One of the things of being a parent is that you have to spend time with your kids. Lucky for you if they are entertaining. As in years past, our tornado still takes forever to eat a meal so I use the time to draw. It’s great to have a living breathing human being at close quarters to draw from! Between mouthfuls, we chat.
Sometime in August I was making notes for my DesignUp talk, and thinking about “belonging” when Orin chimed in:
“You belong to your parents, but you live with us!”
“Do you know centipedes lived in the time of dinosaurs?”
Here we were discussing our best movies/TV shows of 2022. The brown boy chose Better Call Saul, while mine was Dune, and the tornado chose Sonic the Hedgehog 2.
We took an overnight train from Cairo and went to Aswan. From there, a felucca took us to Kato Dool, a resort in a Nubian village. On the way the felucca broke down in the backwaters of the Nile (sketch below) but luckily all the crocodiles in the Nile had either been mummified or left out in Sudan.
There was a wedding going on in the Nubian village that night and it was rather crowded. The brown boy almost got caught in a camel stampede during the wedding procession!
Finally, the ancient ruins of Egypt began…we took a Nile river cruise, and drifted down the Nile, stopping to visit the ancient ruins as we arrived at the sites. First, we visited the Philae temple, our first glimpse of imperial grandeur on the banks of the Nile. Here’s the David Roberts painting of the wonderful colors of the pillars.
This wonderful itinerary had been devised by Mishta, who even managed to squeeze us in for a lunch at the Old Cataract hotel, where Agatha Christie had stayed, writing her Egypt novels!
From Aswan we took the 3 hour long drive over miles of Sahara desert to visit Abu Simbel. I have never seen anything like the majesty of that temple. Rameses not only succeeded in convincing the god and the Nubians of his might, he almost convinced me too, nearly 3000 years later! It’s a massive Santa letter to the god Ra Horakhty asking for more power and wealth, and in case the god forgets, the inside walls of the temple are covered with details of his request.
In between the historic ruins, we chilled out on the river boat, drawing the countryside that passed and some of our fellow passengers as they sunbathed.
I skipped Kom Ombo (and the crocodile mummies!) but saw Edfu and of course the Karnak temple in Luxor, the most magnificent of all the ruins. It was too much to draw, all that imperial majesty, transferring down across centuries to transfix us in our present. We could barely think of the past and future, we were so caught up in the sense of place of these ruins.
Finally the last site we visited was the Valley of Kings. On the way we saw the fabulous ruins of the Colossi of Memnon. In my humble opinion, at some point, the pharaohs realized that it was more cost-effective and scalable to build their tombs in a conveniently located, pyramid-shaped mountain instead. All the tombs were brilliant and beautiful. I was awe-struck at the colors and the massive systems that kept the same consistency of output, and the sheer volume of labor that pulled it off across centuries!
Throughout our fortnight in Egypt, these were the insights I took away about ancient Egypt –
their fascination with death and mortality
their use of visual language – for communication as well as regal branding (this surely has to be the earliest use of regal insignia and branding). The strong sense of graphic design that permeates even today.
how they scaled their artwork and systems across centuries
these feats of engineering and architecture that broadcast the imperial narrative across centuries. A most masculine testosterone-fueled architecture of phallic forms, in my opinion…(except for Hatshepsut’s constructions).
And though defaced and obliterated, the need to adorn persisted through centuries till the present day – adornment not for vanity but as a way to worship, or appease, the prevalent religious faith…
Last October we took a much-awaited trip to Egypt. It had been a long time in planning and finally, in 2022, we could visit. The brown boy and I went with our friends Anirudh, Mishta, and Lekha, and took the children.
We landed in Cairo on a blazing hot afternoon, the city – whose name originates from “al-Qahirah” (the victorious) – so similar to Indian metropolises and yet so different in its sandy-hued dilapidation.
The first day after downing cups of cardamom-flavored Turkish coffee, (with high silt content like the Nile!), that Anirudh called “a gastronomical black hole”, we went off to see the pyramids – first the ones at Dahshur and then Giza.
The Sphinx in all its majesty was our first experience of all the obliteration and defacement of Egyptian sculpture. It was not Obelix who broke the nose of the Sphinx, as our guto believed.
Travelers, natives and conquerors across centuries have destroyed, defaced, and carried off parts of sculpture for various reasons – from necessary construction pieces for their dwelling in ancient times, to the eradication of previous regal influence, or to adapt to prevailing religious dogma. Paul Theroux calls it a sort of negative sculpture, the art of obliteration, and all done with great care. In most cases only the face or the nose missing, and the rest intact. Maybe the defacers were art lovers, or maybe they feared the wrath of the gods…
As we know, the majesty and significance of the Egyptian civilization was unknown until the deciphering of the Rosetta stone in early twentieth century – so here is the painting by David Roberts (c.19th century) that I am thinking about in the sketchbook…
The next day we visited Islamic Cairo. Cairo dates back to the 7th century, so there were multiple layers of history to be discovered there.
We visited the Al-Azhar Mosque where Lekha and I were asked to cover up our bare necks and ankles (!!). While shopping in Khan-el-Khalili Market, Mishta found a beautiful walking stick that had a preserved snake inside it. Egyptians, even now, seem to be fascinated with death and mortality. In the market there were stuffed animals, foxes, cats, and crocodiles – memories of beloved pets, being displayed and sold.
At a roadside cafe in Cairo.
One day we spent at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and marvelled at the craftsmanship skills of the ancient Egyptians.
We also spent time seeing Coptic Cairo, the areas where the Greek orthodox church settled, built around the place where Joseph & Mary took shelter with the baby Jesus as they fled to Egypt! Coptic Cairo was an avalanche of adornment. As faiths were practiced, flourished, and overtaken by other faiths at the same location, the influences of visual language remained, overlaid on top of each other…and the need to show devotion through ornamentation of the holy site, however small the space, prevailed…
In Cairo we caught a performance of the Tanoura Dance, a breathtaking spectacle.
This video and the earlier one are how my day-to-day journal drawing takes place. I sit down with my book and try to draw what’s on my mind. Sometimes I start by drawing what’s in front of me – which is why there are so many drawings of Orin eating! At other times I draw the day, how things went, what I listened to, or read. Sometimes my mind is blank and quite often the fear of the empty page threatens to take over.
But the important thing is to show up, and get over that fear, the fear of not being good enough, the fear of not living up to your own expectations. And after some time, I find the flow, I start to commune with myself, and joy takes over.
THURSDAY • 15th Aug holiday: Apart from mourning for democracy, spent grieving for my lost sense of humour and my declining sense of poetry. Which reminded me of what Lekha said once: “One day you’ll wake up and you won’t be able to recognize yourself…”. And how much of what is really worth it. “What is the price of your sense of self,” I ask the universe. “It’s a cup of coffee and a cookie,” says the brown boy.
Ever since we have been together the brown boy and I have spent a few hours a weekend with a ritual of drawing and drinking coffee.
One way to get through these new lifestyle changes has been to keep to our rituals and find sanity in those moments of calm and pleasure. Hope you’re having a restful weekend.
My sister and I were utterly confused about this practice of hugging for most of our life. We had many questions. We grew up in Kolkata where no one knew about hugs. And why would we…
Transcript: We the Basu sisters were so alient to the concept of hugging. And why would we? Who would want to hug hot sweaty Bengalis all the time? And then how close is close? I mean does “close” have to be reciprocated in distance? What if someone thinks they are closer than you think you are… And then which body part do you hug? I have no choice but to hug tummies, being super short. But when I met this boy, who really enjoys hugging, and this little thunderstorm who is a bony little hugger, I had to tolerate it sometimes. But apart from these two, I am hugely grateful to social isolation. No more random social hugs! As my friend Toinks says “Do namaste instead”!
inktales 