Immaterial

 

10x13.5 inches; Pen and ink over graphite pencil on tinted drawing paper (Click on image to enlarge)

We are at war with ourselves.
Fighting for life with ‘Self Destruct’ programmed into our motherboards.
Do and die. Kill and be killed. All guts, no glory!
It is a slow burn horror flick with no survivors!
This IS civilized; we are assured. This IS progress.
The world is an orange.
We have peeled off the rind, dug our nails deep into it for oil, and squeezed out all the juices from each one of its carpels, and dumped the rest in radioactive waste.
The corporates own the seeds; also the air, water and our freedom.
The filthy rich and powerful own the corporates.
We own nothing, not even our own selves!
All of that conceit, that greed, that deceit, that unbridled need to win, will come to nothing.
The genocide, the ecocide, the hate mongering and democide will not make us invincible!
We will perish, and rot, and so will the memory of our plot.
What will remain is speculation and dust, on our toxic dreams and lust, in between the layers of the earth’s lithosphere.

Pancha Mahabhoota 5 - Vyom (ether/space)

12x16 inches; Pen drawing on acid free textured paper (Click on image to enlarge)

Kosmos

Who includes diversity and is Nature,

Who is the amplitude of the earth, and the coarseness and sexuality of the earth, and the great charity of the earth and the equilibrium also,

Who has not look’d forth from the windows the eyes for nothing, or whose brain held audience with messengers for nothing,

Who contains believers and disbelievers, who is the most majestic lover,

Who holds duly his or her triune proportion of realism, spiritualism, and of the æsthetic or intellectual,

Who having consider’d the body finds all its organs and parts good,

Who, out of the theory of the earth and of his or her body understands by subtle analogies all other theories,

The theory of a city, a poem, and of the large politics of these States;

Who believes not only in our globe with its sun and moon, but in other globes with their suns and moons,

Who, constructing the house of himself or herself, not for a day but for all time, sees races, eras, dates, generations,

The past, the future, dwelling there, like space, inseparable together.

- Walt Whitman

Pancha Mahabhoota 1 - Marut (wind/air/storm)

 12x16 inches; Pen drawing on acid free textured paper (Click on image to enlarge)

Subway Wind

Far down, down through the city's great, gaunt gut,

The gray train rushing bears the weary wind;

In the packed cars the fans the crowd's breath cut,

Leaving the sick and heavy air behind.

And pale-cheeked children seek the upper door

To give their summer jackets to the breeze;

Their laugh is swallowed in the deafening roar

Of captive wind that moans for fields and seas;

Seas cooling warm where native schooners drift

Through sleepy waters, while gulls wheel and sweep,

Waiting for windy waves the keels to lift

Lightly among the islands of the deep;

Islands of lofty palm trees blooming white

That lend their perfume to the tropic sea,

Where fields lie idle in the dew drenched night,

And the Trades float above them fresh and free.

- Claude McKay

Desire And Despair

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

Those cards

Boxes of chocolate

Smell of your soap

On my birthday

The touch

Under the blanket

A strand of your hair

On my pillow

The movie ticket

Our hands

In the dark

Mouths

On the roof

Sultry afternoons

Rain drenched

Like the crows

Sound of

Punctured bicycle tyre

Of pleasure

Maybe guilt

Surely Pain

Caught under

The mosquito

Net

Of desire

To learn French

Do French

Seduction

Wine on our

Skin

Thin veil

Of modesty lost

Liberation

In a bathtub

Dancing

Naked and sticky

‘Baby skin’

Whispered

Tickling my ears

Leaving behind

A trail

Sorrow

Of holding

Hands

In public garden

Eyes flirting

Mouths watering

A shared cup

Of ‘Irani chai’

A bite

Of jealousy

On my nipple

Dripping

Honey words

Poetry

Of laughter and

Longing for

Despair

Heart break

Distrust

‘Dry your tears!’

Bitch

The world

Never ends

To the music

Of dance beats

Sweat

Circling

Measuring

Teasing

Pulling each other

Groin to groin

‘kambakht Ishq’

Old monk

In my vein

Passion

In our loin

Kissing

Till the faithful

Are summoned

Morning prayers

Warm embrace

Enchanted sleep

Deception of

Separation

Distance untraveled

Unwanted

Complications of being

Uncomfortably numb

With failure

Dejection

‘What went wrong?’

Nothing went right

Expectations

Stifled and buried

Dreams

In between

Right and wrong

Flows a river

Of longing

Infested with

Ghosts

Drowned possibilities

Piranhas

Of guilt

And a leaky boat of

Salvation is slowly

Ferried by despair.

- Rudra Kishore Mandal

Fluff

 20.5x28.5 inches; Pen drawing on acid free textured paper with watercolour wash (Click on image to enlarge)
SOLD. In private collection

Every year after the rains are gone, and the autumn sunshine announced the arrival of Durga Puja, with the chill in the air indicating that winter is near... during that time my mom used to bring out all the pillows, cushions and mattresses up on the terrace, to sunbathe them. She insisted on doing this like a ritual every year, to get rid of the musty and unhealthy smell that the prolonged rainy season left behind on everything. She will carefully, almost lovingly, fluff up the pillows and the cushions till they looked like square or rectangular ‘Phulkas’, puffing up on a ‘tawa’ and turn them over at regular intervals. The pillows and cushions will soon become warm and cozy and that is the time when our pet cats, a family of five we had for over six years, will make good use of the soft fluffy playground! The young kittens will play hide and seek among the cushions and roll around, as if the cushions and pillows had been laid out for them. Slowly the warmth will make them drowsy and eventually they will fall asleep. I used to love watching them perform this little drama, and sometimes join in their game with a ball of wool or some other prop. All I have now are the memories of those afternoons, which manage to bring a smile of contentment to my lips, even now. It is like the taste of some delicious jam or pickle you had stolen and tasted once and the taste still lingers in your memory, bringing you pleasure mingled with nostalgia. I still remember the smell of those warm pillows, the feel of the soft fabric, the fluffy fur of the cats, their soft lazy ‘purrrs’ of satisfaction, and the smile on my mom’s face...  Happiness was so easy to find, once!! Yet, many may find it to be nothing but ‘fluff’!