Sunshine Express, 2022
This series is dedicated to my closest friend and all-round favourite person in the universe, Shivi.
We met as a result of a long series of chance events and, at the time, seeming misfortunes. If any one of those things hadn’t happened, we would never have met, and this series would not exist.
Using train and track symbolism that I shamelessly lifted from the film Bullet Train to represent the idea of destiny or fate – a journey leading to only one possible destination – this series celebrates the way fate brought us together.
This symbolism is simultaneously intertwined with and juxtaposed against a sense of motion, since, as Yoda reminds is in The Empire Strikes Back, “Always in motion is the future.”
Back in her native India, Shivi’s friends used to call her Sunshine. I combined this with the railway theme to arrive at the title Sunshine Express.
At the time I created this series in late 2022, I was amazed at how close the two of us had grown in the short time since we’d met. Fast-forwarding to the present day, I could never in my wildest dreams have imagined just how much closer we would become. It’s like it was meant to be.
