Mani’s ability to take you into various zones of time is one of his greatest qualities and is rare even in great film-makers. He devoted several years of his life to the study of dhrupad. The slow-moving alaap that opens a dhrupad has something primeval about it. At the end of his film on dhrupad Mani moved his camera over the cityscape of Bombay at 120 frames per second, slowing time down to one-fifths of its normal flow. As the camera glides over the city, in a never before seen slow speed and gradually goes out of focus, it takes the viewer into an experience that is near mystical. It is an experience of a universe that is gradually dissolving before your eyes to return to a state that is nirgun and nirakar, without attributes and without shape.

Little did I realize that what began in the alleys and back ways of this quiet town would end in the Badlands of Montana