Between 1990 and 1993, Calcutta was waiting. Such was the waiting that it had texture, consistency, tangibility. Waiting had become a way of inhabiting time. Elsewhere, history was accelerating. Liberalisation was recasting aspirations, the Babri Masjid would fall, Bombay would become Mumbai.

In Calcutta, these shifts arrived without too much fury, folded into newspapers and conversation. Mostly, the city was waiting. It hadn’t renamed itself yet. It remained suspended, living inside time.

It is within this suspension that Kushal Ray’s photographs acquire their force.