Dada's Sketchbook
(but online)
January 27, 2021
Backseat pilgrims
I remember years ago, walking to my first tuition class. I was not failing in English yet the 350 rupees every month were worth all the larking about (competing with the summer cuckoos) we did and less of grammar we practiced. Tuitions easily became something to look forward to. In hindsight it might have substituted the lack of playtime we suffered from otherwise.
In a choppy span of a few final semester exams, this recreational adda where many football games were planned, suddenly morphed into something much grave. In a sense it must have prepared us for the uncertainties awaiting us in the future but I would often find myself clutching at the hems of the heavy words in the textbooks I carried, barely coping but that’d be a topic for another day.
Coming back to the city, it’s thus normal to find five or six instances of such pilgrims regardless of the time of the day, shuttling around like worker bees. I think I’ve said enough. I have stuffed the rest of my words into the picture.
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January 24, 2021
Caucasian Pumpkins
The title of the post refers to Gummadikaya we had found on a trip to the Guntur vegetable market; heaps of them. The pumpkins I was familiar with till this time were generally dark green or orange-ish if super ripe.
The rest of the spreads from this ‘18 sketchbook display the sheer joy of experiencing a proper brush pen which I had gifted myself, some more late night or mid-class meditative sketching sessions, thumbnailing for an Inktober narrative ( I’ll upload soon as a complete pdf/epub ) and whatever else is there.
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Gutur gu
January 19, 2021
Way past it’s former glory days, the concrete barracks of the steel-city are no longer at a hundred percent occupancy. Many of the quarters, mostly first floor ones have been long vacated. These empty kitchens with broken windows thus often become perfect nesting spaces for the pigeons.
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Free air
January 17, 2021
Normally I’d absolutely veer away from any kind of eavesdropping but in the tightly packed company-quarters where I am currently working from, to not eavesdrop, one has to wear earphones all the time.
The backyards of these Soviet fashioned residential areas have overgrown their initial utilitarian planning, skinny hedges or wire meshes demarcating boundaries. Many houses including mine have small gardens although in the case of my neighbors, who seem to have the green-thumb-gene running in their family, the garden has graduated to a mini-farm. They also have a three year-old boy who after his online classes, comes out to bask in the winter sun.
One such day, I didn’t have my earphones on and heard something that he said while taking a stock of the plants. “ We should plant some trees that give us chips as well. Then we could have vegetables aaand chips too!”
Shortly after this he must have run inside and pitched this idea to his superiors. I don’t blame him; convincing investors for your ambitious start-up is a tough job indeed.
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