Beyond Mountains

2018 will always be the year I moved mountains. I hardly want to look back on this year because moving a mountain or two is akin to unraveling a couple of Gordian knots. Today, on the last day of 2018, I feel a sense of accomplishment and relief. I also have a great awareness of those people who helped me move my mountains this year. I am beyond hoping and wishing for anything in 2019. All I can do right now is sink back with a deep sigh and smile.

I leave you with this quote which sums it all up:
For us there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
T.S.Eliot

This link here has perhaps been the most enjoyable process of all the accomplishments of 2018 >>>

Yazdani Bakery

One of the memorable places I visited during my visit to Bombay was Yazdani Bakery. I entered into a light blue time capsule where time stood still and savoured every bit of the old-world charm there. Here it is in photographs and drawings in my sketchbook -

Don't miss the black and white flooring.

How lovely are these walls, how full of layers, stories 

and character.

A bread slicing machine also in the colour scheme of light blue to co-ordinate with the rest of the bakery.

Uncle-ji of Yazdani Bakery, like the bread slicing man, he too is wearing a light blue shirt. If we ask him for a photo, he rolls his fists and poses. He is full of stories and insists we try the bread pudding.

Uncle-ji insisted I take a picture of this plaque

I cannot help but notice that my sketchbook too is light blue, which I will from now on always associate with Yazdani bakery.

#Yazdanibakery

Heartfelt Prayer During Life's Upheavals

Thank you God for Swiggy delivery, Fresh Menu, Amazon Pay and most of all for Chai Point Ginger Chai which is the equivalent of drinking a flaskful of rocket fuel.

Once again my Smartphone has saved my life. I love my Smartphone. It is the greatest thing ever invented after the flushing loo system.

Deep and Dark Drawings

Hello Every Sunday

"There is nothing more satisfying, more gratifying than true adulthood. The adulthood that is the span of life before you. The process of becoming one is not inevitable. Its achievement is a difficult beauty, an intensely hard won glory, which commercial forces and cultural vapidity should not be permitted to deprive you of."

~ Toni Morrison

Brief Hipster Moment

I had to get out of the house and sit in a Hipster café to complete this long pending picture. I left my phone at home. It was a revelation that the rest of the world could wait until I finished my illustration. I am perched on a high chair and drawing on a table in a corner. Behind me one woman told another, “I want my wedding to be a simple affair!” And her friend/wedding planner advised her, “You should get your wedding done at Royal Orchid, they have the best deals...” At the other end of my long table, an American in Indian body screeched excitedly in a familiar nasal accent, “Oooo the croissants here taste JUST like those at home!” And in front of me an immaculately dressed couple, he Mohawk and neat beard burnished with beard butter, she wearing the latest from Label Life. He told her, “Your hair looks nice.” She coyly fluttered, “Thinnnk yooou.” And then I, I am eating cherry pistachio croissant and drawing for fun, for a Sunday project with a friend all the way out there in Montreal, and this at an age where most women are worrying about their daughter’s marriages or their son’s ICSE exams, Oh God, I am as hipster as all these folk around me...

You can read the entire comic here at GOOSEBERRY JAM.

Breathtaking

One day while scrolling through my Facebook feed, I chanced upon the raven haired Shreya Ila Anasuya wearing a red sari with a green blouse. Her resemblance to the woman in my painting of The Lovers, was remarkable. When Shreya bought a print of The Lovers from me, I asked her to send me a photo of herself in a red sari and holding the picture. You will agree that the result is simply breathtaking.
Thank you Shreya.

All Framed

And ready for brand new walls -

Gooseberry Jam

There has been a resumption of Hello Every Sunday after exactly
one year. I am glad for it since experimenting leads to all kinds of surprises like the illustrations in this post where I've tried to create a comic out of an unusual encounter. With the progression of each panel I found that my drawings gathered strength, much like I did. Rather than going around feeling dead after the previous project, I found myself reviving once more.

The Giant Sketchbook

 When I bought my first GIANT Strathmore Sketch, I remember I carried it home with pride. At 14×17 inches it was my biggest sketchbook ever. It cost over a thousand rupees and though I had to mull considerably over buying it I gave in since I felt I had earned it.

 I also thought that since it had 100 pages I would take a lifetime to fill it. Little did I know that I would use this entire book on just one project and that I would use it so much that it would be battered and pummeled like dough to make bread rise. 

Yesterday I finished the last usable page and in less than a year and out of sheer necessity and without second thought I have bought myself a second Strathmore Sketch. 

Therefore it is with some ceremony and a sense of satisfaction that I am closing the first one and retiring it. I have learnt and progressed much in those one hundred pages. Onward to the second.