We come to know of ourselves from stories told to us by historians bearing witness to the ruins of our past -- brick and mortar, stone columns, mounds and canal systems, mosques, temples and libraries. Archaeological sites today are places of deep fantasy that often get perverted whilst constructing false identities of nationhood and communal myth-making. In the city of Bombay, 'At the Shore' of the Arabian Sea we find in the rubble of construction sites and redevelopment projects the remnants of its industrial heritage. The 'Heritage Committee' overseeing the protection of its architectural vista recommended preserving the chimneys of its once labouring cotton mill. People who worked in these mills changed the character of the city by bringing in an urban ethos with theatre, religious festivals, literature and politics of the Avant-Garde. This was later dismantled by a nexus of mill-owners and politicians in a greed for land. All that was satirically left of their presence were the chimneys from the discharge of the fumes passed. All had gone up in smoke. Chetan Kurekar poetically and perhaps sarcastically names his solo debut as 'At the Shore' where he is talking about 'the memories at the shore' of his existence translated from Marathi ' Smrityancha Kinara'. At a young age for his first exhibition how can an artist privilege memory? In his paintings one can see that when time is viewed through the perspective of the landscape - it once seemed lapsed and static but now gallops across through the promises of development pushing onto the periphery the viewer who had always believed to be part of that landscape. Simon Njami the art critic and essayist has noted ' The notion of the periphery was constructed by the so-called Center in order to create a conceptual framework to accommodate their arrogance. I do not understand why victims of this strategy in the realm of politics and culture still stupidly use it to understand their existence. The center is where people think and live.' Chetan is using the perspective of the landscape to assert his reflection on the rapidly changing terms of land use in his hometown. Visiting the collieries of Chandrapur with his father, having access to them and living in the labour barracks changed after they moved out and he returned to visit as an adult. Access was denied. Across the world our earth is being gated, big fences, communities living in exclusive bungalows schemes, private beaches, member clubs and guest lists are pushing people out from once public venues. Accessibility defines your stake and status in a scene. Artists instead of accepting this arrogantly induced marginality are contesting these spaces. Chetan does not settle for a compromise; he is keen on reproducing the denudation of his landscape by mining activity. 'On the Road with Monet' a tryptic of landscapes fenced off and bruised by mining he refocuses your attention to how we view a landscape in passing, perhaps on a motorcycle, taking pictures of it without permission from a car window - a land that had been once a familiar playground during childhood. 'Gandhiji, I have no homeland.' was Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar's famous retort to Mahatma Gandhi, when in 1931 he was asked to join hands with the Congress in the national struggle. Disenfranchised by an oligarchy and mega-corporations, descendants of labourers fight an existential crisis to allow them mere presence in the cities and industrial towns that were once theirs. Industrial belts across Wales, Detroit, France and Tuscany situated around manufacturing and mining face similar fates of abandonment. As the search for coal intensifies Coal companies begin to tunnel the labour barracks thus endangering the foundations of homes that each family had built over five decades. Situated on the eastern edge of the Gondwana plate, Chandrapur was once home exclusively to Tigers and the Gond tribe. The lush semi-tropical forests were cleared by British coal concessions that were nationalised after independence. Chetan descends from a cosmopolitan community of people of varied castes, languages and religions who escaped poverty from the different parts of India to find sustenance through employment in the mines. They were also escaping caste and were breaking barriers through secular vocations and manners of living around these mines and where Socialism once tried to establish equitable labour relations but in the last decades as India inches towards privatisation labour welfare has been discarded for coal that has become scarce. Many of the homes in the barracks tremble, shake and collapse. The land under them caves in, often swallowing the inhabitants. This is not tectonic action due to them being perched on a geographic plate but one caused by underground drilling and blasting. Chetan builds dioramas of these broken homes. Its inhabitants have fled. His colours are those pastel yellows, pinks, blues and greens that rose from a palette of painting walls in villages when the binder was limewash or 'surkhi chuna.' He recreates film posters from the 1990s and quotidian objects of domesticity are replicated producing a tragic sense of beauty. Chetan Kurekar is a mature painter holding witness to his subject with skill. But the object is also a sculpture and is layered thus producing a sense 'Arte-Povera' drawn from the industrial detritus to which he bears witness as an artist conceptually. Jannis Kounellis was the pioneer of materially producing the plight of coal as it sustained humanity through an observation of the objects and materials that populated life around coal. Objects have a sense of conscience, they are viewing you as you view them and you are arrested by what you see and feel in their presence. Chetan recreates the immense role of memory to which we all are pledged to since childhood. The space in which this exhibitions choreographed is a sanctuary of resistance against the absolute power of the state. It is in a quiet foyer of the Great Western Building that was built in the 18th century that had once served as the residence of the Governor of Bombay, as its Admiralty House for the Port, as the city court, a hotel and finally a series of tenements that inhabit the architecture of many memories. The rubble of these homes from Chandrapur also talk about the fading presence of mill labour in the city of Bombay now unseen in their small homes that a few received after being displaced by redevelopment projects in Parel. A hometown that is not his, not for him to access or call his own. The exhibition is choreographed as a young artist's memoir. What burdens should he hold with memory perhaps not as immense as for those who inhabit the rubble caused by the annihilation in Gaza? They face immediate expulsion from their homeland and are at the mercy of the outcomes of a negotiations between foreign nations. Wasn't Ambedkar correct to say that a people dehumanised by a rigid structure we come to accept as society cannot afford to have a homeland? Displacing humans for the cause of the nation, industry, a highway and the greater good may be unseen by those drawing maps, typing profits and changing the world order but the immensity of that violence echoes and resonates in the memory of the people affected by it even when they reach the last shores of their life. Sumesh Sharma 2025 Bombay