easy n available

how easy internet has made our lives...some time back feeling a little confused about saivite iconography i felt like seeing some kushana coins..logging on the net i was surprised to find innumbrable coins with complete scholarly desctription....back in college i would have had to spend an entire day in collecting and collating the required information...so are the students today much more priviliged then us...they can get all the required info in a jiffy and literally at the click of the finger...i was reminded of our visits to various libraries and archives to give our assignments and projects a better shape and to be well equipped for the post presentation viva...have i started feeling ancient..not really..i am still a student and will always be one...

ponderings

had quite an interesting day in college today..discussion class mainly focussed on everyones views and opinions on the visit to ngma yesterday..we had spent some 2 to 3 hrs in one of the new wings of the gallery..observations were quote interesting and diverse raising questions like what do we value, the actual work of art or the signiture?...the lack of skill in rabindranath tagore's works was noticed by more than one student...needless to say he was already a nobel lauraute when he jumped into visual arts..moreover it was the time when childart and automatism were being explored in west....his works easily gained popularity...could he have been considered as a good artist during renaissance? one of the students evidently disgusted with the display coined an interesting term 'art pollution' ...though i don't agree with his negative approach but i did find it intersting and jotted down the term in my diary. i wanted to know the views of a japanese student on what she had seen..and i would say her answer was quite politically correct. She considered the works of revivalists important and bold...she could historically contextualize the works..had definitely done her homework on indian art..

As I was having my excessively milky tea in the college canteen and thinking about ravi varma paintings I was about to show in my class a tall figure approached me. I recognized him as one of the irregular but talented students of masters first year painting. I had been seeing his works in the studio, where apparently I take my class. So when he asked me to see his sketch book I was more than happy to oblige. There unfolded page by page in front of my eyes the surrealistic looking drawings but with a very Indian feel. As he explained the manner in which he approaches his works I was getting more and more interested in the lyrical forms he had culled from what seemed like arbitrary doodles. He informed me that finally he has started work on a huge canvas 10 by 5 feet and the first stage had been completed. The canvas was spread on the studio balcony as it could not be accommodated in the interiors. Since we had some ten minutes more to go for the class we rushed to the balcony. There sprawled on the ground I found this huge canvas painted almost like Pollock with the difference that instead of lines he had used various bold curves. He guessed what I was thinking and said this is just the first stage. He will make a figurative work out of it and then it will cease looking like Pollock.

The battle is on....a battle between the senses and the restrain. a battle to conquer temptations...a battle between the process and the end product..a battle within myself.
How often do we realise that our 'self' is a conglomeration of so many varied gross and subtle substances which are frequently fighting each other...so isn’t self contradiction the most natural outcome of such a process...what is conclusiveness but an expression of partial knowledge…here I am reminded of a couplet by Kaifi

“jisko khabar nahi use josh o kharosh hai
jo pa gaya hai raaz gum hai khamoosh hai”

Unfortunately times are such or rather times have always been such that louder you proclaim the more credible you sound…subtleness has no place in the system…but does it really need a place in this system…I wonder, as I often do, but get absolutely no answers….probably there are no answers..its only meant to be experienced….the inability to express certain thoughts in words irritates me..somehow words don’t seem enough to express the actual feel of the thoughts…its restricted by my english vocabulary ,by the form and syntax of the language itself, by the need to give it a readable format and so on and so forth….writing is limiting and so is painting..i have many a times heard artists complaining that what has come out on their canvas is not exactly what they thought…it’s definitely a compromise and all of us have to make it to lend a concrete shape to our ideas……..

I have been reading a lot these days probably that’s why I have lost the hang of reading between the lines…it has more or less become a mechanical process and unfortunately the urge to reach the end of the book or article is too strong….somewhere process itself has lost its meaning..The moment I finish reading the book the excitement is over..i crave for the process again and same cycle repeats itself…..Its like eternal cycles of life..u pass each one in the hope of emancipation but on the contrary it cruelly leads you to another one..so u go on and on and on in the eternal search.

Seriously feel this reading should lead somewhere..somewhere it all should connect..Its not just enough to understand and quote from a certain text or a book. Books have to be internalized..Though I have no clue how one does it and I guess subconsciously some impact definitely is made but how does one consciously internalize the knowledge and ideas presented in a text?

What does one write on a sunday afternoon..day passed away lazing and reading maya thinking about possible differences between bhoot and preta and reading translations of few sutras from pasupata sutra...post lunch had plans to see cocktail and enjoy tom cruise's bartender act but haryana electricity board didn't like the idea..am feeling extremely sleepy and guess after writing this post will take a short nap..it would have been much better if i could go off to sleep with toms voice and couglin's advices reverbrating in my ears...anyways had a nice time reading and basking in the afternoon sun and simultaneously being tarini's student in her class..can still hear her narrating some impossible stories to her didi...kids are so imaginative and such good story makers ..i have never seen her getting stuck while making up her own stories..how i wish for such spontaneity..