His friends, Qusai Kathawala and Tushar Jiwarajka, debate the tempo of the street digger: “Like a machine gun,” says Jiwarajka. “140 beats-per-minute (bpm),” says Deora. Lunch arrives and in between morsels of fish-and-chips and fish kebabs, Deora explains how the exhibition, The Metronome at the Ashish Balram Nagpal Gallery, Colaba, until March 8, is not a career move. “Tushar saw some of the sketches I’d made a year ago, he said he’d show them around and knew the gallery owner.”

The 21 pieces Deora sculpted in a year - made out of silver - are variations of a distorted bed (additional sketches included a giant steel vagina—“Where I come from is where I go”—and another that Deora requests we shouldn’t mention). “The bed is like a soft metronome, a metaphor for the human heart,” he says. Deora recites from memory, verses from a William Blake poem he’s liked since he was a kid (Auguries of Innocence), to illustrate his preoccupation with time, memory and tradition. “Every Night and every morn/ Some to misery are born. Every morn and every night/ Some are born to sweet delight. Some ar’ born to sweet delight/Some are born to endless night.” The bed is Deora’s incubator, where dreams are born, memories linger and where you wake up each morning, planning the next day.

“I thought this was a lunch-and-discuss scene but you’re not eating anything,” he goads me. I’m tempted to retort with a corny one (as I am often wont to do), but I ask for a fresh lime soda instead.

Deora’s entry into the art circuit is close on the heels of another alternative music champion, Talvin Singh, who presented an image-and-sound installation at the Bombay Art Gallery, last month. Like Singh, however, unbeknownst to the general public, Deora has always been experimenting with sound installations.

“It’s nice that Mumbai is finally doing an alternative scene in little pockets. I remember Qusai and I did this sound experiment at the NCPA. Half the audience was the regular geriatrics and about 20 of our friends that we had invited. We had samples and loops going around in concentric circles, sometimes going out of synch, in a four speakers in a room set-up. At one point, a Parsi gentlemen stood up and said, ‘Stop it, stop it,’ and walked out,” he says.