Love Bug!

From the plum tree

Herbie. I've finally got the car I've always wanted :-)

From the plum tree

White Sunday

Green chilli flower 

and 

Clemantis 

Burnt Offerings at the Altar

The first six months of this year were idyllic and enjoyable apart from a couple of little hiccups here and there which are but natural in a life’s progression. Just as I was getting used to the good life came June and Saturn moved forward and trined with Uranus  and made a hextant with Jupiter and all the planets conspired together to drag me by the hair through the Tunnel of Horrors at this year’s amusement park. Just twenty days into June and I've had Cat crises! Freak fright! Police pounce! Towering terror….! What next I ask, what next!

Last weekend a couple of friends (QGM and KFP) decided to show me the sights and took me to Malleshwaram, a place I had always associated with quaint Masala Dosa joints and temples. Instead I got to see the gigantic World Trade Centre, a man made lake and thousands of little cubby holes where people are supposed to live. Nature inspires awe but man made monoliths create intimidation. I felt small and insignificant. Then I made the mistake of visiting Mantri Mall soon after and got flattened completely by zillions of consumer goods hurtling towards me at top speed. My eyeballs fell out of their sockets when I saw thousands of shiny women descending escalators each of them laden with hundreds of shopping bags (have you ever watched ants progressing in a row carrying crystals of sugar?). I threw myself into an auto, charged home and collapsed into bed exhausted. The doorbell rang at six b**** thirty am the next morning. I felt my way through to the window to see the gardener come to make up work for a missed day. I mumbled something and grogged back to bed. On the way I saw myself in the mirror, I looked like the picture top left. Badly frightened out of all remaining sleep I went to the kitchen and drank three cups of strong coffee …then I just drew plants and bottles for the rest of the day. Somewhat soothing that. That’s why I have this blog, to cram it with drawings of bottled plants. 

Why am I even posting this post? Who are you people even reading this ...this...stuff? My inbuilt blog sitemeter tells me that I have people from Ukraine reading this blog. Ukraine and Finland and  Alaska. 

Who are you? Say hello to me.

Sculptures

Found by the wayside.

Some interesting links -
Marie-Laure de Villepin's Seed sculptures

Abhir Patwardhan's beaten metal seed pods

Homage to the Seed

*

HAPPINESS

 ~ by Paisley Rekdal

I have been taught never to brag but now

I cannot help it: I keep

a beautiful garden, all abundance,

indiscriminate, pulling itself

from the stubborn earth. Does it offend you

to watch me working in it,

touching my hands to the greening tips or

tearing the yellow stalks back, so wild

the living and the dead both

snap off in my hands?

The neighbor with his stuttering

fingers, the neighbor with his broken

love: each comes up my drive

to receive his pitying,

accustomed consolations, watches me

work in silence a while, rises in anger,

walks back. Does it offend them to watch me

not mourning with them but working

fitfully, fruitlessly, working

the way the bees work, which is to say

by instinct alone, which looks

like pleasure? I can stand for hours among

the sweet narcissus, silent as a point of bone.

I can wait longer than sadness. I can wait longer

than your grief. 
It is such a small thing to be proud of this garden...

- for complete poem click here >

                         

Today's Serving

Fairing avec Charcoal

So I learned it is a law of nature in my life that everytime my head blows up to twice its size there is always an occurrence to bring it back to normal size once more.

In French class I learnt that the French ‘faire’ everything. Faire = do. So the French, they ‘faire la cuisine’, they ‘faire du velo’,  they faire un drame, they ‘faire de la natation’ in their ‘piscines’, they ‘faire’ every blessed thing. One day we were asked by our teacher what we ‘faire’ at work so that the rest of us could guess each other’s professions. In a class full of software engineers everyone said they faired with their blessed computers so there wasn’t any guessing to do; except in my case, having chosen this dratted profession as my life’s calling, I always stick out like a cabbage in a hardware store. I rather smugly said that I faire avec charcoal. Whereupon the French teacher screeched 

“You work with charcoal? You are a chef!!!!”

M****!

Non madame, je suis illustrateuse…

Routine

..........is a great calmer for bewildered pets and their over anxious servers.

Namma Chanda Lettering - Benglur Public Font Library

The other day Mr. G posted about The Open Font Library on Facebook and mentioned the quality of their typefaces. I was really mystified I tell you. Why go and look at some foreign lettering in some ice cold country somewhere when we have our Namma Lettering here. No need for computer gomputer and all. Just take a walk along any street in Bengaluru and Aiyoh illi nodu! Abbah alli nodu! Yeshtu Chanda! Yentha Kaambinashun! So much different different lettering is there. Here are just a few examples -

To read more about a Brahmin Breakfast at this place please read here >>

See? We have variety as well as quantity. And no strange names like Eadui Medium and Nova Undercut and all. We just call our fonts by what they say: Prashanth Hotel Non Veg font, Brahmin's Coffee Bar font, Pooja jewels font...you get the idea no? So much easier to remember than that Ewdi Undercut thing.
Look to your own city and namma culture is vot I say!

Slideshow here >>

Do visit this excellent site which collects our unique typography - Hand Painted type
Thank you for the link Shreyas! 

Some More Houses

More houses here >>
and lots more over here >>

A Favorite Subject

Red Rice and Fish

I love drawing fish. This one, red rice and fish, is my favourite meal.

Just for the info of some of the readers: This picture took about 8 hours to do. 6 hours non-stop last night starting at 10.30 pm and two hours this morning. That is why I work at night, no need to stop to eat lunch, wash dishes, answer the doorbell etc.
But I ate other things before drawing this picture: One package of salted peanuts, Diet Coke,  premium chocolate...all ingredients absolutely necessary to get charcoal to do my bidding.
Now I must go eat some Ritchie's biriyani to replenish my energy...and then get some sleep.

*

It seems as though Cathal and I spent that time in the shadow world, as though we were quietly lowered into the dark, everything familiar missing, and nothing we did or said could change this. Because no one harmed us or made us afraid, it did not strike us that we were in a world where no one loved us, or that such a thing might be of any significance. We did not complain. We were emptied of everything, and in the vacuum came something like silence – almost no sound at all, just some sad echoes and dim feelings.

~ Colm Tóibín
One Minus One