Giving back to the internet

About over a year ago, Krishna Kumar or KK randomly lamented that we Indians are a very ungrateful and selfish digital people. He says we consume the internet, devour it day and night for hours on end. We see pictures and videos and emote accordingly. We read blogs and content sites like voyeurs. We are voyeurs because we always partake, never participate. KK says we have never been a giving kind of people. Even if it is something that the internet deeply helped you in – a class project that you needed help with, a dish that we desperately needed to know how to cook, anything…we ask and we get and we are happy. No one thinks of going back to the place and thanking the person, the site that helped you out.

I think I had that in my head all this while and it suddenly popped up when I decided to write to the person who inspired the craft of paper art in me. Six-eight months ago, I spotted a zebra that was made entirely out of black and white paper. Black paper was hand-torn into strips and pasted onto a white sheet of paper. It struck me as the easiest and simplest thing to do so I set about mimicking it with old, dusty pieces of paper I could find around office. My boss , an artist herself, was only happy to see rubble go.

So I made myself my very own paper zebra. Here’s a pic.

Ever since then, I love cutting and pasting paper. I play with newspapers too, upcycling is something that’s always been dear to me. However, the sheer charm of spotless black and white paper is just irresistible. Paperwalla was born.

I got into an exhibition too. The Bliss Quirk Festival in Versova earlier this month was a sort of coming together of quirky designers with a unique quirk sense. I did not know what to expect and did not expect anything and that’s probably why I was the happiest person there when people liked and bought three of the six pieces I had specially created for the exhibition. Cloud 9 anyone? :D

So I thought I should write to the artist who inspired me. I just found Tina Tarnoff’s email address online and wrote to her, thanking her for inspiring me and asking her not to sue me because I hadn’t intended on copying her design, I was merely an excited student!

Hope she will reply with warmth and not with an attorney’s message. :-S

Poem by Kadambari Sen
Art by Jasjyot Singh Hans

My mom read this poem this morning.
She read it attentively and smiled as her eyes reached the end.
She then looked at me and saw me watch her read.
She smiled.
I smiled back, wondering what she was thinking.
Was she thinking of how her own son had gone away?
Did she think of my Sindhi girlfriend when she read ‘Now you are stuck to someone else...’?
She held the two pages out to show my dad and said, “Look, isn’t this Hari from his childhood days?”
How did the poetess Kadambari Sen know what my mom was thinking?
How did the artist Jasjyot Singh Hans know what I looked like in my childhood?
Kadambari Sen has never met my mother.
Jasjyot Singh hasn’t probably even heard of me.
In fact, even Kadambari Sen and Jasjyot Singh Hans haven’t met each other yet!
Such is the beauty of KaviKala.
People coming together to add a bit of themselves to each other.
Every piece of art in KaviKala is a bread crumb from someone’s memory.
Each poem in it tugs at a different string in you.
KaviKala. Sigh.

My little bundle of joy!

No I haven’t become a father. (Consider this, if I actually had become a father, I wouldn’t have time to write this note. I would be too busy catching up on naps and changing nappies.)

My little bundle of joy is Madness Mandali’s book of visual poetry KaviKala. Holding the book in my hand, leafing gingerly through each page and taking in eyefuls of art and poetry gives me joy like nothing else before.

I had always longed to make a book of fun – something that would make me feel positive when I was down in the dumps. KaviKala does that to me. All I have to do is to read the poems and enjoy the art along with it and I am automatically elevated to a happier zone. So much so that I often catch myself smiling randomly. Mad, eh? This is not Madness. This is KaviKala. As the cover suggests, 33 artists + poets = 1 maha mashup!

Each poem in Kavikala is penned by a different poet. The artwork accompanying each poem too is custom-made by a different artist based on his/her perception of each poem. The book thus becomes one of the few attempts at creating visual poetry – poetry that you can see not just in front of your mind’s eye but also the real ones.

Being in the advertising industry, my kind is always on the look out for interesting things, things that are not the usual and things that compell you to react. I did not know the meaning of the phrase ‘jaw-dropping’ until I was asked to proof-read the manuscript of the book. My jaw dropped and stayed on the floor till I finished proof-reading. My four eyes had never seen anything this enchanting in art. My brain found it difficult to comprehend that art in black and white could look as gorgeous as it is in the book.

Self-published and arranged so as to facilitate print-on-order’ KaviKala reeks of the need to encourage young creative brains.

I won’t ask you to buy a copy but this I will definitely tell you, if you haven’t read KaviKala yet, you just missed a few hundred trains to la la land.

P.S: Dear poets and artists inside KaviKala, I am in love with your work. Thank you for letting me be a part of this awesome compilation. Hope to meet all of you in person some day.