Umbilical

Crucible

2012-01-19T02:28:00.029+05:30

Work-in-progress from Adi Parva © Amruta Patil, 2012

Devdutt P mischievously inquired some days back, "रणभूमी या रंगभूमी?" Battlefield or playing field? As former turns into latter, there's a cellular-level throb. 'Hope the mettle can withstand the heat, but if refractory material does crack, at least I'll have gone smiling. Choppy water turns gentle at the desk. I give thanks for all that enables.

Ethics, aesthetics

2012-01-01T16:29:00.016+05:30

A friend introduced me to a quote that expresses the direction of effort:
"I've handled colour as a man should behave. You may conclude that I consider ethics and aesthetics as one." ~ Josef Albers

The Unblinking Hive

2011-12-05T11:57:00.008+05:30

Bismillah your old self | To find your real name.

2011-11-22T23:45:00.016+05:30

Find the complete poem here.

Something like a website

2011-11-19T00:01:00.006+05:30

http://amrutapatil.wordpress.com

Ganga enters this mortal coil

2011-11-16T23:46:00.005+05:30

Adi Parva © Amruta Patil, 2011

The next sutradhar

2011-11-11T11:11:00.004+05:30

"The mad man won't stop ranting. Do you want us to get rid of him?"

"He's no mad man. He's saner than the lot of you put together. And he will be your next threadbearer."
"Just look at him. Who will listen to his stories?"
"No one. That is the fate you must fight to avert: You won't have the good sense to stop and listen. But we run ahead of ourselves. The ground must be readied before you recognize what sane really looks like. The hard part is admitting that it may not look like you."

Suparna Garud

2011-10-23T23:56:00.008+05:30

Adi Parva © Amruta Patil 2011

Boatman Who Would Be Queen

2011-09-29T00:00:00.001+05:30

Satyavati | Adi Parva © Amruta Patil 2011

In Italia

2011-09-13T20:13:00.007+05:30

FERRARA: 2nd October, 11:30 AM
'India, metropoli a strisce',
Sala Estense, Internazionale Festival

FIRENZE: 5th October, 6:00 PM
In conversation with Cinzia Zanfini
Florence University's Gallery Ganzo

Tabula rasa

2011-09-05T16:39:00.022+05:30

Adi Parva © Amruta Patil 2011

Every pearl in my paintings would be a prayer...
~ Kim Water (illustrator, 'Illuminations from the Bhagavad Gita')

Arjun's eye

2011-09-03T22:24:00.004+05:30

'I must only warn you of one thing. You have become a different person in the course of these years. For this is what the art of archery means: a profound and far-reaching contest of the archer with himself. Perhaps you have hardly noticed it yet, but you will feel it strongly when you meet your friends and acquaintances in your own country: things will no longer harmonize as before. You will see with other eyes, measure with other measures. It has happened to me too, and it happens to all who are touched by the spirit of this art.'

~ from Eugen Herrigel's 'Zen in the Art of Archery'

O Sun, O Water, O Cow, O Herb

2011-08-01T02:30:00.057+05:30

Durvas gave Indra a garland that would never wilt.
In a moment of insolence, he tossed it aside. | Adi Parva © Amruta Patil 2011

15th July was Guru Poornima, day to honour the teacher. If I stand upright after that shaky start in Smog City (and all it brought), it is because of the grace of teachers. PT's early intervention about right occupation, attitude, speech. Rumi's lesson in loving the Shams-Sun with gentle, joyful abandon. Trungpa's luminous teaching about queenly posture and the warrior's path. Meera's fearlessness in the face of vicious, mocking others. Debroy/Doniger/ Ganguli's efforts in rowing Sanskrit texts to English shores, thereby opening a sealed vault for the rest of us. Kabir and Raashmi, real-time kalyanmitras who helped side-step muddy puddles. I give thanks for not being abandoned despite wandering off course so often.

Been reading Debroy's translation of the Vedas. The Vedas are eat-humble-pie bootcamp: Unclog thy miserly mouth, let praise flow for the worthy instead of flowing for those that mirror one's impoverished standards, or are only marginally better than oneself.

In an übercasual age when no one seems to merit appropriate posture or well-enunciated greeting from another; rivers of self-effacing praise are an absurdity and irritant. I am repeat-offender, having held onto a deluded view until recently: that beings who don't keep the Individual in solus position are like Stepford Wives. (Ironically, it is individualists that most often dismiss the Bodhisattva aspiration as being impossibly arrogant. Lofty goals being the irritant in this case, I suppose. Euthanize the unicorn. Desaturate the rainbow.)

Critical shift happened on being allowed to see that praising the Sun, Water, Cow, or Herb has nothing to do with pampering their sense of self; and everything to do with putting one's own touchy, bloated ego in its correct place - i.e, underground. Amn't doing anyone but myself a favour by learning to bow. The absurdity of imagining that the Sun has anything to gain from clumsy human odes and prostrations!

We have been busy accumulating solace. Make us afraid of how we were.
~ From Jalaluddin Rumi's 'The Core of Masculinity'

Malini

2011-07-13T13:29:00.003+05:30

Adi Parva © Amruta Patil 2011

Invisible hand that had put a stay on my painting has lifted for the present. Retaining pure colour palette needs continuous effort - just like avoiding distortion and ugliness do.

Disaffection: Musings on Sedition

2011-06-04T13:36:00.013+05:30

First appeared in Himal Southasian © Amruta Patil 2011

Thank you Menaka Guruswamy for invaluable conversations and feedback.

Tat Savitur Varenyam

2011-05-21T10:45:00.026+05:30

Sure enough, as amrit abandoned devlok, the tread of asurs started growing heavier and heavier. When they could escape the realisation no longer, Mount Meru grew crowded with penitent devas. | Adi Parva © Amruta Patil 2011

They Live

2011-04-19T10:57:00.000+05:30

Obey, Consume, Conform, Stay Asleep: A still from the film

Inspite of (because of) modest budget, dubious acting, and skeletal-reptilian masks so terrible they transcend to awesome - James Carpenter's self-deprecating film manages message delivery of the sort the ruddy pumpkin brigade of Bollywood has never managed. Watch parts 1 through 10 of the film on Youtube.

Unnerving

2011-04-16T13:18:00.019+05:30

If there were a common thread between people who qualify, by popular consensus, as 'unnerving' - it must be their refusal to engage in small talk. Erasure of bullshit quotient in a conversation means the erasure of impersonal, quickie 'hooks': the foundation of so much social intercourse. When you enter a room unnerving person inhabits, you make eye contact and dive into the deep end. This implies neither dour face nor joyless conversation. What it means is that if you're unwilling to lay all your cards on the table, you might as well not be there at all.

Don't be humble with fools. Don't take pride into the presence of a master.
~From Jalaluddin Rumi's 'The Three Fish'

April showers bring May flowers

2011-04-16T12:00:00.004+05:30

Fleur de vie, from the journal of Leonardo da Vinci

Atlantis

2011-04-10T23:59:00.000+05:30

First appeared in Forbes Life, (February-April 2011 issue) © Amruta Patil

Fraternity of solar raptors

2011-04-06T19:50:00.011+05:30

Horus at the Musée du Louvre. And another goodly solar raptor, half a world away.

April One Sun

2011-04-01T20:54:00.010+05:30

Day of the Fool, journeyman of the Tarot. Broody bumpkin who may, with grace and ample intervention, head towards dancing hermaphrodite sage one day.

Mysterium tremendum et fascinans

2011-02-27T00:46:00.020+05:30

Smog City, 2000-2011

Little by little

2011-02-18T17:00:00.000+05:30

2-pager in Time Out (Feb 18th, Delhi edition; March 4th, Mumbai edition). Of course, since it was the magazine's food special issue, it seemed only apt to bring up the delicate matter of how desperately we need to wean ourselves. Ode to my main man Rumi + friendly neighbourhood foetus in cameo appearance (again).

Saturated Paintbox

2011-02-16T07:49:00.009+05:30

Commissioned by Tramway and British Council. Printed on matte paper - in refreshingly tiny A5 format - to be handed out during select events at the Glasgow Film Festival, February 2011.

Hermitage, Nagali

2011-02-11T21:20:00.020+05:30

Ancient mythologies generate strong feelings about the future, almost as though the earliest memories are simultaneously prophecies. Past events continuously repeat until they are accepted as prototypical. Repetition is a reminder that (the past and future) are firmly linked to each other, if not identical.

~ AT Mann, 'The Divine Plot'.

Watched over by the graciousness of teacher and friend; by diamond-bright books. Surely, Amrita Sher-Gil's Brahmacharis are none other than the five Pandavas?

Gum benzoin on burning coal

2011-01-11T19:39:00.005+05:30

Smell of dawn, of dusk. Sacred smell.

Liberal Lite

2011-01-01T00:01:00.004+05:30

First appeared in 'Asian Age' © Amruta Patil 2010

Click on the image for a larger view. Was asked to 'argue' (in the newspaper's point/ counterpoint section) the idea that we're becoming more and more conservative in our literature today. What's there to argue about?

Navigators of the Multiverse

2010-12-31T00:35:00.001+05:30

Because You are unlimited, neither the lords of heaven nor even You Yourself can ever reach the end of Your glories. The countless universes, each enveloped in its shell, are compelled by the wheel of time to wander within You, like particles of dust blowing about in the sky. The shrutis, following their method of eliminating everything separate from the Supreme, become successful by revealing You as their final conclusion.

Bhagvat Puraan 10.87.41

Memento Mori

2010-11-20T16:03:00.006+05:30

Aapah

2010-11-05T23:00:00.000+05:30

Amrit Manthan, Parva/The Epic © Amruta Patil 2010

Ocean. Mountain. Serpent. Bedrock Turtle. Resin. Herbs. Churning. Chaffing. Poison. Padma Lakshmi. Amrit.

Something from the Mountain, Something from the Stream

2010-11-05T22:30:00.000+05:30

First-ever published work, which no one saw, no one read, and no bookshop ever stocked :) Part of the anthology 'Favourite Stories for Girls' (Puffin, 2007).

Hampi sketches

2010-10-22T08:13:00.003+05:30

String theory

2010-10-12T21:27:00.023+05:30

Click here to watch the video. A swaying, dancing, prancing work based on the simplest premise - all creative work is derivative. Photographed and animated by Nina Paley. Music by Todd Michaelsen. Read more about their QuestionCopyright Project here. And, unconnectedly, a special note of admiration for what is surely one of the curviest, sexiest, most graceful female forms in world art: the Chola Parvati .

Inspite of themselves, they were drawn

2010-10-10T11:01:00.015+05:30

Parva/The Epic © Amruta Patil 2010

'(The asura realm, or the realm of the jealous gods)...is highly energetic, almost in contrast to the state of spiritual absorption...(beings) try to be extremely busy and entertain themselves, indulging in all sorts of things.

(The realm) has the quality of speeding and trying to achieve everything on the spot, trying to make sure your experiences are valid and that nobody is going to attack you...It is the extreme paranoia of trying to save yourself, trying to attain something higher and greater constantly...Everyone is viewed as an enemy from the asura point of view...You do not want to be helped.'

Chögyam Trungpa, 'Transcending Madness'

Navigation, Safe Passage

2010-10-05T18:58:00.022+05:30

Text and photographs © Amruta Patil 2010

Set of four stories + four photographs created for 'Transportraits' - an exhibition on women and safety/mobility. On view at the Alliance Francaise Gallery (New Delhi) from November 22nd-24th 2010. The show has been curated by Gauri Gill for Jagori.

Down Jacket

2010-08-22T00:15:00.004+05:30

Theatre of the Absurd: Gautam Bhatia's 'Lie'

2010-08-20T21:30:00.009+05:30

Architects are different from most navel-gazing comic book artists in one big way: they are into creating blueprints that will alter the backdrop of our lives. That Gautam Bhatia is an architect offers insight into the ambitiousness of his debut graphic novel. The introduction of Lie: A Traditional Tale of Modern India, formatted into twin towers of dense, all-caps text, says that the book is meant to 'act as a form of corrective measure to the real India, offering a set of unintellectual lenses behind which lies something of today’s morality.’

Lie has the vision of a town-planner, the robust and infectious self assurance that is prerequisite to rallying together a workforce that will transform – not a mere page, not a mere wall, not a mere living room – but the skyline of an entire city.

In the presence of those scant literary commodities, audaciousness and idealism, a very special responsibility lies with the reviewer. Particularly when the genre is a budding one, and the author has been brave enough to experiment with form, one needs to be careful lest an original voice is crushed underfoot in excessive manicuring of gardens. Lie has audaciousness and idealism covered. This, then, is a fable of ‘armless beggars, conspiring bureaucrats, demented politicians and crooked businessmen. Of meetings and seminars with no express intent, riots and conflicts that refuse to abate, political debate that stirs no one, grandiose intentions that serve no purpose’. Critics point out that the subject matter echoes Bhatia’s earlier work (Whitewash, Punjabi Baroque). In his defense it must be said that with concerns that are so immense in scale, what better can a sincere flag-bearer do but keep honing his message till it cuts through the drone?

To retell this traditional tale of modern India, Bhatia’s new medium of choice (he has authored essays, fiction and non-fiction before this) is the graphic novel. He is in august company here. The graphic novel has fast become a popular medium with left-leaners, ecological warriors, travelling birds and political beasts the world over (Maus, Barefoot Gen, Pride of Baghdad, Persepolis, Safe Area Gorazde, Pyongyang, Kabul Disco) – not to mention, with journalists who have more to say than newspapers' word count will allow. Even in India, where graphic literature is a very nascent genre, a significant number of titles have strong socio-political or ecological undercurrents (River of Stories, Kashmir Pending, The Believers, Delhi Calm, Our Toxic World).

Lie steers admirably clear of borrowing existing conventions of structure and visual grammar (as defined by Franco-Belgian, North American or Japanese traditions). The author collaborated with Rajasthani folk artists Shankar Lal Bhopa, Birju Lal Bhopa, and Ghanshyam for this project – teaming his trademark satire with kitschy visuals that reference miniature paintings. Bhatia has a wicked ear for the language of government tenders, legal banalities, obituaries and birthday eulogies of the sort found in small-town newspapers – albeit with the occasional tendency to go over the top. The pokerfaced artwork (reminiscent, in sensibility and form, of truck art and Ambedkar statues) complements, and offsets, the hyperbolic text to quirky and delightful result. Bhatia creates a webbed narrative featuring a gamut of droll, disturbing stories about lusty, wheeling-dealing, power-mongering – or doomed – characters. The book is hard to read at one stretch, but this is not necessarily a bad thing. It joins the Holy Bible, Eduardo Galeano’s Mirrors and Dave McKean’s Cages among the books that will sit on my bedside table to be dipped into and savoured over months of re-reading. This is rare –most graphic novels can be hurtled through at breakneck speed and safely put aside forever.

Orchestrating a balanced graphic novel, though, is like walking a tight rope. A successful marriage of word and visual needs more than the juxtaposition of competent writing and competent artwork – one cannot overemphasize the importance of face value. In the hands of those with a Message, the graphic novel format runs the continuous risk of buckling over from top-heaviness. Excess content makes the fine membranes of case, speech blurb and page stretch to breaking point. No publication (with the possible exception of coffee table books) needs more exacting production standards than a graphic novel does; or suffers as grievously from a lack of nitpicking.

Comic book scholar Thierry Groensteen observes in ‘The System of Comics’ (University Press of Mississippi, 2007), “When watching a film, the cinema spectator does not experience the sensation of being placed in front of a multitude of narrative utterances that accumulate piece by piece to give birth to…the entirety of the filmic story. The comic book reader, on the contrary, experiences precisely a sensation of this type.”

Too many cases per page can undo the experience, as can insufficient ‘breathing room’, incoherent visual flow of text, careless choice of typeface, narrow margins, unwieldy binding and wrong paper selection. Surprisingly (since the book lists four names in its design and layout credits) the publishers of Lie could have done better on all these counts – the ink-guzzling matte paper has robbed the visuals of their jewel-like colour, the font selection is questionable, and the binding gave way in my second reading of the book. Girders too weak to support its imposing superstructure, Lie flounders because of faulty design.

All these things can be fixed in a future edition or a future work. More worthy of investigation is the nature of collaboration between Bhatia and the three artists. In an interview with DNA (April 11th 2010), Bhatia explained, “ I wanted a graphic style that can pack in a lot of information and detailing in one panel. The miniaturists are known for this…I ended up sketching some of the drawings myself eventually and then got them to improvise. They had never worked on a graphic novel before. I had to convince them to draw frames that showed movement.”

This could pass off as an innocuous planning detail – many a writer does actively engage with the artist in the storyboarding process – but it takes on a different significance when you consider the distinctive art form that the artists Bhatia collaborated with, are well-versed in.

While reading Lie, it is a cinch to identify panels where the artists are in their comfort zone, and where they aren’t. Hastiness and lack of detail marks certain visuals and seems to be at odds with the meticulous sensibility of any of the various Indian schools of miniature art (this probably has something to do with the large number of images a graphic novel demands). Alien visual devices (such as foreshortening and perspective) imposed upon a traditionally ‘flat’ art form make for some stiltedness. There is, too, a palpable awkwardness in the matchbox-sized continuity panels that feature close-ups and don’t offer the artists an opportunity to work in any whimsical details, backgrounds, or landscapes. One wonders about what the three artists (conspicuous by their absence at the venue of the book release), whose work usually deals with imagery from the Mahabharat and Ramayan, felt about the scores of raunchy images and pop-references commissioned for Lie. Do they see the book as a celebration of their work, or as a subversion of it?

The strongest pages in Lie are the ones where Bhatia allows the artists run of the space – the banquet hall and conference room scenes, the cross section of the aircraft, the chillingly beautiful double spread depicting farmer suicides – and uses text sparingly. Interestingly, it is these very pages where Bhatia’s prose most effectively and confidently shines through. One longs for more open courtyards in Bhatia’s work, more visual respite, a script that was written for a graphic novel rather than adapted to become one. One also longs for more adventurous books such as this one.

Lie: A Traditional Tale of Modern India
Text: Gautam Bhatia
Illustrations: Shankar Lal Bhopa, Birju Lal Bhopa, Ghanshyam
Tranquebar/ Westland (2010)
Rs. 295
ISBN: 9380283739

This review was written for the August 2010 issue of Biblio

Freedom to What

2010-08-15T23:44:00.009+05:30

Body of words, honey sitting inside a rock

2010-08-11T18:08:00.006+05:30

Cover image for the forthcoming issue of Biblio - the overarching theme of this issue being memoir, biography.

Unbroken Lineage of Storytellers

2010-07-27T19:47:00.011+05:30

'When I open my mouth, you will hear the echo of storytellers past'
© Amruta Patil 2010

Front cover image for the forthcoming issue of the International PEN magazine, UK. The theme? 'Words, words, nothing but words'.

'Done Waiting for Godot

2010-07-22T18:06:00.040+05:30

Indifference and superspecialization - two indulgences we simply cannot afford anymore. It's not either vanishing species or withering rivers or food we eat or eroding indigenous wisdom or the kind of architecture we embrace or melting icecaps or overthrowing dunces-in-confederacy or the kind of learning we subject children to or endangered good manners. It is everything.

Concerted large revolutions need to give way to extremely personal about-turns in innumerable extremely personal worlds. Less crisis of leadership then, no meetings to co-ordinate, no unaccounted-for donation cheques, no need for logo tee shirts and screen-printed flyers. Easier follow-up and visible result. A manageable (yet unstoppable!) revolution.

So. Fewer Facebook groups that gather lazy numbers in the flick of a forefinger. Fewer email forwards that lead to a gasp and no follow-up. Just each person to herself. Every fixed tap counts, every refused plastic bag, every shampoo bottle replaced with shikakai powder, every bird bath on every terrace, every thoughtful purchase, every act of humility and kindness. As much as one single personal-person can manage (and an acknowledgment of what one can't). Starting with me. That's all.

Unsightly cows, dogs, people to be packed off

2010-07-21T14:05:00.020+05:30

To read the entire article click here. Let us evict everything but buildings and everyone but jocks, let us pave every inch of this glorious city in concrete and walk upon it in sport shoes. What was once on the realm of 'tomfoolery' is now enough to make one sick to the stomach.

It is time, I must go

2010-07-08T05:14:00.006+05:30

Rough layout, Parva/ Book of Queens © Amruta Patil 2010

Last Parva/The Epic preview for a while to come. Thank you for timely things - upbraiding, encouragement, temporal-world support and prayer.

Single frame

2010-07-07T05:37:00.002+05:30

From Parva/ Book of Queens © Amruta Patil 2010

Give thanks for the ones who can't be owned

2010-06-21T06:23:00.004+05:30

Quote from a book that must surely qualify as 'essential reading'

2010-05-24T15:07:00.012+05:30

"One thought alone preoccupies the submerged mind of Empire: how not to end, how not to die, how to prolong its era. By day it pursues its enemies. It is cunning and ruthless, it sends its bloodhounds everywhere. By night it feeds on images of disaster: the sack of cities, the rape of populations, pyramids of bones, acres of desolation."
~ from J.M. Coetzee's 'Waiting for the Barbarians'

Steroid-crazed Vishnu, toxic Ananta Sheshnag

2010-05-23T15:55:00.053+05:30

Thank you, JP, for drawing my attention to this horror. And for pointing out its shameless resemblance to *this*. Face of unmitigated evil, that 'Vishnu' above, with 'Anant Sheshnag' hovering behind him like the hood of death itself. I hope, without much conviction, that what lies inside the book is an improvement over this artwork. If it isn't enough that so many of us (including yours truly) keep regurgitating the timeless, increasingly we kowtow to the 'glorious aesthetic tradition' of DC Comics and video games. How else, in most peoples' programmed minds, can strength and control be depicted? Finding - and retaining - a honest visual/verbal voice is such a nonstop test of courage and conviction.

In contrast with the image above, here (image below) is sweetness itself. I'd trust the 'divinity' of smiling, relaxed androgyny over the claims of an alpha male nutcase any day. And no, the feminist in me does not have an aneurysm at the thought of Lakshmi massaging Vishnu's feet. A loving, deeply generous thing to do - genders notwithstanding. To serve is not the same thing as to be servile!

Topography of the Fool's Journey

2010-05-22T03:29:00.003+05:30

Returning water to the earth

2010-05-18T20:00:00.002+05:30

Parva - Book of Queens © Amruta Patil 2010

Cannot. Ignore.

2010-05-06T20:58:00.010+05:30

April 2010 Special Issue. Only English magazine at the news stand, and it had to be this. *Reinforcement of April's concerns*.

Public, like a Frog

2010-04-24T17:43:00.002+05:30

Been posting feverishly on public forums in the last few days - something that serious-minded friends balk at. As the highly perceptive R pointed out (in not so many words) - why wear a cloyingly earnest heart on a very public sleeve? One supposes it is so that stray kindred souls will recognize the process, perhaps benefit from the floundering and discoveries of another, perhaps feel more reassured about being misfits in a world full of smooth operators and blind bats.

Public missives left out by wise and slowly-wisening inhabitants of the WWW jungle are the last fistful of seeds scattered by the roadside. Most of the seeds will die parched and ignored, some will be eaten by birds, one or two will take root. The larger nursery is in another, more private place, but one has great faith in serendipity - having benefited from it oneself too many times to count. I salute you, tenacious scatterers of good quality seed.

This public talkativeness is also directly connected with the sun being so directly overhead right now. Soon it will be time to retreat again and do something more useful than talking to a faceless-world-at-large.
*
Was introduced to a slender booklet by a friend who has great timing with these things. A paragraph in it seemed particularly to resonate with my own reasons for being unable to repeat the sort of dark work I have done in the past. It will actually be a marvel if I live to write anything permanent and printed again. Anyway, I quote from the booklet:

'The next morning when I woke from sleep and looked around, I felt that everything I saw was beautiful. Everything, even the most unbeautiful detail, was beautiful. I was in a state of awe. The hut itself was a crude structure, not beautiful by anyone's standards, but it looked to me like a palace. The scrubby looking trees outside looked like a most beautiful forest. Sunbeams were streaming through the window onto a plastic dish, and the plastic dish looked beautiful!

The sense of beauty stayed with me for about a week, and then reflecting on it I suddenly realized that that's the way things really are when the mind is clear. Up to that time I'd been looking through a dirty window, and over the years I'd become so used to the scum and dirt on the window that I didn't realize it was dirty, I'd thought that's the way it was.'

Page 38-39
Now is the Knowing
Ajahn Sumedho

Two April Tales

2010-04-21T23:20:00.005+05:30

motherly sentient beings

2010-04-19T21:34:00.018+05:30

sunrise via water, 19th april 2010

Standing on the road divider, looking at throbbing traffic, the teacher says, "Every one of these people has been your mother in a past life." The idea makes me laugh at first - eyes scan one disgruntled car-sheathed person after another - and then the idea chills me to the marrow. Take every one of these unlikely loutish mustachioed heads into one's lap with gratitude. A very real 'risk' with this vein of thought - you could implode with gentleness, have your eyes permanently transformed.

parched river

2010-04-16T13:11:00.000+05:30

varanasi, 1st april 2010
photo: amruta patil

Hermitage, Part 2

2010-03-27T10:43:00.044+05:30

Early in her aspirant life - when the process is completely internalized and outside wisdom has not yet been sought - she is like a toddler in its Terrible Twos. Response to almost everything the immediate world has to offer is, "No". No, don't want to come along, can't eat this, won't love like that, amn't impressed. No, thank you. "No".

She learns what she doesn't want a long while before she learns what she does want. It will be a while before she can even articulate the difference. As for being able to guide other Terrible Twos - that is eons away. As also is the trading of the defensive "No" and prickly layman intensity for the playfulness that real enlightenment brings.

Her litany of "No" is inconvenient for others. Flow with us, they say. Don't be difficult, flow. No, she says. No. What was 'inconvenient' then becomes 'funny'. "Such an eccentric!" Then it becomes infuriating. "So arrogant!" Then it becomes intolerable. Ultimate dismissal: "She has lost it."

*The newly sane closely resemble the deeply neurotic*. Both experience a reality that isn't shared by the majority. The newly sane are as fragile as people that have been pulled out of a serious car wreck - safe body of their old life now fractured, broken, decimated. Willfully violent and courageous, it's only Step 1. Step 2, resurrection, needs more than brute force. It needs time, it needs the skillful intervention of people more resolved than oneself, and it needs great fortune. We have seen the pinched-up horrors of sloppy sutures and bad surgery. As for great fortune - maggots will make home in an open wound more surely than healing poultice will - thus, blessed are the broken that find intelligent healing.

Until sinews repair, bones realign, scar tissue forms, and lessons settle in - nothing is more necessary than safe refuge, safe hands. Hermitage until one can shed the fear and persecution complex; and generate enough tapas* to bring light back to the same world one forsook. There's a good reason why young initiates are asked to spend upward of half a decade in a monastery before they're ready to interact with the larger world.

* Tapas (तपस) : Sanskrit for 'heat'. In yogic tradition, 'essential energy' - a focused effort towards bodily purification and spiritual enlightenment.

Gardening 101

2010-03-21T00:07:00.011+05:30

First sutradhaar

2010-03-12T14:01:00.016+05:30

Parva/the epic, Book of Queens © Amruta Patil 2010

To love a hermit

2010-03-04T10:01:00.018+05:30

Parva/The Epic, © Amruta Patil 2010

Art Review

2010-02-26T10:19:00.009+05:30

This 2-pager, distilled from the 24-hour comic book marathon work, will appear in the March issue of Art Review magazine, UK - along with a profile by Paul Gravett.

Aqueous Tales

2010-02-20T01:40:00.008+05:30

Appearing soon in the anthology 'Water Stories from Around the World' (96 pages, hardcover, Tulika), my story 'House of Sun and Moon'. Aimed at children, the book features water myths from the world over, adapted by various writers, 'highlighting the intrinsic and timeless relationship all living things have with water'.

'So let man consider of what he is created:
He is created of water pouring forth.'
From the Qur'an

24 hour comic book marathon

2010-01-27T02:27:00.024+05:30

Media: Crayon, ink, collage with found images
© Amruta Patil 2010

24 hours, 24 pages; with no opportunity to rework, or use text. (The latter being the source of some awkwardness). Surprise clause was to necessarily include pirates in the tale. *Click here to see the images upclose*.

Cent pour Cent (100 for 100)

2010-01-24T23:59:00.006+05:30

100 comic book authors from around the world, 100 original artworks in unique coupling - one author's work being an ode to a beloved other. Image above is from the press release. On view 28th Jan - 28th March 2010 at the Museum of Comics, Angouleme, France. For more information: http://www.citebd.org/spip.php?article568

Closing the loop

2010-01-21T08:50:00.001+05:30

Concluding episode of Babel Fish, First City Magazine © Amruta Patil 2010

Hermitage, Part 1

2010-01-18T00:15:00.043+05:30

On leaving the quiet place - the retreat, as it were. It doesn't matter where the quiet place was; it doesn't matter which metropolis one returns to - the result is still shell shock. Sounds have amplified, as have the smells, speeds, the frantic paths woven by people making their way from one suspect engagement to another. Kabir says the city will be uninhabitable in 20 years. This city, any city. I'd say a lot sooner.

Two evenings in a row, I enter the coffee shop were I used to pose every day in writerly affectation. Just to check. 'Cannot even sit down, let alone consume anything. The body slides past people inconspicuously, speaks infrequently and in low voice, seeks not much more than hibernation and a home-cooked meal. To a careless observer, newly sane would look a lot like deeply neurotic.

Other things are on course, though, and make perfect sense. The pantheon, the mountains, the paintbox one sits with every day. Eclipse that shows through dense fog. Strident barbets in the jamun tree. Mindfully kneaded dough. Ascetics - endangered species - who live more simply than one could dare to imagine. Nothing is harder than simple.

Red Rivers

2010-01-07T18:43:00.009+05:30

Painting tests, Parva/The Epic, © Amruta Patil 2010
On display at La Maison des Auteurs, Angouleme from 26th Jan-26th Feb 2010

Rivalries, Curses

2010-01-03T22:12:00.014+05:30

painting tests, parva/the epic, © amruta patil 2009

Back with the old Parva/The Epic style from 2003 - layer upon layer upon layer. Hope for unwavering blessings and stacks of old magazines to cut up.

Plotline / How Sex Lost It

2009-12-15T04:16:00.023+05:30

a story about the collective fixation. dealing with all my favourite themes again (certain character on a certain snake even makes a cameo appearance). assuredly, i have no future writing erotica.

'pure world' color tests

2009-12-13T16:47:00.025+05:30

this is the personal mountain one climbs every day - some days one slips all the way down, some days one presses forward in precious inches. if i'm ever to complete this work, will need to shed several skins first. how hard to paint without heavy handedly sullying the palette, without slipping into the easy impactfulness of edgy. how hard not to seek graphic solace in distorting and 'stylizing' human forms.

i look at my old work and shudder at ghoulishness that peeps out from behind the very best of intent. beauty loses currency in the visual/verbal world; while to spit, tear, deposit your innards, or wrap your old wad of gum in paper becomes avant-garde. who are we fooling, and why.

Vasuki relented, and the churning began

2009-12-09T23:29:00.005+05:30

Pomegranate and pink mountain

2009-11-26T16:58:00.013+05:30

pomegranate from tea cup. pink mountain from parva/the epic

Cud

2009-11-21T02:47:00.005+05:30

even a wristwatch-free year will inch toward winter

2009-11-01T21:57:00.004+05:30

angoulême trees opt for monochrome austerity again. the sky will have nonesuch.

Sterile

2009-10-25T23:14:00.000+05:30

this is what we do. take a living body, sanitize it. fight to fumigate lifestyle off it. erase all olfactory cues of good health and compatibility. then we sterilize it - wilfully, chemically. do our cells complain about the treachery - about how many potentially pointless biological encounters surround us? does it make it impossible to trust our instinct about who we like, who we don't? does it make it necessary to serially disengage after engaging? having been wakened once, one can smell the deception - imposters smelling like a bouquet of flowers, flowers foolishly slathering themselves in unguent and deodorant.

As Icarus

2009-10-19T17:21:00.010+05:30

in the name of the mother

2009-09-19T23:31:00.003+05:30

storyboard and other mountains

2009-09-14T16:08:00.015+05:30

self-doubt is useful, but the opposite of being puppishly gung-ho is being paralysed by inaction. i am cautioned at every step - why this, who are you, what is new, do you have the eyes, the content matter is too trodden, impractical, risky. the questions are valid, of course. they do the essential - slow me down, shake off smugness, keep greed at bay. most skepticism, though, is of the idle variety - dismissal and little else. the other kind - far rarer - comes with a key of hope in its hand. fire may only be guarded by the worthy - it is no one's to own.

breaking the egg before time

2009-09-03T19:13:00.009+05:30

There lay Vinata's son Arun, strong of chest and unformed of legs. For her impatience, he cursed her to five hundred years of slavery - until such a day that the one of golden feathers set her free.

unbearable heaviness of joint palms

2009-08-22T20:47:00.040+05:30

have drawn dozens of characters for Parva like the one above, arms folded at elbow, palms joint in 'namaste' (नमः ते i honour you) - many of them with their head bowed, body language supposedly soft with submission and humility. after a recent visit to a gurukul, though, one thing becomes clear - my drawings are patently unsincere. am such an unbendy hamster - it's incredibly hard, impossible even, to pull off a single such display with any degree of sincerity. needless to say, 'namaste auntyji, hello uncleji' brand of flyaway gestures merit no headcount. unless i fix something closer home - what feeling, what रस could i possibly bring into the work?

nombrilists

2009-08-17T02:43:00.013+05:30

Guilty, guilty, guilty as charged. And the sweetness of this being on a blog called Umbilical.

between worlds

2009-08-02T02:58:00.003+05:30

reptilian mother, avian mother

2009-08-02T02:33:00.022+05:30

Kadru was soon surrounded by her brood, while Vinata's wait was to be a long one

feet

2009-07-29T01:29:00.017+05:30

loaded dice and abrasions

2009-07-27T10:08:00.008+05:30

seated scribe

2009-07-17T04:00:00.004+05:30

anatomy of excess

2009-07-16T15:24:00.002+05:30

Jerky, premature excerpt from the novel-in-eternal-progress, '1999'
First appeared in Tehelka (Fiction special issue on the theme of 'excess')
Text and image © Amruta Patil, December 2008

feast

2009-07-16T04:08:00.006+05:30

a family album

2009-07-15T13:31:00.007+05:30

Retrieved this from cyber-oblivion. A short graphic tale I wrote/drew during the 24 hour comic marathon (La Maison des Auteurs, Angouleme, France) in January 2008. Ideological hiccups and rough edges (and there are more than a few) must be forgiven - there was no time for rewrite or second thought.

notes from the trenches

2009-07-03T02:26:00.009+05:30

Text and Image: Amruta Patil
www.mindfields.in

timekeeping

2009-06-27T18:57:00.006+05:30

it's perfectly understandable why time stands still in provence
photo: amruta patil

solstice

2009-06-25T19:43:00.002+05:30

how the garden grows

2009-06-18T21:27:00.007+05:30

storyboarding 'Parva/The Epic' on sturdy, discarded wallpaper

Saint-Ex and Gauri

2009-06-16T15:54:00.010+05:30

There are people who have had mysteriously bountiful reading lives – in places that had bookstores, and bookstores that had all the books required to stir a soul and nurture a worldview. My own early memory of beloved books is marked by a fugitive air - longing, occasional thievery, but never guilt – for a beloved is never stolen, just rescued from one place to a worthier other.

How far would you go for That One Book? And, in extension, for That One Writer? Pretty damn far. Over the years, I have stolen John Steinbeck’s ‘Burning Bright’ from Peanuts Circulating Library; hidden copies of Rainer Maria Rilke’s ‘Letters to a Young Poet’ in odd corners of bookstores so that they may not be touched by unworthy paws. I have encoded Jeanette Winterson’s ‘The Passion’ into my first graphic novel’s blood. But it was Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s ‘Little Prince’ that was the first among such loves – First Book among those that ought be guarded close to the heart, transported inside one’s shirt.

‘Little Prince’ fell into my life in 1991, when I was twelve.
It was in the Naval Officers Library in Goa, where it had been erroneously filed away in the Under-7 bookshelf – presumably on account of its slimness (who dare take such slimness seriously?) and the drawings of sheep, planets, and an elephant inside a boa constrictor. 1991 predated the time when I could make glib synopses of my emotional state. What was sufficiently clear was that the fox, the rose, the snake and Saint-Exupéry knocked the wind out of me. I borrowed the book eight times over before the librarian coldly informed me that I could squat on it no longer and really it was time my parents bought me a copy of my own.

Easier said than done. The local bookstore drew a blank.
I did not, however, need to steal my copy of the ‘Little Prince’. Instead, the indulgent parents helped me put together a homegrown version of it. Baba got the book photocopied. Where the photocopy machine’s ink had given up, I hand-drew and handwrote the content. Mom sewed the spine on her Singer machine – with a plastic sheet protecting the cover. And thus was made permanent and proprietary, Little Prince’s place in my life.

Saint-Exupéry’s most fierce gift is that of brevity – with word, and with drawing. There is also an unquestionable synchronicity between the written and drawn – something that has permanently influenced my own relationship with text and words. ‘Perfection is achieved,’ wrote Saint-Exupéry, ‘not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.’ The text is tightly coiled, whittled away of all surplus word and emotion. The illustrations, watercolours by the author himself, have the same purposefulness and simplicity. Who amongst us hasn’t known a rose that revealed her single thorn to prove how strong she was? Who amongst us hasn’t churned with the knowledge that you become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed?

I am not a foreword person. What reason could there possibly be to unravel a writer and his purpose before one unravels the painstaking content of his work? I have always had a clear mental image of Saint-Exupéry - loner in the cockpit of an airplane, the man of stormy loves and deep wisdom – but our acquaintance has been a slow one. Over the years, I have gone on to read his other writing, the aviation books, and his wife Consuelo’s autobiography ‘Mémoires de la rose’, published more than half a century after his death. "He wasn't like other people," Consuelo wrote, "but like a child or an angel who has fallen down from the sky."

This year I find myself in Saint-Exupéry’s land – South of France with its divine roses; the city of Lyon, where he was born; the pristine sea off Corsica where his P38 Lightning crashed during a reconnaissance flight. I also have me a blemishless store-bought copy of ‘Le Petit Prince’ – so I may read the words as they sounded in the author’s mind. All of which is good – but these are frills; sighs of recognition, not exclamation marks. The real bond – between stricken twelve-year-old and the long-dead French aviator – was forged with a photocopied book years ago.
*
First published in the writers' favourites special issue of 'First City', June 2009

Conversing with Sfar

2009-06-03T15:25:00.015+05:30

Top: Page 9, The Rabbi's Cat by Joann Sfar

The image is to be part of the exhibition '100 pour 100' in the New Museum of Comic Art, Angouleme, January 2010. Artists 'converse' with the work of artists they love. Good to have got a chance to 'talk' to a beloved book...

Stone

2009-05-19T16:18:00.011+05:30

2009-05-10T00:08:00.004+05:30

Love in Rennes le Chateau

2009-05-08T20:50:00.005+05:30

Cathar refuge, Peyrepertuse; Roadside poppies, Cahors

Germ

2009-04-29T19:58:00.024+05:30

the 1918 spanish flu virus, wikipedia

an invincible april - splendid weather, william shakespeare's 400th birthday, london marathon - was checked in its golden tracks by news of the piggy virus. people on the metro who glean all wisdom from free tabloids learn of a Possible Pandemic. soon a sneezing person will be given hostility, not tissue paper. soon we will jump out of our skins like scaredy cats until the media medusa chooses to distract us with the next lascivious tidbit.

they play with us every now and then, do microbes. whittle away at our numbers and at our cockiness, remind us that we are a colony of cohabiting cells. the spaniards' smallpox unravelled the Incas faster than their swords ever could. but guerrilla microbes have surely strengthened civilisations as well. when you move into my town, you bring along your life, belongings, skills, memories, and microbes with you. when i move into your town, i eat off your land, i share of my being, i increase your immunity. each to the other is possibly life, possibly learning, possibly nothing, possibly a pandemic.

London, Golden

2009-04-20T01:30:00.005+05:30

Photos: Amruta Patil

shaant charente

2009-04-17T19:44:00.010+05:30

sans color-correction, angouleme
photo: luke haokip, 2009