can you smell the divine fragrance in town

The project documents the rapid transformation of land between Gandhinagar and Ahmedabad, beginning with construction sites, the workers and their families who sustain them and gradually expanding to landscapes overwhelmed by human presence. What were once villages and open terrains have increasingly turned into dense concrete jungles shaped by infrastructure and real estate development.

Alongside this physical change, the work highlights the environmental cost of such expansion. Dust, debris, and polluted air become recurring elements within the images, pointing to the erosion of ecological balance and the impact of construction-driven pollution on land, labour, and everyday life. The project also reflects on how much of this growth unfolds in the absence of adequate environmental clearances and impact assessments, allowing development to proceed with little accountability.

Situated within the context of the Anthropocene, the work studies the changing relationship between humans, land, and regulation, where growth steadily replaces memory, nature, and rural life, all in the name of development.