The biggish canvas with a typical, chaotic Mumbai traffic scene, with innumerable cars moving haphazardly, looks so real that one feels as if one is standing amidst it and any moment one would
be brushed aside by a zooming car. It is a surreal feeling, since I am safely ensconced in a seventh floor flat of a housing society, off the Eastern Express Highway in Mulund and there is no way I can be knocked down by an errant four-wheeler. But the madness, the confusion and the mayhem that an
urbanite confronts everyday comes across on the canvas quite vividly.

Perched atop a small stool with a brush and a palette of paints in front of the canvas, a simple, youngish-looking girl, clad in faded jeans and a T-shirt, smiling a little uncertainly, states, “I had
this photograph of a city traffic jam and felt that I needed to paint this chaos in the city.’’

That is Prajakta Palav Aher for you. Having always lived in this city, 30-yearold Prajakta is aware of the underbelly of the vast metropolis and categorically states, “I don’t paint what I don’t witness or have not come across. I can identify with my city and the way it is becoming more and more disorganis ed, congested and chaotic as the years pass by.’’