I'm very much a believer in that you have to deconstruct and destroy to create. I like to be romantic about it and link it to the Dance of Shiva and the creation/destruction thing but really it's the nature of creativity. You break the roles. You try to create novel ways of processing things or juxtaposing ideas.

You start with fragments...food, ritual, spice and religion. We're like chameleons.

Does that mean that we change colour? Change rungh, as it were? His work is full of COLOUR. The browns of tamarind and mehndi. The oranges of saffron and food dye. The yellows of turmeric. Reds. Purples and greens.

And what about a sense of home? Where do the fragments come together?

Ghar? I always have a home because I carry it around in my imagination. My home is not a physical space. It involves a conglomeration of memories from my East African childhood, my fantasies about India and the mythological stories and fables.

I'm very intuitive. I do know my colour theory but I'm always looking for combinations. I mean colours for me are a major part of the language I use, especially in paintings. The whole idea of layering is an aesthetic I'm very interested in. This idea of layering...melding realities—mythological with real.

In my aesthetic, there is a fight between my personal taste, my romanticism and the realities of art and its function in society.