Inktober 2018

Inktober is an annual worldwide event for enthusiasts who love to draw in ink. Draw is just a way of saying it. Creating art would be abetter way to put it.

This is the third year of my participation in it and I am already looking forward to the next year!

You can know more about Inktober, it HERE. 

I drew the pictures below. I have uploaded them in random order and not chronologically. I first give the prompt for each one of them and then explain what prompted me to draw the particular picture. In other words. my interpretation of the prompt.

Swollen: Swollen head, swollen ego. 

Bottle. What better bottle than a bottle of Ink, for inktober?

Muddy. Rice seedlings have to be transplanted into paddies.  It is not only backbreaking work but also your hands and legs are muddy. Paying tribute to the labour which puts rice in our plates. 

Expensive: The horn of the Rhino is expensive. It proves so expensive that rhinos pay with their lives.

Roasted: A very common roadside scene in India. Roasted peanuts. This is the equipment used to roast them, An iron pan, sand in which the nuts are roasted, and a kerosene stove with a pump on

Spell: Abbé Faria casting a hypnotic spell on a patient (not in picture). Based on a statue of him in Panaji, Goa, India. When I first saw it in 1980, it cast a spell on me - of fascination that such a stature exists.

 Chicken: Self explanatory.

Drooling: The Mask (Movie) drooling at a dancer. 

Exhasuted: A different take on an old advertisement for Heineken beer, by David Ogilvy. It showed an empty bottle and a full glass. Here the beer is exhausted.

Star: Star Scientist - pun intended. His words, "we are all start dust"fascinates me.

Precious: Self explanatory?

Flowing: 

Dolphin:

Guarded: Chandamama was a children's magazine with many stories. In many stories, there would be a treasure hidden somewhere but is guarded by a fearsome snake - invariably a cobra. This is a flash back to those days.

Clock: Shortage of time (!!) after a long day lead me to this simple interpretation of the prompt.

. 

Angular.

Scorched: The state of things to come for the world?

 Stretch

Lightning: Zeus, the Norse god of, what else! Based on pictures of a statue in Stockholm. 

 Gift:  A gift of this perfume would be a gift of Gift - because, in German language Gift means poison.

Double: I had seen a movie long ago (1970) of a Japanese master paint with two brushes in his fingers. So stuck to 00 brushes on to a separator to paint Gemini. 

Slice: A backhand slice in Tennis - a game I love, never having held a racket in my hand!

The Gallows

Old buildings move me and draw me to draw them.

The gallows in the cellular jail moved me - not its form or colour or texture or architecture - but the story behind it, the story of India's struggle for independence in particular and the struggle against colonialism and imperialism in general, the story of heroic young men whose life was cut short by disease, hard labour and a hangman's noose.

Some of what I felt when I saw the gallows is below and an image of the hateful building drawn in pencils and digitally altered.























Did the architect seek beauty and balance?
Or only purpose and efficiency?
Did it touch him that a man climbing up those steps
Would KNOW that he would never climb down?

Did the mason, who builds for the living,
Feel that this was for death?
Did the rain blacken the roof or
Was it death that painted it black?

Did the burning desire for freedom
Burn the fear of death too?
Did the hangman see his brethren
Or did he sell his soul and his eyes?

Did the criminal who called a hero
A criminal and ordered his death
Snuff his conscience 'cos he knew
He was killing a nobler being?

Did the first man that this structure took
Break his back to break the rock
To lay the base for the scaffold
That would one day blow the candle of his life?

Blame

Once in a while, a thought starts appearing in my mind already in the form of a verse or poem. I develop it later into what can be called a poem - if you are generous. This usually happens either in Kannada or in English, more often, the former.

Vincent van Gogh, an artist whom I admire instinctively, is oft-quoted. His opinions and remarks on art are revealing.

"..... But still one ought to try, however incompetent one may feel before the unspeakable perfection and radiant splendour of nature", he said.

I was once sketching a portrait or something and the results were unsatisfactory, to put it mildly, and I remembered Vincent.

And within a short time, a thought started forming in my mind and I was astonished that it was in Hindustani. My knowledge of that language is sketchy, at best, and as for a true South Indian, gender is the first victim when I speak. 

I continued to have some fun processing that poem in Hindi. I hesitantly submitted that poem to my brother-in-law, Nagraj Rao, who corrected some words and added an appropriate one in one place. He made sure that not everything had the same gender, and hence often wrong.

Here is the result.

                 तस्वीर बनाने लायक दुनिया बनाके
                 तस्वीर बनानेका  शौक बंदे के दिल मे  जगाके
                 तस्वीर बनाने की लियाक़त बंदे से छुपाके
                 बंदे का मज़ाक उडाते हो?

                 वाह रे खुदा, यही है तेरी खुदायी?
                 वाह रे खुदा, यही है तेरी खुदायी?

Memories

I was a scout. A cub, to be precise. My scout troop planned a camp. My father was apprehensive about sending me. I was not even nine yet. The man in charge of the troop came home and persuaded my father. It was one of the most thrilling moments of my then short life and it has remained the same to this day.

The camp was at Byadarahalli. It is just 30 km away from Mysore by rail. Next to the railway track is a hillock and we camped there.

On the second day of the camp, the senior scouts, the Rovers, went on a hike. They were expected to return before nightfall. We were all tense as darkness fell and no sign of them. We were all looking westward periodically, the general direction of their return. In those days there was no electricity in any surrounding villages and it was pitch dark. After what appeared to be an interminable wait, we saw flashes of light from a torch which transmitted the message "we are safe" in Morse code.

Eventually, they came.  With not even a radio at our disposal, we were completely cut off from civilisation. They returning rovers had bad news.

It was the 27th of May, 1964. Nehru was no more. A pall of gloom fell on the camp. 

The next day, we hoisted the scout flag at half mast. Observed a minute of silence. And we went about other scouting activities.

Whenever I travel by train between Mysore and Bangalore, I eagerly wait for this station. The hillock and the small traveller's bungalow on top bring back memories of that memorable day.