Still Life

The process of living is tinged with uncertainty, an uncertainty made
more palpable in daily events, encounters, and tragedies. Its basis is
the acceptance of universal frailties, the loss of all things. A house is
built; it corrodes in rain and sun, is beaten by seasonal changes.
Organic growth rises in its crevices. Every day it dies a little more.
Till walls cave in, brick turns to dust, and fresh life replaces
completely, till even the plants die and disappear into earth and soil
leaving but one reminder: Youth is but a minor itch, it passes; the
progression of ageing is unforgiving as ever. Still, evolutionary loss is
comforted by time’s elongated length. People feast before extinction,
find God in belief; they migrate in hope. Tradition and custom
intervene. Mosque, temple, and church are clothed in conforming
uniforms. Games are invented to enlarge purpose, create conflicts,
elongate life. Ageing, decline and demise are accorded personal time
frames, accelerated for some, stretched and seemingly limitless for
others. We live, we learn to love because we are dying. The
archeology of cities, the rise and decay of architecture, the dimming
focus of design and material objects, private transformations and
public cultures, the physical residue of all that manifests as life and
material, transforms from birth to love to struggle to dissolution, to
loss and memory, finally to recall and remembrance. Things die,
there’s grief. Things remain beautiful, even in sorrow.

-Gautam Bhatia