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Untitled (Half Widows)
Architectural Video Projection and Installation, 2006

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Up the stairs, through the stair, near the stairs. In and around, through the sheers that try to drape the light outside. It blinds. It never leaves. The memories don’t go away. Trapped in to the air, air dust, settled onto the curtains, woven their breath and noise into them. And they pierce through as whispers.

The sound walks.
And you follow and see a haze. More curtains? Nope. Bits of curtains? Nope. Small curtains? Nope. Cut cloth? Nope
Curtains cut into missing memories. Of missing people. Of missing body parts. yes.

Everyday it stays there not ready to leave. And not ready to return either.

It is him. He has left me. He said he loved me. He loves me. He will come. Is he dead. Do dead people love. he said he will come back. Am jealous of the land he loved more than me. Is the land male? Or is the land female? What does that make him? And is it him that he loves and calls me selfish.

Maybe he has no gender. Genderless. Love has no gender and no body. First the father. Then him my lover and my child. They leave for the land and they leave with a half of you.

Packed in the bag he took and he left behind too. It looked great on the broad shoulders that carry not me. Something else, heavy. Perhaps the hand no longer is there. The curtains of clothes, clothes of curtains they have no hands. A new shirt I stitch with no hand, with extra hands, one for the dead, one alive.

There is a technical term for me, a half widow. Not a full. To live in suspension and float in suspension. To breathe and walk and sing and dance and live and stay and stitch and wait and dream and walk and live and dream and wait and dream in suspension. To milk in suspension.

For the many limbs, I shall stitch new clothes. I know his size and his size too. Perhaps a leg s gone missing, not a hand, perhaps it is both hands and not the legs. But am going to stitch them all, first full, then cut, reverse them in the little uneven edges and neatly stitch lots of new clothes for him when he comes home, returns.

And I look up and the days become light and the light sucks into the night. The night shines. The words turn into women into coils of trees which stand there and watch. Hands on hips and legs apart. Grip onto the unstained flag, They somersault into the air. High above. Revered.

Fragments of their glass selves run marked on the sleeping walls. Stained lines on the floor running through them. Skip over them and they do not contain you. They do not trap you. They do not halve you. Half widow. Not full.

*Half widows in the term used for women who do not know whether their husbands are alive or dead. There are more than 1500 half widows in Kashmir.