Indapur’s soil, red with the passion of its ancestors, blesses the artisans’ wheels. Lines of brick walls appear as we set walking in Indapur in Maharastra, stopping to glance at the unplanned symmetry of the oft broken structures that once set out to be someone’s home. Someone’s hearth, raging with fire. Brick walls are made and unmade with fire - one cannot set to stone what hasn’t been baked in its uncompromising flames. Mudwalls of a colour that is at once terracotta and turmeric. A visual delight lapped with folk wisdom and inherited mix of beauty and skill, born out of one’s interaction with their environment. Can colours trigger a particular sort of smell only through pure sight?  

 
Books on ancient trade were filled with tales of spices - the spice route, the root of colonisation of the oriental world. Sometimes imperialism begins to evoke the scent of spices. But let’s talk of imperial blue instead. And indigo. Born of the indigo plant, born of the precious lapis lazuli. Pigments are born of all things born of the earth. They leave behind an aftertaste that may blend with the spices in your food and carry you back to lost time and spaces.