Retrieving our Mumbai’s lost realities

The end is actually the beginning, for artist Sidharth Dhanvant Shanghvi. Postcards from the Forest is a creative tribute to what he has 'lost' in Mumbai and 'retrieved' in Matheran, through his art. But is it really possible to retrieve what one has lost in reality?
Shanghvi says, "It is easy to think we overcome certain losses; that art fills tall, dark, personal spaces. In truth, no such thing happens. A photograph or a book draws out the outline of something missing, it cannot fill the absence".

Shanghvi started spending a lot of time in Matheran, the photographs are a result of that; his response to leaving behind a city, Mumbai and the absence of a friend. "Postcards from the Forest are as much about missing people as they are about Matheran, and the space it gave me to think about what has gone away. In truth, nothing and no one leaves: memory is stronger than experience. Everything is exactly as it is meant to be," he says.

The Toy Train and Postcards from the Forest are two parts of the same whole — love and longing, tributes, epitaphs, escapades, memories and metaphors. Shanghvi excels in capturing the early morning Matheran mists, the stillness of the parks and the autumn leaves drifting by. The fun-loving Toy Train series are symbolic reminders of what he has lost. Although it appears that he now takes solace in his pictures, the reality is that these are only reminders of a memory that refuses to get erased. The images are stunning and are reminiscent of an earlier exhibition of his father.

The exhibition is on at Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai from February 18 to March 3.