Sometime back, I unearthed old drawings from the depths of my cupboard*.
I’m not sure what this drawing is about and what was going through my mind at the time I drew this. Perhaps it was my subconscious trying to communicate to me. A few random thoughts escaping the labyrinth of my brain, and finding their way to the paper.
From what I can imagine, it is likely that it started off as a tranquil hill. And then somewhere down the line there was turbulence of some sort — a storm at sea — which tossed away all notions of peace.
What do you think? How would you interpret this?
Abstract art – thoughts in motion?
For more ‘moving’ images, check out the Daily Post’s Weekly Photo Challenge – Motion.
It took me a full week to try to get up early. And this morning, I finally managed to get up by 6 am. Unfortunately, in these parts of the world, six is well past sunrise. Still, I tried. Although the next challenge is already in motion (bad pun, I know), I wanted to share this picture of the sleeping hibiscus in our balcony.
She was still half asleep, rubbing her groggy eyes and taking a big lazy yawn, when I saw her. It would be another three hours before she would be in full bloom. By the time I see her next, she would have moved on to another world, never to be seen again — until she takes a new birth, and opens her wide eyes and gives her best smile, to brighten up someone’s day.
It was on the first of March, a Sunday, that our family got together. It was after such a long time that we went out together, that we joked that it would rain. And sure enough, it did! Little did we know, that it was the beginning of a very strange phenomenon. Not only on that day, but almost every subsequent Sunday, it rained.
North India has witnessed, over the past two months, unpredictable weather, and many crops have been damaged due to this unseasonal rain. Vrindavan, it appears had its own share of golf-ball sized hail storm, if the pictures shared on WhatsApp are to be believed*.
Is this weather a result of climate change? I don’t know. But it definitely seems eerie.
A few weeks back, I was at the India Habitat Centre, where I saw a very interesting art installation, and seemed to fit in rather well with the issue at hand. Delhi-based artist Gopal Namjoshi combined scrap iron to create a garden, to highlight the importance of ecological conservation. The garden included flowers, small birds, deer and peacocks, as well as a man resting on a chair!
Winter was on its way out, and the old leaves were making way for new little ones to spring up and take their place. The minute I saw these large leathery beautiful leaves on the pavement, I knew I had to pick them up. I didn’t know what I would do with them. But I brought them home anyway.
A few days later, they had dried out completely and their leathery texture was gone. But I wanted to keep them with me. We had clear wood varnish leftover from an earlier project of mine. So on Holi, I painted these leaves.Work in progress A few days back I assembled them and hung them near a window. Now I see them everyday, first thing in the morning, and just before I go to sleep. All tied up and hung
As some of you may know, I voluntarily provide design services for the Alumni Association of my alma mater, and last weekend, we organised a musical programme for the college reunion.
All of us had our tasklist – marketing, sponsorship, coordination with the other stakeholders, running around for prints… mine was the entire visual branding.
Having done branding, and much more, for an event in the past*, it didn’t appear to be that much work. The main challenge this time, though, was that I had to do it in addition to, and after my day job.
Initially a fun activity, designing all the collateral — the logo, poster, invitation card, backdrops and a souvenir mug — soon began looking more like a gigantic tortoise, moving painfully slowly, threatening to tuck itself inside a shell. With extremely short timelines, it was pretty much a sliding dive to the finish line.
On D-day too, there was a lot of activity. Registrations, sales counters, stage, back-stage, and audience management… all organizers had their stations.
My job was to stick around at the light and sound cubicle above the balcony of the auditorium.
It was déjà vu. In my previous event, too, I was stationed at the sound cubicle. It’s not a bad place to be, but it prevents one from interacting with new people. My regret the last time around was not having a picture of my post. This time, though, I made sure I corrected my mistake.
In the end, it wasn’t such a bad place to be, and in some ways turned out to be the best seat in the house. I had the freedom to click pictures, experiment with the camera’s settings, and listen to the entire performance — something my peers couldn’t.
I’m still not very comfortable with the camera, and in the poor light, it was very difficult to get a clean shot of this console. But it has a nice abstract feel to it, and seems apt for the entire event — the enormous effort involved before, and during the event made the past month and a half a complete blur.
The gadgets
* Event management can take its toll. Check out this incoherent aftermath of my past experience — and there’s a video too: Wimbledon Fever!
Musings of an eccentric mind 