माता भूमिः पुत्रो अहं पृथिव्याः

Idly, the other day, I asked Grok for a poem on nature. Whether dear Mary Oliver is the go-to on such subjects or if the omniscient Internet trackers know of my love for her, I don’t know. However, it offered to me this painfully beautiful poem:

Sleeping In The Forest

I thought the earth remembered me, she
took me back so tenderly, arranging
her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds. I slept
as never before, a stone
on the riverbed, nothing
between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated
light as moths among the branches
of the perfect trees. All night
I heard the small kingdoms breathing
around me, the insects, and the birds
who do their work in the darkness. All night
I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling
with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.

***

So vivid, I could feel around me also dark, rich soil. Slightly moist under my fingers and more than a little alive. My ear pressed against quiet rustles in the earth.

I asked Grok immediately to give me an image depicting this beautiful scene. The results were nice but a bit limited.
 

 

I hopped across to Dall-e, my old favourite, with the same request and the response was a bit more fantastical and pleasing to me. 

The first image had exquisite balance but issues with rendering the human face. 

A tweak of the prompt yielded this.

What do you think?

Walk Slowly

A very long time since I wrote on this blog… I’ve outgrown it perhaps.
But the beautiful Mary Oliver resonated once again with me and where would I record this but here?
 

When I Am Among the Trees, she says…
When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It's simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”

TN Tour 8: Kanchipuram Extra

Isn’t it so amazing that for a temple town with over a thousand temples, there is only one to a feminine deity? Just the one for the lady Kamakshi, who reigns over the kshetra.

On our ‘extra day’ at Kanchipuram, there was a long list of things to do. The Lord Varadaraja Perumal was first order of business. 

This is a stunning temple complex with some highly intricate sculpture. 

A busload of tourists had arrived and that lengthened the queue time, during which I was able to admire the peeling but still wonderful paintings that covered the walls. 

We went to see the gold and silver lizards, where there was quite a bit of silly shoving not to mention yelling by the guards. I admit I felt a pang of worry with COVID so recently past, to touch them but it didn’t feel right to not do the done thing, either. 

In the main sanctum, the Lord himself was utterly magnificent. The temple has a long history (apparently has around 350 inscriptions from various dynasties) and is one of the 108 divya desams of Vishnu.

Next we asked Raj, our driver, to find us a way to the river. He consulted a local or two, followed a track with some dust raised on it and delivered us, quite without volition, at the Shri Kanchi Kamakoti Peetam. Now this is hallowed ground – the Peetam or Seat was established by Adi Shankara and has an unbroken lineage of 70 acharyas. We must’ve heard that phrase any number of times in our lives. However, somehow, it was not on our ‘Plan A’ checklist. But here we were, and since we were there, we went in. Only to stumble upon grand jayanti celebrations marking the birthday of the Jagadguru Bala Periyava that were underway with all the luminaries of the Peetam on stage. A little abashed, we occupied seats and sat for a while before crouching out in what we hoped was an unobtrusive manner.

We visited the brown riverbed that passes for River Vegavati, once again dismayed at the state of southern rivers. 

+++

That evening we made our way to the Kailashanathar koil. Words fail me as I try to describe the beauty of this wonderful Pallava-era structure. Built with sandstone, this is a square layout of exceptional beauty and balance. 

The lingam is a large and faceted one; I think they said 16, but I cannot be sure. We met an irascible, venerable old man here, one of the priests of the shrine. We fell to talking and he shared a little of what it was like to continue in work that was under appreciated today, brought in far too little… but we could see that he could not imagine his life in any other way but in the service of Shiva.

Around the main shrine, built cunningly into the structure, is a narrow circumambulatory passage. You are required to crouch into the tunnel which encircles the linga, and emerge onto Shiva’s left, a pradakshina that is said to give moksha to those who complete it. A young man before us attempted to clamber up with his backpack still strapped on. “Idé eDu!” our elderly priest chided him. “Remove this! Put it down here! No one is interested in your bag.” It was symbolic. You must drop your baggage if you set off on the path to mukti. 

It reminds me of Kabir:

कबीर का घर सिखर पर जहाँ सिलहली गेल
पाऊँ का टिके पिपील का तहाँ खलकन लादे बैल

On the very peak is Kabir’s home, and every step is treacherous
Even the ant finds the path slippery, how then to take a bullock-cart up?

We sat a while in the dusk, looking at the lovely lines of the temple. It is maintained by the Archaeological Survey of India, with the typical landscaping they deem appropriate for every single site under their domain – lawns dotted with the occasional shrub. But they permit prayers in here, while preserving the structure, so I will not carp too much about that.

We then visited the dargah of Hazrat Syed Shah Hameed Auliya of the Qadri, Chishti order, where we sat awhile. 

Then wandered over to Vaikunda Perumal koil, an atmospheric and very charming temple.

Alas, although it was down the street from our hotel, we could not visit the Chitragupar koil. Said to be an assistant of Yama’s, this gent is responsible for the accounts of our destiny, entries of our good and bad deeds. It is a rare temple and I should have liked to have seen it: Chitragupta, by logic, is a good deity to have in your corner. It was not to be. In any case, it would have been academic. I have turned over all my accounts books to someone else. He will fudge them for me.

My Experiments with Dall-E

In November 2022, Dall-E 2 was opened to the public without a waitlist. This is a deep learning AI model that generates digital images from natural language descriptions called ‘prompts’. I signed up just to see what the buzz was about and since then, I have been quite thoroughly enjoying the artificial intelligence experience.

A new user gets 50 credits to play around with, after which you get 15 free credits every month – each prompt or variation uses one point. You can buy credits also. I have not yet explored ‘Outpainting’ which is an editor interface that lets you tweak the images that get thrown up with your prompts.

Alas, I did not use my 50 credits too well. First prompts were extremely mundane – a log cabin in the woods, for instance. Nice but meh.

I played a bit with watercolours and some nostalgia. The effects were pretty.

Photo-real images with my rudimentary prompts were a bit hit or miss.

Then I learnt that with its heavy learning material, the AI interface was aware of thousands of artist styles and aesthetics. A muddled prompt for something in the Mughal Art style threw up a pretty but somewhat confused assortment of elements.

I tried a couple of classical elements together: a koel, a mango tree, and an ornate window in the style of Amar Chitra Katha, and I was really pleased with these images.

Line drawings were satisfactory, illustrations of flowers in the botanical style were near-perfect and even this render of a phoenix was very acceptable.

I wanted to represent the epic road trips my sister and I undertook last year and I was pretty happy with a couple of results in a cartographic rendering.

As you see from the column on the right, I seized the chance to represent this blog’s title in an expressionist output.

I explored what might emerge if I suggested ‘EH Shepard’ or ‘Raja Ravi Varma’ or ‘MC Escher’.

A photo-real request for a Pallas’ Cat (this gorgeous feline was one of the highlights of the trip we took to Ladakh in August 2022) was quite stunning.  

Since many users were bingeing on androids and ghostly apparitions, I didn't go down too much the futuristic route, although a neon digital art image of a mesmerising phone screen delivered to the brief.

As this column says, we may never have to use stock images again, or struggle to express an abstract idea. I have mourned for years that I cannot draw. Now who cares?

A dose of blue-green

On this day of incessant rain, I watched this little gem of an anime, The Garden of Words.
Life was beautiful, but it is a little more beautiful now.

Dot Matrix

My maid has gone to her native village – two weddings, she informed me. She would be back “as soon as possible”. Ominous. Because she is a much adored member of her extended family and by her own account they do not let her leave once they have her in their loving clutches. Daawats, functions, visits... all happening.

But do I complain? NO! Why? Because this gives me the chance to do the morning muggu myself. (Yes, yes, we are drawing out the muggu theme.)

I have been long fascinated by this kolam business but I don’t do it very well. My technique isn’t polished and even my dots come out like little strikes... really good pulli kolam must be generic and anonymous in its imprint. Mine looks woefully like distinct handwriting. Anyway, Narsamma is away and I have been entertaining myself enormously by learning up loads and loads of simple designs. And because my skill with the powder is limited, I have been drawing with chalk – a compromise but at least it lets me focus on the design.

This is a craft with limitless possibilities. The women in Tamil Nadu of course are masters of this game – come festival time, they can cover vast areas with intricate loops and patterns, jaw-dropping in their sophistication. While I was typing ‘sikku kolam’ into every search window, I came across this fascinating paper by experimental economist Timothy Waring. (Another link to the same article here)

Evidently, kolams have been of interest to ethnomathematicians for a long time now. Did you know that a simple 2x2 grid has five possibilities but the 3x3 matrix has 785 configurations! The 1-7-1 diamond matrix apparently is capable of 11,661,312 designs. Absolutely mind-boggling.

I have started with the 3x3, 4x4, 5x5 and the 7-5-3-1 grids... and then, the world is my canvas.

Our endless and proper work

I take down Tom Rault’s fantastical haiku

everywhere
in the river
the footprints of a fish

In its place, not a haiku this time, but a snatch from a poem. Mary Oliver’s urgent, knock-on-the-head reminder:

Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?

It came like a bolt from the blue, that one. If I had the skills, I would make those letters dance in neon, emblazoned across my vision no matter where I looked, a persistent pop-up on the pages of my life.

I had not come across this wonderful nature poet before but it happened in that curious way it does. A friend on facebook had a poem by her on their page with a meme of some kind going on. I was tempted to read but had only a few minutes to spare then and put it away for later. Later that day, a friend sent me a link to a poem. I clicked, took a few minutes to read, absorb and then as I almost shut the tab, an invisible arrow hovered by the side column. Mary Oliver, it said again. Resigned and, needless to say, excited about this treasure hunt, I went looking for the message that had been sent me.

The poem I’m quoting from – “Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches?”
– is here.

She asks:
Do you think this world was only an entertainment for you?
 
Never to enter the sea and notice how the water divides
with perfect courtesy, to let you in!
Never to lie down on the grass, as though you were the grass!
Never to leap to the air as you open your wings over
the dark acorn of your heart!
 
No wonder we hear, in your mournful voice, the complaint
that something is missing from your life!
 
Who can open the door who does not reach for the latch?
Who can travel the miles who does not put one foot
in front of the other, all attentive to what presents itself continually?
Who will behold the inner chamber who has not observed
with admiration, even with rapture, the outer stone?
    
Well, there is time left -
fields everywhere invite you into them. 
And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away
from wherever you are, to look for your soul?
Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk!

To put one’s foot into the door of the grass,
which is the mystery, which is death as well as life,
and not be afraid!
To set one’s foot in the door of death,
and be overcome with amazement!
 
To sit down in front of the weeds, and imagine
god the ten-fingered, sailing out of his house of straw,
nodding this way and that way, to the flowers of the present hour,
to the song falling out of the mockingbird’s pink mouth,
to the tippets of the honeysuckle, that have opened in the night,
To sit down, like a weed among weeds, and rustle in the wind!
    
Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?
 
While the soul, after all, is only a window,
and the opening of the window no more difficult
than the wakening from a little sleep.

===
The title is from Oliver as well; in her poem Yes! No! she says: "To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work."

A Few Good Men

A while ago, some of us sat down and put together a list. Of Bollywood directors who had made at least three successful films. The idea was to see if these creative persons could sustain good output – how much of it was accidental, how many became absurdly shaken by the success of their films and the attendant silliness that accompanies it in the film industry? How was it that (some) makers of interesting initial films churned out work that was shallower, more formulaic and more manipulative as they were now able to command bigger budgets?

We were clear to begin with that ‘successful’ was a subjective judgement – we didn’t take that to mean a hit necessarily, just a film that made sense to us, or appealed in some way, or showed some heart or integrity or coherence.

We had some ideas of our own, of course. I remember Javed Akhtar being asked once about the creative process and while I can’t quote him word for the word, the essence was this: while Salim and he were having fun with that they were doing, genuinely writing plots, scenarios and lines that they enjoyed, it worked. When they started second-guessing the audience, making assumptions about what would ‘work’ and what wouldn’t, they lost the magic. So basically a process where the creative person clears the board – clears away preconceptions (their own as well as other people’s), looks at a subject with some contemplation and serves it in the best manner possible... then it works. When they start worrying about how they are going to keep this good thing going, about doing justice to this bigger budget and big label expectations, put in a slick dance or two, devote more time to the publicity schedule than they do to the script and homework, they are less satisfying. This is commonsense, of course – I am saying nothing new but evidently, so difficult to do!

At the top of our list was Dibakar Banerjee and it was decided that this here was a good man in whom we could place our trust. Anything made by him, we would line up to watch. Yes, Shanghai fell short of being memorable but his short in Bombay Talkies held its own and what variety and assurance he brings to his subjects! And I for one am super excited that he will be making Detective Byomkesh Bakshi with the talented Sushant Singh Rajput.

I am also interested in Imtiaz Ali. I loved his Socha Na Tha – even a shade better than the more touted Jab We Met. He stuttered badly of course with Love Aaj Kal but recovered his poise with Rockstar. I am really looking forward to Highway; it has all the Imtiaz Ali trademarks: travel, self-discovery and I suspect that Alia Bhatt is going to make everyone sit up.

Shimit Amin has consistently put out quality and even in spite of his association with Yash Raj Films. We will keep an eye out for Zoya Akhtar too. I am not attracted myself to Anurag Kashyap, who is a bit affected in his approach but there is something there. 

Milan Lutharia is exciting if erratic; we would look forward to Sujoy Ghosh’s next, as well as Shriram Raghavan’s. So too for that matter Abhishek Kapoor’s next: Fitoor. Tigmanshu Dhulia has become trapped in communicating a certain badlands ethos but I really liked Bullet Raja (and going by the promos I have an inkling that I will prefer it to the forthcoming Gunday as far as Jai-Veeru tales go) and how about that Paan Singh Tomar! It haunts me still.

But so many disappointments we came across as we put this list together. Whatever happened to John Matthew Mathan who made Sarfarosh?! Why did Ashutosh Gowarikar go downhill in that step-wise descent? Will Farhan Akhtar ever make something approaching Dil Chahta Hai? Or if that is asking for too much – will he ever stop with the Don series, for our sakes, and to save consecutive dilutions of a powerful, iconic brand?

All said and done, though: thanks, guys, for many hours of joy. We love the movies and if it happens that we don’t like one, we at least love sniping at it. Hail Bollywood!

Links: Missing links and Other Things

I can’t go wrong today, it seems. Every day brings exhortations from my social media timelines – links that lead to news, videos, cat videos, absorbing views, activism, personal photo albums... the lot. Today, link after link led to gold, so I’m just collating it all.

First thing in the morning, my friend Samanth Subramanian’s most excellent and moving essay about his grandfather, whom he says he didn’t question closely enough when he was alive. (I find that shocking – Samanth has at least half a dozen questions for anyone.) But now with the man himself obscured by death, Samanth tries to make ‘forensic guesses’ about his grandfather’s life, to build a sketchy biography, and a tribute.

He says: “There is some complicated guilt here too, lurking in the corner but unavoidable. I have felt as if I am personally responsible for rupturing traditions that run back many generations and that are still alive, to some extent, in the person of my father... under my uncaring stewardship, a certain continuity has snapped, and a vast body of inherited knowledge has suddenly and irreversibly decayed.”

How this resonates with me! Particularly since my mother’s death, I find myself stupidly at a loss – and feel many pangs over this heritage that could have been mine if I had only respected, valued it more. Between my grandmother’s lifestyle and mine is such a world of difference and I know whose is shallower, poorer.

In the same vein allow me to link (although I came across it a few weeks ago) to another fine piece that speaks of a culture, a past we have wantonly let go of.

When Shweta and I discuss this loss, we are agreed that the blame lies with our parents’ generation – our doting parents who loved their parents but didn’t respect them enough, who looked too much to the future, to western educations, to success, to expanding their horizons beyond anything their forefathers had dreamt of. Theirs the blame for not holding on tightly enough, for their lack of conviction, for not insisting that we, their children, learn and carry on some of it, for letting it all sink before we thought to grasp it. Is that too harsh? I am not bitter, only regretful.

====

Another link today led to this wonderful interview with actor Kangana Ranaut. She’s astonishingly poised, impressively mature (she’s 26!) and devoid of artifice or affectation.



===

My Guru talks of knowing rain: “If you walk through the rain with utmost awareness, you will know rain in a certain way. But if you walk through the rain with absolute abandon, you will know rain another way.” Isn’t that like holding on to moon beams? Can one know rain? He says maybe. That’s what I’m after. Which way I still don’t know, but I’ll know in the end. Or it won’t matter.

But let Sadhguru speak for himself.

====

And though I didn’t come across these links today-today, these TED talks enlivened my week, so they go in here too.

Iwan Baan on how people carve out homes in unexpected places and ways:



This unexpectedly moving lecture on muses by Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat, Pray, Love:

Kaagazi hai pairahan

My friend, Aasheesh Pittie, has many interests, and books have been a consuming passion with him for many years now. He sent me a link to a fascinating story the other day – where a sculpture had ‘appeared’ at the Edinburgh’s Leith Library, the latest in a series of ‘gifts’ that the mysterious artist was making to various bodies of her(?) choice: the Scottish Poetry Library,  the National Library of Scotland, the Filmhouse among others.

The works are intricate, inspired and incredibly beautiful. Someone has been crafting them out of printed paper, choosing scraps with delicate interest and creating these wonderful installations that pay tribute to words, books, movies and other forms of “magic”. And then s(he) has been giving them away, leaving them to be found in obscure shelves and ledges to be found by their recipients.
Many of them refer to Ian Rankin, but the artist has diversified of late. The latest one bears a quote from AA Milne: “It is more fun to talk with someone who doesn’t use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words like “What about lunch?”” What fun this is!

My favourite must be this scene of ‘books-turned-movies’ where horses and armoured warriors leap out of the screen, surround their audience in an utterly immersive experience.

 

 

But this one is funny too:

The whole story up to a year ago is here and detailed pictures of the sculptures are here.
And for more, LOTS more on book culture, http://www.bookpatrol.net/ Hat tip, again, to Aasheesh.