In the last of the Ramp series, iconic images of Musui and Maiya hoisted on pillars and the ramp colonized by the multitudes come together in a new narration of liminality. It brings together the many sculptural devices and images Radhakrishnan had employed till then, and thus reveals certain relations between them more pointedly. Firstly there is the matter of scale or perspective to be considered. If the mass on the ramp are miniaturized versions of Musui and Maiya with their individualities dissolved, as if seen at a distance; the genderless, faceless figures swarming the pedestal-pillars and the wall are then the same, seen at an even greater distance. Reality, we are reminded, is a matter of perspective. The ramp presents a series of varied gestalts depending on where we view from. Viewed from different heights, angles and distances – starting at the ground level and rising to eye level – the ramp is designed for such viewing  – we encounter different images, different rhythms. If our encounter with the ramp and the encounter between the figures on the ramp are governed by chance, our interaction with the larger figures on the pillars and theirswith the ramp are more planned.

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While in the earlier ramps the larger figures arose from the ramp itself, in the present ensemble the pillars with figures start outside the ramp, extend into the ramp, and intersect with it at regular intervals. And the pillars being all of the same height, they are progressively submerged by the rising ramp with the last one almost completely swallowed up. Further, beyond the ramp, where the eighth pillar should have stood, is a wall, a screen seething with embossed miniature figures and the sunken contours of an acrobatic figure similar to the modelled figures on the pillars but invoking not a material presence but an embedded absence. The ramp thus stands bracketed between the freestanding first figure and the wall, between palpable reality and its spectral shadow; and all three – the freestanding first figure, the ramp and the wall – together constitute a single imagination.

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The substance of this imagination and its sculptural incarnation becomes clearer by focusing on the large and alternating figures of Musui and Maiya, and tracing their progress. They form a sequence and are not bound to the pedestal-pillars that hoist them into the air. They merely use the pillars, like gymnasts using equipments, to vault over and leap ahead. And as a chain of moving figures their bodies are clearly subsumed to their collective movement. The first of these is an image of Maiya, her body fully horizontal and lifted on her forearms as in some yogic posture, but with her feet arched like that of a sprinter on the starting block. The next figure is one of Musui with one leg high in the sky and the other turned down, forming an ‘S’ in the air, with the body swinging to the right and the arms bent to its rhythm. The third figure is once again that of Maiya; her body swinging to the left, her legs sketching an inverse ‘S’ in the air, she is a mirror image of the preceding figure of Musui, and carries his movement forward. Through them, the movement emanating in the yogic sprinter is turned into a hop, skip and leap of a speeding langur. And the movement assumes a new turn in the next figure. With the raised legs arching forward, the simian run is transformed into an acrobatic heels over head. Slowed down, the movement is refined over the next two figures and in the seventh and final figure, again that of Maiya, it achieves the poise and symmetry of an ace gymnast executing her final movement.

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Maiya is the point at which all the movements within the ensemble meet. The ascent of the ramp culminates in her body. So does the progression of the Musui and Maiya figures. If her first figure invokes a take off, the final one suggests a landing. The movement of the Musui and Maiya figures, in relation to the ramp, is both one of progress and descent. She is thus the point at which ascent and descent meet, the point at which the tumultuous energies of the ensemble converge and is contained. But her body, standing like a frozen wave, does not mark the end; it only marks the end of what we can perceive. The movement continues beyond. The wall/screen with its tiny firefly-figures in low relief and the thin shadow of a vaulting figure – a double image of distance and unperceivable presence – is a token of this beyond. And the beyond is, like the beginning, pure liminality where, as the ‘Creation Hymn’ of the Rig Veda says, there is: …neither non-existence nor existence…. neither the realm of space nor the sky…. neither death nor immortality… nor distinguishing sign of night nor of day… [only] darkness hidden by darkness… [awaiting] the first seed of mind.