Kolkata LitFest - Sarnath Banerjee

Environment is a quiet teacher, in absolute chaos and absolute calm. What you retain from it turns into memories. When migrating from home and hearth to set up a life elsewhere we hold on to these memories with a dire sense of possession. Safe guarding it from getting lost in the new, unknown environment. Remembering it ever so often, like playing your favourite song over and over to feel the comfort of that emotion and nostalgia while you navigate the new.
This set up focussed of this idea of nostalgia, of things left in the past that still hold a space in our hearts in form of memories. Nostalgia for Oiendrila is the old phone kept on a solitary table in the foyer, a camera that her dad held to capture their childhood, old books that had stories her grandmother read to them, a lamp on the study table that was witness to a multitude of ideas and innovations scribbled with enthusiasm at the days end. A typewriter rhythmically converting these in a formal script to be presented the next day. All of these little objects together created an entire world that was absolutely hers and hers alone.

She dressed these memories with red roses, a flower that is eternal, a flower that has held its own irrespective of time and fads. It blends in seamlessly with both the old and the new.