VINITA KARIM

THE JOURNEY CONTINUES

Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass – Anton Chekov

A crescent moon rides across a dark sea, a sliver in the sky, a gilded boat across the oceans of the milky way. It wanes, it waxes; sometimes, though infrequently, it is full bodied, a mass of incandescence that floats magically, mysteriously, a weightless orb tossed into space that could be sky or sea.

A million miles away, like shards in a shattered mirror, the celestial boat replicates itself in an ancient land through which a river courses, a sussurating beach rushes to embrace a frothing sea. Lining it are hundreds of boats, come to rest for the night. A horizon in the beyond stretches to infinity. Before it slumbers a resurgent civilization.

A symbol of Vinita Karim’s peripatetic crisscrossings – that little boat – has come home to rest in Dhaka, a symbol as much of her journeys and existence, learning and survival by her wits, of struggles and of joys, as of a homecoming and a pillow to call her night. Dhaka’s teeming streets and riverine plains course through her canvases. It is as if, having finally found a place to roost, she has set about to excavate the millions of lives and stories that bubble through her. One is forced to wonder: What is it she is looking for, this little boat that has found its tide but left behind the high.