UNSUPERVISED Thoughts #4

Sometimes I wished I was writing fiction; but my metaphorical voyage through an unseen (but deeply felt) history and an impregnable future has been absolutely powerful and intense. 
It has been a refreshing effort in combining an analytical eye, a nostalgic observance, and an imaginative viewpoint to form a comprehensive understanding of our politics, societies, cultures, religions and our artistic endeavors as the human species.

UNSUPERVISED Thoughts #3

The journey of writing ‘UNSUPERVISED’ has been fascinating, and rather unexpected. 
It began with an essay I wrote over two years ago which just sat in a folder on my desktop. On a random day in January this year I happened to open it and read through, and the rest of the book just flowed in a fervour out of the thoughts left simmering in it. 
Every step, every word has been deeply felt, deeply experienced and I sort of surprised myself with momentum the process picked up.
Extremely excited, slightly nervous to share my new baby with all of you! 🙂

UNSUPERVISED thoughts #2

At the end of day, it is in the lap of words that I find my sense of completeness, my sense of an unadulterated ‘me’. 
Writing ‘UNSUPERVISED’ has revealed to me unique perspectives of looking at and understanding the world around. And most importantly the slogan ‘The personal is Political’ (which has given me quite a few sleepless nights before)

UNSUPERVISED Thoughts #1

Any kind of ‘creation’ is a very solitudinal activity, and dealing with words more so (as my personal experience has been). Yet the whole process of writing UNSUPERVISED’ felt like I was in the midst of a thick crowd - a crowd that seamlessly melted in and out of the various time periods and spaces simultaneously, taking me on a journey hitherto unknown. 
Non fiction has its own set of challenges to tackle - ‘who and what has decided history as we know it and how and why should I trust it ?’ being one of the main ones in this particular collection. But the solution revealed itself to me during the process and the words found a solid ground; and I couldn’t have been more eager to share it with all of you.

Pre order your copies here -https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BSP97RY?ref_=pe_2427780_160035660

UNSUPERVISED

Delighted to share with you all my brand new book 'UNSUPERVISED - Global Narratives through a Feministic Perspective', out on June 28th Worldwide on Amazon.

The book cover painting is by yours truly, which has been fabulously designed into the cover below by my dear friend Kasinatha Rao.

You can pre-order your copies here - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BSP97RY?ref_=pe_2427780_160035660


'UNSUPERVISED' is an intellectual and emotional investigation into the fascinating journey of humankind through a feministic perspective. The myriad political, social, and economic conditions continue to be highly influenced by the presence or absence of women's role in them. This perspective might just be the path to help achieve a universal understanding - a poetic, political, and philosophical solution to contemporary global narratives'.

Global coherence

Mutual exclusivity is a myth grown stale. 

The inter - connections within ourselves and with others is morphing slowly (but insistently) into a singular vision. 

And how glorious is its reflection on our lives! There is a blend of color, a blend of thought, a blend of voice textures. 

It isn't without any opposition, of course, but in a way this opposition does carry forward the path to coherence. When it brings up a 'why', there is no choice but to answer it. When it brings up a 'why not', there is no choice but to gloriously achieve it.

Just to make my own post more coherent, yes I am talking about the globalization of the world in all aspects and the globalization of our own identities. No matter where we are or who we are, we cannot (and we need not) claim a monotony over our names and cultures and races anymore. And yet its representation - whether it is in the arts or in entertainment or in sports or in politics - is something that is still being resisted. Everyday local scenes at schools or grocery stores seem largely open and uncomplicated - common people are really not bothered much about these infidelities. It is only on the higher platforms that the police pop in with their moral duties, which seems ridiculous considering they are supposed to be the 'higher' platforms.

"What can be done?" is a question which has to be answered on a personal level by everyone, and that will automatically lead to a melting pot of resolutions.There are policies and amendments abound everywhere, yet the fight for more representation of women continues; more representation of all races continues; more representation of all skin colors continues; more representation of all orientations of all types continues.

Sometimes it is worth pondering if our sensitivity to all these factors - of gender, skin, nationality etc speaks of our awareness (because we are aware and 'sensitive' about it) or if it is a curse in disguise because we STILL take these outward factors into consideration. 

Awareness is one thing, differentiation and marginalization based on that awareness is quite another.

And so the fight still continues, in this era and this age, and THAT is kind of absurd and unacceptable.

Or is it?

Image - Radhika Prabhu

'Untitled', Mixed Media on paper, 2014

 www.artbyradhika.wordpress.com

'Because I am made up of sea - dust, sprinkled with the sands of a timeless shore

YONDER - A (short) short story

Since he came to know he was soon going to become a father, his only hope was for his child to have the gift of sight.

Blindness had engulfed him from his 11^th year. It had confused him if he ought to be happy that he had at least some memories of sight to fall back on, or feel frustrated that a rude joke had been played on him. It wasn’t frustration at not being able to see anymore, but frustration at knowing how it was impossible to see any more, any further. Now, as he listened to his child's heartbeat as he placed his palm o the womb, all his frustrations from his life metamorphosed into helpless pleads, a helpless begging for his yet unborn child.

But months later, the day he held her tiny form in his hands and was assured that she could definitely see him and was probably forming her first memories and sensations of her father, his deepening sorrow knew no bounds.

He realized he had absolutely no control over what he wanted her to see in him.

In between clenched sobs, he secretly wondered if he could lead her to see into him too one day.

 His fears were very soon assuaged, though.

A few days before her eighth birthday, she complained to him that she got really tired of looking at the same patterns on her bedspread that stared dully at her every night, and asked for plain white spreads as a birthday gift. And within weeks after receiving it, she began telling him about the amazing images with exotic stories that were born on the white every night.

She told him how she could see into the white, and it had blood in multiple hues.

She enjoyed cutting through the reflections. Through the obvious into the myriad.

That night, as he lay patting her head, he knew that his prayers had been answered, perhaps a bit too generously.

He felt a throbbing sadness for her and her life; for she could see beyond the white but not the white itself. And because she could see more, she would, for the world which reveled in repetitive patters, remain utterly blind.

Just like him.

Winter Past

Footsteps.

Fog steps.

Fog. Steps

in, leaving behind its tangible, melting

coat. Voices all muffled,

scuffle amidst the fireplaces.

Gently. And
outside,

the bloodless, dense limb wraps

the grey city of doll houses;

squeezing it, caressing its

green pools of hazels and birch.

Crumbling crusts of brown sticking out

like tongues mocking at the absence of

snow. It is quiet. Still. Till someone,

inside,

sips, in the middle of their hot

supper, its frosty fingers sunk somewhere

in their murky soup.

Paper People teach us what Art can achieve

Carving cities in your flesh, skins tickling your mind;

Their lives but leaves of apparition in an erudite rain.

They are monochrome people, who live in a flat world of white paper and black ink. We all know them, each of us in a different way.
But their weight is either heavily light, or lightly heavy.

And they are, for me, one of the best parts of Literature.
The first is, of course, the extraordinary beauty of the syncopation of words, of the power of the tiniest sentence to evoke the most striking images. And then is this - this whole plethora of people that come out of these spaces and times within the lines, and soak into your life as if their presence has always been there, albeit invisibly.

They haunt you, they soothe you, they comfort you and inspire you, they lead you towards and unexpected catharsis. What makes them extremely relatable is, on one side, the expertness of the writer with his art, and on the other, more importantly, the subconscious awareness that they are not entirely fictional. They would have stemmed from some experience of the writer, some experience of another living being just like us who has metamorphosed them into paper people. It is this sublime comfort that even our deepest experiences, sorrows and joys have all been experienced by others, in different levels and intensities that lingers with us. They are an ambiguous hint that all human experience is shared experience, just not shared at the same time and same place together.

And that, to me , is one of the greatest achievements of art - to bind humanity in an invisible thread of awareness of each other and of themselves, and bring in a sense of solidarity on the subconscious level.

Bhutan - A Picture Diary

What better way to bring in the new year than with travel and dance. Here's the photo story of my new year trip to Bhutan.
HELLO 2016!!!

A Deeper Answer to India

Perhaps, all that is happening is still stemming from the insecurity that colonization had sowed. The past definitely has answers.

If only we take the trouble to look.

Some say we are tolerant, and others say no. 

But more than the fact that it could be a political agenda to defame Modi Government (of which I was and I still am a supporter of except the middle men who assume their power to interfere with ridiculous views), what makes me cringe is the names of people who are taking the respective stands.

If you take a stand, you need to prove that you have already applied or are applying that view practically in your actions.

But all we see is very wise manipulation of each one's personal conveniences.

Those who say one cant make a big deal out of singular events, are the very ones who are making a big deal of other singular events that do not sink with their views. 

Are you trying to say that if it is just one life it has no value?

Those who cry foul at sour grapes hardly get off their ass when the grapes are sweeter closer their own home.

Those who try to speak the truth for the betterment of all (optimistically assuming that is the agenda of everyone) are ridiculed as unpatriotic, and those who fake blind love are agreed with more.

How exactly is a country supposed to progress if you refuse to see its loopholes? 

Where is the question of defamation? 

Who else are we mass Indians conditioned to actually listen to, if not film stars?

What other form of protest can an artist take (taking into account the 'stand' that most of them have here.Yes. Face the truth), other than return awards? 

There is some bad in what those in power are doing, and there is good in what those that aren't in power are doing.

Accept the grays, instead of painting everything black and white.

Everything should not be 'OK', as long as it does not bang on your door or disturb your sleep.

And there is a much deeper answer as well, to everything, and it is in the past. 

No one likes what happened to us during colonization, but it is a fact that cant be erased. 

Yes it happened, and yes we are still dealing with both the negative and positive effects of it. 

And as you see beneath the skin, you see the actual wound. 

It is the killing of her self respect that India is still trying to deal with, which is why she erupts at small little incidents. 

She is still afraid of being robbed, of being burdened, which is why part of her is fiercely, and sometimes impractically, possessive of her 'identity' (culture/values/religion and everything else), and part of her is trying, probably way too hard, to shake everything off and find her place in the 'new' world.

The calm 'thinking' middle ground has not been stuck yet. 

Or of it is, it is painfully hidden and unacknowledged.

And at this point of extreme social and political upheaval, we have to find the common ground. Which is, quite simply, taking into account that in spite of all developments there are countless Indians who are hungry and homeless.

We maybe tolerant of many things, but we cant still be tolerant of hunger and poverty.

Unless every citizen is fed, unless every 'Indian' has a simple roof at least to stay in, I, as a common citizen, find it hard to accept the shallow patriotism raising its head everywhere, irrespective of what 'party' it is.

We need pride, not shallow ego.

To Burn or not to Burn, That is the Question of the Diaries

The customary cleaning for the festival has begun at home.
After a very, very long time I had the chance to get the entire stack of my diaries and notebooks out to clean up the shelves. Needless to say, it was quite amusing to see almost 8-10 years of my life, all collected in little piles.
I couldn't help but sit and start going through them.
One by one.
Page by page.
Goodness!
So many emotions.
So many memories.
So many people who have blurred out of my life and so many who have stayed and yet are hardly recognizable in their present souls.
So many memories, incidents, and experiences.
It was quite overwhelming to see everything that life had given me.
So many happy moments and so many not so happy ones.
They have all been a part of the journey and all have made me who I am, and yet, as much as I tried to honor and respect them all for what they were at the time they existed, I couldn't help but feel that some of them were a total waste of emotions and time.
That sounds equally childish to you as it feels to me, and yet I can't help but feel that I could perhaps have gotten better moments had I not been so blinded by feelings, ideals, ideas of creating utopia, and baseless faiths.
Well. If it weren't for those experiences I wouldn't have the maturity (Don't laugh. I know I still have a long way to go but am learning!) that I hopefully have now.
Theoretically, I understand and maybe even appreciate.
And yet, practically, I cant help but feel why on earth I would have squandered my precious confidences.
Its also quite funny how my own emotions have changed and morphed -  sadness and pain, to anger, then to frustration, and finally, to nothingness. Happiness, to memories, to mere little tingles, to nothingness. Some incidents were even out of my memory's reach now, and if not for my diaries I perhaps might not have thought of them ever again..
I pictured myself, 50 years from now, hopefully alive with all my faculties intact, reading them again on an empty afternoon. Or perhaps sharing it with some other people. Would I laugh? Cry? Or not feel anything at all?
We all seem to go through similar journeys. We all seem to go through similar lessons and feelings and experiences. It is sort of comforting to know that I am not alone, and also quite saddening to realize that my condition is not as unique as I had thought it was.
Well :) It is all life, all a part and parcel of it.
At this moment, as I am caught in a dilemma about whether to keep all of the diaries or probably burn away a few awfully painful ones, all I find myself asking from life is not to keep me away from anything, not to take pity on me and spare me all that life has to offer and all that the condition of being born as a human has to show and reveal.
All I funnily find myself asking, is give me more, life!
Give me more of everything, enough to fill a million more diaries.

A Creative Conversation with the Epitome of Inspirations - Krishna

You are still as far away as the rain cloud you so proudly paint yourself with, and as near as the tickle of a peacock feather on my cheek.
Before I could start thinking about the concept of God, you were there - as a bit of imagination, as an invisible companion to have conversations with on the terrace, and as a daydream to paint away on sunny solitudinal afternoons.
Though at times I was wary of you, I remember I never was fearful of you. With dance you grew closer and through you I got my first introduction to various other emotions. What I loved the most about what I felt was not just the awe and the amazement, but the utter sense of you being so human and so complete in being a human in all your emotions, relations and dealings. There never was a crust that I had to break through to reach you or strive to get your attention and grace on me; you were always something that existed alongside me in life - as a concept, as love, as trust, as a prayer, and sometimes as a visible absence.

My perception of humanity was shaped by the sort of 'humanness' I saw in you - something grand, something intense, something in control yet sensitive and vulnerable enough, something boundless and blissful and something inexhaustivef. These are the qualities I look for on a universal basis, probably in everything.

Though I do not understand some of your decisions and your stories, and nor completely agree with some, I know it doesn't offend you; you probably did all that you did (or your writer told all that he told about you) so that the mirage of perfection is broken - you are so perfect in your imperfections that it does not feel awkward. And you wanted us to know it.

Were you happy as a child ? Did you go stealing all the butter and food because you were a spoilt and pampered brat, or did your mother, by any chance, try to discipline you a tad too much from which you wanted to break away ?
Did you really leave Radha because you wanted to protect her honor as a married woman, or were you just scared to accept that love and so you found the glitter and comfort of Mathura easier to deal with ?
Did you really manipulate the war with your clever little lies, or were you just desperately trying to keep everyone at peace and it all worked like a brilliant stroke of luck?
Were you really magnanimous to marry 16,000 queens or was it a kind of penance to assuage your own guilt for having played with the feelings of thousands of maidens in your youth?
More than anything, how did you manage to become so personal and intimate, that your recantations in the Bhagad Gita remain as one of the most universal texts on our inherent nature ?
Who were you, Krishna? Do I believe what people say or what you say to me in my reveries ?
Is it necessary to be sure of your existence and what I am given as facts of your existence? Do I always need facts ? Aren't you already existing in all of us, not just as a spark of the divine as we keep telling ourselves; but as the human nature itself, with all its glorious things and all its not so glorious things (as we perceive it )?
And is that what you were trying to convey to us all, when you said that we are in you, and you are in us?

Tenderness

                                                          Larkhall Park - My soul space


There are these moments in life which you somehow forget to fill up. They stay open, bare and are often invisible until some other moment nudges them out of their burrow.
Like looking at an old doodle done seven years ago and slipping into the same space of mind effortlessly.
Or looking at an old photograph and hearing a voice inside your brain.
Or when my mum calls me from the kitchen for dinner.
There is something about that voice, about the way she calls, and the texture of the tender care in a simple syllable that speaks volumes more - 'The dinner's hot and tasty.' 'Its your favorite.' 'You have not eaten for hours.' 'I am tired and sleepy but I can wait until I've served you.'
It is these little things that carry so much meaning than grand displays that I miss the most when I am away. And it is these spaces that I want to hold more of.
The blood beneath the skin.
The blue in the nerves.
Or the tiny 'gulp' sound when I drink water.
It is odd how time seems to stop during these little getaways. Everything blurs, the sights, the sounds, the sensations of everything around melts as these moments gain a strange weight and hover over me. And often these spaces come unheralded, and yet blend in beautifully.
Back in London for my graduation ceremony and a few performances, it feels like everything in between hangs in another space. Its like touching a familiar unfamiliarity. Or an unfamiliar familiarity. Or maybe I am losing it.
It is gong to be formally over, my course, with a formal ceremony of robes and smiles and congratulations. More than the course, I wish we all could look into (really, really deep into) the whole experience of it, and congratulate each other on the particular period of time that has been intense both personally and artistically in some way or the other.
I am listening to the same songs I used to a year ago on the tube. And walking on the exact same spaces and trying and tracing the exact same steps.
It is not the spaces but what we leave of ourselves or what we find of ourselves in those spaces that make it significant for all of us.
Or, maybe I am losing it.

Wandering In Wales

A short travelogue of a trip to Wales :

Is it possible to be bored of a color? 
I am bored of the color green. 
Are fishes bored of blue? Are dogs bored of black and white? But since they have not seen anything else, do they realize they are missing something ? 
Are we missing something ? 
Are we perpetually fooling ourselves as the most superior creations but there is a vastness even beyond our imagination?

The only way to see what we might probably be missing on, in a very minuscule sense indeed, is to travel. It is the deepest experience we could give ourselves, and especially to a place like Wales.

The name ‘Wales’ had always amused me, and anyway it was in UK so I knew I would not need to go through the hazzles of visa. 
Succumbing to a whimsical travel fever and wanting to throw in my own bit of randomness into the seas of life, I booked the earliest morning bus to Cardiff (Capital city of Wales) the very next day. With no arrangement of accommodation or travel plans as to how and where to go except a list of places which really seemed interesting, I set off.

But lo! A 5 hour bus journey later there was life, standing at the bus stop of Cardiff, laughing at me. I wanted randomness? No child, life is all arranged, you just need to figure the patterns; and I watched in amusement as these patterns unraveled throughout the trip.

Honestly, it was a tad disappointing in the beginning as my sense of adventure was gone very soon; for even before I could feel that I was in a different country, a stranger in a different city, there were millions of maps, brochures, leaflets and guides thrown at me, putting me completely at ease. Also, the first person I saw in a shop I walked in to was an Indian, and I was immediately given advice regarding the best and cheapest places to stay. I enjoyed the camaraderie, but oh damn the person who first thought of tourism as a business.

Cardiff is a lovely city, though, except for the green color of its buses. A long walk in the sunny afternoon across the downtown area took me to Cardiff castle and its vastness. It was a soothing time in its gardens imagining its history and the walk up to its tower with lovely views. The air raid shelters there were disturbing though, with blaring radio voices from the 2^nd world war years, faded posters and pictures, and also complete emptiness as you walk along the long dark narrow stretch.

Cardiff bay was a pleasant enough sight after that in the evening, with the brimming restaurants and shops and the setting sun. I was still feeling weirdly comfortable though, and not like an amused explorer.

And thankfully, soon after that the true adventure actually began. 

I had planned to spend most nights either in travel to save both time and money on lodging, or in bus stops and railway stations wherever I found a decent enough one. Cardiff bus stop was pretty decent and it also had a railway station just across from there, but since I found there was a bus to Pembroke Dock (One of the places on my list), why waste time?

‘You will reach there at 2.30 a.m, is that OK? Do you have reservations made?’ Asked the person at the booking. I liked the concern in her voice, and sensing the first call of unpredictability, I lied yes and took a ticket. I had nothing much to see in Cardiff anyway (I deliberately avoided the museums which are pretty amazing I am told; I had had too much for the whole year).

And so I reached Pembroke dock, a tiny little village at 2.30 in the night. The bus stop was just a sign post near a large Tesco department store. No waiting room, not even a shelter. It was exactly like its name - just a stop.

Oh well :) 

Anyway, after searching aimlessly on the dark streets for quite a long time which felt like an after-bedtime tour of the little village, after hilarious broken conversations with Welsh truck drivers resting for a drink on the roads, I did manage to find a Bed and Breakfast before sunrise which had the last available room. 
Four hours of solid rest and after that, with brilliant suggestions and tips from the friendly staff, the whole experience was one beautiful poem with perfect punctuation at the right places - and the rest is better expressed through pictures.

A short bus ride from there to the sea, and I began with an amazing 5 hour coastal path hike (part of the Wales Coastal walk of the National Trust) from Pembroke dock to Freshwater East in the morning - a perfect blend of the sea, the mountains, and silence. Every step brought forth a different view, every step made me stop and stare  :  

When I reached Freshwater East, I met a retired English and History professor. 
All by chance, of course; he was basking in the sun reading a book. I had originally intended to walk on till a place called Tenby, but when I asked him for directions, he told me it would take hours and I wouldn't be able to make it before dark, and he offered me a place to stay for the night. We chatted in the sun, saw the sunset, and then picked up some food from a nearby store and headed to his home. The village is on a cliff overlooking the bay so everywhere we went I got treated to glimpses of sea and sand.
Cigarettes and beer and Life stories shared with aplomb throughout the night with a perfect stranger, randomness or a pattern that fell in place when it just had to? Did I go seeking this moment or did the moment seek me out ? 
His little cottage was filled, actually crammed with hundreds of photos and other memorabilia of all his years, and I was lucky to know about an intense life. 
A little sleep and then being woken up the next morning with a very classy 'English tea for the lady in bed!', it could not have been better! 

After another short walk in the mist along the bay and up another cliff, I caught a bus to Pembroke, and frankly I wasn't ready to be so bowled over by Pembroke castle. Having reached early and being practically the first visitor even before the gates had opened, the mellow magnificence lay there, bare, open to be seen and felt. It has some of the most romantic visuals (even with annoying sightings of the traffic and electric lights from the tower windows. How I hate the jarring juxtaposition of the past and the present that serves no purpose). 

Sunrise at Freshwater East :

Pembroke Castle :

Walking around Pembroke Castle, you feel like a living ruin walking among the dead ruins. So caught up was I in these strange feelings that the visit to ancient places make you feel, a feeling that is a sense of nostalgia not your own but borrowed from someone else and you don't know what the memories are, just something deep but intangible, but you know that you are missing something. I ended up missing a couple of buses and a train as well to potential places, spending the afternoon running between bus stop and train station.
I finally caught a bus to a village called Flatford Mill. Not much to boast of there except the  historic port, and the names given to the boats are quite amusing - you don't know why you are looking at a boat when it sounded more like it would be a horse or a cat :D

Again, by chance, I met a sailor who had been sailing across the seas for most of his youth. He offered to drive me on to the next town which was Haversfordwest. On the way he showed me another ruin; but this one was like a nameless corpse - it hadn't even been given a proper funeral. It was so covered in moss and undergrowth that we had to struggle quite a lot to find a way in beyond the safety wires. And what we found there was eerie :

I was dropped off at Haversfordwest by evening, and the empty castle here was buzzing with flies. (Wales has castles sprinkled in almost every corner). I enjoyed walking along the streets of the city and its downtown area more. It had some weird funky pubs which I thought I would go to at night but all the walking had taken its toll and the minute I found a B&B I fell asleep like a log.

Next morning as usual started very early with a heavenly chill, and I set off for St. David's Cathedral. It is a couple of hours by bus and the journey is breathtaking to say the least. You meander around green hills, you get glimpses of the sea now and then which seem more like mirages, you see sheep and cows grazing around like the most contented creatures on earth, and all this with a flirty mist that rises up and then comes down magically.

St. David's is a little town and it had began raining when I reached there. It seemed out of a book - the place, the tiniest city central circle ever, the weather, and this glorious structure that I came to at the bend of a tiny path. Spending hours inside the cathedral was a beautiful prelude to what was the most breathtaking place I had come upon until then - Angel's head.
It is part of the National Coastal walk and in one hour it takes you around the mountain where you can watch the sea in all its glory and wonder. The cloudy weather, the slight drizzle and the enthusiastic wind made me feel like I never wanted to go anywhere else but just stay there, listening to the waves. This is kind of what it looked like :

 I lost track of time, but somehow, again by chance, I happened to slowly wander back in the nick of time to catch the last bus out of that city.

I had a few more places on my list but they were quite far up north. My energy was seeking a break and so was my wallet. I rode to Cardigan ( why exactly is it so hyped?) and another small town called Fishgaurd. I was quite satisfied and spent and was preparing for the epilogue of the experience. I had no inkling of what was yet to come.
Aberystywth is a seaside town and I had found a convenient bus from there to London at night. It would have been fine only if the previous bus had not run late. Strange how these things and timings work. I reached Aberystywth late at night and needless to say, I had already missed the bus. But what I saw was too overwhelming for me to have any place for tension :
                   

(Image borrowed from google; my phone camera gave up on trying to capture this beauty)

(discoverceredigion.co.uk)

I wandered around at this fairytale like place, sounds of invisible waves crashing on my left and a plethora of lights, lamps and lanterns on my right. It was buzzing with people and for a change I did not find the crowd bothersome; I was too wrapped up in myself and felt so vaporous that I knew I was invisible to them as well.

All the hotels were booked, all the guesthouses over filled. It being the opening weekend of the university there, it was brimming with the young partying folks. Few drunk college kids were loitering and tried following me around as I waded in and out of buildings. Yet, being in a very ethereal state of existence, neither danger nor worry for the night could contaminate me. I kept wandering, on any street I found, any alley, any friendly looking pub. I wandered until the crowds on the streets thinned out, until silence began revisiting her existence. I wandered until I knew I wasn't going to find a room and thought of retracing my way back to the bus stop.
I could probably nap a bit in its shelter.
And then I saw these two women walking towards the corner of the road I was standing in.
Alice and Nicola were spending their customary weekend in their holiday cottage and were just returning back.They instantly knew I was lost, were extremely friendly, and took me around trying to see if there was any room left in some hotels tucked away in corners.
'Why don't you stay with us?'
Well, who would say no in that situation! We packed some Indian dinner on the way and then drove to their cottage.
To say it was one of the best things that has happened is an understatement. They are such amazing, experienced women that I took in an enormous amount of love and wisdom. Nicola and I stayed up very late, speaking about life, about art, about philosophy, about relationships, about us.
It was like finding a long lost friend. In fact, one of the things she told me has struck so deep that a whole article has come out of it, and this is what she said - 'Did we cultivate wheat, or did we allow wheat to cultivate us?' This one sentence opened so many ideas and understanding about our society and lives as the way they are now.
I don't quite remember when we went to sleep, but I remember feeling so cozy, safe in my dreams.
the sun was way up high by the time I awoke  (and of course missed the morning bus to London). After brunch they dropped me off to see the castle ruins there and enjoy the ocean a bit. It was quite a sunny day so wandering around felt great.

I caught a train to Birmingham and then a bus to London. The journey back home was uneventful thankfully, though I have to say that since this was the trip of missing buses, I could not NOT miss one last one. I somehow made it home the next day before dusk, with aching feet, drooping eyes but a very lingering emotion of I still don't know what. Just as we take care of life, life takes care of us in strange ways. And this adventure made me more in tune with the internal journeys I would go on but not always notice or appreciate, no matter how rough or how smooth the terrain was.

It has been months, yet the footsteps stay on. 

And when I look ahead I see some more trails along the English countryside, probably where Constable painted his hay wain. 

Until then, happy journey, to wherever you are heading, body or mind.

And it begins!!!

There is no beginning or end, that is what Krishna teaches us. And in our tiny lives we probably will take a long time to understand this perspective, especially with regards to Art.
After a whirlwind phase of intense learning and travel last year, this year so far has been a gentle hum. Though I needed the break, I initially did curse the occasional boredom, but now as I stand on the threshold of another upcoming intense phase, I am quite thankful for the quietude. It has helped me understand the importance of stillness - external stillness to understand and appreciate our internal journeys, and internal stillness to make space for external energy. Because that is where we often trip - our external actions usually do not echo our internal atmosphere, and there is so much of mending and blending as a thought goes on to become a work.
Where exactly does 'ART' begin ?
Is art a hyperbole ? Or is it simplification? Who knows?
What this internal intimate time has made me understand is how beautiful change is, especially as an artist. Of course the intensity and the excitement is one of the innate reasons I am here, but still, everything that has been until now feels just like a warm up. All the classes, all the performances, all the paintings, and all the scribbling of words - now feel nascent. I do recognize their value in the context of the time they were created, but it feels like a newness has been unearthed, another blank slate challenging me to show how deep I can dig or how hard I can seek. And it is definitely because of a growing awareness.
With a gradual increase in the audience of whatever I create as 'Art', there has been a subconsciousness increase in my sense of responsibility. Though they are still the fundamental questions of 'why am I making Art? Am I representing what I see/feel, challenging what I see/feel, or critiquing what I see/feel?' that I find myself dealing with, what has expanded is the awareness that they probably won't have straightforward answers for a very long time, and as an artist that is actually a blessing.
Older ambitions seem slightly vulgar, distresses have changed into disgust, affections have morphed into sympathy, and definitions for success and dreams have evolved and filtered, along with an ability to accept them as they are. The creative impulse has become the foremost concern rather than just technical goals - there is no need to find a 'balance' between different forms as the impulse will take great care of it. In fact, all these fancy words like 'balance' and blah blah are quite malleable in Art; this field needs its own bloody dictionary.
It has been a great warm up though, and I look back with gratefulness, but it is super exciting to know that my internal ideas have finally found an audible conversation with my external actions. And hoping I am capable of giving the honesty and integrity they have begun to (relentlessly) demand as some long held visions have begun to unfurl.

Revisiting Spaces, Revisiting Nostalgia

It is a different sun here :) A different moon, different stars.
Their light here is different, and their yellow skins too. Not logically, of course, but logic does not, and need not work all the time!
I have been spending the past couple of weeks revisiting spaces that hold significance from different periods of my life. Childhood, teenage, the starting point of my dancing journey, and streets that hold so many joyful memories.
Nothing seems to have changed much; the grey of the streets, the shade of the trees, and the feel of gentleness and delicacy in the breeze. My steps seem to have altered, though, I either am able to perceive more of its breadth, or I have become mature enough to see it in its true identity. In spite of their beauty, I am able to see and accept that it has its share of rotten grass and dead branches.
I can still weave stories around them, as I did for hours back in a more innocent time, and now I am not scared to talk about their ghosts and their secrets in the torn corners of their minds.

Time, or whatever it is that we so desperately try to hold within our clocks and the ticks of the three hands, seems to have shrunken back into the caves from which we invented it.
These journeys are, in a mildly desperate way, an attempt to familiarize myself back with a city I have literally spent my whole life in until now. It is amazing how what you think has been true and yours for decades can suddenly become unfamiliar in a second, and what has been but for a short while can show you such an astonishing glimpse of eternity. And there could have been no other beautiful way for the universe to teach me that time is just an illusion, and it is all about space and our perception and responses to it. Quantum physics, in its simplest, is finally making some sense to me :D

There is no need to hurry, no need to make sense of every second, and no need to try and make everything meaningful. While the purpose of the whole creation itself remains such a mystery, why bother heaping importance on physical spaces that keep melting and morphing? Its more than enough to lie on their lap and keep weaving on stories :)
I am off to catch up on some more Einstein, for nothing in Science had so caught my attention as this concept of time and space. Here are a few pictures from these short (physical) journeys :