Hriday Aakash

'Hriday Aakash'

The Landscape of the Heart.

A short animated film for 'The Kabir Project'

at Srishti.

Kabir talks of a 'Sky in 

one's heart'.

When we see trees and mountains and rivers we connect with them because we have those very trees growing within us. 

'Our body is the sky.

When the lotus in our hearts rain

The sky gets wet'

This story takes place in this Heartscape.

I'm not going to give the whole story away but it's based on true stories of moths. :)

Wikipedia says: 

Moths frequently appear to circle artificial lights. One hypothe

sis advanced to explain this behaviour is that moths use a technique of 'Celestial Navigation'.

By maintaining  a constant angular relationship to the moon they can fly in a straight line.

Like sailors at sea.

When they see artificial light- they get distracted and circle around it. 

Me animation uses this as a metaphor and perhaps a mythology.

The moon is the divine/the truth.

And these artificial lights represents maya that distracts us off our path.

Along the way this moth encounters a Firefly (desire), a Streetlamp (maya/illusion) and 

A candle flame (love)

While in search of light.

'The moon shines in my body, but my blind eyes cannot see it' says Kabir.

The moth following a Firefly (desire) through the forest

She leads him to Maya (an artificial light/a universe of illusion within a lampost)

More soon!

Come for the Kabir Festival

to see/watch/hear love spoken and sung.

Some spreads from a Children's book I'm doing for Karadi Tales.

Do buy it once its out! :) 

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)

Snakes and Lotuses

A littul book I worked on as a final project for an Indian Literature course. :)
Through the texts I encountered I saw that snakes often symbolized men
and lotuses often symbolized women.
This is a poetic-imagery based interpretation of the relationships between the varied men and women through selected Indian texts.

Let us begin with a benediction

a prediction
a beautifully contorted contradiction

To shape without form.
To silence devoid of disdain.
To devotion despite disillusion.
To Divinity that exists
(if not in his fingertips)
then in everything that shimmers.

Shakuntala

Rani from Nagamandala


Vasantsena from "mrittakatika"



.
I handmade the paper, the illustrations,poetry,collages and also bound it meself.
:)