Ngan and Nilnil, the two nodes here, are traversing the temporal soup of history - a notion of time where details of past, present, and dreams have been mixed up after a great deluge, allegedly concocted by  the slow-distancing moon and a chaotic climate. Amidst decaying remnants of governmental infrastructure, archives and an all-encompassing wild growth, N&N chance upon visions, anecdotes, documents and rumours through a range of sources. These images deal with a sense of ambiguity, its relation to the unknown and the mysteries N&N choose to pursue. In some ways, Ngan is a river and Nilnil is the ocean. This is about what lies between them, the estuary, in a forgetful world with sullied memories.

(Ngan to Nilnil)

I’ll try to tell you before time runs out again. 

Since the world has gone off the beat, no one knows how to regulate the flow of time anymore. People went back to old hourglasses. Nothing is more reliable than a granule of sand, they thought. But soon the moisture took over, making the grains sticky. Making it seem all still, as if all of us were suspended in time, around the narrow neck of the glass. Night and day bit into each other like teething pups. 

I have lost my count.

It’s been a while since we walked along the bunds. They are overgrown with grass now since there are few to cut them. The water from the sea flows in through the breached bunds claiming back the reclaimed lands. And the leaning ear of paddy is brimming with salinity. People of the bridge have predicted that soon all will be swept across in a great deluge, tossing details of dreams and reality into the same bowl. Tourists, eco-refugees, gaonkars, settlers, hoteliers, ateliers and brokers have fled uphill, where they say that there are mechanised floating islands that will never sink are being built. While people are gone, creepers, weeds, muggers (crocodiles) and Lantanas spread and roam in abundance. I guess neglect has its own charm, invasive or not. From time to time you can still spot lonely painis (manas guard) sitting by the manas (sluice gate) hut - mending the net or knotting a hook to fish out dissolved memories. 

I am sending another cloud your way. (This time, I hope it reaches you at a moment of rest but also catches you by surprise. Sometime in the evening on a windy day, on your new terrace). Here, the clouds have brought winds of the past. They crash into each other, reverberating with sounds of wet electricity and stories from the sea of lost time.

(pause)

I am thinking about the time I met you at the Konkan coast. Someone had told you that beaches were getting lost and appearing in unlikely places. We had to see it for real and investigate. 

(We didn’t speak Lingua Canarim. It was mostly all guesswork. Se ti sabir)

Midway through the investigation, you found out that the moon has been distancing itself from the Earth at the rate of 3.78 centimetres per year. Almost the same speed at which our fingernails grow. 

“If it moves too far will the Earth topple off its axis and roll down the Milky Way? Well, that will be a sight. The oceans will drown all the deserts, where it had once existed. The tree of Tenere might fervently sprout back. All your grandgrandgrandchildren will probably shoot off from the Earth’s crust and get suspended somewhere in the fabric of gravity. They will wake up in another realm and gasp in confusion - Hail Mama! Full of greys! What the hell just happened? We can’t remember a single thing!”

I imagine, in a way, that is how we met. On a little fragment of a bridge made of doors. A place suspended in the tide. Or time. Where everything moved as they willed and nothing was emptied to fill another.