Collaboration Part 2: A Valley of Mountains Which Are the Sum of All Colors

There she sat, perched upon the boulder bordering the river, slumbering awake beneath the clear, blue skin of a sky. Headphones plugged into her ears, eyes fastened shut, the music pouring into her very being - and she was suddenly swimming in a river, the river snaking up and around and through mountains that were the sum of all colors. She was both inside them and outside them. They were the blue of a newly born river, the lime of a budding seedling, jade of a rain-washed tree, and the mauve of a decaying mogra. She did not know where these mountains were; perhaps, they existed only in the planet of her imagination, whose terrain she knew only so little of and still had so much to explore. She kept her eyes shut, knowing that the moment she opened them, the mountains would evanescence, the river would dry up, and she would be left with the indomitable gray bedrock of reality from which there would be no escape, no escape at all. And how could she let that happen?

**

This is the second part of my collaboration with my painter friend, Vidya; in the first part, she had beautifully interpreted one of my images and accompanying text through her art while here, I seek to give words to a musical dreamscape she magically evokes in this painting. 

I hope you enjoyed partaking of our collaboration as much as we enjoyed participating in it!

Musings for 2016

Nature's Gift on New Year's Day

Another sparkling new year is upon us; actually, to be perfectly precise, twelve days of a new year already upon us.

The year had just started when I started reading about many bloggers planning on resuscitating their virtually lifeless blogs and posting much more regularly, daily even. The blog, it seemed, was not dead, after all. I then thought of my blog, this aqua-blue-white space (the background being an oil-painting I made during an art class I took in Pittsburgh almost three years ago; I called it the Summer Storm) - and which I have neglected quite a bit in the last several months. I don't know if this blog is really me, anymore. I don't write like the way I used to five years ago. What preoccupied me then doesn't necessarily do so now. I find myself articulating a great deal through the medium of photography- and my nomad thoughts increasingly find a home in my Instagram account more than anywhere else. Perhaps, this blog can no longer encompass or reflect the scope of the journeys, literal and otherwise, I have taken in recent times.

When 2015 was drawing to a close, I was thinking of writing a swansong to the blog and mulling about starting another one. I sat down to write my annual 31st December journal entry, a ritual which I have maintained for many years now - and when I finished writing it, I found myself browsing through my previous 31 December entries in my present journal. It made me subseuqently think about all the journals I have kept since I was eight years old and my first journal was a blue paper-back book used to note down spellings of new, uncomfortable-sounding words. I haven't yet found the time or inclination to browse through all of those journals - but I like knowing that I can do so one day, to literally page through the ever-evolving novel that is my life and reflect upon its diverse, messy, rich, painful, happy, contemplative chapters. I would like to compare the differences between a 13 year old Priyanka's handwriting and that of her present one; I still want to read about the 6th grade gossip and what lessons 2015 endowed me with. These journals are those precious windows through which I can glimpse the nuanced transformation of my mindscapes over the years; these journals collectively represent the past, the most foreign country of them all which I can never go back to, whose language I cannot speak no matter how much I try.

Dada, Subodh Gupta (2014), National Gallery of Modern Art, Delhi: Banyan Tree of Steel

        

This blog is ultimately a journal too, a public one, where I have never permitted my private thoughts entry. I read and follow many personal blogs where people ably and articulately arrange their innermost feelings but I will never be able to do that. For me, the blog is simply a nurturing, comforting, nourishing space. I like coming here to write. My first post in this blog described it as a virtual garden, that one public space which I have always greatly loved. The blog continues to be my garden. The seeds that I choose to plant here now have inevitably changed as have the color, texture, and fragrance of the blooms which spring up here. But the blog itself is a banyan tree which flamboyantly throws down its roots, whose glorious, messy, entangled beauty will become apparent only in the years to come. I remind myself that in order to access and appreciate that beauty, I must allow the blog to grow, no matter if it grows an inch one year or multiple roots in another.

So, I am still around - and shall try my best to be around more often. Let's see where this year takes me next. I do want to start a new blog though but more on that later.

For now, I would like to end with a quote I recently read in one of my favorite books, The Artist's Way: "In times of pain...I have learnt to pay attention to right now. The precise moment I was in was always the safe place for me. Each moment, taken alone, was always bearable. In the exact now, we are all, always, all right." I have always encountered challenges in practicing mindfulness and being anchored in the moment. However, if and when I find myself being able to do so, I locate it in those temples of time when I am writing or creating or musing, when I literally lose myself in that alternate, parallel universe, in which the corporeal 'I' no longer exists and the creation itself is the living entity instead. This blog is one of them, those temples of mindfulness.

Hope 2016 is treating you tremendously well, dear readers...

Dawn Gifts and Writing to Bird-Song

Mogra from my mother's garden, freshly plucked at dawn

The other day, I awakened just before dawn and could not slip-slide back into sleep, no matter how much I tried. I am currently visiting my parents in Oman; I instead decided to go outside, wandering into my mother's garden, inspecting the sprawling neem tree, the frangipani and peepal plants, and my favorites, the mogra [Arabian Jasmine] bushes, still blooming even though it's already nearing the end of September. I have waxed eloquent about my all abiding love for mogras often enough and it's now become a new favorite game of mine to spot the buds in various stages of bloom hidden inside the bushes, a bud treasure hunt, so to speak. My mother tells me these mogra bushes growing in the garden are called haathi mogra, 'haathi' meaning elephant, the name probably due to the comparatively large-sized blooms that these bushes produce. I personally love marvelling at the intricate mint-green origami perfection of their journey of blooming as much as witnessing the actual bloom itself. 

The bloom I saw that morning though was enough take my breath away: I could not imagine a more perfect dawn gift. As I gently cradled the mogra in my hands, the apricot light tinting its famously fragrant snow-ivory white petals, I realised it had been a very long time indeed since I had voluntarily been up and outside at this hour.

I am not a morning person, period. I forcibly had to get up at 6am during my school years and the only thing that made it bearable for me was glimpsing a spectacular sun-rise from my bus windows as we drove to school every day. During college, though, I gleefully embraced my night owl avatar; thanks to my particular roster of classes which began either before lunch or during the afternoon, I was free to wake and sleep late. I was pursuing a degree in creative writing and I would only work on my assignments between midnight and three am, even later, at times. It was singularly the most peaceful time of the day, or at least, what constituted my day, anyway. Everyone else was asleep, the phone would not ring, and if I needed company, there was always MSN Messenger (oh god, how long ago was that!), where I could pop in to chat to other nocturnal kindred spirits or friends living in different time-zones. I would also often find my friend, D awake and online then; she lived in the flat next door and told me that this was the time of the day she too liked the best, whether to read or relax. I still remember those nights: the silence, the feeling that you were absolutely the only person awake in the world, the sensation of almost like being inside a meditative vacuum. Is this what space sounded like? If I became particularly immersed in writing or working on an assignment, I found myself only pausing to stop writing when I could hear birds singing. The sound of bird-song was a sign, to me, at least, that the night was over and a brand new, tooth-paste smelling morning was upon us. I would shut the computer and crawl into into my bed, finally ceasing to write, study, think. By the time I woke up, the sun was rudely poking its stubby bright yellow fingers into my eyes and there were too many other noises drowning out the birds singing.

This particular nocturnal writing routine persisted long into my working life, when I was working as an independent writer and journalist, unbound by office hours and strictures. After a while, I realised that I just could not write during the day, no matter how much I tried. I conducted interviews, called interviewees, or completed work and personal correspondence but the meat of my writing, slowly cooking words, ideas, and voices into articles or stories, only occurred in those inky post midnight hours. If I wasn't writing, I was either painting or collaging or journaling or something or the other. Now that I reflect upon it, it seems as if I was only truly myself in the night, my performance during the day literally being a day job.

The routine changed once I got a job and had to turn up to office at suitably early hours and of course, afterwards, when I got married to my surgeon husband, who would be out of the house at 6am or frequently placating an incessantly buzzing pager and phone often all through the night, shredding the night silence into smithereens (and unfortunately depriving him of a good night's sleep!). I still stayed up till midnight, however, only mostly reading though. As time went by, I just couldn't fathom writing late into the night anymore. I found myself too burdened by the day to write, its stories and events and attendant physical and mental exhaustion over-crowding my mind, making it impossible to voyage into the world of my writing. I increasingly preferred writing during the day, particularly during the afternoon, when I had yet to decide what was to become of the day, what adventures and conversations and memories awaited me, thereby leaving me free to focus on my writing.

When I was in college, our tutors recommended that we regularly read Paris Review. I eagerly consumed interview after interview of both known and brilliant but obscure writers in which the journalist usually questioned them in detail about the architecture of their writing routines. I always enjoy learning more about the rituals and process of writing - or any kind of creation, really - whether it is about the rooms in which they write or the objects inhabiting their desk - and so I loved that portion of the interviews. Many of them mentioned that they often arose early in the morning to write, commenting that it was that pocket of time during their day, wonderfully devoid of distractions as well as the fact that their minds were so fresh and well, emptied. It reminded me of a painter friend who once told me the same thing, also adding that the remarkable quality of dawn light made the experience much more joyful.

It was unimaginable to me then as a student to subscribe to a similar routine. However, as I grow older and becoming decidedly less and less of a nocturnal creature, I thought of it: writing at dawn, absorbing the molecules of purity and silence and above all, the optimistic quality of that roseate dawn light.

Dawn conversations between the tree and the clouds

I once used to stop writing at the sound of bird-song; now, I can imagine myself - just a little bit -  writing to the dawn background soundtrack of bird-song, perhaps weaving their joyousness, a contagious zest for the unblemished day ahead, into the textures of my work. 

Perhaps, I should try it some time.

What about you? Do you have a time of a day when you feel you are the most inclined to create? I would love to hear!

Japanese performance and installation artist, Chiharu Shiota: Drawing Memories in the Air

Trace of Memory, The Mattress Factory, 2013 (Photo: Priyanka Sacheti)

I remember being thoroughly enchanted the first time I encountered Japanese installation and performance artist, Chiharu Shiota's work, Trace of Memory at The Mattress Factory, a contemporary art museum in Pittsburgh. I had been wanting to visit this curiously named museum all throughout the time I had been living there but I only managed to make time just a couple of days before I left the city - and am I glad I did! I had been primarily interested in dropping by the museum to see the work of another Japanese artist, Yasoi Kusama, whose signature polka dot + infinity mirror installation works were one of the museum's most exciting and fun spaces and which I regularly saw popping up on my Instagram feed. However, I returned from the museum visit, having become a big Chiharu Shiota fan instead and subsequently eagerly read up on her large, varied body of work. Almost a year later, I have been fortunate enough to personally interact with the artist when I recently. blogged about her work at Her Blueprint, where I regularly write about international women artists. Read on to find out more...

Chiharu Shiota's Mattress Factory installation utilised both the spatial landscape of an abandoned 19th century row house as well as specific objects such as a wedding dress, hospital bed, and a pile of suitcases and which she enmeshed it all in intricate black wool-thread creations. Everything was visible and yet, not; it was not unlike cobwebs studding the dusty corners of an abandoned house, simultaneously representing decay and life. In a sense, Shiota's work resurrects an otherwise dead house, creating a physically tangible web of narratives through the confluence of thread, space, and air. Perhaps, enchanted was also an appropriate word to describe my engagement with her work, for there was a fairy-tale, other-worldly quality to her work that I had never previously witnessed or experienced elsewhere. Researching further and talking with the artist herself, I discovered that the wool-thread is a signature motif of her work and through which she quite literally binds memories, past, people, and objects.

Born in Osaka, Japan, Chiharu moved to Berlin, Germany in 1997, where she studied with Marina Abramovic and Rebecca Horn, forerunners of the performance art movement; she has exhibited all over the world, presenting her installation art in both solo and group exhibitions.

What does installation art specifically mean to her? “I love empty spaces; the minute I come across one such as an abandoned building or an empty exhibition space, I feel as if my body and spirit transcend a certain dimension - and I can then start from scratch,” Chiharu says, presenting the abandoned or blank exhibition space as one void of references or associations and which she is subsequently free to re-interpret and realise her imagined worlds in. What particularly excites her about installation art is the immediacy of communication and engagement with the viewer. “[The viewers] can immediately feel as to what I am trying to show...unlike a painting or sculpture where you may have to engage with it for quite a while before distilling its meaning,” she opines.

While her work is largely rooted in the soil of her personal memories and concerned with theme of remembering and oblivion, it also sprouts and entwines itself with larger collective memories as well; one glimpses it in installations such as Dialogue from DNA in Krakow, Poland and which was subsequently recreated in Germany and Japan. Currently living and working in Germany, Chiharu reminisces about how it is linked to the time she returned to Japan three years after moving to Germany. "I wore my old shoes and experienced a curious situation; they didn't fit me any more even though they were the same size. This sense of dislocation persisted even when I was interacting with my parents and old friends. Nothing specifically had changed - and yet, I felt differently about them," she says.

The scenario made her start thinking about the gulf between the idealised memories when one is away from the home and yearning to return to it -- and actually being in home itself. "I began to interrogate the idea of missing and memories and I fused it with the idea of old shoes and the memories associated with them," she says, elaborating that the installation consisted of 400 disused shoes that people had donated along with notes containing specific memories associated with the shoe. Looking at the installation (below), it is almost as if the threads anchor the memories in form of the shoes in place, lest they vanish into nothingness and being unremembered.

Chiharu Shiota, Dialogue from DNA, (2004) Manggha, Centre of Japanese Art and Technology, Krakow, Poland, Shoes, Thread Photograph: Sunhi Mang

Chiharu has often remarked that working with thread is a bit like drawing in air. “When I began working as a painter, I felt that two-dimensional drawings were limiting me. I needed more space so I started working on installations and using thread in order to achieve a three dimensional drawing, so to speak. The threads since then have been a fundamental aspect of my work,” she says. These threads represent multiple meanings in her diverse output of work, whether of connections or ensnarement or opacity.

Apart from the threads embroidering the surface of Chiharu's installation spaces, they are also home to objects which Chiharu frequently and quite literally weaves into her works; these objects are plucked from the quotidian, facilitating both the unspooling of a narrative while crucially being a narrative in themselves. They also signify absences, absences which become the works' fundamental bedrock. "Specific objects inspire me when I experience a personal association or link with them as I did when putting on my old shoes. Abandoned objects are laden with even more memories and associations," she mentions, suggesting that this surplus of memories adds further narrative texture to her work. "The object itself has a meaning, being a signifier and then my role would be to weave its memories and meaning together using the threads."

Chiharu Shiota, During Sleep, (2004), Saint-Marie-Madeleine, Lille, France, Thread, Beds, Performers
Photographer: Sunhi Mang

While objects frequently figure as the central components of her installation works, her works are also distinctively body-oriented, as evidenced in works such as During Sleep, which features real-life women asleep on hospital beds and the space enshrouded in her customary fog of thread, bringing to forth gendered associations with the fairy-tale Sleeping Beauty.

My first story on Medium: The House with the Mint-Colored Walls

I love the idea of Medium and have enjoyed reading many stories that have appeared on it; in fact, I always look forward to its weekly digest every Friday, which features the best from the week. I thought it would be a great platform from where to start sharing my stories as well and so here I am, reproducing the first of my stories. And given my constant preoccupation with homes these days, perhaps, it's appropriate that my new house with its mint colored walls was the focus of my debut story. 

It's bit of a long read so sit back and enjoy...

**

Pink and Mint

The first thing that I saw when we walked into the apartment was its mint green walls.

We had just arrived in New Delhi two days ago. Since June, we had moved from Pittsburgh, traveled across the United States, and divided time between Bombay, Bangalore, and Rajasthan before finally making up our mind to come to India’s capital city. I was both utterly exhausted of being a nomad for the past many months and apprehensive about calling Delhi home. Actually, more precisely, calling India home.

Apart from annual holidays to the homeland while growing up in Oman, I had never previously lived in India before. I was becoming increasingly disconnected to the idea of calling it home over the years. In fact, the label itself was becoming a complex abstraction for me. Was the home in homeland actually home? What was home anyway? I could worry about the semantics of home later though. Right now, I wanted a house: a nice, comfortable house, where I could anchor myself and start fleshing it into my space again.

I fell sick hours after landing in Delhi. On our first night, we went to a mall where there was an indie rock concert going on in a huge open-air court. I remember sitting on the edge of a white marble planter, simultaneously listening to the crowd sing along to the music and feeling a dreaded itchiness invade my throat. Every time I had previously visited Delhi, its notorious dust and pollution had not been my friend. The following morning, I woke up to find that the itch had snowballed into a cold: my eyes watered continuously, my nose was on fire, and I had little desire to do anything but remain under the covers for the next day.

I couldn’t, of course. I had a house to find.

Our apartment was the second one that the real-estate agent showed us in what would be a long succession of potential homes. Seeing the green walls after a day of battling a burgeoning cold, consuming cold, dessicated sandwiches, and dodging dusty, traffic-clogged roads was like stumbling head-first into an oasis. I wanted to camp out on the sofa itself, refusing to budge further. Afterwards, once we were done with visiting the other apartments (good, terrible, and ugly), the only one that remained with me was the green wall apartment. In the morning light, it would be mint-green, I thought, by dusk, it would assume the shade of pistachio ice-cream. I like the green wall apartment, I told my husband at dinner that night, as we listened to three college-age musicians sing Bob Dylan, let’s take that one.

**

The Tree Whose Name I Do Not Know

We arrived in the apartment. My cold became a fever — and I spent the first week in our new house, ensconced in the bedroom, either staring at the ceiling or the windows bracketing me. On one side, the shadow of a massive peepal tree and its spreading, embrace-like branches and numerous leaves dutifully dappled the balcony while the other tree — whose name I still do not know — was framed within the window, like a minimal black and white photograph. During the day, their leaf shadows stenciled and overlapped one another upon the green walls, the walls fluid canvases. The leaf-shadow dance lulled me into sleep; the green soothed and calmed me.

The house swiftly became a welcome sanctuary after all those migratory, mobile months.

**

We are still in the process of turning our house into a home. In fact, we are still befriending the city, understanding its costume, its dialect, when it sleeps, when it wakes up, the art of razoring through its traffic jams. We potter about in the house, migrating from one room to another, wondering where the guest room should be, what color flowers will look good against the mint.

A river of traffic flows behind our house. We hear people’s conversations, dogs fighting, and ambulance and police sirens. I was accustomed to a soundtrack of silence in all the places that I had previously lived. This is the first time my ears are constantly negotiating the overwhelming barrage of sound, the sheer plurality of it; my mind is learning how to filter, distinguish one sound from another. However, I don’t miss the silence quite as much as I miss peering above into the nocturnal sky, glimpsing the dense population of stars studding its surface. Here, in the city, like any other city, they are just as invisible as they are during the day.

**
 

Our landlord’s art work meanwhile still dots the apartment walls. In the living room, you can see camouflage-hued tapestries of Paris, a bright bird water-color, an Ancient Egyptian god and goddess in dialogue, and a mountainscape sparely executed in oils. I have decided that these works will continue to hang there on the walls until we discover and introduce our own to them. In any case, they are strangers no more; our daily engagement with the works has made them familiar to us.

There are three paintings though that that we have decided to never remove as long as we stay in the apartment.

These paintings are portraits of three distinguished women hanging upon one wall in the living room. I call them distinguished simply because that’s exactly the sort of air they exude. I have no idea who these women are. I don’t even know the names of the artists who painted them. What I do know is that these portraits define the house as much as the walls themselves. And like the tree window-photograph in my bedroom window, I am content to see their framed selves on the walls.

One of the Distinguished Ladies

What is remarkable is that each of them wear an identical expression of contemplation in their portraits. They look as if they were mulling over a problem or a puzzle or a query — and were about to unpack their thoughts to the artist. The thoughts would quickly spill out, raw, unadulterated, like paint gushing upon a palette from a newly pierced open tube. Yet, the women would just as swiftly incorporate them into the bigger picture, the larger idea, connoisseurs of both the macro and micro. These women are constantly editing themselves, their thoughts, striving to be better, fuller, richer persons. But they wouldn’t bite back their words, that’s for sure. If they have something to say, they will say it.

When we say goodbye to the house with the mint colored walls, I already know that we will miss these three ladies. In the next few months, we will be constantly overlaying the house with our presence— paintings, photographs, furniture, objects, books, our conversations — and by the time we leave, the house will have become an alternate version of itself, a new draft, so to speak. Perhaps, by that time, I will have even figured out how to solve the mathematical-like conundrum of learning to call my homeland home. But what these walls and admirable ladies will remind us of will be those initial paint-strokes, those first words on the computer-screen, a freshly new time, when blankness was exciting, when anything could become everything.

**

You can read the original version here...and in the meantime, why don't you too think about sharing your stories there?

The Neon Horse: Of Collaging, Blogging and Looking At-ed Ness

Kitschy Horse, Collage, 2014

I impulsively decided to throw together a collage a few days ago. I find making collages as relaxing and enjoyable as taking long, meandering, purposeless walks. I visually gorge on a rich buffet of colors, images, and patterns, thinking about nothing in particular, cutting and ripping and pasting until the collage somehow...fits together. The journey of creating and the end result in form of an image, however startling or obscure, both appeal to me very much.

It had been months since I last made one and when I came across this journal while organising my collection of (many and mostly empty) journals, I decided that at least, its pages should be blank no more. In the past, I was used to making bigger-scale collages but I liked the diptych format that this journal gives me, it's like simultaneously writing two interlinked yet independent stories. I sheared through a single magazine (Vogue India's September issue, to be precise), as opposed to a whole bunch and ended up structuring the collage around this fantastical horse head that featured in an ethereal, dreamy shoot. Except it has much more of a neon kitschy vibe going on here when transplanted in the journal.

I can't help but wonder though if abstracting a collage is also a metaphor for what's happening in my life though. I have cut and pasted myself into a different city - and something inevitably and unsurprisingly has changed in that moment of transition. What is it though? And what of the narrative that I am writing myself into?

I am also thinking about the blog as well. I began it sometime in April 2011, describing it as the constant visual commentary running in my head. I also meant it to be a writing portfolio, where you could dip into and leaf through my writing. The blog and I have naturally evolved with time; it's not just about capturing whatever ensnares my visual fancy, impaling it beneath the glass case of a post. I can see the changes in my writing, even the nature of my looking-at: what I look at, how I look, the details which I now pay attention to and would previously never have considered.

There is more than just the look-at-nedness, perhaps. And so, I am wondering about the shape and direction this blog is assuming. Sometimes, there's so much I would like to do with it. Other times, I am content to fiercely stake it out as my garden, my space, my world, just as I had said in my very first post

Should I continue collaging it into my story as I have been doing all this time? Or entirely repurpose it?

I think I need to go take a walk and think it out...

PS You are most welcome to share your thoughts on your own journeys/challenges with blogging or other personal projects!

Taking Notes While Trailing Abandoned Sofas

** 

Wherever I go, I happen to see them, the abandoned sofas: do they follow me or vice-versa?

That's another thing: I do not see what eventually becomes of them. I instead merely take their pictures, plotting the coordinates of their presences upon the invisible, shifting, fluid map that is my memory and imagination. Even if they will disintegrate or be subsumed into the anonymity of a landfill, they still exist upon this map, my map, still abandoned nevertheless but not forgotten. 

** OMAN**

Lonesome: Seeb, Oman

I began spotting the abandoned sofas a few years ago. While driving through the sun-bleached streets of the sea-side Omani town, Seeb, I would often spot them sitting outside the modest one-story homes. They were more often than not faded, patched, stained, and sagging, the arms seemingly displaced from the sockets. 

There also happened to be a street in Seeb which was exclusively dedicated to selling wedding function articles; as you drove past that street, you would see fancily dressed up sofas, faux-flower festooned arches, and tables on display outside the shops, almost akin to mannequins in boutique windows. Like the mannequins with their perfect figures and features and coveted clothes, these sofas too were aspirational, strongly redolent of shiny, happy and beautiful occasions that were weddings. 

Yet, no such fragrance emanated from their less worldly, infinitely more battered cousins, these abandoned sofas. I wondered about them: had they been simply put outside as an extension of the private living space, the domestic blurring into the public? Or had they more likely been rejected and abandoned, left to the mercy of the harsh Omani weather: the searing sunlight, bone-white heat and dryness? Meanwhile, inside, their younger, fresher counterparts commanded court, blissfully ignorant of a similar future which awaited them as that of its predecessors outside.

 ** 

Lavender: Barka, Oman

 One November morning, while walking towards a quiet beach in yet another sea-side town, Barka, I encounter an upended gutted lavender-hued sofa on the roadside; its color nevertheless still remained sharp and fresh in the sunlight. Perhaps, the previous night's thunderstorm had cleansed away the years of accumulated dust and blemishes leading it to be re-presented in its original glory days. Yet, regardless of its seeming newness, it stolidly sat there, like a tortoise turned upside down, waiting for someone to upright it. I did not know how long ago it had been discarded or abandoned; the sofa itself faced an abandoned, burnt house across the road, whose turquoise walls still gleamed brightly despite the layers of black ash caking its surface – and a shattered mirror, shards of its glass soul shimmering in the sunlight. 

 ** 

Ship-wrecked: Al Khod, Oman

 A fervid Friday afternoon in a self-contained university campus: everybody is still immersed in the throes of a siesta, unwilling to awaken until the sun extinguishes itself. 

An avid walker, I can't recall why I happen to be walking at this hour and temperature of the day though. Even though I usually stick to a routine walk-path, I still find that every time I walk past one particular corner, there is a new surprise awaiting me; it is as if the corner deliberately invokes surprise, as if to compel me to walk towards, rather than past, it. And, surprises, they are: a marmalade cat looking up at the  ripe, brassy full moon in wonderment, as if it has glimpsed something quite unlike it before. A bougainvillea bush, sprouting from the burnt biscuit-hued sand: a welcome oasis-island of fuschia. A miniature township of cardboard boxes and scraps. I cannot help but pause, reluctant to leave behind these nuggets of extraordinary and return to the quotidian. 

Today, I find this: a ship, ship-wrecked, unmoored and dislocated. It sits like a king in the tree-dappled shade, adamant to retain its hauteur even though its courtiers and menials have long dispersed and disappeared. Having been discarded and abandoned, it attempts to establish a new kingdom nonetheless, intent on attracting a new coterie. 

This is its present reality, though. What lies ahead for it? It sits there, the cracked wall giving it company, watching the world walk past it without as much as giving it a glance. Even if they do, for onlookers such as myself, it is nothing more than a whimsical oddity to be briefly examined and wondered about. And then...the next step beckons, tantalisingly laden with discovery of new sights and worlds. Once the corner has been eventually turned, who remembers what lies behind? 

Yet, it still fills the air with its presence, adamant in its longing to be noticed and listened to. And yes, perhaps, one day, someone will want to hear its story. And it is this hope that sustains its illusions, its bid to become a whole, rather than a bit player, in the scheme of things. 

 Every time I walk around the corner, I hear its plaintive siren call...will I succumb one day? Who knows?

 ** UNITED STATES**

 I leave Oman and hopscotch to the United States; even here, the abandoned sofas find me and I find them. While my husband navigates supposedly the steepest street in San Francisco in our rental car, I glance through the window only to find a powder-blue chaise lounge primly standing outside a pink-blossom smothered blue porch. Viewing from the car, it appears to be slightly tilted, as if bit bemused by its fate. Is it being sold? But who could voluntarily abandon so serene and elegant a piece? I want to jump out of the car and photograph it. Yet, we are already careening down the slippery slope and into the undulating maze of San Franciso's terrain. This is the only picture I have of the blue sofa and can present to you of: a word snapshot. 

Mirror Door: Pittsburgh, United States

 A languorous, mild July evening: returning from a heady, summer-fevered street party, I short-cut through a damp, mossy alley en route to my apartment. Fragments of a party fall upon the ground from a large window set in a wall. I am more interested in the sofa standing upright and against the wooden door leading up to the house; there's a mirror placed against it too and for a moment, you would be forgiven for thinking that the sofa was mirror-studded, a fantastical sofa specimen, if there ever was one. However, it is apparent that the sofa and the mirror have been bid farewell. This is an university city and at this time of the year, students are packing up their rooms and apartments, their mobile, temporary homes – and the sofa has been peremptorily placed there. I take pictures but it's night and the phone does it scant justice; the next day, when I go to take pictures during the light, the sofa is already gone and so effectively has it been cleared away that it might as well never have stood there. 

Pillowy: Pittsburgh, United States

One morning, as I am musing about jewel-tinted glass birds which I have seen minutes before in an art-gallery I collide into the sofa, almost apologising before realising it is in fact just an inanimate object. It is a bleached sky blue sofa sitting in the middle of the sidewalk. Once again, the question impatiently neon-lights through my mind: Who put it there? Couldn't they have found any other place in the world? There is nothing else next to it. Everyone else walks around it, paying scant attention to it while it may just as well be invisible for the cars streaming past it. No longer irritated, I try to take pictures of it as is my wont - but am dissatisfied with the results; the angle is just not right, I somehow am unable to convey the sofa's character. It doesn't occur to me that perhaps, it doesn't want to be photographed: it simply just wishes to be sat upon and carry on with its business. 

**

Why are they so peremptorily abandoned? Does anyone rescue them – or perhaps, that statement merits questioning: do they need to be rescued, after all? These abandoned sofas inhabit a liminal country, having become permanent refugees. They cannot return to where they were exiled from – and yet, what future awaits for them? 

Are they merely objects of contemplation or does anyone actually sit upon them in their abandoned state? I think of the bleached sky blue sofa: how tempting and inviting and pillowy it appeared, seductively calling out to be sat upon and therefore, claimed. This is my original function, it says, rather than having metamorphosed into this eccentric oddity stalking the streets and outsides of homes. Sit upon me and endow me with dignity. 

Perhaps, that is the crux of it all: their function. When positioned inside a home, they performed according to their function: they provided shelter and comfort, a sanctuary after a long, exhausting day when the only and most desirable option was to shut out the harsh world beyond. They were one of the multiple pieces of furniture and objects that constituted the matrix of a person's home: they too were a story, part of many stories. 

 And yet, outside, in the streets, it is an entirely different matter: their former stories have lost currency. The streets are already interlaid with dozens of smashed unheard stories: fallen leaves, feathers, and flowers, one shoe, one glove, torn pages from a poetry collection, and crushed, juicy plums. In midst of this menagerie of oddballs and misfits, the sofas too attempt to locate their place, striving to understand what is now their function, striving to be understood.

 They cannot be ignored, they cannot be overlooked: for they determinedly make themselves visible, refusing to vanish into nothingness. And so, the least we can do is to ask them: what is your history? Where did you once live? And yet, we must simultaneously be aware of and sensitive to their present: displaced and existing upon peripheries. They may be abandoned - but they are not dead. Like migratory birds which cannot travel back to their original habitats, they must evolve and adapt to their new ones, abstracting vigorous novels from their present narratives. In the process, they become significant emblems of transition and metamorphosis in this dynamic world, drawing as much focus to themselves as to the liminal pockets that we, the onlookers, too inhabit and yet are consciously oblivious to. 

Whenever you encounter them, do pause and donate them your time and attention; they have much to say and every time you listen, you grant them a presence in their new world, enlarging their scope of purpose and function. 

 Perhaps, that's what they have been trying to tell me all this time.

--------------------------

This post originally appeared in The State's blog here

Wrapping up 2013 - and welcoming 2014!

Judging from the last post and the several others I have dedicated to it in this last year, it would seem that I did precious little apart from Instagramming;) Well, I browsed through my blog archives and did a little bit of flashbacking to see what I was up to in 2013 - and it turned out that there was plenty of travelling, rekindling of creativity, whether it was writing, photography or painting, meaningful interaction with fellow creatives, and absorbing all the incredible sights of the multiple, diverse worlds that I happened to access throughout the year.

Here are a few vignettes:

February:

I began to discover the city which I have called home for the past one year via a delicately blooming cluster of magnolia trees and bold, beautiful eye-sculptures. 


May:

Spotting bio-luminscent bacteria, swimming in impossibly clear seas, and photographing deliciously hued tropical blooms and ice-cream colored houses in Puerto Rico = the best holiday ever!

 I discovered the joy of merging painting and collaging!


June:

I pursued photography and more specifically, photo-essays and was featured in The Aerogram.


November:

I wrote a lot more non-fiction, exploring the intersection of fashion, style, and personal narrative here and here.

December:

I mused about what it is like to create a home, object by object, thought by thought...


All year-around:

I had the opportunity to interact and meet with some fabulously talented international women artists while guest-blogging for International Museum of Women's blog, Her Blueprint, such as Mona Kamal, Tulika Ladsariya, and Haleh Anvari (work featured above).

Wonder what 2014 will have in store?:)

 In the meantime, here's wishing each and every one of my readers a very Happy New Year! May 2014 bring you all that you aspire for and that you enjoy every moment that the forthcoming year has in store for you, like blooms of breathtaking beauty encased in buds limning tree branches...

Being featured in Once Upon a Tea Time's online magazine

I have been following Priya's gorgeously curated blog on interiors, lifestyle, and visual prettiness, Once Upon a Tea Time for quite a while now. What I have always enjoyed about her blog is that in addition to feasting one's eyes upon beautifully-assembled and presented interiors and learning about various organizations and individuals creating unique and interesting products (I admire how she has consistently supported entrepreneurs and artisans world over and brought them to her readers' attention), I also appreciate how she thoughtfully intersperses these posts with personal meditations upon life and her constantly evolving interiors through features such as A Postcard from My Life.

One of Priya's recent posts was concerning Project Home - and I felt compelled to write in with my thoughts and pictures. She then later graciously invited me to contribute these thoughts in form of a short piece for the first issue of her online magazine celebrating her blog's fifth birthday. I was honored to be part of these birthday celebrations and associated with her blog...and looking forward to the magazine's subsequent issues!

I am reproducing the piece and pictures below here:

Blue Moon

 'Project Home', which was a thoughtful meditation upon what home means to different people, made me think quite a bit about what home means to me. I initially associated it with 'homelands'; 'Project Home'  made me perceive it in terms of physical sanctuaries instead. I must say that getting married, moving to a different country, and having a home of your own quite literally turns the definition on its axis. Now that I have a home, I am much more mindful of the elements that will contribute to making my home an enjoyable and beautiful space to inhabit and be surrounded by. I am still gradually building it up; as I am most likely to shift home in few months, I can't layer or extensively decorate the place as much as I did like to. However, it's also simultaneously impossible to live in a bare space and I am learning to strike a balance between minimalism and maximalism. My home at the moment therefore is a reflection of my present state of mind: I am in transition and yet, I need to populate my immediate spaces with little bits and pieces to call it my own.

Dressing the Mirror

Spilt Shadows

What are these bits and pieces? I have used miniature pumpkins and fallen leaves as table center-pieces; I decorate my shelves with ceramic bowls painted and glazed at a ceramic art store (his and mine). There is a pink framed mirror dressed with a Rajasthani leheriya dupatta and paper kites flying high on the wall above it. Above the dining table, a tomato red and saffron Rajasthani miniature painting depicting a bride travelling to her marital home in a palanquin (how fitting that it is a wedding gift!) looks down at us. Back in my old house, my dressing table was my stage of decor, containing my knick-knacks and some which have migrated from there to here: Moroccan trays, Kashmiri and Iranian boxes, Venetian Masks, and Omani bedouin thread key-rings.

Pumpkin Crisp

Venetian Drama

It's a home being put together and I would any day dress it with what Priya beautifully describes as the patina of life in her 'Project Home' post. It may not look like a photograph from an interior magazine or Pinterest but that is perfectly fine with me. As the evenings darken with winter's onset and I illumine the room, I feel a sense of cosiness and intimacy, surrounded by objects that I brought from my old home and which are now joining the others that my husband and I collect as we build our new home and life together.

The Singh Twins: Re-Imagining Indian Miniature Art

For the past few months, I have been contributing monthly posts about international women artists at International Museum of Women's blog, Her Blueprint; it allows me a window into their creative mindscapes, wondering what impels them to create what they do. I have so far written about several artists including Mona Kamal, Haleh Anvari, and Tulika Ladsariya, and Lamia Gargash, to name a few.

My first post was a commentary on the British-Asian miniature artists, The Singh Twins' work, whose re-imagining of traditional Indian miniature art I have long admired and pondered about. In this post, I explore their work by examining two of their paintings which particularly left an impact upon me.

An example of a miniature painting from Rajasthan

I have been a long-time admirer of miniature paintings, especially those originating from Rajasthan, the north-western Indian state which I belong to. However, while in awe of their beauty and technical finesse, I often find myself pondering the paintings' subject matter. Apart from the miniature artists' superlative ability to so effectively create and convey a microcosm through the minute, painstaking nature of their art, I also think much about the two-dimensional figures that populate these paintings. The ubiquitous presence of Hindu deities, kings and queens, courtiers, and their attendants: yet, who are they? What are they thinking? Why is it that they happen to be where they are in the paintings? At times, it seems that the lovingly detailed leaves conjure up a greater air of vitality than the figures themselves. The figures in turn are shrouded in mystery, performing within the painting and yet, their faces are impassive, refusing to reveal what lies beneath their perfectly manicured features. Indeed, these characters seem as anonymous as their creators. 

Many contemporary artists are nowadays engaging and reinterpreting the miniature art traditions, and when I encountered The Singh Twins' miniature art, I was fascinated and wished to explore more of it. 

Internationally acclaimed artists and twins who were born, raised, and work in the United Kingdom, Amrit Singh Kaur and Rabindra Kaur Singh, create their art together, hence, their moniker: The Singh Twins. Deriving inspiration from Mughal miniature paintings which they encountered during a trip to India, they were drawn toward the richness of technique and presentation -- and were keen to practice and revive the art traditions, which were otherwise in decline and neglected. Their artistic journey has witnessed them introducing the miniature art techniques and legacies to a wider audience while simultaneously interweaving contemporary narratives, themes, and issues into their work, creating a  vital, dynamic form of miniature art.

Examining two of their paintings reveal how they incorporate the miniature art traditions into their work while infusing them with their unique identities and perspectives.

Nrymla's Wedding II

At first glance, Nrymla's Wedding II (1985/6), depicting the mehendi (henna-painting) ceremony taking place for their sister, is layered with meticulous, beautifully ornamental detail, as per miniature art traditions; however, as one looks more closely, it is evident that the painting exists beyond mere aesthetics. With the post-modern aspect of artists themselves entering the frame, being both the creators and subjects, the painting also explores the interface of domestic and public spaces. A joyful, traditional atmosphere permeates the interiors, as evidenced by these signifiers: the dancing little girl, the bright-yellow dressed boy playing upon the drum, a videographer documenting the event, and a woman arriving laden with fruit. However, as the artists' commentary denotes, outside, for instance, we see the McDonalds' logo, a universal visual byword for globalisation and despoiling of the environment, triggering a debate about globalization and its impact upon cultural heterogeneity. The paintings are therefore no longer static, frozen moments; aesthetics and debate co-exist, encouraging the viewer to both admire the artistic traditions defining the work as well as being used a medium to create a space of interrogating contemporary issues.

Love Lost (2001) channels elements from the Persian miniature traditions while simultaneously being utterly modern; reinterpreting the tale of the traditional star-crossed Persian lovers, Laila-Majnun, the artists refer to it as being a commentary on the contemporary nature of love. This work demonstrates that while the artists showcase knowledge of various miniature traditions, they also playfully reinterpret styles and structure associated with each and imbue it with their personal artistic language. For example, rather than strictly adhering to boundaries (as typically seen in Persian miniature paintings with their thick borders), they literally step out of the box as seen through the presence of the car and ladder. The artists also draw upon various literary and cinematic romantic traditions in this visual commentary: the cell-phone clutching and television watching figures are Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare's famous lovers whereas reference to a popular romantic Hindi films emerges through images of the films, Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge and Mughal-e-Azam. The combination of satirical commentary, mixed media, and traditional Persian art features make it an intriguing interpretation of both the traditional tale and technique. 

The Singh Twins' work is not as much a deviation from the miniature art fashion as broadening its scope for engagement with a global, contemporary audience; their work revitalises and reiterates the traditions while placing it in context to personal and contemporary global narratives. 

Please see and read more about The Singh Twins' work.

Photo credit: The Singh Twins' paintings' images courtesy The Singh Twins

Bonsai moments: life in miniature

Many years ago, I had had the opportunity to see the works of several prominent Pakistani artists during an exhibition at the Omani Society of Fine Arts in Muscat; one of them (whose name I have regretfully forgotten) was working with the miniature art form and I remember spending much of the exhibition in front of this particular painting, completely transfixed. I recall the painting being that of an apartment block in an urban landscape; the artist had depicted and evoked the myriad worlds found in each of the rooms constituting the building with exacting, loving attention to detail. 

Up till then, I had been familiar with traditional forms of miniature art, most specifically, the examples found in markets of Jodhpur and Jaipur and of which several hung in our home; I was delighted to encounter this modern and whimsical interpretation of miniature art though. It was probably around that time that I started to think more seriously about what appreciation of art meant to me - and what kind of art I would like to collect and surround myself with. I would never have gotten tired of looking at such a painting: there would be new surprises to encounter every day, unmasking themselves as the time went by...

I have subsequently discovered several artists interpreting this art form in their respective styles; however, my favorites have been the British-Asian artists, The Singh Twins, whose work elegantly pays homage to the miniature art technique while flamboyantly infusing them with their personal vision and identities. For example, this painting below, Les Girls celebrates the joy of feminine bonding or the sisterhood: 

Les Girls

I blogged about them at Her Blueprint, where I will be regularly blogging about women artists once again:)

Meanwhile, keeping up with the miniature theme, I was enchanted to discover a collection of miniature rooms at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh; as in the miniature paintings, where details reign supreme, these rooms were exquisitely appointed and decorated, whether it was the grand dining room, which was immaculately laid out for supper with silverware, candle-stands, and the imposing chandelier suspended above or the bedroom with its dressing rooms and accoutrements. It was only a matter of time, it seemed, before the guests would convene to consume dinner or the lights would be switched off in the bedroom and the sleeper migrating into dreamland. 

Here are pictures I took of the miniatures at the museum:

Dining room

Bedroom

Have you ever seen anything in miniature art form that particularly caught your fancy?