The Aftertaste of Loneliness

An exploration of queerness and home: how queer bodies carry grief when dislocated from their places of origin. A deeply personal retelling of displacement and the complex negotiations of ‘belonging’.

After finding independence in Mumbai, I was forced to return home to Patna during the pandemic. I felt untethered, incongruent, lost, with no ground. I was consumed by a sense of loss while being safe within my childhood home. I am never the same in these two places, so how could they be two sides of me?

The project began with the discovery of my first studio photograph with my parents. Painting the five stages of grief onto an enlarged photo-negative of it became an attempt to make sense of my relationship with my hometown and my family.

Shot between my hometown, Patna, and Mumbai, the selected photographs offer a glimpse into the state of mind that exists before reaching the stage of acceptance. A fleeting vision of memories that peek from the curtains of your mind as you search for the answer to the question of belonging. What will bridge the gap, what connects the identities I float between.

The Aftertaste of Loneliness uses memory as a tool of dissection, working through a philosophical process to understand the grief of leaving a life of acceptance behind. It meditates on photographs made in two very different cities, weighing them against ideas of home, longing, and freedom. As I reflect on my time at home since the first wave of the pandemic and every visit since, I unearth each emotion, analyzing every interaction, every moment of silence, loneliness, and disagreement to find exactly how much of the distance is repairable.

Through this process comes the discovery that loss is not linear and acceptance can take form even in a familiar yet changed environment - where my connection to my family seems infallible, my relationship with my hometown pure, and my queerness the bridge connecting my identities.