Christmas is around the corner!

In addition to Diwali and other Hindu holidays, my mother somehow decided to include Christmas among our annual festivities while my sister and I were growing up. My mother had lived her formative years in Goa and to her celebrating Christmas meant reliving some of her happy memories rather than a religious festivity. She would bake an enormous cake and we even had a tree sometimes (not a real one but a plastic one). We would make cards under our mother's supervision and even hung stockings above our beds. My father was a willing participant as long there was a cake waiting at the end of all the gift-wrapping.

We spent quite a few Christmas vacations in Goa partying on one of those fun cruises. What I remember most is that every year on Christmas our parents would wrap our gifts in bright red and green paper. Whenever Christmas is around the corner I remember those festive moments and the bright colors it brought.

Today I am miles away from home, its the start of winter in Ohio and everything is gray. The trees have been stripped off their leaves. But among the bramble when I spotted this tiny bough of green and red the spirit of Christmas came back to me. Taking the picture was quite an experience since I had to try to eliminate quite a lot f the drying thrush around the pretty little piece of glowing foliage and the red berries. It was fun as always.

Happy Holidays!

A Pencil Sketch: Experiments With B&W

Recently I tried resurrecting my old love for pencil sketches. The black & white picture of the berries (see entry: Black's Bright Borrowed Faces) was an inspiration to try this particular art that doesn't employ colors and instead chooses to add life to a pencil sketch using deft shades of black and white.

My roommate Seema was the first ready and available model. Making the sketch took approximately half an hour and I spent some additional time adding a little extra to the eyes. What really disappointed me though was that when I took a photograph of the sketch, the uniformity of the digital picture due to the flash and the angle, slightly undermined my efforts at giving her eyes a lit-up look. Also the dimensions were a little awkward considering the picture is on paper and the camera captures a flat image. I tried some editing and it seems to have worked a little. I do wish her eyes wouldn't have appeared slightly angled like that. Nonetheless Seema is exhilerated at seeing her smile materialize on paper.

One of the things I find hardest in charcoal/ pencil sketching is drawing limbs, so I tend to stick to faces and expressions. I decided to start off a little easy since charcoal pencils are hard to handle. They smudge if one's moves are awkward. I drew an outline with a liquid graphite #2 pencil and then used a simple husky pencil (HB#2) which smudges but gives that unfinished charcoal look....I used my fingers quite a bit in trying to frame the face, the smile and Seema's wild curly mop.

I'm quite satisfied with the results and I think I will continue experimenting with B&W sketching some more.

Sunset

Sun

When his flaming eyes
melt over still waters,
And his wings dissolve
In an amber sheen,
Among the effervescence
Of curly waves,
I imagine
How weary he must be,
Untwining himself,
From the delicate fabric,
Of a million things
That were caught
in his rays,
All day.

Black's Bright Borrowed Faces

I had originally taken this picture in color and while editing tried to see how it might look in black and white. To my amazement the berries seemed more luscious and vibrant inspite of being stripped of their colors. The pitch black had borrowed light and was making a few stray rays its own.

Dreams take their,
Nocturnal flight,
And the reins
Of imagination,
Escape into oblivion,
Like silt
From my clutches,

It takes a moon,
An eyeful of stars,
And the pitch black,
Mouth of a sky,
To churn
In its blinding canvas,
the morning's sudden
Wakefulness.

A Walk in the Woods

These blinding turns,
Have open mouths,
that scatter the woods
In their wake.

These winding paths are like
The solemn, weathered faces
Of wise, old men
Who wait patiently,
To take me by the finger,
On a journey toward the
mysterious unknowns,
Of Life.

Wild Berries in Fall

I took this picture during a walk through a metropark. These berries had set the forest ablaze with their wanton colors and I couldn't help writing an ode to them.

Wild Berry

Give me the formidable,
blazing yellow,
Of a Sun,
The warm, the live,
the gleaming red,
Of Blood,
And I shall be
That one fiesty berry,
Smiling from among,
The mediocrity of a shrub,
Like the mutiny of Season.

So Dark The Con of Man: Mickey's Story

A week ago my roommate and I realized we had a mouse in the apartment. We saw him scurrying behind the entertainment center once and then again jumping out of the trash. My roommate's violent interjections and sporadic screams did not make life any easier for me...or the little rodent. Being a researcher, I have worked with mice; the kind of mice that snooze peacefully in a lined cage and wake up for their well-balanced chow; they are spoilt mice. But this mouse was the street kind, the ones that have to fend for themselves and loot by night just to stay alive. He was Mickey, the hustler.

Now we were, by proportion, much bigger and hopefully smarter than the mouse, nonetheless we were scared. I was more worried than scared. See, I don't mind sharing miniscule amounts of food, but clothing, leather jackets, garbage bags, wires etc. would also eventually be targetted, I thought nervously. We called our apartment management and two muscular guys appeared in a doorway, like knights with glue traps. They were at their chivalrous best. "So did the li'l guy scare ya sweetheart!!" they fretted and my rommate, ever the damsel in distress, dramatically fluttered her eyelashes. I am sure even the mouse, if he were watching the cloying scene from somewhere under the sofa, must've rolled his eyes skywards.

The traps were set. They were straight pieces of thick card paper with a layer of the stickiest glue. They were laid in areas where our little house-guest had been seen hiding. After a couple of days of no sightings we began to wonder if he had left. Our next door neighbour reported seeing a mouse in her home and I secretly wondered if it was our own Mickey that had made its way into her home. Why?, I found myself wondering; didn't Mickey like our food. Was I jealous?, I thought, feeling a bit silly. And just as I felt my first pang of missing the unwelcome pet in our house, I saw his furry body make a dash toward the coat closet. The chase was back on.

On the third day of this unfolding drama, my genius of a rommate (bless her!), got her hand stuck on the extremely tricky glue. The trap had worked alright, just not on the right target. Having disentangled her arm, questioned our own intelligence and pondered over a more solid plan of capture, we set out to seek help from the kitchen. A bait would have to be used. Crackers and peanut butter (the one with yummy swirls of jelly and crunchy peanuts that just goes really well with bread, ummm, what was I saying...sorry, food always throws me on a tangent). Anyways, this piece was set on the three traps. One of the pieces was on the very edge, sitting between the layer of glue and the floor. The next morning we woke up to find that piece gone! The mouse had dragged the delicious snack off the glue, keeping his feet on the floor. The little Houdini!! It was war now!

At the break of dawn we were awakened by high pitched little squeals coming from behind a wall in our kitchen. The trap! It had worked. Finally! We gingerly walked toward the trap, armed with a shoe, eager to meet our tiny adversary. And there was Mickey, his fur stuck on the stiff glue. He had finished his meal and smacked his lips, only to realize that he was cemented by the gummy white surface under him. I walked toward him expecting myself to feel satisfied, at having captured him. And as I bend over to examine our prisoner, he looked up at my face, his black eyes, his alarmed pout pointed at me. There was a pleading look on his face. It just moved something in me. Animals have this look in their faces that sometimes makes me wonder how people hunt or how vets put them to sleep. We have a dog called Aibo who might just get away with murder if he titlted his head and gave us his melting brown-eyed, puppy-dog look. It is heartbreaking.

When the maintenance guys came to collect the haul of their trap, we had been agonized for over four hours by the piteous squeals coming from the trap. The guys assured us they would find a way to let Mickey loose, and as much as I wanted to believe them, I didn't think he'd survive being ripped off the gooey surface. I sobbed a little in the shower this morning but like everything else time will heal this too.

For what its worth, I decided to write this little piece as a tribute to little Mickey and his short but adventurous life in our apartment. He was a hero who got caught by human con and did not deserve to die. He will be missed by man and mouse alike.

Of Eternal Love...

It was almost sensuous, the way this bee was perched atop the yielding flower. Like in an all consuming act of love, it was feeling the nectar, intoxicated for a brief moment. I could hear it humming to the flower and see it holding the petals open to the sun, moving in rhythm with its fragile sway, as if making love to it. The pollen on the bees' searching proboscis would be carried into eternity, joining the cascade of conception and procreation. And thus, despite its fickle ephemerality, I marvelled at how perpetual this act was.

Bollywood

I am from India and our film industry is the largest world-wide, known for its bright colors, catchy numbers and heart wrenching love stories. Sometimes criticized for the the prancing heroes and the voluptuous heroines who shake their booty at the drop of a hat, Bollywood is actually what teaches us Indians not to take everything so seriously and maybe once in a while to just chill! You know, this may be why you will probably never meet an uppity or snooty Indian.

A trip to the movie theater is not just about an hour of fun interrupted by popcorn...No! The airy popcorn is just no match for the solid samosa. The movie usually goes on for three hours and sometimes the fun part is the 'Interval' for two reasons, one coz biting into luscious samosas while watching a Bollywood hit is so very gratifying and two coz the interval usually means "Kahani mein twist!" (A twist in the tale!).

One never knows what could bring light into their day...for me it was this solitary flower holding its own among the grim changes of season. Fall had flamed the leaves and toasted the grass. But this little misplaced star twinkled bravely from among the bramble and my lenses begged to capture this being in the blink of their flash.