Middletone

It is telling that for most creative people, the city of Calcutta has formed an integral part of their art, a muse in their storytelling, be it in the written word of poetry or prose, in cinema or visual arts. The metropolis is seen from diverse perspectives, but is omnipresent, its city lights now dimmed, now glittering in the dark night. During the 1990s, in fact, an entire phase was dedicated to a series Shuva had titled Middletone, a period when he painted the plight of the middle-class Bengali vis-a-vis the urban space they inhabited. In the depiction, labyrinths of alleyways in the citys older neighbourhoods had concrete structures on either side and it was as if the houses breathed, burdened by the plight of its occupants who were mute, incapacitated by circumstances. The passionate fervour of an earlier era had given way to apathy and in their alienation they had accepted their own powerlessness to ever bring about change.