Cause And Effect

20.5x28.5 inches; Pen drawing on handmade paper with watercolour wash (Click on image to enlarge)

A moth... beautiful with silky golden wings outlined in dark brown velvety down, fluttering in my room and suddenly caught in a spider's silky web, is unable to understand why its flight was unexpectedly interrupted. It flutters a little more pulling at the fine silken threads and unwittingly informing the predatory spider that a victim has just landed on its net. I see the spider progress towards the helplessly struggling moth, cautious enough not to break any of the threads, which holds its victim tangled. Pity suddenly swells up in my heart for the moth, knowing that a thing of such beauty and full of life is going to meet a painful and slow death. I intervene. I reach out and scoop the moth out of the web, scaring the spider away which scurries away deeper within its own web as if to protect itself from me. The moth flutters in the cup of my hand with renewed vigor as if trying to celebrate its new found life force. I look adoringly at it for a few moments and take it to an open window. I set it free... and it flutters away towards the mango tree... its wings shining like a spark of sunlight on this cloudy day... and then nothing....the spark is extinguished in a blink. A finch snatches the moth away in mid flight, perches itself on a nearby branch, looks at me, mocking me as it devours the moth entirely. Life and death, the cycle of cause and effect!

Dilli

57x20.5 inches; 28.5x20.5 inches each panel; Pen drawing and Acrylic on handmade paper (Click on image to enlarge)
SOLD. In private collection

Created for a child's room, this composition uses 6 historical landmarks of India's capital city, Qutub Minar, India Gate, Jama Masjid, Red Fort, Humayun's Tomb and Lotus Temple in a cluster to form a magical cityscape. The artwork is divided into two panels meant to be framed together, forming a composite view.  

The Sun and the Moon

Each portrait:13.5x20.5 inches; Pen drawing on handmade paper with watercolour wash (Click on image to enlarge)

SOLD. In private collection

Imaginary symbolic portraits of Mah Laqa Bai Chanda (the Moon), an influential and powerful courtesan of Hyderabad who was also a well known Sufi Poetess, the first woman to have compiled a complete book of her poems/Ghazals and Sayyid Shah Siraj al-Din Hussayni better known by his nom de plume Siraj (the Sun), another young and gifted Sufi poet whose poems are still sung as Qawwalis all over India.

Hear news of love’s bewilderment

Hear news of love’s bewilderment: no beauty remains, no feverish madness

No you remains, no I remains – all that remains is unselfconsciousness

A wind blew in from the unseen world, scorching the garden of appearances

On pain’s bare branch, just one bud – call it the heart – remains in greenness

Just now, the king of oblivion has bestowed upon me nakedness’s royal robe

No stitch of discernment’s propriety remains, no veil-rending insanity’s lewdness

With what tongue can I express complaint against my beloved’s negligent gaze?

Take from my heart’s wine-vat a hundred cups – it remains brimming in fullness

Your beauty’s power stirs up bewildering tumult here to such extent that

The mirror reflects no charred devotee, no idol – its face remains imageless

An amazing moment it was, when I first learned from passion’s pages

Ever since, reason’s tome stood on the shelf and remains right there, readerless

Passion’s flames reduced to ash Siraj’s uncomplaining, speechless heart

No caution remains, no second thought – all that remains is fearlessness

- Sayyid Shah Siraj al-Din Hussayni (d.1763), mystic Sufi poet, better known as Siraj ‘the sun’. Translated by Dr. Scott Kugle

The Lure

28.5x20.5 inches; Pen drawing on handmade paper with water colourwash (Click on image to enlarge)

I set my eyes on yours. The opening to a primal dance of desires burning on eyelids, a toe less tango of wits. It’s an invitation which entices and liberates notorious hope into a magical trance. You play elusive, I play right into it. I try to learn by heart, every fluid move of yours; the mocking arch of an eyebrow to the smug curling smoke at the corner of your lips. I devour your words like the tempting apple of Eve. I scoop up a handful of your shadow and breathe in the aroma of a lonely bed. I brave indifference, aided by the allure of your vulnerability. You panic like a child in a dark room, left alone with a fantastic monster under his bed. I pluck you up and hold you to my brotherly chest, caressing your frowns away. My chest expands to house the triumph of taming the devious stallion. I grasp you in a sickly sweet embrace. My tentacles coil around you in a possessive knot. You mimic my act and I believe you reciprocate. We build a cocoon with the fragile silk of imagined sanctuary, a delusional sense of power and invincibility in each other’s arm. All worries fall like shooting stars. I am lulled into a state of bliss, my hunger satiated, like a python after a huge meal. My inertia renders my thoughts impotent. I slowly sink in your quagmire, ignoring the odour of deception swirling around me. When I am neck deep in the bubbling cauldron, realization dawns like the last breath before death; you have led me through this dance, a sacrificial goat to be beheaded at the altar of love. I go under and am engulfed in you. I disintegrate in your cruel hands and experience a perverse pleasure. I had set out as a predator and ended up being the prey.

- Rudra Kishore Mandal

The Sphinx

9.7x13.7 inches; Pen drawing on paper with watercolour wash (Click on image to enlarge)

Enigma

Are you?
Secrets play like dew
On lotus leaves,
Your riddled spirit
Mercurial but true.

Is it your will?
A charade,
To keep us in shade,
Lest we break
Your fragile heart,
Vulnerable but afraid?

Treacherous
They say,
Is your way,
Like a mirage
Igniting passions
Leading lives astray.

Is it your will?
Devising lame
And misleading game?
A trial of faith,
For the lovelorn souls
To drown in shame?

Merciless
To behold,
Is your heart so cold?
A sharp dead stone
None dare melt,
Not even boldest of bold.

Is it your will?
Being cruel,
Using malice as fuel?
Haunting with dread
Of torture and heartache,
While your own self, you duel?

- Rudra Kishore Mandal

The Phoenix

9.7x13.7 inches; Pen drawing on paper with water color wash (Click on image to enlarge)
SOLD. In private collection

Your nest is your pyre.

On a bed of myrrh,
Strewn with ageless suffering
The sepia Cinnamon twigs
Form a fence of memories,
Fading…
Entwined with the Spikenard,
Gathered from the lost Eden
Of love and yearning,
You breathe your last…
Igniting the inferno,
Devouring the past.
The purging flames grow
Into unmarked wings,
An unbroken heart
And you are born anew
From the ashes of desire.

- Rudra Kishore Mandal

Weed

11.7x15.7 inches; Pen drawing on  paper (Click on image to enlarge)

I give you an inch

You take the entire limb…

Weighing down my shoulder,

Playing with my head,

Gripping my neck

Smothering me…

Sinking your roots

Deep within my chest.
My heart breaks
Under pressure.
Your unrelenting hunger
Grows in my belly,
Pulling me
Towards gravity.
You have my balls
In your tight fist,
My legs bound
And no ground
Beneath my feet.
You strike me blind,
Licking my words away
You drink with relish
At the stream of tears
And sap my will to rebel.
You usurp me
And yet
You grow on me.

- Rudra Kishore Mandal

The Prey

20.5x28.5 inches; Pen drawing on handmade paper with watercolour wash (Click on image to enlarge)

Watching

From afar

Perched

On bony thrones

Tangled, thorny, and

Riddled with worms

Of odium and panic

If we dare rebel

Throw stones.

Waiting

In shadows

Wishing

For us to coil up

Belch, choke and

Breathe our last

Decomposed by plague

Penetrated by a bullet

Cut by a blade.

Hovering

High above

Breathing

Down our neck

Pushing, shoving and

Raping us with our

Crippled religious sentiments

Shameless war mongering

Corrupt morality.

Digging

In our talons

Tearing

At our mind

Dead, senseless and

Erupting with putrid sores

From myriad stigmas

Inflicted abuse

Mutilated lives.

Longing

For liberation,

Manipulating

The delicate dictates

Good, bad and

Forever judgmental

Of what we desire,

We are the tyrant,

We are the prey.

- Rudra Kishore Mandal

Resurrection

20.5x28.5 inches; Pen drawing on handmade paper with watercolour wash (Click on image to enlarge)

‘As a man abandons his worn-out clothes and acquires new ones, so when the body is worn out a new one is acquired by the Self, who lives within.’

- Bhagavat Gita, Hinduism

Lament

28.5x20.5 inches; Pen drawing on handmade paper with watercolour wash (Click on image to enlarge)

‘If you love me,’ you said,
‘You will want me for me!’
‘If I love you,’ I said,
‘You will love me for me!’

What remained unsaid
Were the threads unseen
Which sew the wounds,
Built the bridges,
Webbed the blanket
Shielding me from me,
You from you
Lost on the way
Trying to keep alive
A myth called ‘We’.

‘You are no more,’ you lament
‘The one I knew and loved!’
‘I am no more,’ I admit
‘Me!’

- Rudra Kishore Mandal

The Ventriloquist

20.5x28.5 inches; Pen drawing on handmade paper with watercolour wash (Click on image to enlarge)

Play with me

Come, pull the string…

Speak through me

You can hear me sing.

Limelight’s on me

You put me there.

When I’ll take over

You’ll cease to be here.

You think you’re strong?

The one in control?

The tables will turn,

With the drum on the roll.

You will call me a monster,

I was moulded by you.

You’ll play the victim

And ask, ‘who’s playing who?’

- Rudra Kishore Mandal

Redemption

28.5x20.5 inches; Pen drawing on handmade paper with watercolour wash (Click on image to enlarge)

Wonder, from these thousands of 'me',

which one am I?

Listen to my cry; do not drown my voice

I am completely filled with the thought of you.

Don't lay broken glass on my path

I will crush it into dust.

I am nothing, just a mirror in the palm of your hand,

reflecting your kindness, your sadness, your anger.

If you were a blade of grass or a tiny flower

I will pitch my tent in your shadow.

Only your presence revives my withered heart.

You are the candle that lights the whole world

and I am an empty vessel for your light.

- Rumi, Sufi Mystic

The Awakening

20.5x28.5 inches; Pen drawing on handmade paper with watercolour wash (Click on image to enlarge)

SOLD. In private collection

I am neither formed nor unformed, for I have always been here.

I am neither delusion nor actuality, for I have always been here.

I am neither of light nor of darkness, for I have always been here.

I am the Bliss, I am the Truth, I am the Boundless Sky.

How can I speak of having desires or not having desires?

How can I speak about attachment or non-attachment?

How can I speak about God as being real or unreal?

I am the Bliss, I am the Truth, I am the Boundless Sky.

(…)

It is neither solid nor subtle.

Neither appearing nor disappearing.

It is without beginning, middle, or end.

It is neither above nor below.

This is the secret of the Ultimate Truth.

I am the Bliss, I am the Truth, I am the Boundless Sky.

(…)

Dear one, I am neither unknowable nor hidden.

I am neither imperceivable nor lost.

I am neither near nor far.

I am the Bliss, I am the Truth, I am the Boundless Sky.

(…)

I have no actions that bring regret or misery.

I have no thoughts that bring pain or suffering.

I have no sense of "me" or "mine."

I am the Bliss, I am the Truth, I am the Boundless Sky.

- Avadhuta Gita, Hinduism

Ego

20.5x28.5 inches; Pen drawing on handmade paper with watercolour wash (Click on image to enlarge)

SOLD. In private collection

In psychoanalysis, Ego is the division of the psyche that is conscious, most immediately controls thought and behaviour, and is most in touch with external reality. It is custom developed for each one of us individuals, as it feeds on the data it receives form the environment it grows in! All our actions and reactions are triggered by this ego! As Sigmund Freud pointed out ‘Analysis does not set out to make pathological reactions impossible, but to give the patient's ego freedom to decide one way or another.’ Ego is also an identification of the self, especially as distinct from the world and other selves. Ego can also be an appropriate pride in oneself; self-esteem. But, when this understanding of the self or the pride goes out of realistic bounds of human nature and becomes an exaggerated sense of self-importance it turns to conceit. The question is ‘How much is that much?’ When can we judge that the boundaries have been breached between self-esteem and conceit? And isn’t being judgemental a sure sign of the ego? In spirituality, the ego has been always the villain. As the 14th Dalai Lama said “The foundation of the Buddha's teachings lies in compassion, and the reason for practicing the teachings is to wipe out the persistence of ego, the number-one enemy of compassion.” So, Ego stands in the way of love, friendship, kindness and compassion; things that the soul craves. I have seen so many lives being ruined because ego becomes the master of the house. The ego is always hungry and the more you feed it the more the fire burns, until the self is obliterated. There is an ancient proverb, “It is the nature of the ego to take, and the nature of the spirit to share.” So, I guess it will be a good thing for all of us to decide whom to feed, the ego or the soul!

Apocalypse

20.5x28.5 inches; Pen drawing on handmade paper with watercolour wash (Click on image to enlarge)

Apocalypse (Greek: "lifting of the veil" or "revelation") is a term applied to the disclosure to certain privileged persons of something hidden from the majority of humankind. Today the term is often used to refer to Armageddon, also referred to as the end of the world, which may be a shortening of the phrase ‘apokalupsis eschaton’ which literally means "revelation at the end of the æon, or age". In the Christian tradition, 'The Apocalypse' refers in particular to the Book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalypse

Apocalypse (noun)

– Very serious event resulting in great destruction and change

Source: http://dictionary.cambridge.org

Hinduism teaches us that nothing ever ends! It is an unending cycle! When something ends, it does so with the sole purpose to pave the way for a new beginning!

Heavy stuff I know! Yet it is very simple. I looked this word up (It was like a freaky premonition!) while tripping at the state of everything ‘Global’, which our world is supposed to be evolving into, and worked myself up into a state of frenzy, alarmed! Alarmed, at the increasing menace of ‘Global Warming’ and more at the rate at which the so called ‘Globalization’ is eating into independent minded nations like ours, dissolving our value systems while injecting their own, erasing our cultural footprints while imprinting theirs, utilizing our cheap labor and fueling our consumerist greed! That’s not Globalization, that’s getting mind fucked! It is misinterpreting Globalization and making it into a villainous plot for world domination! We are not becoming members of the global village, we are becoming irresponsible zombies, or even better third rate clones! Our Identities are at stake. We are molding ourselves and our needs to ape certain human specimens whom we have ordained as benchmarks of evolved beings, and making ourselves believe in the need to buy a Ferrari which has no real utility on our roads, because either the roads have a hundred potholes and clogged with flood water or eternal traffic jams! Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against evolving or adopting practices from other cultures which can make us better human beings, but I have a problem aping other cultures and trying to prove to the world that, we were born with it! I have a problem compromising our Identity just to fit in! I have a problem with the reckless rape of human values at the hands of demand and supply! Globalization for me is all about living in harmony, helping each other better our living, so that the world becomes a better place for everyone and everything on it and still accepting and respecting each other’s differences! And I don’t see that happening! Is this what apocalypse looks like?

Unsung Lullaby

13.5x20.5 inches; Pen drawing on handmade paper with watercolour wash (Click on image to enlarge)

No one hears them weep, or rather sees their silent tears as they will themselves to sleep, to get lost in their dreams and shut out the chaos and high emotional drama playing outside the safety of their bed room door! The screams and moans become hard rock lullabies playing in a constant loop! Language crosses the barrier of decency! Such are the nights, spent in anxiety and escapism, of the rising number of children belonging to families which are defunct, abusive and riddled with domestic violence! The parents don’t notice anything because they are too busy with their egos, clashing! Their child becomes just another reason to hang on to a failed marriage, more of a curse than a gift. Fuses are running short, tempers are soaring! Compromise has become synonymous to love! I wonder, what kind of adult human beings are these children going to grow up into? Will they be able to love others? Will they grow up to be responsible and tolerant? Will they be able to build lasting bonds of family and friends? Will they ever grow up at all? Will they ever have a childhood, to begin with?

Abduction Of Innocence

8x12 inches; Pen drawing on handmade paper with watercolour wash (Click on image to enlarge)

This painting has been inspired by a story in Greek mythology about how Zeus, driven by his passionate lust, took the form of a mighty eagle to seduce and abduct a mortal youth named Ganymede who later became his personal cup bearer. Zeus was God of all Gods and thus the story elaborates his escapade! But what intrigues me is the story from Ganymede’s perspective. A young, handsome (understatement on my part because he must have been ‘drop dead gorgeous’ for Zeus to have gone crazy over him!), innocent youth losing his virginity and more to a God! Zeus had to disguise himself in order to get Ganymede’s intimate embrace. So, was Ganymede entirely innocent to begin with? Imagine being carried away by an eagle! How would that feel? Would it have been any different if Zeus had approached him without the aid of disguise? What must have gone through his body and mind during the entire episode. We can only speculate! But one thing is obvious; he liked what was happening because he became an eternal companion of the same God who ravished him. He did not turn himself into a tree or plunge to his death! Would it have been any different if Zeus was just another mere mortal old man? God knows… but everything seems to boil down to 'control'; who/what controls whom/what and who/what spins out of control! The moment one grasps the workings of 'control', precious innocence goes kaput!! I kind of like happy endings!

Loathing

9.5x28.5 inches; Pen drawing on handmade paper with watercolour wash (Click on image to enlarge)
SOLD. In private collection

For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.
- William Shakespeare

Lust

9.5x28.5 inches; Pen drawing on handmade paper with watercolour wash (Click on image to enlarge)
SOLD. In private collection

Lust's passion will be served; it demands, it militates, it tyrannizes.
- Marquis De Sade

Love

9.5x28.5 inches; Pen drawing on handmade paper with watercolour wash (Click on image to enlarge)
SOLD. In private collection

O cunning Love! with tears thou keep'st me blind,
lest eyes well-seeing thy foul faults should find!
- William Shakespeare