(Above: Salted paper prints of two rajnigandha flowers made by artist Aparna Nori)
In a little nook of the gallery that I had retreated to, away from the wine-glass-clinking and perfumed folks in well-pressed gowns, a print caught my attention. The label below informed me that it was a diptych of salted-paper prints, a vintage photographic process from the mid-eighteenth century.
It depicted two rajnigandha flowers that the artist had created, as two unique prints, striations of the silver nitrate sensitizer clearly visible underneath the impression of the flowers. It wasn’t perfect, because of which I could trace the journey of the brush over paper. I imagined her hands—rushed, and perhaps impatient with the burden of memories. The show was a homage to her dear mother, who had passed away many years ago, leaving her with objects that the artist decided to make prints of. Her mother loved rajnigandha flowers.
Later that night, I had a beautiful vision as I lay down, the ceiling seeming unusually distant. Those serrated trails of the brush stroke slowly started to appear, while beads of memory of the artist’s mother hung precariously like morning dew on a spider’s web. I was hit by a volley of prints, flying out from a chest of drawers like frisbees hurled with a Sunday morning vigour. But none of them exuded the fragrance of a withering rajnigandha; the fragrance of love and loss. I rummaged? through the rest of the drawers of the chest feverishly to little avail. Dishevelled and dejected, I rushed outside to find myself in a vast arid field, where only a few acacias and oleanders blossomed in neglect.
I followed a mud track that led me farther and farther away from the trees, till everything faded away. There were swoops of swifts twittering around for an evening snack, the larks camouflaged against boulders and the setting sun pulling down a curtain of deep yellow.
It was then that I saw her, tall and wearing an emerald Ilkal saree with a tiny red border gently crinkled with use, one that has been washed enough times to render it soft and reassuring to the touch of cheeks. Her feet were bare with toes partially buried in the soft, white sand. Her head tilted with a smile that seemed to recognise me. At that moment, I noticed two stalks of rajnigandha held up with her left hand, placed against her chest.
They were the same two flowers in the print.