Jobless in Hyderabad

              Oh...there was this interim period when I'd quit my job in Hyderabad and was awaiting my Singapore visa. For the first time in many years, I had whole days to myself when I did not need to run protein gels or isolate DNA.In fact, I had the time to indulge in things closer to my heart.

              University of Hyderabad, where I was at that time, (albeit in School of Life Sciences) had a wonderful library with an entire section dedicated to Art and housed wonderful books. I used to spend hours poring over those books, soaking in their sublime beauty, toying with the ideas projected by them, learning trivia about some art forms, photocopying the bits I wanted to carry home( there's always comfort in hard copy data, isn't it?) and thereby, creating a state of such artistic torpor, that to snap out of it, I decided to paint. I do have some formal training in art, having attended art classes in my school days, and decided that I just might start wielding the brush again.

               The first one I painted was reasonably ok.

                   


Since the first one was both about colors as well as an underlying theme of music, I added to it with these others.All of them are Oil on canvas.

               Then I decided to try a little variation in theme. So I painted this Krishna evoking the elements of Water, Air, Earth and Fire with his music.

                     Over the course of the next few months, I tried Acrylic as well. Though not as fluid a media as Oil, it is nonetheless a quicker media as it dries faster and gives a very glossy finish.
This one was done in one day and is one of my favorites.

                      Then it was time to use paper. Acrylic works pretty good on paper and can be nicely framed in glass. I decided to redo some of Jamini Roy's paintings. They have always been some of my favorite pieces of folk art.

                   


                      And why should watercolors be ignored. My art teacher, the late Mr Venkat, always revered water as the most difficult of all mediums as it leaves no other scope for the artist other than to be transparent in his expression. Water, being the most fluid of all mediums, and not as labile as oil, has its limitations as any flaw cannot be covered with a second coat of paint and when done immaturely, can leave a very sorry effect. Conversely, if done in the right way, deftly, minimalistically, it can produce a profound effect, at once ethereal and fluid, but also deeply impressionable. Frankly, I am a great fan of watercolors, yet am least adept at it. Have to practise more!! But where do I get hand made paper in Singapore??

         This one is watercolor on handmade paper. I call it simply " Jodha". Don't ask me why....:)

       I also made a sketch of this beautiful Lambadi Woman whose picture I found in a magazine.

         Now I must make sure to pick it up again. It's been 3 years, and I have not produced anything. Not even reproductions! Yet, on retrospect, those months when I was jobless in Hyderabad, indulging in amateurish art, spending hours crouched over my canvas, sometimes missing lunch without a thought, and without a need to keep track of time, fingers stained with paint and enveloped in a fine haze of fragrant terpentine oil, I had a real tryst with bliss.

From Van Goh's pen

                      "We spend our whole lives in unconscious exercise of the art of

                                  expressing our thoughts with the help of words."

                                "There is no blue without yellow and without orange."

                       Vincent van Gogh, for whom color was the chief symbol of expression, was born in Groot-Zundert, Holland on March 30, 1853.During his brief career he sold one painting. Van Gogh's finest works were produced in less than three years in a technique that grew more and more impassioned in brushstroke, in symbolic and intense color, in surface tension, and in the movement and vibration of form and line. Van Gogh's inimitable fusion of form and content is powerful: dramatic, lyrically rhythmic, imaginative, and emotional, for the artist was completely absorbed in the effort to explain either his struggle against madness or his comprehension of the spiritual essence of man and nature.

                         Although Van Gogh is mainly recognized for his vibrant use of color, his drawings are exceptional because his representation of figures, light and landscape can be appreciated in their own right without the color to distract the eye.

Quay with men unloading Sand barges

                                                            Woman with her hair loose

                                                                    Landscape with trees

                                                                        Edge of a wood

                                                     Woman with a wheelbarrow at night

                                                        Woman pianist and a violinist

                                                                   Winter Garden

                                                            Woman with head in hands

However, as he describes,in many of his letters, he also used drawing as an outlet for his depression. The following excerpt about Van Gogh’s drawing comes from a letter Vincent wrote in 1880, at the age of 27, to his brother Theo.

“Well, and yet it was in these depths of misery that I felt my energy revive and I said to myself, I shall get over it somehow, I shall set to work again with my pencil, which I had cast aside in my deep dejection, and I shall draw again, and from that moment I have had the feeling that everything has changed for me, and now I am in my stride and my pencil has become slightly more willing and seems to be getting more so by the day. My over-long and over-intense misery had discouraged me so much that I was unable to do anything.”

He also quoted,

                              "I am not an adventurer by choice but by fate."

Due to Van Gogh's extreme enthusiasm and dedication to first religion and then art coupled with the feverish pace of his art production many believe that mania was a prominent condition in Van Gogh's life. However, these episodes were always followed by exhaustion and depression and ultimately suicide. Therefore, a diagnosis of bipolar disorder or manic depression makes sense with the accounts of these episodes in Van Gogh's life.

Dr. Gachet, Van Gogh's physician, was thought to have treated his epilepsy with digitalis. This prescription drug can cause one to see in yellow or see yellow spots. This may have been one of the reasons why Van Gogh loved this color.

As I study his sketches, mulling over their form and  extreme austere beauty, punctuated with a sense of motion and fluidity, I am disturbed by the fact that such genius stemmed not from  inspiration but rather from profound grief and is not a reflection of his extra ordianry genius but a dark echo of his madness.

Hinduism in Bali

            Imagine being in a place thousands of miles away from India and discovering that nestling among a cluster of 13,466 islands that comprise the Indonesian Archipelago,which is predominantly Muslim, there is this small tropical island that is 92% Hindu, with it's very own version of the Ramayana, religious rituals, beliefs and has close to 20,000 puras (temples), thereby famously known as the "Island of the Gods"-thats Bali for you!Known for its breathtakingly beautiful scenic spots, sea cliffs, volcanic craters, temples, white sand beaches, rice terraces and a for being a veritable hub of tourists from across the globe, Bali is truely fascinating.

         



But isn't it intriguing how Hinduism reached its shores? Or that they worship deities that closely resemble the ones from Mahabharata and Ramayana? Look at this picture of Shiva and Garuda, carved in granite for starters-

Garuda with an attitude...isn't it?














Thats Shiva, or Ciwa, as they like to call him!


                 

Thats the Barong, King of spirits, who fights against the evil forces......quite a spectacle indeed with the mythic creature prancing about it its dramatic avatar.

The mighty Barong....

 

The demon Rangda......

Also take a look at the Kechak Dance, their rendition of the Ramayana, where a group of 60 vocalists perform acapela( producing musical notes from their mouth and throats) in the backdrop of Sita Haran and Lanka Dahan.

Acapela artists-their combined chants for more than an hour was truely mesmerising. Very soulful music indeed!!

Sita haran-indonesian style:)

The super-savior Hanuman......setting Lanka on fire.....

The town square has a huge sculpture of Bhima, as well as a pristine white ensemble of Krishna in his chariot during the battle of Kurukshetra.

Even though so much of it's culture is borrowed from ancient Indian epics and scripture, Bali boasts of a brand of Hinduism that is very distinct and exotic. So for all the ubiquitous Hindu names like Ganesh, Devi and Garuda, we have aspects like their preference for pork to mull about. Also that each time you want to enter a temple premises, they insist on you wearing a sarong, whereas the temples themselves are not active throughtout the year and only come alive on festivals. The temple architecture is quite fascinating though.

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Travels through South East Asia

     "The old hunger for voyages fed at his heart......to go

       alone...into strange cities; to meet strange people and to
       pass again before they could know him;to wander, like his
       own legend, across the earth-it seemed to him there could
       be no better thing than that."

                                                    -Thomas Wolfe

                            One of the most impressionable outcomes of reading is that we begin to conjure up images of places that we read in our minds and impart to them the hues, forms and textures of our own imagination. I seldom read non-fiction and the ones that I do read are mostly travelogues. One such wonderful experience was when I read Brad Newsham's round-the-world journey called " Take me with you". The extraordinary thing about it was that Brad happens to be a cabbie in San Fransisco and he undertook this journey to get himself out of writers block and also with an intention of bringing back someone from one of the countries to the US on a sponsored visit. His journey begins in Manila from were he embarks on a trajectory spanning Calcutta, Delhi,Cairo,Nairobi, Harare, Johannesburg and finally Cape Town from where he goes back and sets about writing this book. That was a time when travelling across the globe was a much cherished yet seemingly unattainable dream. I was pursuing my PhD in Hyderabad and I was content with reading and dreaming.

           Soon things changed and I moved to Singapore. Apart from a whole lot of advantages, the most conducive one to my dreams of travel was the fact that I was now living in close proximity to some of the most sought after destinations in the world. Slowly, sometimes methodically, sometimes impromptu, I started exploring the various countries in S E Asia whenever I got a chance to escape the monotony of work in Singapore. Given a chance, I'd actually love to backpack through the whole lot of places in that belt in a leisurely manner but as of now it would have to be quick long weekend getaways.

           Likewise, I visited some really exciting destinations- Kuala Lumpur, Malacca, Cameron Highlands (Malaysia),Bangkok, Krabi, Pattaya( Thailand), Bintan, Kota Kinabalu(Borneo), Bali, Jakarta, Bandung, Borobudur, Garut (Java)(Indonesia),Angkor Wat,Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Taiwan and most recently, Hong Kong.. I would like to start a series of posts on my reminiscences of those travels. I know that would be my feelings in retrospect, yet aren't those the best kind where you draw forth from memory things that changed you the most?

Garuda carved in stone, Bali

HinduTemple, Bali

Grand Palace, Bangkok

Maya Bay, Krabi, Thailand

Petronas Towers, KL

Floating Market, Bangkok

Rafflesia, Kota Kinabalu

Kota Kinabalu, Borneo

Domas Crater, Bandung, Indonesia

Borobodur, Bandung, Indonesia

Alishan Mountains, Taiwan

                                                

Vishnu, The Bayon, Angkor Wat, Cambodia