It's a chicken and duck problem

says the person who doesn't smoke a pipe, unlike Sherlock Holmes.

There are days when you look around and realise that every major conversation taking place in the mainstream media– be it television, books, newspapers, magazines or the social media– is taking place from the point of view of a white person– mostly a straight, white man, occasionally a straight, white woman. Pick any topic from any part of the world. That is how f**ked things are.

So what to do? Pick up the color pencils and start drawing, that's what. First a duck, then a chicken, then a duck, then a chicken...mindlessly drifting at the rate of one pencil stroke at a time. My own self behind pushing forward the self in front.*

Water color pencils and charcoals on any paper on hand.

*I asked of Destiny, “Tell me who with relentless hand pushes me on?”

Destiny told me to look behind.

I turned and saw my own self behind pushing forward the self in front.

– Rabindranath Tagore

The Hare: A Memory

 “Don't you find it a beautiful clean thought, a world empty of people, just uninterrupted grass, and a hare sitting up?”
― D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love 

Watercolour Pencils and Charcoal on Fabriano Accademia Drawing Paper

Watercolour Pencils and Charcoal on Fabriano Accademia Drawing Paper

Watercolour Pencils and Charcoal on Fabriano Accademia Drawing Paper

One had a lovely face,
And two or three had charm,
But charm and face were in vain
Because the mountain grass
Cannot but keep the form
Where the mountain hare has lain.

― W.B Yeats, "Memory"

In Silence

Baya Weaver Male. Watercolour pencils on acid free cartridge paper.

Goldfinch on Coneflower. Watercolour pencils on acid free cartridge paper.

Juvenile Indian Silverbill. Watercolour pencils on acid free cartridge paper.

Barn Swallow. Charcoal on acid free cartridge paper. Messy and fun.

The emotions are sometimes so strong that I work without knowing it. The strokes come like speech. –Vincent van Gogh

The art of drawing which is of more real importance to the human race than that of writing...should be taught to every child just as writing is.

    – John Ruskin

Perhaps if people were encouraged to draw something everyday, they'd talk a lot less. They'd begin to appreciate the importance of silence, of observation, of not getting entangled in the outward appearance of things. By watching a pencil slowly follow the contours of the subject, they would learn to edit out the superfluous and the unnecessary; they'd perhaps learn to not just see things but also comprehend them.

It would make the world a more peaceful place, even if all our problems wouldn't get solved (I am certain half of them would) at least there would be a lot more of silence. And when we say we seek peace, we often mean we are looking for silence– an absence of man-made sounds.

That's the limitation as well as the limitlessness of words– their meanings are not locked in some dictionary. We give them meaning. Words by themselves neither hurt us, nor make us happy. It is the intention behind them that does. Humans often confuse the medium for the message. By giving words such absolute power we are neglecting all the other human senses that make us sentient beings.

By making words, and the noise they bring along, the favoured method of expressing ourselves we have lost all other forms of communication. The first being the ability to communicate in silence.

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain

Watercolour pencil on acid free paper

(Gardens in the UK are spotting record numbers of waxwings. They are immigrants from countries further north who'll spend the winter here feasting on the ripening berries. And like many people on reading this news the first lines that came to my head were– I was the shadow of the waxwing slain– from 'Pale Fire'.)

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the false azure in the windowpane;
I was the smudge of ashen fluff––
And I Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky.
And from the inside, too, I'd duplicate
Myself, my lamp, an apple on a plate:
Uncurtaining the night, I'd let dark glass
Hang all the furniture above the grass,
And how delightful when a fall of snow
Covered my glimpse of lawn and reached up so
As to make chair and bed exactly stand
Upon that snow, out in that crystal land!

First paragraph from 'Pale Fire' a poem of "heroic couplets, of nine hundred and ninety-nine lines divided into four cantos",  by Vladimir Nabokov. From his novel 'Pale Fire: A Poem in Four Cantos by John Shade', which is essentially a novel about a poem. All 999 lines can be found here.

The Other Autumn

Watercolour pencil on acid free paper

For most of us, people who have grown up and are living in Indian cities, autumn as a season exists only in the imagination.

The complete post and the rest of the album of illustrations are here.

Have pencil, will draw

 Water colour pencil on paper

Everyone draws. Even if it means just doodling in the margins of boring textbooks or scrawling all over the page during insufferable meetings or scribbling in the pad during (or after) a contentious argument. At some point in time one takes the drawings away from the margins and puts them in the center of the page. But the purpose for drawing remains the same. An attempt to put one's thoughts in order. A silent argument between the hand that wields the pencil and the mind that wields the hand. A stream of conscious effort whereby one lets the subconscious wade through stormy tides. Whatever the story behind the humble sketch one thing, as anyone who has ever doodled knows, is certain– doodling helps one think clearly. Often when one puts the pencil down one feels, for want of a better word, refreshed.

I never have doubted the fact that people who doodle during lectures or meetings are able to process the information being given, if not 'better', then at least 'differently' from the others who merely listen. Here's a TED talk that makes the case for unlocking your brain via pad and pen: Sunni Brown: Doodlers, unite!

A rainy day

Work in progress

As I sit working on my last farewell ride a voice from nowhere comes up and says,

You’re searching, Joe,
For things that don’t exist; I mean beginnings.
Ends and beginnings—there are no such things.
There are only middles.*

*In The Home Stretch by Robert Frost

Inspiration is hard to come by

You have to take it where you find it. - Bob Dylan

My back pages

Water colour pencils on paper