2025 in my sketchbook, part 1

Only 5 sketchbooks in a year beset by creative blocks and the temptations of consuming over creating. Still, the physical affordances helped tremendously to keep up this essential habit. I wanted to forcefully become more creative this year and started some good rituals in Jan. it was such a challenge maintaining those habits with a fulltime job & the endless commute.

Onwards to Feb, the evolution that I was hoping for was nowhere in sight…but I flew too close to the sun and the inevitable of course happened.

In April I took a workshop at Jaipur Design Week – Poetry, Presence & Practice. The first time I have ever spoken about my drawing in a public forum!

And then on to Kochi.

and my wisdomous brown boy

“What you don’t know should not stop you from, enjoying life”

Indeed.

sketchbook

Who knows, maybe I’ll be singing

The thing is, my dreams of future life showed visions of wisdom, zen, finding balance…

But the country they call life, teaches that life and dreams are not quite the same thing.

And everyday I find new ways to find solace, find balance –

“And maybe, if I’m lucky, some wisdom will trickle in…”

Life, sketchbook

Conversations with the anteater, part ix

Life

Conversations with the anteater, forties edition

Most of you readers know I have many conversations with the anteater. He came into my life in 2009 with his wisdom (!) and never left. Here’s a recent conversation:

“I used to believe in I think, therefore I am“,

“But lately I learnt it’s only *one* way to be…and maybe I need to move away from it…”

“Maybe I can give some autonomy to my body…”

“Huh. And we all know how that turned out!“

“I’m very tempted by Eckhart Tolle and the absence of thought…”

“Ulp!”

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.