The Work
Milāpa begins with a photograph.
A child, perhaps three years old, arms raised, dancing — dressed in fluid clothes sewn by a loving mother, watched by a smiling uncle, witnessed through the lens of a father who kept doubles of every photograph, just in case.
Beyond definition. Free to be, to dance.
Milāpa — the Punjabi word for reunion, for meeting, for coming together — is a memoir in progress and a performance in development. It traces a life lived between worlds: between cultures, between genders, between the self that was shaped by the world and the self that was always, quietly, there. Moving through five decades and five movements, it follows a path from exile to return — through fear, anger, grief and silence, through ceremony and healing, through the slow, tender work of bringing lost parts back home.
From the family archive of Harchand Singh Shinhat
From the Work
Both of my parents had artistic talents. My father was a prolific amateur photographer and a skilled carpenter. He had an eye for form and design...
His black and white photographs are of special interest because they bring me back to a time beyond my own memory. I look at the photos through my father's lens, through his eye. I feel his love, his pride, his tenderness in that gaze.
At first, I didn't see it, or maybe I filtered it out subconsciously, but in a number of the photos I'm wearing a dress or clothes that could be those of a boy or a girl — fluid — "gender neutral" as we say these days...
I remember looking back at the photos. They troubled me. I removed them from the album and, later on, I tore some of them up and threw them away, trying to exorcize that part of me.
I carried the guilt and the shame until, one day, I found envelopes in my late father's things that contained copies of those very same photographs that I had destroyed.
Oh Dad! My heart leapt, my soul laughed... I had forgotten that you always kept doubles of the photos you took to give as gifts. I opened that gift then, as if you had sent it back to me from the beyond.
Both the masculine and feminine energies have returned, out of hiding, into the light. They can play together again, in my heart, in my soul.
Five Movements
Milāpa is a work in progress. Performances and readings to be announced.
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