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Never behind closed doors |
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Suparna Thombare
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 | Mumbais space-starved lovers walked into Saaz
Aggarwals canvases almost on their own. “When I started painting
Mumbai I realised that there were couples everywhere. There was
romance on the streets, in one-room apartments, in the trains, cabs
and buses. So the paintings came naturally,” says Aggarwal. Her
series, called Love in Mumbai, captured such everyday vignettes from
the rose-tinted cityscape of lovers. “In Love in Local I have shown
that the train is empty, because though it may be crowded, for these
lovers, there is no one outside of themselves. They are completely
into each other.” Another love on wheels picture is Joy Ride, which
represents Aggarwals daily sightings of couples getting intimate in
a taxi.
The recurring motif in Aggarwals paintings is the very
openness of romance in Mumbai — there are no closed doors, no
curtains drawn. It is all out there in the streets. “For the
middle-class of Mumbai, going down on your knees or opening a bottle
of champagne is not their idea of romance. It is holding hands while
crossing the road.”
So has Mumbai come to love its lovers less
over the years? “I was working for a newspaper and I had to go
through old stories and print those which are relevant even today.
There were pollution problems, traffic problems, infra-structure
problems even then. Its the same with romance. Its just the
perspectives that change.”
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