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.

A Walk through Kumortuli

If I thought that the walk through Kalighat at night was an experience I would remember for a lifetime, then I was in for a surprise because there was Kumortuli as well. Unlike the lifeless solemn Ganeshas wrapped up in plastic before their moment of celebration in the South, these sculptures as you can see were most definitely alive, they jumped out at me from the most unexpected of places, waving their arms, teasing and taunting me by sticking out their tongues as they posed for my camera.

These pictures on my blog are but an outline of the day I spent there. There was a stall which sold Googni, peas cooked in lamb broth served with soft fresh bread (who knew?), I got interviewed by a TV crew just after I enthusiastically polished off a bowl of this and was finishing off with chai. As we walked past we saw a pile of bricks with the name PRIYA molded into them.I stared at dozens and dozens of tiny shops with brightly colored doorways where artisans made what they make best,shopkeepers sold chai, barbers shaved hair...the place, like everything else in Kolkata hummed and buzzed with life. 

Here below, those faces that belong to another era and those saris which have timeless color combinations -

The patchwork house all divided up -

And lastly the omnipresent Ganga -

And with these I finally finish my long overdue Kolkata posts from my visit there two years ago. The overflowing memories are enough to fill a decade worth of visual stimulation all packed into 4 dense and exciting days. What I've shown here is just a drop from the ocean of colour and life that I saw, and each element that made up that drop was unforgettable, fascinating and enriching.

Also see:
Shantiniketan
Kolkata
Santhal Village