I was holding on to mirrors. Hand cut and sides buffed. Something i got done from a glass shop in govindpuri many years ago. A small 4 inch by 4 inch mirror.

I had an idea then and today i felt, i could take things forward. That by sharing my thoughts with other participants, i could soften the hardened, almost dead grounds inside me.

India gate was the meeting place and it had rained lightly in the morning. I felt it was perfect weather to find ourselves under the shades of the large trees, i am sure planted during the British occupation of India.

I warmed up inside Haldiram at Bikaner house, sketching 3 main, core exercises. For one i wanted them to let loose their gaze and see what happens. Second was, as Merleau ponty, the author of Phenomenology of Perception would say, our body is in the world just like how our heart is in our body. I wanted them to walk into this world from endless vantage points. And the final exercise was to think and see the world from deflection of image, images from the mirror. To challenge ones perception.

All of us started to walk from Bikaner house to enter the space of India Gate and immediately find shade. I really liked it. I love open, large spaces. And here in delhi, India gate gives me immense distance and lots of people to draw, especially tiny bodies moving back and forth.

We opened up our perception in the afternoon till it was time for the sun to set. Things which were far away started to play on our minds the feeling, idea of blur. we could see the mid ground and then things up close. For me the intense moment was walking into the crowd far away and drawing them, seeing them at every stage.

The use of the mirror flipped us, literally. The world turned upside down. We had no sense of what we were seeing. Too many angles, too much to see and unimaginable scenes erupted. Just a slight curving of the mirror at any direction, not curving, turning the mirror and there was a new view to draw.

In the end i would like to thank and remember Merleau Ponty to remind me, that in this world, we have no front or back of anything. Your gaze on me is my front yet, my back is a front to someone behind me. And for them what you see, or are seeing of me is their back.

Its a twisted world i feel.