My mother is 80 years old and I am 42. Two years ago, when I came out with my homosexuality, she denied my position by declaring ‘it’s all wrong’. I did not fight. But I wonder if she is ever going to recover from thinking that she was wrong in giving birth to me, her youngest child. Am I going to spend my entire life wondering who my real mother is? The irony is that after a gap of 20 long years, we now live under one roof, co-existing in each other’s absence. The question I ask myself is: ‘will we ever recover?’

All images from the series Invisible Living, His absence in her presence/ His presence in her absence Goa, November 2012

Creepers on a Steel Door

Poem by Anand Thakore

Three months now, creeping up this door,
Half-open, between myself and the garden-yard;
I wonder, why at times, it is so hard
To reach the wide world across the narrow floor.

Space must have its bounds, I suppose,
Though the heart’s first impulse be to leap;
The creeper does not wish to move – it simply grows;
It is the eye that makes these broad leaves creep.

But see how tight each tendril grips the grill,
Where the highest leaves, translucence-shy, peep inside –
I can tell what makes them want to hide;
Could they hear, I would tell them – looking in can kill.