The drawing is a 'collective memory drawing' of the artist's ancestral home, called 'tharavadu' in Malayalam. For the drawing Saju has used pigment ink and the midrib of coconut leaf, which is reminiscent of my childhood painting activities. Even though some portion of the house got renovated later on, eventually the structure got destroyed due to negligence and partition of the property. Now only the site remains with the accumulated debris.

As there is no traceable history available about his ancestral existence, and he is trying to dig through his history through the oral narratives shared with him by the elders of his extended family. He tried to correlate the shared history with the speculated history available in the public about his community. Unfortunately, his forefathers have not left any traces of their life in any part of the house or architecture, which could have been helpful for the next generation. This is the case with majority of the lower-class communities. So, for Saju the process of engraving is a kind of digging for the past and so the narratives on the pieces are his interpretations. Through researching his own history and existence, he is also researching the existence of a larger community, which is about 20% of the state’s population.

The narratives reveal the different existence of his people in different time periods. The geographical areas shown in each piece relate to his ancestors who lived in the house or in other words it traces the path his forefathers crossed to reach here.
These are completely personal, but through this work he is enquiring about the existence of a larger community.