Strength

Tum ho toh accha hai,
tum na ho, toh bhi accha hai.

'Make a good book, not a great one.'

Past

Forerunners get lost (as
other's find),
in old
stones, smiles and frills,
mine more than these lines -
is the beauty of innocent
starts.

Method

From
maximum mess,
you brew
magic.

Dirty

Fear clean,

hide the sensual,

subvert the pure, bury sense -

for some, be true, not honest.

Music

I orchestrate moves
and everything you are,
yet
i'm lost in the filth
I am, when you move.

Being a girl

When you are innocent,
they are stronger.
Once aware,

you are not naive.

The more your know,
the further you deviate,
but to not see is to not learn.
When lost in your own,

you cannot be heard,

when you say it as it is,
you are an open book.
When you are colorful,
you are not sharp,
and colourless
is immature.
When you achieve,
you are week within,
When larger than life,
you are not simple,
and when you strip yourself of all
you are less attractive.

I am insatiable.
I have been all I wanted,
and nothing remains.
I am more than that in my ordinariness,
and I fear
what a moment lacks,
more than what it holds.

Cliche

Everyone's beautiful,
everyone's got a story,
everyone's a judge.
If only i could collect myself again,
gather my dues,
fulfill the selfish desires of this heart,
be stable
and loved,
could I devote myself to the wounds
and joys of their heart.

Both

Stoop low,
High as you are,
Vivid as is life.

evenings

Centre

What it takes to be good to the wrong
is kindness (not indifference),
and the best of them will
only feel more victorious,
the question is whether
to hold your ground or walk on their's
to prove a point.
I'll prove it (again), if
to care is to not fall, and now I will be true to my style.

Pretending

To pose your heart as you pretend

to be if only a belief

is true but

he who won't wear 

his heart on his sleeve

he who conceals what he could be

is untrue it seems

so then what matters is not who is pretending

but who reveals and who doesn't.

 story by Franz Kafka

finally- the book mark

silence

spell it out
they'll never know
for
they are always
lesser
or more than you.

Like a child,
we
judged nothing,
followed no rules,
of right or wrong,
of going where we should,
we wore faces but rid them too,
why then,
must we necessarily be
simple, too?

Colonisation

These dogs starved for love
under metal pipes
and beaten plates curl
when the tire moves
there is always the nearest cave to hide from emperor
for being born less couth.

jackals and arabs

vengeful lambs condemn birds of prey as evil; the birds of prey, rather than reciprocating this hatred, suggest that they love the lambs— because "there is nothing tastier".

reference:On the Genealogy of Morality

Submerge

I the keeper of secrets,

walks into the sea like
a puppy parting with it's teether

a magician trading subtlety
for the open waves to hit me again.

Desire

So much desire,
so much more to see
so much to be
take me there
to the music,
to the lovely dresses,
the drawings,
the dogs,
the places i haven't seen,
the loves i haven't known, yet.

Note to remember

It is so easy to write anyone off

anyone ahead, or below or

with you, 

anyone who has something you don't,

desirable or not,

to convince yourself, where you are at is better

than where the world is

you may be there tomorrow

or perhaps you were yesterday,

and who knows what pain and joys

have got them there;

what it will take you

to get there.

Those who create things of beauty

all look within

and every one's depth, is as valid.

This Side That Side : Re-storying Partition by Vishwajyoti Ghosh, Process work

A wave, a year, two,
lost
in the make up of the mind.
Corners
of the city,
on closed terraces,
I spent countless evenings
lost in the make up of your mind.
Once the door shuts,
I search for it's marks.
Open the windows to the world,
but I'm a clean slate again,
with nothing to remember.

attempt

page 1, attempt 2, long way to go
meduim: paper cuts and black pen

Those Up There

No matter what you have (or don't) tomorrow, be modest.
With power, you have the power to raise those who deserve to be raised, those who the world ordinarily ignores. Those who go against the current and most often, become victims of collective cowardice and blame.
Achievement is a responsibility first, a promise, and then a luxury.

beauty is, steadiness

For First City magazine

Illustrated spread for Gautam Bhatia's idea of the 'map-of-delhi' in the August issue of First City magazine.

Chosen and Published

second option

sarai inputs : discussion points

• flying circus, film
• the artistic body
• freedom of the geneology of art
• sendo titlo
• ed bruche'
• oulipo : a parody. 
• post anarchism: failure
• DISCHARGE
• HAMMER,CROWBAR
• oshima ceremony/protest : the bride hasnt arrived but the whole ceremony is completed. nirakaar protest. social science: i would like to problematize the problem - talk about talk about talk
• lamuk
• object vs thing : fetishising the object veils the labour behind it
• touch: how does commodification negate touch? 
• 60s phenomenology.
• how does it inform ur work conceptually, apart from being an act of transgression? conditional
• john dewey: air guitar in art as experience
• philosophy converts sound into meaning, poetry converts meaning into sound
• why wary of theory, theory is not western
• where i start is incidental, where i end is accidental (p?)
• can you experience space without reason? why the instigator?
• deep ecology
• francis alys: subversive tales ( city, gun, life)
• walks through Jerusalem, along the 1948 partition lines, through armed checkpoints, holding a leaking can of paint (The Green Line [Sometimes doing something poetic can become political and sometimes doing something political can become poetic])

• douchon played chess
• john cage lalala
• the representation debate : do we stop representing then? 
• abstracting the body , the eyes and the subject have to negotiate, adjust
• removal of the body, body as vector, debranding : removal of familiarity
• superfluous branding surrounds
• evil architect: evil planners controlling minions.  counter porosities in the city
• the myth of the truth : photography: is it a document or art? oh look this is you! how do i know? - photography. narcissus he cudnt fall in love with anything except his own reflection
• cities like dubai too are longing for a body
• 'i am a museum exhibit'       ( what? )
• the discourse over tomato
• a spurious defense mechanism of sorts : the city?
• potentially sanitised space
• the x ray machine at the metro like an opera, this film going in, the guys enjoying it
• the escalator pretending to be the stair: big choice
• local/global - a stab in the dark
• anesthised city, to make room for the global taking away the local, 1947 zionism- the delhi that was, benevolent rulers, pre-libralisation dreams, longing
• exploring materiality 
• technology: embodiment to the extent it becomes transparent/superfluous
• herministic
• the idea of silent reading, burning a copy of the satanic verse
• grapefruit, john lenon: burn the book after you read it
• no man's an island, youre working with the lineage or against it but theres no personal, the original genius vs the . im not trying to create the wheel, but there must be a creative impetus
• iconoclasm
• fetishing the object
• subverting the icon in these projects
• project called 'anxious', the text: offending the audience. contexts, deactivated.
• poetic interest
• when does porn become art? frivolous sex is as much an art as meaningful sex. the suppression of feeling is as much a skill as expression.
• art that has made seismic shifts within the political sphere
• poem called tape worm foundry
• ideas after ideas, Darren worshler henry
• pamuk : burns a library.
• richually consigned to the waters
• manusmriti, raked up, riled up
• administrative abt it
• scramble the letters of a book
• proliferated
• franco moretti
• language, the use of TIME as a manmade thing, but time made the big bang, entropy is part of time : pratik;s words
• deformities museum
• personification of space: space an active agent
• theatricality, concerted, fiction/fact
• bunkers and barbed wire

i'm not sure i  understand any of what i'm hearing, sometimes.

There are two things,

that i held close to my heart,

I traded the one I had to protect,

and hide the one I had to give.

Leh

                                                             Lamaan and Astha

Astha sniffing flowers.