Cara Nahaul - Sunbeams and Windows

Sunbeams and Windows

I step off the plane, sleep deprived, skin coated in misty sweat. The thick heat provokes my body, nudging me to give way to its embrace. From the backseat of the car, a pink sunset pierces my gaze as we cut through roads lined with fields of sugar cane. Through heavy eyelids I glimpse petrol stations and fruit sellers on the roadside offering sweet nourishment to other strangers on long journeys home.

Soon enough we arrive at Temple Road, passing by the old post office with red wooden shutters and a statue of Gandhi gilded in gold. It almost starts to feel like a day like any other, but then through a thicket of overhanging palm trees the white chalky exterior of my grandparents' home appears. The house, built from breeze blocks laid and plastered by three generations of men, is now two storeys high since I last saw it with stripes and arches painted in cobalt blue.

Stepping onto the cold porcelain tiles inside elicits a familiar sensation. Each footstep traces a path taken many years before. My fingers skim the walls as I walk into each room, and I find myself lost in a place that is my own. My desire to seamlessly exist within these walls is interrupted by a fear of an empty home, and an unwillingness to accept the present-tense.

I open a new note on my phone and write:

The kitchen where you ate with your hands

The house at the end of the road with the tree full of ripened jackfruits

The rooster that boldly crowed before you were ready to wake up

The smell of salt fish frying next door

The fruit bats with a nightly appetite for mangoes

The sea where you learnt to swim with courage

My days are filled following the sea, shores and mountains, with my camera in tow. I develop my many photos looking in and out of windows, of boats, of tall hills, and of trees, and I sit and draw. Something of my childhood emerges; the pleasure of drawing, lines after lines of colour connecting with each other which I slowly begin to understand. I have always been fascinated by the way your eyes can travel along a group of images and read them as if time is passing.

Among the many mysteries of drawing is the inexplicable sense that the image already exists, and is waiting to be brought to paper. The drawings are easy to finish because they do not require time to dry, and in that sense they seem totally in the present. The dusty pigment from the pastels threatens to fall off the page with every small gesture, and I briefly mourn each potential mark that is lost.

- Cara Nahaul 

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