Hello Every Sunday

Hello Every Sunday

We are still at it.

Uses of a Book

It seems that Is It The Same For You? is being put to good use on Republic Day. Many thanks to Vinitha R. for tagging me with these pictures.
Here is what Vinitha had to say in a comment about the book -
"We keep discussing about how many ways a picture book can be read. This book has so many layers. One reading will ONLY be the reading of the illustration. Because the illustrations (oh the beautiful beautiful, breathtakingly beautiful illustrations) itself bring out so many layers..."

Below, a closeup of the previous picture, where the young girl on the right, wearing a headscarf, looks toward a friend speaking up in the audience. 

She could be the girl in the book.

Is It The Same For You? is available at Seagull Books.

Here is what Vinitha had to say:

The book came in last night. (I'd picked it up from @khalisi_singh and read it at Jodhpur, #Kitaabo while we were waiting to head for the festival). There are books that startle and move you; there are books that make you want to write, there are books where the illustrations and the text are powerfully matched and matchless, there are book that make you think. Is it the Same For You? by Priya Sebastian and Neha Singh is all of this. Beautifully produced by Seagull Books it is something that I've read and re read many times over in less than 24 hours.

Read it first to my 14 year old daughter and 12 year old son. Then read it to around 40 adolescent girls at a public park in Bandra.

Where could the story be set in? The kids figured sugested Kashmir, Delhi and a bunch of other places. What is curfew? They said bandh. So we talked of what curfew could mean.
They connected with the story of a young girl... when we asked how old is the girl in the story they immediately said 13 or 14. When I asked how did they get that... they said "emotional maturity" (... after we re read the story they understood the period stain....) they immediately connected with the page where the mother lays her head on the girls lap... They've had weary parents. We spoke then of how often we do have to parent a parent... They connected with loss and fear ..
We talked of body changes, about times when we've been groped and have had to "let it go". They connected most to mood changes, the laughing, the girl who looked up to the night sky and shared her secrets and how despite squabbling with a sibling how when that sibling is not around they fear and worry.

Print Party

These are some pictures of a very enjoyable Print Party I attended, organized by my friend Joanna. I got to make my first Litho print. More than print making, it was fun to get together with other illustrators and do something given that we are in such an isolating profession. Next time the party will possibly be at my studio :-)

And that's me taking my very first print with Joanna's hands on the ready for assistance on the right.

A Full Circle

My initial idea for this post at the start of the new decade was to write something meaningful, something about how my life had literally and symbolically reached a full circle, how I had accomplished all that I had set out to, how my book was akin to the act of giving birth, how certain seismic shifts occur within you when you hold your book in your hands, how much gratitude I feel etc etc. But all that is in the past is where it is meant to be, what is over is over, challenges have been met headlong, gargantuan voyages have been embarked on and returned from, friendships that have run their course have been axed, fantasies have thankfully turned to dust and an eternity of perceived barriers have been broken through. Right now in Bangalore's beautiful winter sun, new joys, exciting challenges and happy moments await me mingled always with memories of that incredible ancient city of Matera, swirling in the mist like an enchanted land.

 However sometimes you have to recall the past to remember how far you have progressed and to use that as an encouragement to progress further or take the necessary steps to do so. That is what birthdays and new years are for, markers to reflect and assess. Ten years ago when I started this blog, I was at a very different place in all aspects of my life. I recall making the choice to consciously focus on my illustrations rather than my problems. My illustrations were the only thing I had to grasp onto in a world that was disintegrating under my feet. It was a good decision because things changed with that. Where once I was stationary and digging myself into a hole, focussing on my work propelled me forward into doing things I would never have dared and gave me results I fathomed were always beyond me. 

All those efforts and choices have led me to here and now. January 2020 has been wonderful. There have been beautiful meetings with old friends, pleasant mornings sketching with "sketch buddies", lots and lots of great food, strong coffee, top class prints of my book illustrations, drawing with other like minded incredibly talented people and the blaze of the moringa tree abuzz with activity from birds and different kinds of bees and enormous butterflies every single morning fills my heart so much that if I could sing I really would. But I draw instead and that is enough.

Twenty three years ago I made a voyage alone to Australia to study illustration. There, for my final exhibition, 

I drew this girl with a red scarf over her head. (below)

At Queensland College of Art, I was blessed to have an extraordinary teacher who had the gift of imparting knowledge. For me, a student with an unquenchable thirst to learn as much as possible, the result was a very firm foundation in illustration. At the one and only critique that I took part in my teacher Armin's class, I put up the picture above to see how it would rate in his assessment. What I got from my teacher were disparaging remarks about this picture in front of the class. It didn't meet his standards for a Distinction. I was given exactly one mark short of it. 

Then a few months later, this very same illustration got me a High Distinction at the final critique for Master's degree students, the external assessors commended me for creating such an excellent image, people walking through my exhibit at the college kept stopping in front of this picture and pausing to stare.  I was halted at the corridors with, "You are the woman who made that picture!"

Now two decades and three years later, after hours and hours of practice, after making 100s and 1000s of drawings, my life has come to a full circle when the girl with the red scarf looks at me again from the cover of my book. 

I considered it an act of grace to have been able to not only dedicate this book to my former teacher but also to have been able to hand this book over to him in Rome, the person I looked up to for a lifetime of guidance and inspiration, the mentor and friend who had provided me with so much encouragement over the years and so much moral support during the making of my book through his flawless beautifully written emails to me. This could almost have been a scene from a Hollywood movie set in Rome, had there been the appropriate background music.

But this is real life: A few hours after I landed in Rome and reunited with my teacher after 23 long years, he accompanied me to a restaurant to have dinner with his wife. Along the way his phone rang. He answered it and spoke the entire length of the 15 minute walk to the restaurant while I walked silently beside him.  Unfortunately his negation of me did not stop there, that teacher still had disparaging remarks to make and this time it was about my worth as an illustrator. In spite of the fact that I had conceptualized and drawn every single image on my own, I was told I could not have made this book without him.  Being in his presence was extremely unpleasant. I was snapped at when I spoke. I was mocked about my "Indian accent" incessantly. I was subject to one-sided deathless monologues during every meal together, I was at the receiving end of dickish snide remarks, the sort you cannot do anything about. On other occasions I was rudely cut off mid-sentence each time I attempted to speak and made to stand and wait humiliatingly alone for inordinate lengths of time over and over again while he and his wife shopped for nearly an hour for things like one plastic folder during my one and only visit to the City of Rome. This is a couple who paint on the graves of dead refugees in Lampedusa in order to give them dignity to make a political statement to the government, and yet cannot bring themselves to treat a living guest from India with basic decency.  In all I was  treated like a dog, thrown a few crumbs of hospitality and served up a coldness not unlike the bleak atmosphere in my illustration of the girl running through the forest.  My stay in Rome was a stressful and anxious one.

So much of the memories of a place have to do with the kind of people you encounter there and how you engage with each other. It took the love and the warmth of the people in Matera, complete strangers who are now friends, to restore my confidence and to accept the realization that how people treat me is a reflection of what they think about me and what they think about me is their business not mine. I did not feel comfortable with what I was put through in Rome. The sadness and distress I felt at being at the receiving end of what was obviously racist and invalidating behavior was traumatizing for me, to say the least. The dissonance between what I considered a close friendship with a mentor and the illusion it ultimately turned out to be will take me a very long time to process and accept. It was time to draw the line, to close the circle and move on. This too is progress.

Growth is when you can say, "This is not good enough for me" and that's it.

End of story.  I'm moving on.

At 50. A satisfying closure, an inevitable ending and a fresh start.

Redoing Rome

PROTEST!

Even those of us disinterested in politics and way down here in the South had an inkling at the back of our minds as to what was in store for us when the BJP came to power. At the back of our minds we remembered the Gujarat riots of 2002 and before that the images in the news of the Rath Yatra and the demolition of the Babri Masjid. It is inevitable really that what is happening now has happened. So here it is, up on my blog as well and that too as the first post for the new decade.

The picture above was taken on the 5th Jan 2020 protest by M.Basu @basutramp.

I first went tentatively to a protest at the Town Hall on the 19th of December 2019 (above). I went too early at first, then I went again to be met with barred gates at Unity Building and a tense atmosphere. I was told that Ramachandra Guha had been arrested. Then thanks to friends on social media telling me that protests had been allowed by the police I went yet again at 4 pm to catch the remainder of the protest. I remained on the fringes but I went. I never ever though I would attend a political protest in my lifetime but I went because of how strongly I felt about the terror that was gripping my country.

The photograph below is taken by Nisha Abdulla at Quduss Sahib Eidgah on the 23rd of Dec 2019. Her account gives you an idea about the scale of protests even down here in the South in Bangalore.

Then yesterday a friend, seeing my social media posts asked me to accompany her to yet another protest she was attending. I was glad to have company. Then another friend along with her friends arrived to my home from Delhi, and these days, when friends meet, it seems instead of going pubbing, we attend protests. This time I was in the centre of it all. My friend, a veteran of these recent protests took me up the steps of the Town Hall, she gave me a placard, we held our placards up. We chanted Azadi, Azadi, Azadi  which means FREEDOM and Dhikkara which means BE DAMNED to the people who hold power and who have created this calamity.

The picture below is taken by S.Chatterjee @theshroomtea from the other side of the protests.

We were all there, my former publisher, my former teacher, my colleagues from my profession, Irom Sharmila with her twin babies, poets, rap musicians, artists, children, activists, lawyers, we were all in this together while a ring of policemen stood passively and watched us (had they been given one order from above, the situation could have changed in an instant), but we felt powerful, we would not let this country be divided on the basis of religion. Then as we returned home we read on our newsfeeds that armed thugs had attacked JNU. 

This standoff between the government and the citizens of India will not end soon. It is a very long fight to freedom. 

BLOOD AND SOIL IN NARENDRA MODI'S INDIA