The wild juxtaposition of irreconcilables provides me with a plethora of 'found' images and materials---the same recycled metal sheets and blue plastic, newspaper photographs, film posters, stickers, and glitter---which I attempt to turn into a visual metaphor, to prod the viewer into experiencing something he normally sees without seeing, in a different way.

Meera Devidayal
Mumbai, January 2009