The glistening trail of a reticent snail journeys from the chaos and cacophonyof a city to the unsettling stillness of an urban wilderness. Equipped with an empathetic gaze, the traveller-narrator captures the minutiae of everyday life: forms, shadowsand textures that often remain hidden in plain sight. The ordinary and the familiar blur into the unexpected and the uncanny. Drifting in and out of the pages is a solitary voice that is, in turns, poetic and provocative. Shifting registers between the personal and the political, it speaks of dreams and fears,of conflict and closure, and ends on a tentative note of hope. 

Hemant Basankar is a Mumbai-based graphic designer and visual artist.He quit a career in advertising in the early noughties to co-found Bacteria Design,an interdisciplinary design studio. For many years now, he has straddled a dual path, with art being a parallel preoccupation. His leanings chiefly encompass the mediums of photography, paintings, drawings, printmaking and photobooks.