My past lives in me. Memories, forms, shapes, smells, soil, farm and the farmer. Their lives are inextricably interwoven with mine as my mind keeps shuffling between my childhood, not so long back, and now. My past is my best friend in which I am at one with the farmer and his family. Worshippers of earth. Annadaatas for humanity. My art gets sublimated through them and their remarkable lives filled with toil and unselfish labour.

Rehat, the water garland, is one such strong memory and a reality pretty much becoming solely of the past. In my childhood they were everywhere. Feeding water to millions of acres of farms. Of my home and the world. Driven by bullocks who would go round and round around a hub on the ground. The hub geared to the axis of the water garland would make the wheel, whose spokes ended in water containers, go round and round, up and down. Up and down. Like an incandescent rhythm beating its heart to ethereal poetry. The containers would go into the well, pound and draw the water out to fill the canals which would spread out into the horizon to irrigate land even beyond them. A simple triumph of mechanics driven by repetitions and life. Bullocks, iron, wood, gears. Simple.

Till the fumes spewing acrid diesel pumps took over. Now the sounds have shifted. From the gentle chap-chap to the rude stacatto groans of the pump, mimicking the gun. Breaking the silence. Da-da-da-da-duh. But I did not worry. Will not. The art installation WaterGarland is but an ode to a lost life. Romance for the idyll, ironically brought to life through modern tech-guru addled modernity. Ironic indeed.