I have been accompanying my father to medical appointments that made me aware of how time can feel interminable in the hospital waiting rooms. In between the hospital visits, I regularly visit a city forest close to where I live in Delhi. At the end of July 2025, I started learning how to work with oil paint. I felt a similar sense of waiting – the slow process of allowing one layer to dry before applying the

next – not so different the wait during my father’s treatment in the hospital. The more I paint, the more the forest feels like a place with a multitude of possibilities—it can harbour secrets and provide refuge or even a sense of solace and comfort, not only for me but for all the people who step into this space – a temporary escape from the noisy reality of the world outside the forest wall.