Three years ago I started to document the neighbourhood and community where I grew up in Baroda, India. These homes which belong(ed) to friends and family were once open and familiar to me. Now they stand like silent entities--at once intimate and at the same time mysterious. This goes for my own childhood home.
Where once doors always remained open, now the gates are firmly closed. The homes are locked up, perhaps to be opened once a year to be dusted, or not at all. The interiors become a distant memory, the exterior--a well-worn shell that presents itself over and over again as I walk down the quiet streets.
Most of the original families who lived here have gone. With the death of the family elders, mainly the sons inherited these homes and now live in foreign lands to which they emigrated to search for a ‘better’ life. Unable to care for them, some of the homes are sold -- often to individuals who themselves live abroad but have roots in this part of the world and feel strongly that they must keep a footing here.
And so, this notion of claiming a home "back home" but without the intention of living in it and making it into one is the story of these homes that were and will continue to be left behind.
for Go Home. a web project by Sandra Sterle and Danica Dakic.
view the work at :
http://www.project-go-home.com/gohome/archives/artcastText.html#Varsha
