It is a watershed day and year,
2024 a gift of tears
Of Joy
When you come full circle.
To pause….
To allow…
And know
You were meant to soar.
Your soul is set free.….
Your canvas enriched,
As you connect your core
To reflect on the bigger door.
Gratitude.
As exhausted lungs deeply exhale,
Anything you may owe,
And find that you inhale,
Oxygen.
You were meant ‘To Be.’
Stay Kind
How do you sum up a year that has been a learning, an ongoing discovery that kindness to self is the root? The prayer recited at the start of Mass is ‘I Confess’. An acknowledgement wherein we take charge of what we have done and more importantly failed to do at the community gathering. Christianity is not an easy religion to practise and for that matter, if we were really following the essence of ‘Religion’ the world would be a less troubled place. The ‘Merry’ in Christmas is an anomaly to a celebration of a child born in a manger. Do you take the path that comes with the discomfort of standing up to social conventions that buy convenient status quo? Of enablers, beneficiaries, and naysayers or those who chose to stay silent. A hard note to reflect on. Stay Kind and begin with yourself.
For 2025, I wish that we live the Art of Being Alive, KINDLY. And that Religion is not a Craft but stems from the deep belief that goodness is not a label. It’s a way of Life.
Making Art Your Religion
I’m driven by this Art Absorption. If someone takes me for a drive they end up in at least two art galleries. In the exact two hours of reaching and returning from downtown. The conversation was interesting but I will reserve it and share the relevant takeaway. It has to be gratitude to those who have been your pillars, staying true and allowing for kindness to yourself, through thick and thin.
How to Kill a Bully with Kindness
Gurjeet Singh’s soft Sculptures were on my list from the November ANT (Art Night Thursday) inaugural day and I made it to the closing. It wears the craft of patchwork from discarded textiles in a quirky lexicon. The shape and form of the magnified head and stub body are diminutive to the giant eye orbs. Their expression protrudes the pain of the protagonist.
Atyan and Shireen Gandhy’s ‘Chemould Collab’ has the essence of talented young artists who have transcended their practice to reflect the social fabric nailing it with a language of their own. The transparency of a generation that expresses what GenX swept under the proverbial carpet with muffled noises and abstraction. The sculptures mirrored in Gouache colour on Wasli Paper are a refreshing take on an essential statement that can be a turning point for sensitive living.
As a kid, I was shy and perhaps thought I was not as good as the extraordinary performers I was surrounded by. What altered my existence was the two days when my Grade 3 & 4 Class teacher was on leave. She kept the girl who ended in our class from the earlier batches as a Monitor. My name, like most of the class, was on the board on both days including the first day when I was absent from school. The pandemonium brought in the school principal. The next day, the teacher who must have been rebuked came with a board that said: “I Am A Talking Donkey”. She decided from the Board cramped with names I would wear this board strung around my neck and instructed the Monitor to escort me to each class and be masqueraded. The girl dutifully and gleefully did so explaining the parade to each class teacher. The other classes were paused while I was viewed, cringing inside, waiting for the 6 pm closing bell while every minute hung. I wonder how I managed, looking at her play with her loose locks sitting on her high chair, till the year’s end.
What Matters
You could be a life changer for someone or be part of the closet of someone who suffocated because of your inaction or actions. I often mulled walking up to her and telling her how it is fresh as ever in my memory (These were the days when you did not come home and tell your parents, you just showed up the next day). It made me shrink into a shell. How do you deal with actions that have impacted you so deeply? It takes a lot of effort to deal with such. Make your peace with those who live in denial, distort reality and move on as if nothing happened. You would be blessed if they own up, acknowledge and be fortunate if they redeem the situation. If not they are your learning lessons. It’s not your burden to carry and seek validation, “Get your clarity and Let Go. Release them with Kindness.”
This was my reflection as I looked at those beautiful stuffed expressions.
Man in the Middle
Befittingly Nityan Unnikrishnan’s showing at Mort & Tara’s ‘Chatterjee & Lal” is what we are adept seeing yet unseeing. Here is an artist who is like a drone that captures micro happenings within the main frame. While you ponder as to where does one painting frame ends, you discover the multiple dimensions of the same canvas. He ties these observations like a tailor bird and you are drawn to the curatorial conclusion that Light is not the Source of the Window.
You scout the many figures in the sub canvas of his paintings ’The Other Room’, “Light Comes In’,’Frankfurt School’ and The Gig. It’s almost as if you can gauge the emotion through the back view of Nityan’s characters. My favourite was his capture of the beach cramped with sea bathers, some doing yoga and every activity possible in the space of the mat facing the sea. ‘All I Think of is Growing Old With You’ is bereft of humans but their presence can be felt in the objects strewn in one corner of the otherwise well-ordered room. Clearly, his black and whites are as engaging. It is as if you are invited to speculate, and for that, curator Sampurna Chatterji exhorts you to levitate or at times stand on your head to view the inverted figures.
2024 Closure with Gratitude
I am inspired by the grit and giving of one who turns 85 this week. Her frugal living and capacity to rise beyond the mundane has been an empowering anchor in my journey of Let Go, Let Live. The capacity to respect and accept you as you are to embrace your growth in the circle of life is what matters. 2025, I am done with a lot of learning this year, but approach you, open to the wealth that lies ahead. Let the Continuum begin!