This was part of a group Exhibition at KCC in 2021 – ‘The Legacy of Loss: Perspectives on the Partition of Bengal’ – which the late Rajasri Mukhopadhyay had conceptualized, and the KPM Trust had organized in collaboration with KCC. I had worked on it for over two years.

The group show brought together contemporary artists’ response to the Bengal Partition. Bengal was divided in the eastern side of India which had a lasting and deep impact on the people of the land. Though Partition did not affect my family personally, I realized that every Bengali carries this wound within as a part of his/her sheer existence.

Ritwik Ghatak was my frame of reference for this work. With him, I discovered the divided Bengali inside me — learning about the division without effort as a child who grew up in Bengal, with uncountable daily habits, football clubs, recipes, literature, songs, parody, and everyday jokes. I have found that this divide is alive in us – as a memory and as a fact.