Guilty As Charged 4 - Envy

8x8 inches (unframed); Watercolour and Pen drawing on Executive Bond paper (Click on image to enlarge)

'The flower which is single need not envy the thorns that are numerous.'

- Rabindranath Tagore

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

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

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?

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

Original Sin

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

Mankind’s suffering started with women! I don’t say it! Says certain myths and religious beliefs! Well, to begin with, mankind gained knowledge of fire and what did Zeus do to punish them? He gave them women! Why else will poor Eve be the one to fall for the snake’s temptation and bring down the wrath of God almighty, on our heads? Islamic beliefs are nothing different on this subject! Sounds very misogynistic, and that’s the way it is! But, it was not always like that! There were times when Women were worshipped for their fertile wombs, for their power to bear children, to create and breathe life into them. They were viewed as Mother Nature incarnate. They were needed, valued and respected, for nature had imbued them with the magic of procreation! I wonder what went so drastically wrong in people’s (of both sexes!) perception of women, to bring about such a huge shift in their status, from being goddesses to being witches! ‘Original Sin’ is my obeisance to that fateful journey of the feminine, from the pedestal of a deity down to being the conniving temptress and ending up as the mere object of pleasure for the male ego.