I like to try different themes and styles. The movement from figurative to abstracts was a natural progression. Likewise, the palette also kept changing. The current exhibition, for instance, will feature a lot of red and black — these are shades that I haven’t used prominently before.

Will we see Benaras again in your works? It featured prominently on your canvas once.

Benaras does continue to inspire me. It is a city close to my heart and the ethos of the place has always appealed to me. Besides the religious sanctity, it also has a certain calmness to it. As a child I always wanted to accompany my mother to the city, but somehow I never could.

You have an exhibition coming up at Mumbai’s Chemould Art Gallery, as a homage to Kekoo Gandhy. Do you think artists and gallery owners share a similar camaraderie now?

My relationship with Kekoo goes back several years and we spent a lot of time together. The art world has witnessed several changes over the years. Monetary factors have become more important and things have become commercialised.

Not many people know that you have written a couple of novels and a few short story collections in Hindi. Recently the English translation of your stories, The Face and Other Stories (Vadehra Art Gallery), came out.

While in college, I always wanted to be an author and share stories, but over the years art began to occupy most of my time and writing took a backseat. It has been 10 years since I wrote a story. The translations weren’t proposed by me. Arun Vadehra approached me with the idea a couple of years ago. The translation will make the stories reach out to more people.

Your protagonists are all lonely and in search of something. You also leave a lot of things unsaid at the end of each story.