Between Time
The year started with a night at Andaaz. On the roof, against the backdrop the Badshahi mosque. Chilly as it was, the bheeni warmth of the angeethi kept us magnetized to the decadence of the night.
Deep in conversation I heard a voice say 'Mirchi ka Saalan lengay aap'… Depth, coarseness, Reshma. Words stammering in my brain. Trying to find their context.
A city that lives alternatively midst its history. The fragrance of dilapidation, the flirtatious uneasiness of the people, and the confusion diluting into a tempestuous romance. That's how Lahore opened up to me. In between journeys, in between moments.
I looked up. She was statuesque with a strict dupatta draped across her as to tell you your boundaries. I was curious to figure out how she landed in this environment. I stood between time … drinking in the nasha that was the moment. It ended with 'Supari lengay aap'.
Aarzoo is about those that are in between spaces, or time. Rejected, denied, and yet they swirl in a secret dance with their destiny. It is about the hidden areas, curled up sensuously inside the ‘maili chadar’, yearning to expose the past.
Walking down walled street, experiencing those sham-e-mehfils that happened for a fortnight, I felt that I was in between narratives, swapping places and allegiances, going back, and surging forward in time. You need to be the victim for the city to embrace you.
Suppression makes you think differently. Brushstrokes on bones, conveying the unspeakable through music, questioning the very womb that birthed you. And then, there is a dying craft overthrown by the brash idea of success in society today.
But it is because it seems dead that it is even more haunting. Like being between the dead and the living, reconstructing with images, and nostalgia, and ideas.
Seeing her work in a restaurant, earning the dignity that society denied her, made me want to talk about progression. Was it a unique accident? Was this the conflict between progression and regression, or its confluence?
Tracing the edges of walled street one afternoon again, I found myself behind Andaaz. I heard a gunghroo ki aahat. I looked up and I saw old jharokhas. The alaap came from an era elsewhere. It was a maharaj guiding his pupil through her routine.
‘Where am I?" I asked myself again.
In between everything. We could go back, or forward. But that's our own time machine. In our heads, in different cities, and in strange times.
Lahore, a maili chadar…….
Arjun Saluja Fall - winter 2014 Collection
In 'Between Time' Arjun Saluja's search for the duality of reality leads him to a collection in which multiplicity is explored via motifs, print, darting and paneling, yet all this is unified in simplistic, clean, even monastic silhouettes. Arjun explores a cutting technique that pays homage to the linear and yet rebels from the defined. Wool, georgette, cotton, silks, Jacquard silks and self plaids play the role of 'shell' fabrics that contain the 'duality' of contrast linings.
The unexpected placement of zippers suggests the interdependence of the contradictions.
Dilapidated leather detailing exposes the dereliction of the environment.
The print motif takes a bow to the geometry of Pakistan’s Khais, - a dying tradition of weaving from Sindh.
This fall – winter, Rishta questions the intimacy of identity of progression and regression. And everything in between.