Tag Archives: poetry

Books, sketchbook

Books of 2022

In 2022 I didn’t read as many but I read widely.

If I had to choose themes –

  • Career & Business – The 7 habits of Highly effective people*, Wolfpack*
  • Design – Design Justice*, Hello World^, The Brand Gap^, Paul Rand Conversations with Students, Drawing on Courage*, Super Normal*
  • Film, Art & Creativity – Art Matters, Creativity, The Creativity Leap, Wes Anderson^
  • Fiction – Pixel^, Tell me How to be, Carrie Soto is Back^, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, The Christie Affair, Bright Lines, অগ্নিসম্ভব and অগ্নিকুসুম*
  • Graphic Novels – Pablo^, Esther’s notebooks, The Best we could do, I was their American dream, The Butchery^
  • History – A little history of the world, Broad Band, The Equivalents, At Home in the World*, Man’s Search for Meaning*
  • Physics – When we cease to understand the world^
  • Poetry – Very close to pleasure there’s a sick cat^, I hope this finds you well
  • Travel – Dark Star Safari
  • Uncategorized – Visual Thinking*, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction*, In the Shelter*, The Right to Sex^, The Book of Hope

*These books were life-changing – impacting the way I thought about myself, the world, how I live and work, what I choose to do

^These books were excellent. Some of them I gave as gifts to others, and I would probably re-read later in life.

More Books posts are here

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Books, Reflection, sketchbook

A busy, bustling, still repeated dream

What life is, a minute’s pause, a moment’s thought, and I am grateful every day to have this practice of journaling.

Here are some recent pages from my sketchbook, unedited, unpolished, straight from my mind to the paper, drawn in usually less than fifteen minutes.

A skecbook spread. Drawing of me waiting under the sun and reading. At the passport office. Waiting in the crowded room for a long time. Thoughts about efficiency and people, employment in India. And thoughts on the UX of the passport system software.
A visit to the local passport office
A double spread. A boy asking Do you know centipedes lived in the time of dinosaurs?
Daily drawing at dinner
A double spread. Walking and how to use creative imagination in your spiritual practice.
Notes from a podcast

This was the podcast episode I made notes of, though it’s not my favorite episode. And surprisingly, I have been reading more about spirituality all of a sudden, but coming in through poetry, like this wonderful, magical book In the Shelter: Finding Home in the World by poet and theologian Pádraig Ó Tuama, who also hosts the podcast Poetry Unbound. In the book, Padraig has an amazing chapter on prayer “Hello to the imagination” which changed my perspective of it as an opaque ritual that was not for me.

You will find meaning
Where you give meaning.

The answer is in a story
and the story isn’t finished.

Pádraig Ó Tuama
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drawing, Food, Life, sketchbook

A study in skins

I was 8 when I copied my first Cezanne, in the drawing class we used to attend, held every Sunday in the parish hall at the local church. There was no looking back after that. I was mesmerized by the color palettes and the compositions, though I didn’t know all these terms then. I went on to copy the old masters for a decade, running through all of the teacher’s copies of Cezanne, Renoir and Van Gogh prints, and later from my uncle’s fabulous Great Masters’ collection at home. I’m not sure what I learnt, back then, but I became familiar with the artists, their colors and lines and brush strokes.

These onion studies are a far cry from those days. It’s been decades since I attempted any color studies but oh what joy!

Inspired by the this lovely poem by Harryette Mullen:

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Life, sketchbook

An hour is not a house

Last year I discovered the poetry of Jane Hirshfield. Award-winning poet, essayist and more, she set aside her writing to study Zen Buddhism for many years.

Reading poetry is a deeply personal experience. What resonates with me in her poetry is the minimalism, the spirituality shorn of all excess, and the “moments of insight” that every poem reveals.

Sketches while reading An hour is not a house –

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Reflection

Holding on

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.

This one is for Punam and Deepa.

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Books, Life, sketchbook

Although I cannot see your face

Honestly who would have thought that we would spend a quarter of a year in physical isolation from each other. A story to recount in my old age.

And speaking of old age. Umberto Eco once wrote that books are the most robust format of content transmission that we have seen over centuries, and so that if nothing else, my sketchbooks would probably survive till my old age at least, and I will look back on these days and laugh…

"Although I cannot see your face 
As you flip these poems awhile
Somewhere from some far off place
I hear you laughing - 
and I smile..."

Shel Silverstein
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Life, sketchbook

Lockdown diaries

Like most people who draw/sketch I filled up a lot of my time drawing.

Here are my sketchbooks from 2020. The red one is from Jan-Feb, when I wasn’t drawing at all, and I started the green one when lockdown started in March.

Things were of course very worrying and unsettling…

But did you know that these stages are not linear? I was so grateful for being able to work from home, having my favorite people around me and countless other things, when so many around us were suffering…

Anyway the one thing we did to keep a semblance of normality was “always the same little things in the same order and then the day can start”…

like eating breakfast…and finding ways to keep our spirits up.

Ate noodles for dinner and found TS Eliot thinking about home:

Home is where one starts from. As we grow older The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated… …a lifetime burning in every moment…We must be still and still moving

So in the pursuit of stillness…

and birds flying north.

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