Divyakshi Kedia

My project is a work of autofiction on disconnectedness, femininity, and changing family-scapes. The idea for A Lemon Falls from the Mango Tree started with an impulse, an urgent need to document the world as I was seeing it onto every surface. I started to question the influence of sociocultural factors on my identity. I resisted exploring ideas that allowed me to introspect: can I live outside my culture? Eventually, when the world began to shut down in the spring of 2020, I decided to shut down with a process that would curb my curiosity. My ideas matured in two cities—Bombay and New York—where through techniques of automatic writing and heavy mark-making used by surrealist artists in the early 20th century, I learned to simultaneously exist in three worlds: the outside, the inside, and the transitional. During the early days of quarantine, I found myself feverishly searching for artists and writers who engage the audience in numerous dimensions of relevance through nonlinear and nonsequential narratives. These influences not only inspired the lexicon of the text in my work, but also brought to the fore how form and content can be abstracted to help transport the reader from a state of observation to that of introspection. The process of creating this book has been a transformative one, and while the practice of documenting my memories and archiving emotions through objects and domestic spaces has brought me a sense of calm, the ideas explored in this world were driven by a desire to produce dialogue.