sonal's response on my project

2025-03-14 01:50 Note Type: conversation, response Tags: rca-grad-project, grief

Sonal

Dear Abodid,

Having lived some life and lost some, I have always wondered about the meaning of things. Sometimes most of it seems insignificant and irrelevant. Yet perhaps there is this very mortal being inside of us that finds meaning in everydayness…

Our stories when shared, perhaps never remain just ours… So does our loss… They start belonging to all others whose hearts it has touched… It has a way of opening up all the wounds we are each carrying, waiting to be tended to… I don’t know while scrolling when and how Fukun and Ananya began to feel like my own loss… I don’t know when I started believing that I was on that cycle ride with Fukun in the narrow lanes of Bhubaneswar… or walking through the main gate of NID with Ananya to have a cup of chai… 

Your loss, longing and lingering have seeped into my very existence… It is going to journey with me as my own loss… That of Dia, Sai, Anuja, my dog Joey and a mother and friend Moxda… Your tender holding of words and images, unburdened me of being guilty everyday for not remembering them enough…for not crying for them enough… for maybe muting out the pain of loss while the noise of love took over…

Thank you for holding my hand and making me journey into your life… for opening up parts of you that could have remained forever tucked in your heart… for believing that just like me there are so many who want to stand in front of your images and feel like they are looking at their own album of forgotten memories… for giving me a new address to live, where I could cry without feeling homeless… For crafting this with love and freedom…

This conversation is a continuum… I don’t think I am seeing this work, this work is looking back at me… I don’t think I am going through it, it is going through me… I don’t think it is a project, I think it is a tender compilation of your life…

Until I write more…

Much Love,

Sonal