Jammed at my Desk

Illustration for a story by Salil Chaturvedi for The Indian Quarterly magazine.

On my desk

My favourite subject for a magazine spread.

Dark and Smoldering Goodness

In the last six months, deadlines have started appearing simultaneously, two, three at a time. This makes me nervous. My hands shake, I lose things, I drink too much coffee... The giant hi-res digital scanning machine where I get my large work scanned is now churning out bad results. I am glad I have the camera and thankfully in this country, good light in any season is never a problem.

While returning from the Scan man, I stopped to buy some Chinese food. While waiting, I wandered into a shop next door which sold Organic food. They had with them, the chocolate I was searching for – Earth Loaf chocolate. And there was only one left in the fridge.

In Toronto, my flatmate introduced me to Chocosol. If there is the equivalent of pure gold in chocolate, it is this. It is excellent, dark, organic chocolate. No sugar, no additives. It is so good that just one piece is enough to give you your chocolate fix for the entire day. The Toronto flatmate was a generous woman who not only gave me some Chocosol chocolate as a parting gift but also took me to the Distillery district and to the SOMA chocolate shop over there. I could only marvel at the chocolate because it was very expensive. However I did treat myself to a cup of chocolate with hints of orange, pepper and spices, which needless to say was heaven itself on earth within that cup.

                        SOMA hot chocolate. Photo by Danielle

Here, Earthloaf chocolate is as good as Chocosol (I can’t believe I am saying that). It is as obscenely priced but it is value for money. The one I bought is studded with this strange fruit called Gondhoraj which lifts the flavor of the chocolate. It is so so so good.The commercial variety we get, even in the good brands like Lindt are essentially candy. We end up eating a lot of it because we don’t get the chocolate fix we are looking for and instead derive our high from the sugar content within it.

In that Organic goods shop I also bought some extra dark Palm Jaggery (Molasses). The extra dark variety is hard to find. It is usually available in temple towns in coastal areas and friends who actually procure it for me during their travels have been known to suddenly change their minds when it comes to parting with it. The jaggery's smooth, dark, muted sweetness is as good as the chocolate but in its own way. It tastes almost like chocolate fudge but better.It is of course very different from organic powdered jaggery. I tried some Palm jaggery in my coffee and the deep, complex sweetness that resulted was very good.

 Why I am eulogizing these things so much? Because I firmly believe that strong coffee, excellent quality chocolate and rich jaggery is fuel and sustenance to an illustrator. The good things you imbibe, flows out into the picture you make and lifts it above the ordinary. With so much dark goodness in my system, my hands have stopped shaking, the answers I wanted have emerged on paper, I breathe easily and I am happy. The taste of dark chocolate, Palm jaggery and coffee lingers on... 

*

Begin again

From the Bits and Pieces Box

Waste bits and pieces collected and juxtaposed in pages of my sketchbooks create the most interesting and unusual compositions. Looking at these pictures makes me feel I am turning the pages of a very strange picture book where I never know what the next page will bring. Just like real life.

Uncertainty

And when you go long enough being uncertain of who you really are, what results is a form of subtle, long-term meditation — a persistent and necessary acceptance of whatever is arising, because you don’t actually know if it was the food that made you sick, and you don’t actually know if you like Eastern European cultures anymore, and you don’t really know how you feel about income inequality anymore, and you don’t know if your career path is the best for you or not, and you don’t really know if you miss your friends back home or if you just like the idea of missing your friends back home.

And at some point, you just stop asking questions. And start listening. To the waves and the wind and the calls for love in all of the beautiful languages you will never understand.

You just let it be. And keep moving.

~ Mark Manson. 5 Lessons from Travelling

Fish Curry

Five Lessons from Travelling

The Bong Detective

I was feeling very blue since there were no sketching jaunts outside Bangalore this weekend, when the doorbell rang and I was delivered the latest copy of The Indian Quarterly (IQ) Magazine.

Here is my illustration for Calcutta Noir, where I had to illustrate a Bengali woman addicted to detective novels who eventually ends up solving a murder. I have depicted the protagonist engrossed in a detective story in a Kolkata tram and a scene from what she is reading taking place in the tram window behind her.
To show that the background is her imagination, I have done it in moody colour as appropriate to the story she is reading while the rest of the illustration is in black and white. To bridge imagination with the reality of the story, I have shown a cloud from the coloured scene making its way into the black and white one.

I was asked to do this illustration right at the beginning of the year, before I had barely recovered from the cacophony of a New Year party. Voices with strange South-Indian accents were ringing in my ears, weird psychedelic lights flashed in circles behind my eyes, drunken men carrying a sofa knocked around the insides of my skull, bad memories of fruit flavoured beer I had been plied with haunted my dreams and I was still freaking over the contents of my 2014 horoscope when the curt and coldly professional art-director sent me a mail saying 'Kindly complete this in three days'. Trams! Electric wires! Kolkata! Three Days! If that wasn't bad enough, I swear with my hand on my heart that drawing electric wires across the sky is the most daunting feat I have ever accomplished in my entire career as an illustrator. As any illustrator who has attempted this will know, it is like running full speed across a tightrope with your heart between your teeth. It can make or break all your hard work in creating the illustration. By the time I finished this picture, my hands were shaking with nervousness and my teeth were chattering with excess caffeine...

But it is done! And over with! And published!
Abbah!
Now I need some more morning filter coffee.

Sketchbook Stuff

Violets

Since several bloggers have asked me about this pretty plant on my desk, I thought I'd indulge you all with a few pictures. It is a Violet plant that I bought at the flower show in Lalbagh. It needs careful handling and care, therefore it is on my desk rather than out in my garden. My studio window does not face the garden so it is nice to look up and have this pot of violets keeping me company with their quiet beauty.

The other beauty has defiantly found herself a different place where she can sleep undisturbed since there was always a tussle for space between both of us at my desk. There is no sight more beautiful than the serenity of a cat asleep :)

My old sketchbook has come to an end. Here are the last few pages -

And here is a new sketchbook, freshly bound with customized cover from a school chart bought on the streets of Avenue Road.

And this is what my desk looks like right now :)

I learned… that inspiration does not come like a bolt, nor is it kinetic, energetic, striving, but it comes to us slowly and quietly and all the time, though we must regularly and every day give it a little chance to start flowing, prime it with a little solitude and idleness.

                                           ~ Brenda Ueland (via ArtPropelled)