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30 March 2010

Art Antics in the Mountains

 
Getting the 26 shadows in Khadi of my Art Karavaners ironed before my performance, "I Will Never Forget You", raindated for tomorrow. It took some time to get an Iron Wallah to agree to such a strange task but finally found this fellow with an incredibly massive one  & willing for 5 rupees a shot. It was an outdoor stall and they had to put up the raingear half way through as the clouds overhead started to spill tears around 2pm.
Here are Jeetin and Buvanesh(Bangalore) carrying Jeeban(Orissa) to the Gandhi statue where wrapped in newsprint he desuited and the police were not happy because they have a strict anti litter law up here.
Some school kids here came to help get the knots out of a performance on the Mall that was a giant mess of a string with at least a thousand obstacles, they were inspired by chocolates and did it!

23 March 2010

more LAUNDRY LINES, dorii installations(RED)

February 15-21, 2010
Various Locations in Kolkata     Lal(Red) Series - Rainbow Hobo

"ART FOR ARTS SAKE"
Salt Lake Stadium, C.E. Kolkata

"FREEDOM WILL ONLY EXIST WHEN ALL BEINGS ARE FREE"
Rabindra Bharati University, North Kolkata
"YOU ARE BECOMING YOUR HABITS"
New Market, Kolkata
"THINK WITH YOUR HEART"(trns.Bangla)
North Kolkata

 installed no pix yet:
"YOUR BODY IS YOUR TEMPLE"
Kali Temple, South Kokata
"ART REQUIRES PARTICIPATION"
Traditional Dance School, North Kolkata
"THE UNIVERSE IS READY MADE"
Sarai CSDS, Delhi 

coming soon:
"I AM YOUR HAND MIRROR"
"AS ABOVE SO BELOW"
"ITS JUST A MATTER OF TIME"


Inspired by the subculture of the hand washed and sun dried laundry system of Calcutta.
The palette of color displayed in the majestic golden sunlight. Shirts and pants flapping in the winds along the roads, sarees spilling from balconies and windows of buildings, make shift lines on the banks of the rivers to dry the banquet cloths of the cities best hotels. All the towels and kid's dresses between electrical cords and the traffic mayhem. Cheers to the the dhobi wallah, or any of the men and women who toil morning to night in their traditional dress rolled up at roadside pumps, wells actually wherever there is water, clean or otherwise, sudsing it up, beating out that evil dirt for a few rupees a cloth.

Watercolor on the Ganga ji (BLUE)

My last morning in Benares(Varanasi), I was up with the aarti. I climbed into blue and could already feel the shift.
I headed down to the river at Meer ghat(bathing steps at the river) where my GH was. The first boatsman that approached was the young Rahual Sahani, 14, and in the business of rowing visitors and pilgrims this way and that at sunrise and sunset on the Ganges since he was 8. This morning his father handed him over the oars, so he pointed to his boat and asked me - how much? I agreed 80 rupees($1.75) for a half hour knowing it was high but he had on a blue shirt and his boat was perfectly blue. I asked him first "let me do anything while we are in the boat?" and second "are you a good photographer?" He agreed on both. I brought along some paper, brushes,blue chalk and blue watercolor.
Entering the boat I was really entering the sacred realm of  thousands of years as this river at this place has cradled billions of such crafts and trillions of such passengers. To begin I had to lay down for some time on the lower planks of the boat to listen and feel this doorway into Time.
As we began to head upstream the poems of tides and waves, ripples and wakes were being wrote across the akash of my mind. Dipping my brush into the Ganga, I began to paint Rahual's portrait as he spoke about his life with the river. He pointed to his house, there, the one with the yellow curtain. Other curious boatsmen, flower wallahs and touristships began to drift near....we were the blue satellite drifiting across the liquid cosmos and we were happiness. He set course for some of the magnificent architectural landscapes along the shores of Varanasi as he thought I would like to paint them. I fell into their golden edfices, their hollow eyes of mysterious chambers, romantic balconies and jutting towers. Though I have been here before I was seeing the ghats  for the first time through another's eyes. The colors at the edges blurred and the calm grey of the river was all pervasive. We crossed the river long after my half hour had passed. We laughed about it.

I entered the river slowly allowing these calm waters to soak each and every thread of my jumper. This water is notoriously polluted and religiously the catch all for many who have died. The sand soft and cool in my toes is mixed with the ash of infinite bodies of the deceased who have made it luckily to these final shores. There on the other side there are numerous carcasses: those who have lived and those remnants of sunken idols that have been fervently worshipped.
Here is the river Styx and I have again passed through Being into mythology upon her course. 


I am the boat
I am the boatman
I am the river
I am water

18 March 2010

Contemplating Planes of Existence at Sunrise on the Edge of the Ganga or Notes to Myself

 The inescapable law of  kamma guarantees that each and every one of our actions — whether it be of body, speech, or mind — has consequences. The Buddha also taught that this boomerang of cause and effect extends far beyond this present life, thus determining the quality of the soul's journey towards rebirth and future rebirths, which we can expect after this death simply because most are not yet ready for moksha, liberation. We surf for aeons through this samsara, this endless cycle from one birth to the next determined by the quality of our choices and our actions in each lifetime. Imagine then all the realms of existence available to us- three distinct "worlds" (loka), listed here in descending order of refinement:


  • ARUPA LOKA(the immaterial world) Consists of four realms that are accessible to those who pass away while meditating in the formless jhana(a meditative state of profound stillness and concentration. An abiding in which the mind becomes fully immersed and absorbed in a conceptualized object of attention characterized by non-dual consciousness.Other times it is taught as an abiding in which mind becomes very still but does not merge with the object of attention, and is thus able to observe and gain insight into the changing flow of experience(exp.through Vipassana meditation practice))


  • RUPA LOKA(the fine material world) 16 realms where experience is extremely refined in degrees of mental pleasure. These realms are accessible to those who have managed to (temporarily) suppress hatred and ill-will through some level of jhana. They are said to possess extremely refined bodies of pure light. The highest of these realms, the Pure Abodes, are accessible only to those who have attained to "non-returning," the third stage of Awakening. 


  • KAMA LOKA (the sensual world) Consists of eleven realms in which experience — both pleasurable and not — is dominated by the five senses. Seven of these realms are favorable destinations including our own human realm(I like my paradise I am in) as well as several realms occupied by devas. The lowest realms are four which include the animal(a dog's life in India) and hell realms(not for me). 
The Fine Material World and the Immaterial World together constitute heaven/sagga. Such heaven realms are blissful abodes whose present inhabitants (the devas) gained rebirth there through the power of their past meritorious actions.  Like all beings still caught in samsara, however, these deities eventually succumb to aging, illness, and death, and must eventually take rebirth in other realms — pleasant or otherwise — according to the quality and strength of their past kamma  The devas are not always especially knowledgeable or spiritually mature — in fact many are quite intoxicated by their sensual indulgences — and none are considered worthy of veneration or worship. Nevertheless, the devas and their joyous realms stand as important reminders to us both of the happy benefits that ensue from the performance of skillful and meritorious deeds and, finally, of the ultimate shortcomings of sensuality.

kama-rupa: The desire body; the portion of the human inner constitution which adheres to the various mental and psychic energies; a kind of simulacrum or astral likeness of a human which exists after death in kama loka, an invisible plane of being, until the impulses which created it are exhausted and it finally fades away.After death the kama rupa becomes the vehicle in the kama-loka of the usually unconscious higher principles of the person that was. 

"After death . . . there occurs what is called the 'second death,' which is the separation of the immortal part of the second or intermediate Duad from the lower portions of this Duad, which lower portions remain as the kama-rupa in the etheric or higher astral spheres which are intermediate between the devachanic and the earthly spheres. In time this kama-rupa gradually fades out in its turn, its life-atoms at such dissolution passing on to their various and unceasing peregrinations."

It is this kama-rupa which is Dante's 'shade,' It is the 'spook,' or 'ghost.' It is, in short, all the mortal elements of the human soul that was, an exact astral duplicate, in appearance and mannerism, of the one who dies. It will be your eidolon, your astral twin.

Meer Ghat, Varanasi





 

17 March 2010

Photo Archive of WHITE(Shantiniketan) and RED(Calcutta) Series

Click on this link below to visit the gallery of images:

Pictures Documenting My Safed & Lal Series by Rahual Dhankani

Much thanks to brilliant work by and collaboration with Rahual!

ANTARABHAVA (Bardo of Dreaming)

Performance at College of Arts & Crafts Patna 3/10/2010 Ondi with Minni Kumari & Ranjit Singh and special appearance by Chotu

Unfortunately we do not have any great pix of this because we performed in the dark. I am also missing my great photo friends from Calcutta, Rahual and Sayan!!!
Searching, Seeking
Minni waking
Awake

I AM THE CELEBRATION (PILA series)

mai utsav hoo!

From the Patna yellow series - Rainbow Hobo
photo realized at Ananda Studio Nawada, Bihar

Missed but not Remiss to Digress

I was supposed to head out to Varanasi this morning but because my tailor shop closed up early last night, I was unable to take my yellow costume - thus I saw it as a gracious signal to spend one more morning under the Bodhi Tree. This Sacred Fig growing at the Mahabodhi Temple is allegedly a direct descendant of the original specimen under which Siddhartha Gautama took a vow to never arise from meditation and Anapana-sati (awareness of breathing in and out) until he had found the Truth. Here He gained Enlightenment.  The Buddha then spent a whole week in front of this tree, standing with unblinking eyes, gazing at it with gratitude.
It was not a difficult decision to take to sit it out one more day in light of  all this:
Yesterday  I woke up pretty late as I was in need of a good 10 hours of sleep after the past few sleepless mosquito biten dog wailing 5am wakings in Nawada. I headed to the temple as the heat of the day was rising. I entered just in time to catch all the monks doing karma yoga at the temple around the Bodhi Tree-vigorously washing the sacred stones, clearing out waste bin after waste bin of  garlands, wilted marigolds lotus and other flower offerings, hosing down the marble and walls around the Tree. There was an incredible happiness in the air. The winds were blowing their softest cool breezes and some monks were playfully running this way and that to catch the falling pipal leaves. At first I was watching and laughing at the game of it and then I too was infected by the chance of gathering a few of these falling heart shaped yellow leaves raining from the massive outstretched limbs of the Bodhi tree over the meditation courtyard. Each monk was in jest so proud to show me their leaves which I assumed they were gathering for other monks and family who could not make the journey(I have gathered a few for you too).This courtyard that is usually steeped in meditation chants and silent reverence was alive and bustling with smiling monks, pilgrims and the curious from all over the world. The spectacle of multi colored cloths and the universality of all in barefoot was ripe with the most ecstatic vision of Peace I have ever witnessed.
Herein is a place on earth full with the breath of  Love.
Om Mani Padme Hum.
Án ma ni bát mê hồng.




16 March 2010

48 hours On The Path in Bodhgaya

 
Purification of beads for Malas
The World is here gazing lovingly upon each expression of the Enlightened.
Green Tara in Gold.
MahaBodhi Temple
The first of 7 footprints of the Awakened One that turned to Lotus Flowers

Cosmic Robes of Devotion



 

13 March 2010

CHOTU

This dog named chotu(means small one) I found limping and very sick because he was hit by a rickshaw. I took care of him the week we were in Patna staying at the College of Art & Crafts. I had to bandage his wound and nurse him from death's door, everyone started calling me mama and one artist Kshitish from Orissa even used us as muse for a painting he left on the campus wall's inner courtyard.....
Chotu was moved to Minni's house roof where he is being lovingly looked after till he recovers, then he will move 100km away to the farm belonging to the family of Ranit Singh. Happily ever after for a dog's life which is usually a hard one here in India.

Carnival mela with Prasad family in NAWADA, BIHAR


Minni, Tissue, Viki, Chapti & I went to the mela and we ran into Mr Ashok who got us on all the rides free and we never waited in one line. We were like VIP. We went around and around and around on all the rides everywhere we went the crowds gathered.I am staying at their house in their village and everyone is so nice and curious. Bihar has become a much safer place in recent years but yet the curse of  the former corrupt minister,Lalu Prasad seems to haunt the tourist trails because here I find myself the lone foreigner and within an unchartered territory, happily so. I was invited here because Minni and Tissue(Ranjit) are artists that I met and collaborated on one performance titled Antarabhava(Bardo of Dreams) in Patna on the Art Karavan.
Rajinder & Saroj Prasad are the father and mother of my new friends here in Nawada.
More pix from the carnival which was full of light, color, blaring Bihari music and the lovely gawking faces of locals.