There is something about the kitchen that invites intimacy. I suppose kitchens are a space for intimacy because I will touch with my hands the things that will go in your mouth; I will taste what you taste; I will work for you, or you will work for me. I will make this for you because I love you, because you need it, because you want it.

— Ella Risbridger, Cupboard Love

R makes soul-filling food even when she’s not trying. This passage made me so happy I had to interrupt her cooking (which is a big NO otherwise; she has a zone she gets into, cooking) and make her read.

It is incredible, almost absurdly so (and a cliched thing to bring up), how the simplest of dishes take on levels of delicacy that should be illegal, when gifted people cook. The other month I was having some curdy salad she’d packed for lunch and was certain there was something extralong about the ingredient list till I was told—later—that there wasn’t.

The passage is from an anthology-type book I found at Champaca some weeks ago, called In the Kitchen. The book has some slow-cooking writing. R and I are making our own cookbook. (It is mostly her; I’m picking stock and working layouts.) By next year. Fingers firmly crossed.

This is R outside Jaswant Thada, Jodhpur. That (teaching) trip was a lifesaver. More on that later.

Cake Day

R completed another round of running-around-the-sun. We had a slow day with her friend dropping by with cake #2 (unexpected, unexpected place, etcetra) that made it quite special, some nice food at this quiet-ish two-storey food-complex finished in exposed bricks and cement and littered with wire-backed chairs in yellow and blue, and some harmless IKEA web browsing for artificial plants. We played some Snakes&Ladders (she won). We also made some art away from the screens. Here is what I started off with.

The birthdaywoman did not approve the first one fully so I moved on to this (it says ae-bee-see-dee in Malayalam). Cleaned up, whitebalanced etcetera.

R made a portrait of me. I am going to take it to the HQ and show it off on the desk.

She had a ligament tear some weeks ago—distracted by Chelgato getting into a car—and walks in pain. Hoping things turn out okay soon.

Other (Work) News

Work is harsh and fun. Store #2 is on, signage project is on, web is off (should be on). On Friday I picked Pantone shades for some tintsandshades from the brand palette for River and topped them off with corresponding-ish AsianPaints Cosmos swatches with fun (?) names. By the end of it I couldn’t tell red from orange so just focused on what was needed ASAP.

New neighbours at the ID Studio. Good conversations and sharing references.

We need more people to steer this graphic-design ship, clearly. If you know someone who knows the only right way to align monospaced type and whose filenaming game is chefskiss awesome, please ask them to come meet us online.

Technologee

Ordered one of these in white (darth was out of stock). Binepad is an Indian startup from Haryana; the person at the other end of their phone number was nice enough to run me through basics and share a discount code. They also sent me a nice little machined aluminium tray with the order. More on all that after I have a chance to work with it at the Cintiq.

I am not reading enough. Another K-ink device died its untimely death and I find it really hard to justify throwing another 12K at something that is going to go the ghost-touch way in a year. Also need to visit Blossoms soon; it is almost illegal at this point to say I’m in Bangalore and I haven’t been to the big B yet.

KL11-10

This deserves its own post. We have been at this for ten years! Almost all of it is thanks to M managing the stuff so well and keeping the standards high up when it comes to work. The rest thanks to great clients and folks we work with. We had a small (surprise for M and I) gathering with great friends and tasty food. It was overwhelming and fun. We may do something of our own, later if everything works out well. Fingers firmly crossed.

The photographs are up along with the roses and rosaries and pages off the Book and the mouldy old bread and the candles burning and the light filtering through hastily pasted acrylic panes over window panes at the Old PWD Complex in Panjim. R’s Mother Beloved is on display till the 23rd. We are here till the 17th and would love to have any of my three regular readers to check in if around. More on all the prep later (we did some lovely die-cut exhibition pamphlets in black and red). Here is the day before the day before.

In the evenings there is mellow music and loud lights. Yesterday was lovely except for people trying to one up Lucky Ali (one simply can’t) at O-Sanam (especially). The streets are full of art and -ists and people and dogs. Gradients are out in full bloom. Viva Panjim is quite and lovely and feels like home.

R took the nice photograph above, obviously. We are here, R is hopeful and tensed. Wish her luck.

So… we were in Goa for a two-week workshop (R was documenting; I went along) and made some supertalented-neighbour-slash-faculty-slash-friends. Sampled all the curries at VP (practically next door) and found them all excellent etcetera. Robbed Siridao beach clean (the flat shells are otherworldly nice; we don’t know what to do with them, yet). Looked at some veryold verynice Portugese houses from the inside. And went to a total of three beaches. The sand was in the process of turning into glass (or so it felt at mid-noon). And there were lotuses sprouting from cashew nuts.

There were long walks in Fontainhas (pronounced Rajarajapuram or some such; most spellings had moved on from the spoken word counterparts) with bathes of friendly dogs on tow. We met some folks from Paldi and GN too and campus-jokes flowed. The place (Goa) was sand-into-glass hot, all the folks at R’s workshop were such sweethearts, and offered such warmth (and stuff; jackfruit, mangoes, kokum, pastries, crochet, the works). On the day the workshop got over, J gave me something to remember Kalyani by. It was a nice two weeks.

That is Siridao post our collecting ALL the fun/flat shells.

Serendipity!

Reshma is going back to Panjim (North) again in December for the Serendipity Arts Fest. She’s won the photography grant and is one of the five people exhibiting work. (It is a deeply personal project. Visit her/us!) Here is hoping for a good show! Maybe we’ll make small books to give away.

R turned ◼︎◼︎ yesterday. (Happy birthday R!) Here is an excited-blurry longexposured picture. She’s been applying to grants and looking forward to teaching again. (She says young-er kids this time around and I have seen her deal with tiny ones in the last two weeks at temple festivals and family gatherings. She’s good.)

We went to Kappad and the sunset was otherworldy. Chellam pretends (?) to be afraid of the sea. Then laps up the receding foamy saltwater. There is sand everywhere under the backseat. Podimol indeed.

Sulthan Bathery’s arguably-best print shop is called CopyCat. We moved here (not exactly SB but close/far enough) in March and sometime last week was the first time we needed to commit-control-pee anything into pulp. This (below) is from Nellarachaal, a buffaloe-grass-carpet showroom over a hill overlooking some water that seems to be going nowhere in particular. Chellam likes the place despite the three dogs who are a bit too jumpy, and because of the one who is a sweetheart. (R—obviously because everything is photographically appropriate—took the pictures.)

Chelgato loves taking naps in moving vehicles way better than any of us can ever hope to. (She’s halfheartedly sleeping off a vet visit to Aruma in this picture.) She finds nooks where there are none apparent.

This is home. It is an old (60+ years) singlestory sloped-roof affair with flawed wooden ceilings and a kitchen that leaks in five places (so far) when the rain turns extrabold. Like many houses from that decade, ours is a simple square-plan divided into two big rooms, two small rooms, and the kitchen-cul-de-sac-combo next to a bathroom that stays consistently in winter-mode. It is a 3-column modular-ish grid with odd gutters. We lost the green cover in the backdrop to some seasonal clearance sale. On the plus side, the fore-noon sun warms the house up in time for night-chill. Out front, there are birds (bulbuls, kingfishers, tiny sparrows in a rainbow’s worth of hues) everywhere. Plus everyone’s chickens are everywhere all the time. Chelgato has kind of stopped barking at some of them regulars.

R—recently—won the Alkazi Foundation’s Theatre-Photography Grant. With the support, she gets to work on her project Akam for the next year and present her work at the end of term. She’d applied last year and had won a special mention so this is doubly sweet. Here is what the three-person-jury had to say.

…it speaks to her own anxieties and dreams and nightmares. But, especially in times of COVID, being able to see her work or the range of work she’s doing, where it feels like something deeper is being tapped into, which feels of the time—not only of the time, obviously. But the greater sort of anxieties that we are enveloped in, and how they seem to be bubbling onto the surface—that is a really really fascinating thing. — Monica Narula, Artist and Curator, Raqs Media Collective

In the way she was photographing her experience, there is a certain sense of horror, which is very evident in cinema but not really present in photography—at least in the context of South Asia. — Munem Wasif, Photographer and Film-maker

We thought that was an interesting space for development. Project Akam blurs the line between the personal and intimate, and what populates a shared imagination. — Marie-Nour Hechaime, Curator, Sursock Museum

Here is the foundation’s Instagram update announcing the winner. (Here is a direct link if you prefer the no-popup experience and prefer to focus on the video. Update: here is the foundation webpage with a convenient video-embed.) Thanks to COVID-related travel-restrictions and some hardware SNAFUs, R had to greatly reduce the scope of setting-up and shooting the images. The low-light-noise in the images is both a production-side-effect and is really effective.

R’s already put a lot of herself into the project and speaks excitedly about all the potential offshoots to it. She’s working on some of the background research and we will—fingers crossed—work on a publication, together, later. I think the project—eventually—deserves a treatment that can do justice to all the film-like-grains in the images and the general grain of the subject. Can’t wait to pick the stock for this one.

New place online for R. She is looking for a teaching-responsibility again. reshmateelar.in Have a look.

A day’s worth of messing around with code and pixel-percentage adjustments. Fira Sans and a limited colour palette so the photographs speak clearly. Sneaked in a fun 404 page, too.

R, before and after sending in a grant application last week. We got the lockdown-pad up and running over the automotive-painted table (that is now two-feet longer). She loves the trusty old I-3 yet steals glances at the mouse once in a while. Work has finally picked up pace with absolutely unproductive days mixed in aplenty.