Silence This Please

Acryllic on hand-made paper

“Hence when did thy breasts hate to feed me?

Hence then haven’t they heaved to need me?

Oh Mother! Why art thou so silent?

Those bombs and those ammos from the machine guns, they bother me no more.

They sound like a lullaby to me.

Wasn’t it you who reassured me that ‘this is life’ even before I was born?

Now why do you still lie?

I heard Papa’s plea to let you go

before they shot that merciless bullet into his head.

I saw it Ma, I saw it all...

ripped, stripped and writhing in pain,

I heard your final beg to let me go and take all that they wanted from you.

I cried then Ma, I cried aloud,
I cried my best with all I could;
thought that hearing me cry they would let you go.
They never stopped... and choked I lay.

My eyes still won’t open full and I only see darkness around.

Tears mixed with trickling blood have dried;
And my voice too fragile to rise above the noise outside me.
Oh Mom! Why don’t you shout for me now?

Was it wrong that I was born to thee?!

Why have they taken it all even before I can understand in a life time or more what war and hatred is all for?

Tell me Mom, tell me now from up above
Why won’t a bullet silence me too?”

(A Painting and Poem after witnessing what one shouldn't during the war in the island nation when we were busy complaining of potholes in our own.)

Untitled abstract II

Acryllic on hand-made paper.

"A hundred times I mention her name in loneliness,
a thousand times I shout her name into the wilderness.
In my wildest dreams and tormenting nightmares I have cried for her,
at life’s every twist and turn I have reached for her.
In the prison’s dark alleys I have searched for her,
in my mother’s womb I must have craved for her.
She is more the image I seek than who she probably can be.

She is someone about whom I have an archive of unwritten poetry…
Though a dream she wakes me with hope;
with twinkling eyes and soothing lips.
She is she and much much more,
her beauty glows as she ages.

When the rope turns its final coil to squeeze that last drop of draining blood,
I’ll smile at the mirage of her vision in full entity and shout her name with all the
might
Lo, I shall shout “Freedom!”

Untitled Abstract I

Acryllic on hand-made paper.
Did you know that Abstract Art is not just a splash of colours yet something that emerges out of a state of mind when in meditation?

"The voice is cut,
the noises still prevail.
The noises cut,
I listen voices again!

Behind walls of silence,
switching gear to gear,
my journey begins into the wilderness,
across pathless paths I take
as I transcend deeper and deeper into the self...
humbly I surrender to the unseen, the unknown.

No pleasure nor pain,
still in motion, so lies all emotions, thus I stay...
Waiting for the breath to subside.

What am I?
Nothing!
From nothing I came
and to nothing I go
and to realize that nothing I am
feels like there is nothing to worry no more.

'Thathuvumasi'-they say,
To experience a feeling as this.
Hard to explain and hardly explained.

Can't say this is bliss
and can't say that there is anything I missed.
A thought becomes everything
and everything becomes a thought.

Nothing wasted reigns,
nothing wasted remains.

Life is thus and thus remain...
a potpourri of thoughtless thoughts during meditation."

Psychoanalysis

Acryllic and oil on canvas board.

This was done for people who might understand Thanathos, Eros and Logos.

Across The Hills

Oil on canvas board.

From amidst the raging storm of thoughts a cry shattering the sky…

“When wilt thou return from the dew-topped mountains?
From those high peaks that rub my imagination through.

Where oft doth thou disappear into a fragile trail of foot prints that mystically reappear?
from where I hear a heart’s lonely cry; from where the frantic cries of the reaper submerge dies.
Is it true or is it just I?

What hath thou so wonderfully witnessed from a town so tinsel lies?
From where such ruthless condemnation forked displayed…

From where ever, tell me now, tell me how and tell me why?
When thou art gone for what must I still low lie?”

The Withering Tree

Oil on canvas board.

"This is a dream of long ago...
Of a wanderer, an occasional sage and an often hermit;
who oft as life relies upon, took steps too bold
into the cowardice path of loneliness for sanity's sake alone.

Oh! pathless paths they were.
The truth better left unsaid of the dark alleys
and those mystery miles some roads carried him through.

Why the journey?
Why the pain?
How the endurance to carry on?
No one knows yet! Not even he...

Seeker of the Trinity-'Love, Truth and Simplicity',
the journey still continues, across barbed wires and fences
and through doubts and hurdles come what may.

Like the others who took this path and disappeared
into the mists on the rivers they tread, leaving no trails whatsoever,
so will he and knows that too... yet,
he makes his own path step by step.
Knowing well that a man who has chosen to walk into the dark
must not be surprised to see the light within."

The Crucifix

The agony on the cross is depicted in this oil on canvas board.

The whip, the spear, the crown of thorns, the blood stained nails and the cross swirling into an obsolete; a representation of life itself... the rest left unsaid and to the interpretation of the viewer.

A piece that can be used as a point for reflection and/or meditation.

Artist's Statement

Art to me transcends boundaries and understanding as it implores the soul to shed inhibitions, identities and all those fake masks we hide behind. Art is raw, bold and clever which inspires as well as draws inspiration to become further more than what it is. Art to me is meditation emerging from thoughtless thoughts.

The art of mine attempts to capture the kaleidoscopic images of pain and pleasure witnessed from a state of euphoria and expressed from behind silent walls. It is a bold statement sans fear that I deliberate to make through my paintings till it reaches a character on its own and will speak for itself.

Trained in 3 schools of thoughts in art and in understanding the psyche, the work I do attempts to formulate a tryst between the two; many in the process of unlearning than learning.

Bottom line: Someone asked me “What is art?” and I asked her, "What is not?"