Saw this mini documentary on Studio Mama, a London based architectural and furniture design studio run by wife-husband duo. In this documentary, they show the delightful designs they are able to make from waste. I might be a sucker for Scandinavian design after all.
You'll be happier. Daniel Lombroso’s short film follows a patient as she goes under the knife.
The Brazilian Butt lift is the world’s most dangerous cosmetic surgery procedure with 1 in 3000 patients dying from it.
Daniel Lombroso (https://www.instagram.com/dlumbo/) a Director and a Journalist made this short film following a patient as she prepared herself, convinced herself to go through the Brazilian Butt Lift surgery.
What struck me the most was the words by the surgeon as he prepared her for the surgery.
“You’ll be happier.”
A quote on the inconceivable nature of reality as discovered by 23 year old Werner Heisenberg in the solitude of an island
in Books
Werner Heisenberg, a 23 year old German Theoretical Physicist went to an archipelago to recover from hay fever. Helgoland is an island with no trees, hence no pollen.
There, he discovered a mathematical structure of denoting atomic reality which by itself is some sort of an oddity and yet which tended to compute correct results in predicting the outputs of experiments and now are used in quantum computers and atomic bombs.
One quote from the book, Helgoland by Carlo Rovelli is particularly fascinating because I read the name, Buddha in a book of Quantum Physics.
“
An electron is a particular type of regularity that appears among measurements and observations that we make. It is more pattern than a substance. It is order...Thus we arrive at a strange place. We break things down into smaller and smaller pieces, but then the pieces, when examined, are not there. Just the arrangements of them are. What then, are things, like the boat, or its sails, or your fingernails? What are they? If things are forms of forms of forms of forms, and if forms are order, and order is defined by us..they exist, it would appear, only as created by, and in relation to, us and the Universe. They are, the Buddha might say, emptiness.
”
21 days of meditation drawings
I have a selfish relationship with meditation. A little too selfish. Whenever I am in a deep rut, I run to it like a fish without water. I would meditate for an hour, sleep with meditation music on, take frequent breaks to tune into 5 minutes of guided meditations. You get the drift.
It works too. I feel connected to myself, my deepest sense of existence and I am able to tap into some unknown source of stability that is usually able to drag me out of dark places.
However, I also know that in order to nourish a mindspace where its easier to respond to emotions, this streak of selfish meditations must give way to a continuous practise.
Sometime in late 2020 though, I started drawing immediately after a meditation session. With no expectation of form and shape, I was able to return to a pure play of colour. Sometimes I would draw the shapes I saw when my eyes were closed during meditation and sometimes I would draw along as a guided meditation played along.
Today, as I was listening to my favourite Buddhist teacher on YouTube: Nick Keomahavong, he suggested to use chanting as a way of meditation. He also suggested to try chanting for 21 days to reap the benefits.
I immediately reflected back to my days of drawing my meditations and how I loved the process of a quiet reflection looking internally and then putting to paper forms and colours that I experienced during the process.
I want to go back to the same feeling and hence, this project. 21 days of meditation drawings.
A drawing from the book Tantra Song - one of the only books to survey the elusive tradition of abstract Tantric painting from Rajasthan, India—sold out in a swift six weeks. Rendered by hand on found pieces of paper and used primarily for meditation, the works depict deities as geometric, vividly hued shapes and mark a clear departure from Tantric art’s better-known figurative styles. They also resonate uncannily with lineages of twentieth-century art—from the Bauhaus and Russian Constructivism to Minimalism—as well as with much painting today. Rarely have the ancient and the modern come together so fluidly. Read more about these meditation paintings here
Watched Tove finally.
Woke up early, bleeding. Found the movie and watched it. Found it average. Did not speak to me other than the studio scenes that are recreated.
A shot from director Zaida Bergroth’s "Tove," filmed on Kodak 16mm by DP Linda Wassberg. Photo by Sami Kuokkanen.
What is an artist's life?
I am reading the biography of Tove Jansson, the Finnish artist who drew the wildly famous characters of Moomins. After having watched the trailer of her biopic by Zaida Bergroth, I certainly have been hooked.
After rummaging through youtube for all the documentaries available, I finally decided to turn to the books (never a disappointing decision). In this one, there is a mention of hundreds of letters that Tove is writing to her art school friends and her lovers - mostly about her life growing up the world war 2 years, but also her decisions on art. I couldn’t help but feel slightly jealous. I haven’t been to art school ( a decision I don’t regret as I think its only now in my third decade that I have concrete feelings about things to say something about them). Hence, I don’t know a lot of my contemporaries with whom I share my views on art, discuss works or plan shows.
There are a few friends who are on the same path as mine for sure, but for now, it does feel like a solitary road.
Writing I’ve found is a detox for the mind. When I write, I vacuum clean my brain of all the old dust of thoughts and ideas and plans and dreams and make way for new dust. Hence, I thought of writing about my journey here. Hopefully, I’ll find more artists willing to connect and share their thoughts. If not, I’ll have a really clean mind :D
The book I am reading:
Week 24: The year is half empty or half full?
A numbered list of stuff I was upto this week
Watched three and a half movies
The Personal History of David Copperfield (couldn’t finish, found it a little too obnoxious for my taste.)
Amal: Liked the story and the situations the characters find themselves in. Couldn't find the diction of the leading character matching the language of the city the film is based in. Found it uncanny. Enjoyed the film nonetheless.
A Woman in Berlin: Got to know about this aspect of the second world war. Based on a book by the same name, the movie speaks about the time when the Soviet army occupied Berlin during the tail end of WW|| and raping women in Berlin as victory hauls. A moving film that did justice to both sides of the story.
More can be read here -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_during_the_occupation_of_Germany
Shiva Baby: Gorgeous movie set in a single day. A bi-sexual girl fighting her emotions about her sugar daddy. Loved all performances!
Tried some experiments in the kitchen, thanks to a gift I got: Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat
Made peach syrup for the first time. 5 peaches boiled with loads of jaggery to be mixed with soda for spritzers/lemonades
Did the prep for Cherry infused gin and it should take 20 more days to be ready.
Lost a wisdom tooth :(
Worked a lot. Which explains why this list is so short.
Have set aside a budget for trauma therapy for girls between the ages of 15-25 who lost a parent to Covid19. Really hoping it helps someone.
4 weeks of uselessness
Hello friends,
Sabbatical comes from the Hebrew word shabbat (שבת) (i.e., Sabbath), in Latin: sabbaticus, in Greek: sabbatikos (σαββατικός)) which is a rest or break from work.
Although a sabbatical is a longer break, colloquially translating to months and months of break, I started with a 4-week break to understand my readiness for a sufficient swathe of time that was directly in my control. I did not want to impose a project on this break primarily because it would have ended up becoming a cause of stress for me and would have undid the very reason of this break in the first place.
While I am writing about my experience of 4 weeks of not ‘doing anything’, I am fully aware that taking a break this long at my age is a privilege I haven’t seen any woman around me exercise. My mother, in her thirty eight years of working never once took a holiday that wasn’t due to a health emergency or a health emergency in family. The prospect of her taking off on an extended break from work to ‘heal’ was neither in the landscape of thought nor was uttered as a passing phrase.
When she would have been the age I am, I would have crossed over from primary school to middle school. I would have exchanged our primary uniform of a mauve frock worn over a white cotton blouse to now a mauve skirt whose ascending lengths were proving to be an issue of torment for our teachers in our all-girls school. In my fifth standard, my mother was so struck by the domestic demands and her job that she told me flatly about her absolute inability to take the responsibility for my studies. I would now have to study by myself. Perhaps, that decision would have given some break to her?
Before I went on this break, I could feel myself spiralling down again. I was mentally exhausted and it showed every other day in some form of ache and pain. In the three weeks leading up to my sabbatical, I was popping pain killers almost every other day again. Every night one could see the wire of a heating pad dangling from where I would sleep and I would wake up nauseated. Things would settle down by the time of my work meetings and it would repeat all over again.
So immersed was I in the narrative of work and its meaning that I had never taken the time to disentangle my being from the productivity of my body and mind. In the last ten years and going back further, I had fully made myself believe that not working in an office for a job that was paying me would be the very definition of ‘uselessness’. This false construct of work as tied to the direct economic merit was not only going against my felt experience, but was actively dispiriting.
These four weeks were the first intentional break of my professional life thus far and I didn’t want to actively pass a judgement on it. So I have compiled a list of things I did in my 4 weeks of uselessness for you to form your own judgements.
Went on a drive 423 Kms away from my place passing through the majestic western ghats
2. Drew by the beach side for two weeks every day
3. Documented the patterns of sand bubbler crabs
In sandy beaches of certain tropical beaches in Indo-Pacific lives a tiny crab whose feeding habits creates intricate patterns consisting of thousands of sand balls on the beach.
When the high tide goes off, these crabs start to nibble on the thin coating of organic matter on sand grains. Can you believe it? They nibble on the coating of organic matter on grains of sand! As they keep burrowing deeper into the sand, they keep nibbling and pressing the excess into a ball which they kick out of their burrows.
The result are gorgeous patterns of sand balls on the beach.
4. Saw the evening blending into night
All photos were taken a few minutes apart.
5. Re-read a book and drew a project from it
I am fascinated by words and love to incorporate it into my drawing work. While re-reading The Collected Schizophrenias, I highlighted text - passing passages, beautifully constructed phrases for a drawing project I will be undertaking on the book.
6. Witnessed the great conjunction
A great conjunction is a conjunction of the planets Jupiter and Saturn, when the two planets appear closest together in the sky. Great conjunctions occur approximately every 20 years when Jupiter "overtakes" Saturn in its orbit. They are named "great" for being by far the rarest of the conjunctions between naked-eye planets
I was extremely lucky to spot this event with the naked eye (along with some help from a star gazing app) The photographs from my phone didn’t come out well so these are the screenshots from the star gazing app confirming that it was indeed Jupiter that we were looking at.
12. FONDEST SUNSET
My mother has never been to Goa or to a beach city. We had made plans for her travel now that she is no longer working but 2020 came along and did what it did to everyone’s plans. One evening as I was strolling along the beach at sunset, I decided to video call mom. As I flipped the camera towards the beach, her excitement at seeing the setting sun was evident. So that evening, I kept the video on as she saw a sunset on the beach for the first time. As the sky kept changing colours, I kept showing her the waves, the sky and the last rays of the setting sun.
It wasn’t any close to what she would feel seeing the real thing - but the way she reacted on even witnessing it with me on a video call was extremely precious.
7. Slept for nine hours. Every single day!
Somedays, I would have slept for more. Who knows :)
8. Started running everyday
I am glad that I discovered running and that discovery happened on a beach. I started running early morning barefoot on the beautiful beach and loved the feeling. I used to be concerned about the impact of running on my already inflamed body, but given that I was eating healthy, was not stressed at all and was meditating, running proved to be a beautiful form of exercise.
9. Made my acquaintance with Ruth Asawa
By a stroke of luck as I was ordering a few books online, a book on Ruth Asawa caught my eye. I hadn’t known about her or her work and given that it was a weighty book, had decided to chug it along for my Goa stay. For the first week of the break, I was curled up in the life of Ruth Asawa, her questions on identity and her insistence on living on her own terms.
This is the book I was reading. Everything She Touched and would recommend it to anyone who wishes to make an enquiry into a gorgeous hand made life.
Image taken from ruthasawa.com
10. Spent an afternoon in an independent bookstore
When it comes to bookstores, I can never get out of it fully content. You can leave me for two hours or twenty minutes, I’ll only come out grumpy at all the shelves I couldn’t see. I absolutely have to scan almost every book before deciding to move on. Could it be a disease? May be so! So when I took an entire day to visit the Literati Bookstore and Cafe in Calangute. I didn’t have anything else planned for the day and given the size of the bookstore, was able to scan the collection twice :D
11. Finished reading a book in two days
Because I have mentioned this in my highlights, you would know that this is important to me. Not for flexing that I can read through 300+ pages in two days but for the stretch of time and consistent focus that tends to slips so fast nowadays. It felt really really nice to not do anything but just sit down with a book engrossed in the story and finish reading it without any distractions (other than long naps).
13. Discovered the quiet magic of flaneuring
In the apartment complex where I stay, every evening hoardes of neighbours come out for their evening walk. It is a small complex and people keep walking around in the complex in circles. Going in circles round and round sometimes for hours. I did that as well. During the lockdown, getting out was not possible but when it is now, I did understand it was a peculiar habit. There is an entire world to be discovered in the neighbourhood. New shops keep mushrooming and shutting, there are florists and fruit sellers on bicycles, houses with overgrown gardens and sounds and scents of varying degrees.
Why did I keep walking in circles? Why didn’t I walk in my neighbourhood instead?
I changed that in my break. Flaneuring is the act of strolling or simply a mindful wander. During the break, I started on long, sometimes solitary walks in Goa and around my house.
14. started a book giveaway and gave away 70% of my wardrobe
I have had a very patchy relationship with fashion. Growing up, I never really cared much about it and now as a grown up (aargh), I find it at best a functional obligation so far. Even then, I had a cupboard full of clothes most of which were not worn or ones that I kept for the time I was going to trim down. I just said goodbye to them and packed them for a giveaway.
My aim for my wardrobe is to limit it to 10 items per season. Given that I stay in a city which is summers the entire year round, I need to trim down my wardrobe considerably. I am still in search of a good capsule wardrobe to follow and would continue on this journey of simplifying this year.
With books the relationship is more love-love making it harder to part ways with. I picked up the books I had read and I was sure I wasn’t going to read again and started a book giveaway. Posted them on my instagram stories and just gave them away to readers in my city. Did that for 30 books so far and I have lots more to give!
15. DREW EVERYDAY
Drawings are still packed in the sketchbooks and need to be put into through the raging laser eyes of my scanner. Those would follow.
So yeah, this is the record of my useless moments over the last four weeks. I am leaving you all with two pictures - a morning and a sunset that I witnessed from where I was for two weeks.
I wish you a year that is intentional, deliberate and has room for growth. Happy 2021!
From the studio: The week of awakening
Hello to whoever is reading this :)
Last week on Sunday, I decided to go to a nearby hiking spot. I had only climbed a handful of steps that I lost sensation in my legs. It was bad enough that I had to sit out the entire time clicking pictures of the sky and seeing people huffing and puffing their way through to the top of the hill.
At that moment, I felt nothing but pity on myself and my body. To be sitting there, breathless and numb was very painful to admit. The days that have followed have not seen me operating in 100% capacity. I still feel fatigued, unable to sometimes walk for more than 2000 steps at a time and chained with nausea.
In times like these, it is the hardest to feel kind for yourself and to give your pain the acknowledgement it deserves. However, I have set myself a very small yet challenging-enough goal and I do end up ticking it off on most days.
Full moon
Monday was full moon night and I wanted to take a breather from overthinking and sit with the moonrise. Indigenous cultures have dedicated rituals around the lunar cycle and specially around the full moon. While I am yet to discover these beliefs of cleansing myself, I did discover that aligning yourself with cycles gives you a sense of mark making in time.
Just like celebrating birthdays that come once a year, a full moon occurs every month and can be a natural mark to stop in your tracks, reflect and realign with your intention for the next month. It is easy to imagine in the cultures where there was no clock, a full moon would mark a new beginning and thus, would call for a celebration.
I laid out fairy lights in my balcony and spent more than two hours just sitting with the moon seeing it rise in the sky. Here are a few pictures with Orbit enjoying her full moon ritual.
Exploring paper
This week, I started exploring making on different kinds of paper. I am a paper hoarder and find it hard to part ways with any nice packaging paper but when it comes to drawing, I don’t experiment often. I have been feeling stuck on that for quite a bit and considering only I could get myself out of it, I gathered a few papers around and just starting drawing on them.
Golden cardboard paper is from a bakery used as solid base for pastries.
From a sketchbook with a few pages left
The packaging of a dress that my brother gifted me (I am the luckiest sister in the world)
A butter paper that was in the folds of my dress
I thoroughly loved working with the fragile papers and felt a close connection with my drawing and the medium. I’ll continue this series as much as I can.
Reading
I am still reading Lust for Life (1934) a biographical novel written by Irving Stone about the life of the famous Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh and his life and work. The book is a gorgeous biography and I also created a few pages of art journals based on the quotes in the book (which would have been taken directly from Van Gogh’s letters) and will write a separate post on the book when I am finished with it. Reading a book published in 1934 is a fascinating journey into that time and it helps to see what was acceptable during that time.
It does get easy to drown in the cultural artefacts of today, especially when it comes to reading choices but I’ve had a great time reading books that were published before I was born.
In the spirit of Vincent, listen to Starry Starry Night on Youtube :)
Listening
It had been some time that I heard the podcast ‘Art For Your Ears’ by the Jealous Curator. This week, I heard Danielle talking to Petah Coyen. Her work is big, bold and gorgeous and what I loooved hearing from an established artist was her journey. She tells about years and years where she was making bad art and how it was a battle of time with her full time job and her art.
I am going to have to hear that episode once again and make an attention map out of it. It was pure gold!
I’ll leave you with the four of the five panels I drew a while back.
Thanks for reading! Hope you have a lovely week :)
About the ‘From the Studio’
This is a letter that I intend to publish every Sunday. My wish is not only to look backwards in reflection but to use the reflection as a guiding principle for the next week. I am impacted by influences every moment of the day — literature, spoken word, cinema, fellow humans and my work. I am hoping to use this space as the vessel to share all the beauty I found in the world that week.
From the studio: The week of intention
I started 2020 with a big resolve and ambition. To not overthink and just create indiscriminately. At the beginning of the year, I was able to blog for 15 odd days when the reality of Covid hit all of us — indiscriminately.
For the longest part of the initial months of lockdown, I was turbocharged into the black hole of domestic work and just trying to survive with my cooking. I saw with my eyes, dust settling in crevices that I turned a blind eye to, some cob webs getting larger and small hillocks of dishes and unironed clothes got bigger.
Now, it is almost the end of this year and I wanted to pick up the pieces again and hobble along.
This is what happened in the studio this week:
My endometriosis flared up along with a continuation of the flu. I got tested for Covid-19 and while the test came negative, the healthcare worker conducting the test drove the swab so deep that it hit a nerve behind my eye and there was an additional eye to nurse along with my broken body. It was difficult sitting down for more than 20 minutes at a stretch, it was difficult walking, back and knee were sore and my spirits were really rock bottom.
Its when I am completely down and about, there wakes up a part of me that wants to rebel against my own body. I usually crash early and wake up early and head straight to the studio table. This collage is a product of that rebellion.
Watched HillBilly Elegy - a movie based on a book I wanted to read but just didn’t get the time. The performances shook me and I did move back and forth from my childhood to the present moment.
Also binged on Dash and Lily. Am I ashamed of binging on teenage romance? Never!
I have been reading Lust for Life, a biographical novel written in 1934 by Irving Stone on the life of Vincent Van Gogh. I have a very battered copy of it and some of the pages keep jumping out of the binding no matter how delicately I handle the book. I find the writing lucid and find it hard to not daydream about the time when Vincent wasn’t the most famous Van Gogh.
This week, I worked on an original drawing of an attention map made with my own words. After drawing a lot with other (wiser) people’s words, writing my own was fun.
To end, I am attaching a few pictures of another sketchbook where I spent most of 21st November with.
About the ‘From the Studio’
This is a letter that I intend to publish every Sunday. My wish is not only to look backwards in reflection but to use the reflection as a guiding principle for the next week. I am impacted by influences every moment of the day — literature, spoken word, cinema, fellow humans and my work. I am hoping to use this space as the vessel to share all the beauty I found in the world that week.
Days 20-31: Being in the belly of the whale
Every day, at 9 PM sharp, my feet start losing sensation and my hands start losing any will to work. In the last ten days, I have carried on, absorbing my own chaos and matching it with the world’s.
Suddenly, April looks dangerously different. Suddenly, life looks dangerously precarious.
I read this piece by Dan Albergotti
Things to do in the belly of the whale
Measure the walls. Count the ribs. Notch the long days.
Look up for blue sky through the spout. Make small fires
with the broken hulls of fishing boats. Practice smoke signals.
Call old friends, and listen for echoes of distant voices.
Organize your calendar. Dream of the beach. Look each way
for the dim glow of light. Work on your reports. Review
each of your life's ten million choices. Endure moments
of self-loathing. Find the evidence of those before you.
Destroy it. Try to be very quiet, and listen for the sound
of gears and moving water. Listen for the sound of your heart.
Be thankful that you are here, swallowed with all hope,
where you can rest and wait. Be nostalgic. Think of all
the things you did and could have done. Remember
treading water in the center of the still night sea, your toes
pointing again and again down, down into the black depths.
"Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale" by Dan Albergotti from The Boatloads.© BOA Editions, Ltd., 2008.
I am trying to do everything you said and a little bit more.
Day 11-19 Eight days of looking back at myself
Have you seen Jojo Rabbit?
Elsa, the Jewish girl is hiding in a cupboard. The cupboard is dark and stinky. She is separated from her family and her love. Perhaps, she has lost her family and with the spite and anger diverted at her community, she is living through a loss that is almost unimaginably suffocating.
She is but a teenage girl, in the prime of her life and the world around her is crumbling down to pieces she can’t pick and make sense of.
Children assume love to be the default mode of the world around them - their mothers loved them enough to not let them die of negligence and their fathers loved them enough to be around as an additional care taker and this normalcy of feeling, when tested tears to shreds the model of the world they’ve been weaving all along. Hate must literally destroy our cells, I believe. Was it destroying Elsa’s cells too?
When you can’t hold onto anything, what do you hold onto?
Hold onto that thought. Being stuck at home isn’t the best thing to happen for me in the last one week - and in between work, cooking, washing dishes and washing more dishes, I am more irritable and tired as usual. It was surprising when I started looking back at my selfies from two years back.
It seemed a distance of a lifetime had to be crossed between that girl and the woman I am now. I seemed to be holding onto dear life - and barely so. I decided to walk the steps of these two years to meet her again - between today and that day. To hold onto her.
This is how the meeting went.
Day 4-10 Six days of drawing and collecting shiny confetti from the universe
A week flew by in the haze of news of Corona virus infecting the world’s blood streams. Fortunately, I was able to snatch enough time during my days to put my pen to paper everyday to make something that came from a deeper place.
I’ll be putting up some of the completed drawings up on the home page directly. Here are seven drawings I made in the last five days.
There is a story about a shiny confetti in this post.
During travels, it is impossible to pack along a long list of stationary items. I have also observed a long list of stationary items, even if packed, are instead a hinderance to creating something in pockets of time one gets while travelling.
In order to invoke the merciful goddess of creativity-under-constraints, I only packed a black notebook, two white ink pens, an adhesive tape and a glue stick.
On the first day of my stay while walking to the beach, I saw amongst the organic debris of twigs, dried leaves and tree bark, a shiny glittery coin shaped object bouncing off the Goan sunlight. I looked closely to confirm that it was a piece of shiny confetti that must have floated off by the wind and deposited in this absolutely random point. I thought to myself, oh, it’ll fly off by the time I am back - the wind will take it off and I’ll never see it again.
That didn’t happen.
I saw it wedged firmly on the sand the next day too. This time, I picked it up considering it a bright, shiny, glittery gift from the universe - a gift for my sketchbook. I pasted it on one of the pages and admired how it reflected the light as it sat firmly on my sketchbook.
Guess what happened the next day?
As I walked to the beach with my sketchbook and stationary pouch, I saw another one of this confetti landed just a few inches from where I found its sister the other day. I looked at, smiled and picked it up to paste it on another drawing.
The next day, I found another one, another one the day after that and another one the day after that!
For everyday I drew, I found this confetti waiting for me to pick it up, to be stuck along nicely in one of the drawings.
Today, as I checked out and walked towards the exit, guess what I found! Two confetti circles this time! Locked up in the same position, reflecting the Goan sunlight, hidden enough from the prying eyes of kids yet visible enough for my peering eyes.
Those two drawings are yet to be made. I’ll update this set of drawings here as a notebook.
Thank you universe, for sending me a reminder of a treasure everyday can hold — only if I look closely and have the courage to claim it for myself.
Day 2+3/366 Balacing stones and painted beads
I saw a video about balancing stones first from Jonna Jinton - a Swedish photographer and artist who moved to a small village in Sweden that has 10 inhabitants. I have spent quite a many evenings after work and quite a many mornings with her videos getting inspired by her.
I have a small collection of stones of interesting shapes and colours from different beaches I’ve visited. They’ve been wrapped in various bags and kept in the recesses of various drawers so far. I decided to revisit them and see if I could change their form into something else.
So I did. Used a few drops of a fast glue and made these three tiny sculptures mimicking balacing stones.
On day three, I dusted my collection of wooden beads that I was quite fascinated with some years ago and decided to paint them to make necklaces. Turns out, I still enjoy the process of painting those beads tremendously. Sadly, I didn’t have any string to string them on and had to steal from the burlap string that my cat plays with (Sorry Orbit :P)
I have a feeling I’m going to go in the rabbit hole of making these necklaces again!
Now, I have to rack my brains on what to make for today! Off I go :)
Day 1/366 Embroidery Loop
I am sitting in the lotus position today, dutifully reporting on the first day of the Year of the maker rat. Before I start the day’s reportage, I just happened to browse through the Julie/Julia project to make a comparison of our projects (You’ll know me through this, I am competitive in weirdest of ways)
Julie Powell started on a similar project of cooking through 524 recipes in 365 days! Considering I’ve picked a similar number, I realise how utterly daunting this task is - however, I also am able to drive some strength from the fact that Julie was indeed able to finish her project.
What is harder? Making 524 recipes or making 500 arty things? We’ll only know with time.
For now, I call upon the compassion of this mother of yearly projects to bless me with the strength and tons and tons of ideas to make!
Now for the reporting, yesterday, I finished making this embroidery loop. I had started working on this over the last weekend and this was left unfinished when I squeezed a trip to Delhi and back. In the evening though, as I was surrounded by friends passing on information on the newest vegan protein powders, my hands kept moving in a state of trance to finish this piece.
* Year of the maker rat *
For reasons completely inappropriate to mention here - I have thought of making 500 art things this year. In any shape or form! Also, to be completely open hearted and sending them off in the world (hopefully not dispatch it to my mom).
I am known to myself as the girl who is extremely fond of keeping lofty goals and then kind of scoring a 60-70% - which she then justifies as failing honorably than not starting at all.
I have no clue how on earth have I got this insane 500 number! If this year ends the same time next year, I have 366 days (leap year yay!) to make 500 art things.
Knowing very well in advance of my historical failures in keeping up with these resolutions on social media, I have decided to just keep writing here (because no one is going to be reading my blog) and if I indeed realise the utter stupidity of this venture, I can crawl here one late night and delete the half baked 2.5 posts I would have posted.
It is 2020, the year of the metal rat - in the spirit of adhering to the theme, let’s call it the year of the maker rat - shall we?
Dubai Diary
in Travel
Alo readers!
Last month, Wingify, where I work as a culture designer, took everyone (~170 people) on our annual 3 nights, 4 day vacation to Dubai. Since I was responsible for planning the entire trip and ensuring that everyone has an amazing time, it was less of a vacation for me and more of living a partial panic attack, but we made it back! yay!
There were tons of people for whom this was the first international trip and seeing their smiles as they got their passports stamped for the first time was the warmest feeling ever!
One of the moments firmly etched in my mind is of the first day when the music stopped playing on our Dhow and we were gently floating on the marina as the evening prayers rolled in from the nearby mosque.
One could hear faint chatter but mostly the water rappling along and it was a sight to see.
Floating on the Dubai marina on a dhow as the evening prayers roll in.
Although I haven't done travel sketching before, I was eager to try this time. So I took a cute notebook and some colours along. These are some of the dispatches from the trip and some pages of my diary that I managed to work on during the trip.
We had our eyes set on Kinokuniya, a bookstore in Dubai mall and I specifically wanted a large roll of good black paper and was hoping to return back with a lot of colour sets and stationary. However, their stationary was sealed mostly and there were no pens and colours for trial. Even the sketchbooks were sealed and I couldn't touch and feel the paper.
So I was more cautious than I would've been and hauled back these ones!
There weren't a lot of pictures I clicked as I was busy sketching wherever we got some time to ourselves. But hey, no complaints! I was awake till 2-3 AM on most nights of the trip and that itself deserves a victory pat on the back :)
Till next time!
Turned the last page: Option B - Facing Adversity, Building Resilience and Finding Joy
in Reading Women, Books
Sometime last year, a close cousin was battling with cancer. From his home town, he would come to our house to get chemo sessions done in the nearby hospital. I would feel sorry for him, his suffering and that of his wife, as they spent weeks away from their two daughters, fighting the deadly battle. At that moment, no one was thinking that he wouldn’t make it back. Physically, he was tall, well-built, had a great sense of humor (told me spooky stories even after his chemo sessions) and was trying to conduct business as usual. Nothing about him, his appearance, his personality, hinted that his fire could be diminished.
And then, the day came when we were asked to see him, probably the last time. As I looked at that emaciated body, drained of all the life I had celebrated in him, I shook to the core. He had literally wilted away. It wasn’t him at all.
Soon, one morning. A WhatsApp message on the family group came up. We had lost him. I saw flashes of all the times we had spent together. His jokes, that smile, him getting surprised by how many chapatis I eat (I don’t eat a lot). And when I turned the age exactly ten years younger than what he was, I thought. Did he know? When he was celebrating his 32nd birthday, did he know that he only had a decade to live? That he would go from this world in ten years. And if he did, what would he have done differently?
Sheryl Sandberg didn’t lose her husband to a debilitating illness for two years. But that would have made her suffering more painful. Finding your husband dead in a resort gym where you’ve gone for a celebration is a view I wouldn’t wish on even the most wretched being on the planet.
From that last year, fighting an illness myself, I found myself crawling into a tunnel, blindfolded, writhing in pain I had never experienced, seeing my husband anxious, confused and terrified of seeing me in that situation. And then, as I started talking to more people around me, I found myself redefining what a normal life looked like. Almost everyone shared their stories of fighting through pain, of dealing with death, of illnesses that they were occupied with, of insecurities that held them back and from childhoods that weren’t fair on them.
And reading through this book, as it offered wisdom upon wisdom of building resilience as a muscle, the one thread that kept the narrative held together was the normalisation of suffering — if I went through life assuming that suffering was something that happened to other people, as an accident. Then, I would always go through life grumpy, in denial and in shock of the unusual accident. But if I understood life as one of suffering, I would be kinder to myself, kinder and more empathetic to others, would work to minimise the damage of life’s vicissitudes to others. In other terms, I would be wary of surfing and chasing local maxima.
if I understood life as one of suffering, I would be kinder to myself, kinder and more empathetic to others, would work to minimise the damage of life’s vicissitudes to others. In other terms, I would be wary of surfing and chasing local maxima.
Normalising suffering though can’t happen with everyone. We can’t really say that to young kids who are suffering abuse, torture or are in physically dangerous situations, to rape survivors, to people struck with crushing poverty and illiteracy, to millions of people who genuinely don’t get a decent shot at a good life.
That’s why, I thought this book was important. To people who have the blessings of the randomiser (I am an atheist), who can look beyond the immediate suffering to understand it thoroughly, they must understand it like we understand fever, our muscles, headaches and obesity.
From the book, I am sharing some non-intuitive research results that shocked, gave me hope for dealing with adversity and some, a bit of sunshine.
- When you are faced with adversity/setback, these three feelings will hinder your recovery
Psychologist Martin Seligman found the three P’s that will stunt recovery.
- personalisation — the belief that we are at fault
- pervasiveness — the belief that an event will affect all areas of our life
- permanence — the belief that the aftershocks of the event will last forever
- People tend to avoid discussing upsetting topics. A phenomenon so common, it even has a name — mum effect — for when people avoid sharing bad news
This silence is crippling for people who are suffering. If you know your colleague had a death in the family, is suffering through a mental health issue and you chose to keep mum about it, you are isolating that person and their suffering. Your avoiding to discuss that issue won’t do any good.
Grief is a whisper in the world and a clamor within. More than sex, more than faith, even more than its usher death, grief is unspoken, publicly ignored except for those moments at the funeral that are over too quickly. – Anna Quindlen
- When people are in pain, they need an escape button — they might not use it, but it is comforting just by being there.
In studies of impact of stress, people performed tasks that required concentration, like solving puzzles while being blasted at random intervals with uncomfortably loud sounds. They started sweating and their heart rates and blood pressure climbed. They struggled to focus and made mistakes. Many gave up. And then, researchers gave some of the participants a way out.
If the noise became too unpleasant, they could press a button and make it stop. The button allowed people to stay calmer, make fewer mistakes, and show less irritation. But you know what was surprising?
None of the people actually pressed the button. Stopping the noise didn’t make the difference, knowing they could stop the noise did. The button gave them a sense of control and allowed them to endure the stress.
Adam Grant uses this by writing his cell phone number on the board on the first day of his undergraduate class. He lets his students know that if they need him, they can call at any hour. Students use this number infrequently, but along with the mental health resources available on campus, this gives them each an extra button.
- If you are in trauma, in pain — journal
Jamie Pennebaker had two groups of students journal for fifteen minutes a day for just four days — some about nonemotional topics and others about the most traumatic experiences of their lives – including rape, attempted suicide, and child abuse. After the first day of writing, the second group was less happy and had higher blood pressure. This made sense, since confronting trauma is painful. But when Pennebaker followed up six months later, the effects reversed and those who wrote about their traumas were significantly better off emotionally and physically.
Writing about traumatic events can reduce anxiety, anger, boost your grades, reduce absences from work, and lessen the emotional impact of job loss. Health benefits include higher T-cell counts, better liver function, and stronger antibody responses.
- Labeling negative emotions can help us process them, labeling positive emotions works as well!
Writing about joyful experiences for just three days can improve people’s moods and decrease their visits to health centres a full three months later. We can savor the smallest of daily events — how good a warm breeze feels or how delicious french fries taste.
Thanks Sheryl and Adam for choosing to use your adversity into a learning ground for so many others.
Turned the last page: Who Thought This Was a Good Idea
in Books, Reading Women
The cover of ‘Who Thought..’ was appealing enough for me to peal it from layers of books at the airport. Who wouldn’t pick it. It features Obama sitting on an arm rest with a deep in thought face and a woman who is occupying the chair is looking sideways, comfortable with the US president on her arm rest.
Alyssa Mastromonaco was the former white house deputy chief of staff. If accomplishments came with badges, then at 32, she would’ve been marching with the flag of successful people.
I had a passing thought that this book might be drab and full of references to political candidates I have no clue about. A short review at the back cover clinched the deal for me.
If your funny older sister were the former deputy chief of staff to President Barack Obama, her behind-the-scenes political memoir would look something like this …
I can deal with a funny older sister! So I bought this book and added it to the top of my reading list right away.
I wouldn’t have enjoyed reading a book about working in the White House with no personal details. This is exactly the reason I picked up this challenge. To really know the women behind the veneer of success of failure and hopefully normalise my own life situations.
Do other women on covers of magazines have to fight guilt (of skipping office), pain (such divine pain) and anguish, every 2-3 days of the month? Do they find themselves in situations where they feel completely inadequate (and perhaps goddesses of stupidity)? Would a deputy chief of staff be worrying about setting up a fund for street cats?
On a scale of neighbour-next-door to too-holy-to-touch, Alyssa’s life was oscillating between the two, and I loved that!
What do you expect from a woman who was on the list of Washington’s Most Powerful, Least Famous people! Most powerful can fly in MarineOne and have the Presidents casually walk into their rooms while they are doing sit ups, while the least famous can love their persian cats and can rescue more and more kitties.
Most powerful have their numbers on Anna Wintour’s phone and she is tracks them on their last day at the White House and fixes meetings for their next jobs. Least famous can afford not to have a grand wedding and get their wedding dresses from online stores. (Farfetch!)
I liked that idea for an interesting life.
The New York Times identified her as one of “the most influential people inside the campaign whose names were not on television or in the newspapers, but whose role could well have been vital to the outcome of the race.”
Here are some lessons I took from the book. Because if you don’t get an actionable list for your life, you won’t come back to the blog, right?
1. Short people can get recruited to the Oval office. Insecurities are free for everyone and my husband and my cat knows how many do I pack for myself on a daily basis. So for a long time, when I saw pictures of smart women dressed to kill, on the covers of magazines or Wikipedia pages, I simply thought that short women either don’t want to get those jobs or those jobs aren’t just available for them. Like there’s an invisible height police at the entrance to these grand offices and they just don’t let you in. But Alyssa is short and so am I. And Alyssa was called a hedgehog and Alyssa was so cool about it.
2. It’s okay to get into a job that no one teaches you to want. And those jobs are actually some of the coolest!
Alyssa was the first woman to occupy that office. She says
It might mean something to you, or it might not mean anything at all. It’s not exactly the kind of job six-year olds are naming for the “What do you want to be when you grow up?” question. It’s not even the kind of job precocious 26-year-olds are gunning for. Most people who hear the title don’t really know what I did. Jobs like this — the kind of job of which there are many, the kind that are definitely good but that no one teaches you to want — are found only with an open mind and a willingness to do your own thing.
3. Its okay to be sensitive and emotional, just be self-aware about it.
If the Dep. Chief of Staff says that she is sensitive, we all feel a little normal towards our own feelings.
I wear my emotions on my sleeve. I usually dislike someone before I like them. I’m sensitive — especially when I’m tired or feel I’m being misunderstood. This may sound like the “About Me” section on a bad online dating profile, but knowing this stuff has allowed me to keep my contacts, my reputation, and my sanity throughout a long and often stressful career. Being self-aware means knowing when you’re about to act bad — and then not acting bad.
4. At any high-powered job, you have to work a lot. Stress is taken differently by everybody, but that’s the reality.
That is working at the White House in a nutshell: For every glamorous state dinner, every surreal conversation about ’80s music with a foreign dignitary, every glass of champagne on Air Force One, there is a 4:00 AM conference call. The advent of Blackberries and the 24/7 news cycle — neither of which was really around when I got into government — ensures almost no meaningful rest. My hair had turned completely white from stress. That’s just how it is. You kind of know what you’re getting into when you start, but you also have no idea what it will really be like.
At any high-powered job, you’re going to have to work a lot.
And it is not possible to “find your calling”. Callings don’t come knocking at the doors and neither do they arrive wearing a badge. In most likelihood, they come in jobs where you don’t come back home feeling disgusted by yourself. When you come back home and go for that glass of wine or tea or run towards your cat and feel that you accomplished this day on earth, that’s more like a befitting picture of a “calling”.
Give it what you can so that when that day comes when you want to get on a new adventure, you’ll have made your mark and done shit and helped people.
5. Children are not for everybody. And its okay!
6. Serious ladies can eat cupcakes and be crazy cat ladies at the same time! There is no dearth of boxes you can get into. Being a part-cat spirit, I’d actually be more comfortable in one too. But if there’s a part of your personality that reads Hacker News and Vogue with the same spirit, keep it up!
7. Be generous with small acts of kindness. They matter the most.
When Shrummie (her cat) passed away. She got a call from President Obama “I heard we lost Shrummie today,” he said. “There are a lot of sad faces up here on Air Force One right now. You should know — I’m pretty sure we saw his spirit up here over Denali.”
And then she says
Kindness often exists on a smaller scale than the grand gestures popular on social media would have you believe. Though anonymously paying off someone’s student loans or giving a waitress a $5000 tip are amazing acts of goodwill, things like being willing to cut someone some slack, or making a thoughtful phone call, can help another person so much.
8. Cats are the best. Rescue them!