Poetry in a Signature

I saw this today in the new Time magazine and realized that our President is also an artist. The lyrical B, the creative use of the line dissecting the O to start the b in Obama.. I am no handwriting expert, but I can recognize a singing line when I see one. My admiration for the man was kicked up another notch. I wonder when he perfected it, while he was a kid, a preteen, growing up in Indonesia, or in Hawaii, when? How many transformations did it go through? Lucky to be a man, and not have to change your signature along with your last name at a rite of passage.

At some time while growing up you realize that your signature is important. You see your dad signing checks, your leave-of-absence notes, your report cards.

You watch him as his pen hovers over paper, his hand trembles before the nib touches it, even though he is in his thirties, and will continue to tremble as he grows older and you grow wiser. You show your brother how you can duplicate your father's signature, flourish for flourish, underline for underline, dot for dot. Not that you ever use this skill, it's just that you have it, and you know it.

You try to develop your own signature, becaue one day you will have to use it, and it had better be good, since it is going to be on everything 'REALLY IMPORTANT'.

So you toil over it: shall I write my full name and my full last name, or my full name and the initial of my last name, or my first initial and my last name, or just my initials, or maybe my nickname? that would be neat, and pretty intriguing

Legend has it that S.H.F.J. Maneckshaw signed his name as Field Marshal, just that. He was the only Field Marshal of the Indian Army at that time, that's why.

Artist M. F. Husain signs his name in different scripts, and I loved that idea. I could read the Gujrati, the Bangla and of course the Devnagari.

Finally you settle for full first name and last name. You practise and perfect it, and distill it down to one you love: the one that starts and ends in one continuous line. The underline and two dots are for flourish and effect: like you father's signature.

You use that for a few years, on "really important" documents including opening your first bank account and signing your first check.

Like the artist you admire, you develop one more for your paintings: one that looks like sticks stacked, mimicking an oriental script.

Before long you are married and have to change it all over again, only this time your last name is really long, so you shorten your signature to two initials and last name. End of story.

The Face at the Window: A Short Story

Last week we watched a Diwali magazine on DVD, the first of its kind...One of the features was a documentary on Anandvan, and Baba Amte, its founder. There are no words to describe his dedication and drive to bring meaning and worth to leprosy patients and handicapped and blind people. People who had not just lost their limbs, their faces and eyes, but their will to live.

For years, my childhood friend has bought all her greeting cards from Anandvan. I have posted this link here, for everyone to view the cards, and especially to view the work done by Baba Amte. I admit I haven't yet purchased the cards, but I am doing it.
I have memories of recoil and horror at seeing bodies and faces robbed of the familiar angles and ends. Baba Amte lifted the curtain of fear of this disease, by educating the public about it being bacterial and treatable.
This is a story I wrote years ago : it may seem familiar to some.

The Face at the Window

The bus is crawling laboriously along the road, heaving to speed, slowing down, jerking at turns, with its bursting load of people. It is Sunday, late afternoon, and there are people everywhere. On the roads, everyone seems to be going somewhere, anywhere. Inside, people squash into the aisles, between seats, women “ adjust” three seats for two, with children in laps, between knees, plastered to windows, wound around the vertical bars running from floor to ceiling. Men, their bodies flattened against one another, keep their gazes steadfastly out of the bus.

Outside, the sun is harsh and blinding, its light glaring angrily on tar roads, tin roofs, gaudy clothes. After the mild months, the heat has come to stay. It permeates everywhere, along the aisle, between bodies, through clothes, entering our very pores.

I, who am making the trip to finish an important errand, wonder why people leave the coolness of their homes at all.

A little boy is crying for a window. His harassed mother pushes him between the aisle bar and a seat. He gets stuck between a pair of knees, and then is obligingly pushed further across another pair of knees to the window; on reaching which he immediately is lost in the world of the outside.

Luckily, I am seated near a window, through which trickles in a thin current of air, and I don’t envy the passengers in the aisle seats, whose shoulders support the weight of those standing leaning against them.

A mass of humanity waits ahead at the bus stop, and the bus, leaning heavily on one side, lumbers to the edge of the road and stops. With it stops the breeze.

People attack it at both doors. Some, who go to one, not finding room enough, run to the other. Men, women, children, fall over one another to get an inch, a foothold. There is a cackling and frenzy not quite human. Concerned relative’s push them safely inside, and then come to the windows, embarking upon a long series of farewells and goodwill messages for those back home.

Someone taps urgently on the tinwork below my window. Instinctively, I look outside to see a good-looking, well-dressed young man smiling at me. His hair is well combed, his nose sharp, his moustache trimmed. His shirt is clean. But I cannot recall ever meeting him.

Albeit with a frown of mistrust, I try to place him. Quickly he raises his hands for me to see. I recoil. The remains of his fingers stare horridly at me, gaping with gray-green stubs, like inward-pointing arrows, the beginning of a journey of decay. Bodies with flattened noses and stumpy limbs dance before my eyes.

Indian Express, Madras, Wednesday, August 14, 1985

Original sketch for The Outsider

"Outsider" in Stir-Fry Cafe

The manager wanted me to take charge of my paintings that they brought down after the new ones went up since there wasn't a safe spot to store them. Stir-Fry cafe is an hour plus drive from home and I wanted to be there during off business hours so that the customers wouldn't be disturbed, but time was of essence, and so here I am, on Valentine's Day evening, the busiest night for the restaurant, waiting to pick up my paintings, among everyone else waiting for a table.

The wait-staff and maitre d' were extremely cooperative and took the pictures that I wanted, since I couldn't have gone inside without being obtrusive (and to add it all I was in sari and all!)

So here it is: The Outsider, looking on an outdoor cafe, while being housed in an indoor one! Wait, Stir-Fry cafe does have an outdoor section, except it's hard to think of it now when it is so cold.

Three stages of a painting and giving it a title: The Outsider

The IBM doublespread ad in the Wall Street Journal had me sufficiently fascinated to want to do something.. First of all I wanted to be in that spot, Park Guell Barcelona, with a laptop, like that dude. I got my laptop, and I have now acted upon the inspiration from that picture.

Here you can see the first stage of my painting, ,when I drew just the balcony and the girl. Then I drew a pelican diagonally across from the girl, but somehow the proportions were wrong.

So I got rid of the pelican and added a dreamy seascape in the background.Again, the realistic notes of the background, and the fantasy elements of the foreground didn't match. The sea and mountains had to be changed, the background had seemed cut off from the rest of the picture, so I connected them all with the patterned river and the Arc de Triomphe-like structures across the hills.

Carried it squished in my van (the piece is 57" x 57") and hung it at Stir-Fry in Turkey Creek.

Imagine my delight to note that the distance between the crown molding and the top of the booths is exactly that much.

Will post pictures of how it looks in the restaurant soon.

Should have taken one instantly after it went up. Anyway.

Changing Light Bulbs

When we were in India, most of the bulbs were energy saving, cool white, fluorescent tubes. They rarely even had covers, and we all felt bright, energetic and enthusiastic even when evening came and night fell soon after. For the few months that we lived in Veraval, I felt dull and depressed in the evenings for no reason at all, apparently, till I realized that the kitchen and living room didn't have any "tubelights" but "yellow" bulbs. When we were kids, my brother and I had hated those things, and when we would visit homes of people who burned them instead of tubelights, we got headaches and eye pain.
After moving to the US I observed that yellow bulbs were in fact the norm, and not the exception, like the sole one I had at home inside a Pondicherry paper shade. In fact here in the US, tubelights were supposed to be industrial lighting, and in homes I saw them very rarely, and only in kitchens. Needless to say, I have been dull and depressed for eleven years. ELEVEN years! Till the new president came along and made tubelights seem cool. By the way, he also carries a Hanuman amulet, which probably endeared him a lot to many fellow Indians or fellows of Indian origin, and has also picked out a guy named Rahm whose name can be pronounced as Ram.
Back to the tubelights: After several trials with various fluorescent bulbs, some of which "burned the corneas" of our son, and some of which only lit up the space directly below them, we found the ones which may work. They come in packs of two, so dear hubby changed only two out of three on the island fixture till I was completely sure...
I am now, and our kitchen glows in the dark, literally.
I can now paint till midnight, and not have to guess at the colors.

What's new now: Making books and journals!

These are the books and journals I have been making, or trying my hand at, these last few days.



This one I had seen at an exhibition, and was intrigued by the way it folded into a small square. (See second picture).
I wanted to buy the book to figure out how it was folded, but my problem-solving husband assured me that he'd "got it" and in fact he had. So now I have got it too.

This one I learned online. It's a book you make with a post-it pad. It looks very cute, and you don't feel like using those post-it's.

This one was before I "got"the first one, and it turned out to look intriguing itself! In fact I now like it more than the other one, so I have named it Diamond Surprise! It can be hung up like an ornament.

You can use anything you find around the house to make your book cover. Then add a few blank pages and you have a unique book. I made this one using found objects. A pair of handles from a paper bag, the backing from a picture frame, a trinket, gold wire, and left over paper from the class.

This one I made at a bookmaking class I took. I wonder if I will be able to recreate that binding, but if I stare at it long enough, it will surely come back to me. Otherwise, there is always the problem-solver!

Another one from the class, I put a twist on the binding by adding some glass beads.

More to follow, as I keep trying!