Wisteria

From the plum tree

From the plum tree

From the plum tree

I wanted love to grow back, like the grass when it’s mown down. To grow differently, if need be, like children’s teeth, like hair, like fingernails. To spring up at will, wild and untended. The chill of the sheets made me shudder, and so did the warmth that followed when I lay down.
- The Land of Green Plums
Herta Muller

The Trees at Manikyavelu Mansion

As I walked through the sprawling rooms at the National Gallery of Modern Art at Manikyavelu Mansion, looking at the tiny, tentative, sometimes exquisite, always unfailingly polite works which represent early Indian Modern Art, my eyes kept travelling towards the window frames and what lay beyond it –

From the plum tree

From the plum tree

When I returned to the paintings on the wall, they had reduced themselves to faded lines on musty paper.

From the plum tree

I walked out onto the balcony

From the plum tree

From the plum tree

And wandered through

From the plum tree

From the plum tree

From the plum tree

Then I walked into the Contemporary Art section and looked through canvases of curious blobs, incongruous elements, angry brushstrokes and psychedelic colour all fraught with deep and intense meaning.

And then I sat down and looked up –

From the plum tree

And then I walked outside –

From the plum tree

And I saw -

From the plum tree

From the plum tree

From the plum tree

And I understood why my ancestors fell on their knees and worshiped trees.

Framed

From the plum tree

My work is now available at Ambara, Ulsoor. Bangalore.

You can also contact me directly at tumblrofseaweedsoup@gmail.com

Today

*

Oh what a life we live held together by string
Never knowing what each day will bring
But there is beauty in the darkest of things
And there is hope in the insane
And all of the things that brought you down
Just may raise you up again.
-- Declan de Barra

via The Hermitage