Rock (Hardback)

Rock architecture, in the Deccan plateau in central and south India, part of the 2.5 billion years old ‘Dharwar craton’, is unique in hosting some of the oldest and most stable stone formations in the world.

Rock continues and stretches the eco-geological arc that started during a sojourn in South Africa’s ‘Cradle of Humankind’ and culminated in Red. Rock expands the reach to include India in a more concrete manner — thereby inter-linking earth’s meaningful geographies and ‘climate imaginaries’.

Our interglacial multi-millennia old history traces its distant past to when Africa and India were once joined as one land-mass. It is inescapable that the cratons — both the exposed and subterranean rock-stretches —have some shared eco-paleo-geological history.

Sudeep’s new work in Rock emerges from his dedicated trips to the Khajaguda Hills and other rockscapes in and around Hyderabad; the crumbling remains of the Rachakonda Fort in the eponymous village, and the incredible boulder-speckled hilly landscape that surrounds it; and to the spectacular stone-art, rock-temples, and litho-formations in and around Hampi.

Rock completes the larger eco-trilogy that started with Anthropocene — written during the pandemic in 2020-21; and Red — written in a frenetic trance-like state while Sen was on a three- month artist/writer-in-residence fellowship at South Africa’s Nirox Foundation in 2023.

The tightly-wrought text — poetry & prose — is simultaneously urgent, intelligent, visceral and lyrical. Replete with stunning colour and black & white photographs by the author, Rock is a collector’s item.