Parliament's Square (2021)
A Virtual World and animation set in London's Parliament Square, where Winston Churchill's Statue stands tall, much taller than Mahatma Gandhi's statue opposite.
Almost 750 varshas (years)ago, there lived a poet par excellence called Swami Vedanta Desika. He composed two verses with each verse consisting of 32 aksharas (letters) and placed the verses against each other on a Chaturanga board, with one akshara on each square. Every time he strategically and rhythmically moved each piece around, cathecting the board, he sang a new poem into being.
The poem is the trace of a bloodless war between two, as was the war between the worldviews of Winston Churchill and Mahatma Gandhi. Their strategic movements, towards an Indian dream, independent for one and in shackles for the other, are traced in chilli powder and charcoal, singing their own poem of colonial rule. It was they who composed their own songs to define their defeat. ‘Although independent, but at what cost?’, she asks as she feels the scar of the war her ancestors fought - on her body.
