There is always a distance between what was and what is, and this distance is often invisible, often unmeasurable. It is where meaning quietly forms, it comes slowly, through the act of returning. The real artwork was not only what appeared on the canvas but also the space between making and understanding. It was in that gap that something essential unfolded.
Phenomenology tells us that meaning is not hidden inside things; it appears in the way we experience them. A painting does not “contain” meaning by itself. Meaning forms in the encounter, when we stand before it with our changing selves. The distance between creating the work and returning to it is not just a passage of time—it is a transformation of perception.
When I began thinking about this distance, I realized I had been living inside it for years without naming it. Walking itself became a metaphor. During lockdown, when I felt trapped indoors, I walked in a small room. The artist’s walk is not a straight line. It bends, loops, pauses, returns. My feet moved on the ground, but my thoughts wandered elsewhere—to memory, anxiety, imagination, and to the unfinished works lying inside the room. Two journeys unfolded at once: one of the body, one of the mind. This dual movement created a space where these works took form.
Later, when I looked back at those paintings for the first time, I found myself confused. Fragments of Picasso’s attempts to collapse multiple dimensions into a flat surface seemed to appear. The stiff but expressive lines reminded me of Egon Schiele. The fluid movement vaguely carried Matisse’s dancers. None of this was intentional. It was only after distance that these echoes became visible. This is the strange gift of the in-between: it allows recognition that is impossible during creation. When we are too close to work, everything feels blurred, like pressing one’s face against a mirror. Only when we step back does the reflection gain clarity.
मैं जब भी गिरा मैंने मुड़कर देखा
ये जानने के लिए
कि मैं कितना दूर आ चुका हूँ
और हौसला आया दुबारा चलने का।
Exploring the hidden could come through looking back. It is also distancing myself from what I have created.
Looking back is not nostalgia. It is a way of knowing where we stand.
मैंने हमेशा तुम्हें मुड़के देखा
जब भी तुम्हें कहा अलविदा।
I looked back at my work again and again not to repeat anything, but to understand. Distance allowed me to notice what I could not see before, to hear what might have been buried under urgency and confusion. But then a question arose: when we say a painting “speaks,” who is really speaking? Do artworks speak at all? Or are we hearing our own thoughts reflected back through their surfaces? Aren’t we, in a way, always talking to ourselves when we try to interpret art?
जब भी मैंने तुम्हें
बिठाया ऑटो में या कार में
मैं हमेशा करता रहा इंतज़ार
कि तुम मुझे मुड़कर देखो
इस आशा से
कि मैं यही हूँ
मैं आज भी यही हूँ।
The longing to be seen one last time, even as something or someone is leaving, speaks to the delicate relation between an artist and their work. When a work is finished, it departs from the intensive intimacy of the making process. It goes ahead into the world, while the artist stands behind, hoping to be acknowledged, hoping the work might look back. But often it doesn’t. The artist waits, like someone watching a car disappear in traffic, hoping for a glimpse of recognition in the rear-view mirror. Artworks, too, sometimes remain silent until time and distance allow them to return unexpectedly, revealing meaning like a sudden reflection in glass.
During COVID, I lived in a small single room. The outside world was filled with sickness and uncertainty; the inside world was filled with silence. That room became both a shelter and a trap. Days blurred into each other. Time felt stagnant. Anxiety lived inside the body as tension, awkwardness, stiffness. All of this seeped into the paintings without my awareness. When I later returned to them after more than a year the distorted bodies startled me. Their hands and legs bent in unnatural ways, their movements anxious, placed inside box-like rooms with dark openings. Everyday objects scattered across the floor: cups, plates, clothes, sketchbooks signs of prolonged isolation. These figures were not imaginary; they were emotional truths. They reflected the internal struggle to survive mentally, the invisible labour of enduring time that had no measurable output.
And yet, something still felt incomplete. Even after distance, I sensed there was more hidden inside those works. The one and a half years that passed between making and understanding were not empty. They were filled with invisible labour—thinking, forgetting, worrying, recovering, trying to hold onto hope. This labour does not appear in the artwork, yet it shapes everything about it.
How does one include such invisible time in artistic narrative? By writing? By speaking? By acknowledging it exists, even if it leaves no trace?
As I examined the paintings more closely, I began to see how the body remembers what the mind forgets. The brushstrokes were fast and rough, revealing the urgency of the moment. The contrasting colours introduced small pockets of light—perhaps an unconscious attempt to keep hope alive. The bodies seemed to push against each other, sometimes like they were fighting, sometimes like thoughts colliding. This fragmentation reminded me of Mir’s couplet:
हम हुए तुम हुए कि ‘मीर’ हुए
उस की ज़ुल्फ़ों के सब असीर हुए।
-मीर तकि मीर
Mir splits himself into multiple parts to express the depth of love and longing. In these paintings, too, I saw parts of thoughts split, struggling, reaching, failing, enduring. Distance allowed me to see these fragments not as stylistic choices but as emotional evidence.
The understanding that emerged after distance was not a neat explanation but a soft clarity. It became clear that the artwork is never limited to what appears on the surface. It includes the time between thought and emotion, between memory and forgetting, between making and seeing. It includes the turning back, the hesitation, the longing, the fear, the hope.
And so the walk continues.
Walking forward does not mean leaving everything behind. The past accompanies the present in quiet ways. Every step contains memory. Every movement carries the residue of earlier moments.
और मैं
फिर निकल जाऊँगा
अपने रास्ते पर
मगर मैं दुबारा मुड़कर देखूँगा
इस आशा में
कि अब कोई निराशा नहीं है
तुम ख़ुश हो
मुझे अलविदा कहते हुए।
This gesture of walking ahead while turning back captures the core of the artistic process. No walk is final; no understanding is complete. Distance is not separation; it is expansion. It allows space for meaning to breathe and grow. The artist lives in this in-between space, always moving, always returning, always discovering a new layer inside what once felt finished.
When I reflect on the journey of these paintings, their making, their silence, their return. I realize that the true artwork is not just the image. The true artwork is the distance between was and is. It is the interval where meaning forms slowly, where confusion settles into shape, where the self transforms quietly. It is where the artwork finally looks back, not as a separate object, but as part of the artist’s unfolding life.
The gap between then and now is not empty. It is a garden where understanding grows. It is the walk itself—uncertain, hopeful, incomplete, and yet deeply alive.
Walking forward does not mean leaving everything behind. The past accompanies the present in quiet ways. Every step contains memory. Every movement carries the residue of earlier moments.