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I walked into Simryn Gill’s exhibition SOFT TISSUE at Jhaveri Contemporary on one of the worst days of an unusually dense winter smog in Mumbai On the way over, driving slowly through sunset traffic, I stared straight into the sun: its whole circumference visible, its light diffuse and dull behind a thick curtain of pollution Maybe soon we will forget what sunsets look like here, I thought, how the sun dips slowly into the sea Smog like this is sad in a physical way; it is an injury that hangs over the city, seeping into its inhabitants Birds fly in hysterical circles, blinded, their sense of direction askew   Gill brings the injury into the gallery A different kind of injury to the one the smog inflicts, perhaps, but still the injury of nature For the series NAGA DOODLES (2017), she has collected snake roadkill: torn up membranes, snagging tissue, and ribbons of soft, delicate spines Sometimes, flecks of blood and urine dot the paper, alongside gaping wide mouths with fine but broken teeth Once, while on a drive, Gill noticed a dead snake on the side of the road and pulled over the car She wanted to get closer to it It was a cobra, and she brought it to her studio Later, she rolled etching inks on to the carcass and took impressions of the inked snake by hand Her cat had brought home a dead bird as a gift, and she had kept it in a ziplock bag in her fridge for a while Eventually, she decided to print it It was a bright, grey and yellow bird native to the South West Pacific: a type of honeyeater called a silvereye that migrates up and down from Tasmania Legend has it that the silvereyes first arrived in the region carried by a storm The bird’s Maori name, Taohou, translates as ‘stranger’ ‘The silvereye is a hoverer,’ Gill writers in a recent essay for SLUG, ‘you might see it floating alongside flower blooms, eating the nectar, or flitting from branch to branch in trees How, I wondered, did the cat