The Desert and Mirrorwork Skirts

Book no 5. 2008.

"To Surrender"

Rajasthan

Back from teh desert :)
LOTS of stories to tell. the universe conspires. orange half moons. Sand and Silence. Stillness. Winds. Perfumed oils. 21st century mystics. Moondrunk encounters by the edge of a sacred lake. Lost at a local full moon festival. Shared Cigarettes with a beggar at the edge of the train door. A tiny little village on the indo-pak border where sufi musicians sing by night. bagpipes and strange contortions that create music only imagined in dreams. Embroidery Villages and Fab-India Conspiracies.
De-mystifying the mystic. Breaking down the exotic.
Got so used to looking at things as 'symbolic' that real life becomes a representation rather than realism.
So so many questions. and answers that are lost in translation.
I've been assaulted by sounds. Like occupying armies. Been surrounded. astounded. confounded.
I'm understanding what it means to really Listen.
To Love. and to Surrender.

these are just the drawings on the way there whilst on train. :)

things following the train:

and there's so much love to give.

I also held a rat in me hand in the rat temple. aaaaaaaarkh

The person you love is 72.8% water

This space was silent for a while. 

I've been meditating upon stillness. 

'Close the language 

door (the mouth)

Open the love window 

(the eyes)

The moon (the reflected light of the divine)

won't use the door. 

Only the window.'

a single brushstroke can erase the storm 

(I'm back :))

pornographic skelingtons and all

Let us Compare Mythologies

New book- the fourth this year. 

Kattacodita - 'as if impelled by destiny'

Third time I've found myself in hampi in a span of 6 months.

I'm called to those ruins

like tide to moon. like moon to silver. 

Everything I touch turns to stone. Watching the Sun set over the river.

The River too is carved by the moon.

Some nights stay up till dawn.

watching star follow star follow star

before falling down.

Gaia and me construct kingdoms. we connect the dots.

She doesn't believe that stars are made of fire.

there's more to this than combustion.

 

no one looks for stars when the sun comes out.

warm. spread out on stone.

ink brush- dipped in the river.

Rain is born of our fingertips.

Rivers too.

500 times we whisper to the gods.

With each step, repeating his name.

Until we're in the clouds.

 Where Hanuman was born.

Chai and Chilli Pakoda. Langoors. 

and Love gifted to strangers in the form of Ink on Paper. 

(what else do I know enough to give?)

And the Head priest asks for a portrait of Hanuman.

Who lifted mountains and set islands

on fire.

On seeing it he asks for 2000 prints for every hanuman temple in Hampi.

'An author doesn't necessarily understand the meaning of his own story more than anyone else'

Lewis Carol 

Bumble Fruit

Zosix and Camelon.

teh beginning of an epic of sorts.

By Jugular Bean

Attempted to be illustrated by bonifisheii.

Tales from Topographic Oceans

Gokarna 2009

From the River to the Sea.

'Maggie and Milly and Molly and May

went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang 

so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles, and

milly befriended a stranded star

whose rays five languid fingers were:

And molly was chased by a horrible thing

which raced sideways while blowing bubbles: and

May came home with a smooth round stone

as small as a world

and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)

Its always ourselves we find in the sea.

(sometimes one also finds the skelingtons of strange creatures called by the locals as "GODFISH" (which was later discovered to be a whale!))

and sometimes one falls in love with a little scruffy black puppy called "Kalikalooti" :O)