Suburbia: it’s a state of mind, because the geography is suddenly shiny and new, like a virgin. Touched for the very first time. It’s a frame of reference, for even when the song has ended, a melody lingers on: nostalgia, the hangover from heady change, a suburban lament. It’s a window on our collective projections, hopes and fears. Humming with ideas and buzzing full of plans: a hornet’s nest of tranquility.

In these images, I choose to see the gasping silence left behind, as a homogeneous suburbia – confident, vibrant, brash and unrelenting – gets belched out of city centres and urban hinter lands alike, across India’s metros. Surrounded as many urban dwellers in India today are, by perpetually unsettled, churning spaces, I too watch the transient become permanent.

These three urban landscapes, caught between frames, in Mumbai and Bengaluru, no longer exist. They happened along the way. That, to me, is both ominous and filled with hope.

Window at Kosmo Lounge, Bengaluru, 2007. Digital.

Richmond Circle, Bengaluru, 2010. Digital.

Worli Sea Face, Mumbai, 2009. Digital.