The Couch

 

16x12 inches; Watercolour, pen and ink over graphite pencil on textured acid free paper (Click on image to enlarge)

The couch, like my mind, is a seat for many encounters; conversations, debates, drama, lazy afternoon siestas, teasing, loving, hating, staining, excitement, boredom, rejection and seduction.  The couch touches strangers and loved ones with the same intimate caress. It is a symbol of privilege and comfort. It is the halt between the entrance door and the bed. It is private and not so private at the same time. It allows us to just exist without being productive, becoming a couch potato. It also is the seat of power and power games as in the casting couch. But beyond all this, the couch is a receptacle for idle thoughts, day dreams, pleasure, pampering, relaxation, entertainment, eroticism, pain and sorrow. Couches are soft with memories without the lumps of judgement. They are cushioned for the depressed, plush with first kisses and frayed with troubled tears.  The couch takes the place of lost comforting embraces and companionship in solitary existence.

The Closet

 

16x12 inches; Watercolour, pen and ink over graphite pencil on textured acid free paper (Click on image to enlarge)

Do you have a skeleton in the closet? Or are there more than one? Are you in the closet yourself? Did you hide in the closet when you were young and scared? Did you have a Narnia of escape at the other end of the closet? Do you have a closet for your personal belongings and that of others you claim to be your own? Does your closet have a mirror? Is there a closet in your head like mine? A closet full of knickknacks, memorabilia, songs that are playback score of your life, places, whiffs of scents, sights and visions, feelings, traces of a touch, erotica, embarrassments, pain and anger, guilt and guilty pleasures; A closet that opens up like a puzzle and holds a mirror to myself.  I feel at home searching that closet, sniffing the lingering scent of moth balls, looking in the secret compartments, some so deep that they were almost forgotten! It feels like a labyrinth. It is a closet I do not have to come out of, because no one cares for what it hides, though everything it holds makes me who I am today and who I will be tomorrow.

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’!

Bonsai

Mixed media on wall. Created for the cross media artists workshop 'Shunyosthan' organized by Shunyosthan Artists Collective, inspired by the concept of 'Blank Space' at Studio 21, Kolkata, India (Click on images to enlarge)

Thoughts grow crippled
Mangled and distorted
Confined
Like the tears
Never shed
Like the smile
Worn and faded.

It becomes thorny
Trying to make peace
With honest reality
Claustrophobic
With fear
In the labyrinth of
Control and desire.

Seeking to escape
Through the cracks
Spreading midget limbs
Like moss on a wall
Crowding
For the dreams so
False and liberating.

Penetrating through
Sanity and insanity
Through the tenses
In time
Memories stare blind
Fastened windows of
Heart and mind.

- Rudra Kishore Mandal