Usha dapur Kar: Fragments from my Other Life

"I was born in a rented flat in north London - shortly after, my distant grandmother asked my parents to send me to India so she could raise me herself. Instead, I grew up on the margins of the city, braving the verges of the speeding North Circular to walk with our mother among the shady oaks and beeches of Epping Forest, browsing in the longest street market in Europe where sarsaparilla was drunk by the murky glassful standing at the stall, tanks of live eels awaited their speedy execution and a Knickerbocker Glory in the Wimpy was a longed-for treat. And at home, along with chips, cheese and Angel Delight we ate dal and mango, loved pedas and snacked on chevda. Occasionally, I wondered,  how would my life have been, if my mother had put her baby on a boat, to travel to India...."

 

Usha dapur Kar returns to Cornerstone with this new work exploring, through imagination, layered memories and magical realism, the juxtaposition of a life lived and a life imagined, through the eyes of a child.