Plotline / How Sex Lost It

© amruta patil 2009

a story about the collective fixation. dealing with all my favourite themes again (certain character on a certain snake even makes a cameo appearance), but assuredly, i have no future writing erotica.

'pure world' color tests

kashyap with kadru and vinata, parva/the epic, © amruta patil 2009

this is the personal mountain one climbs every day - some days one slips all the way down, some days one presses forward in precious inches. if i'm ever to complete this work, will need to shed several skins first. how hard to paint without heavy handedly sullying the palette, without slipping into the easy impactfulness of edgy. how hard not to seek graphic solace in distorting and 'stylizing' human forms.

i look at my old work and shudder at ghoulishness that peeps out from behind the very best of intent. beauty loses currency in the visual/verbal world; while to spit, tear, deposit your innards, or wrap your old wad of gum in paper becomes avant-garde. who are we fooling, and why.

Vasuki relented, and the churning began

Color test, Parva/The Epic, © Amruta Patil 2009

Pomegranate and pink mountain

pomegranate from tea cup. pink mountain from parva/the epic

Cud

For the Food Special Issue of First City magazine, © Amruta Patil, 2009

red rivers

Something happened long ago that your ancestors did not want you to forget. So they sent the story down through the mouths of storytellers. We are an unbroken lineage of messengers - storyteller nested within storyteller. When I open my mouth, you will hear the echo of storytellers past.

A caution, a key. Trust the humble storyteller who knows how to untangle thread. Beware the braggart who embellishes and confuses. Stay with the story, even when it passes from threadbearer to threadbearer. Stay with the story.

Image and Text: Parva/The Epic © Amruta Patil, 2009

even a wristwatch-free year will inch toward winter

angoulême trees opt for monochrome austerity again. the sky will have nonesuch.

Sterile

this is what we do. take a living body, sanitize it. fight to fumigate lifestyle off it. erase all olfactory cues of good health and compatibility. then we sterilize it - wilfully, chemically. do our cells complain about the treachery - about how many potentially pointless biological encounters surround us? does it make it impossible to trust our instinct about who we like, who we don't? does it make it necessary to serially disengage after engaging? having been wakened once, one can smell the deception - imposters smelling like a bouquet of flowers, flowers foolishly slathering themselves in unguent and deodorant.

As Icarus

Random Access Memory, First City magazine, © Amruta Patil, 2009

in the name of the mother

Random Access Memory, First City magazine, © Amruta Patil, 2009

storyboard and other mountains

self-doubt is useful, but the opposite of being puppishly gung-ho is being paralysed by inaction. i am cautioned at every step - why this, who are you, what is new, do you have the eyes, the content matter is too trodden, impractical, risky. the questions are valid, of course. they do the essential - slow me down, shake off smugness, keep greed at bay. most skepticism, though, is of the idle variety - dismissal and little else. the other kind - far rarer - comes with a key of hope in its hand. fire may only be guarded by the worthy - it is no one's to own.

breaking the egg before time

Parva/The Epic, Book of Queens © Amruta Patil, 2009

There lay Vinata's son Arun, strong of chest and unformed of legs. For her impatience, he cursed her to five hundred years of slavery - until such a day that the one of golden feathers set her free.

unbearable heaviness of joint palms

have drawn dozens of characters for Parva like the one above, arms folded at elbow, palms joint in 'namaste' (नमः ते i honour you) - many of them with their head bowed, body language soft with submission and humility। but after a recent visit to a gurukul, one thing becomes clear - my drawings are patently unsincere। we are so unbendy - it's incredibly hard, impossible even, for most to pull off a single such display with any degree of sincerity. needless to say, 'namaste auntyji, hello uncleji' brand of flyaway gestures merit no headcount.

nombrilists

Random Access Memory, First City magazine, © Amruta Patil, 2009

Guilty, guilty, guilty as charged. And the sweetness of this being on a blog called Umbilical.

between worlds

the blue lord sleeps
Parva/The Epic, Book of Queens, © Amruta Patil, 2009

reptilian mother, avian mother

Kadru was soon surrounded by her brood, while Vinata's wait was to be a long one

Parva/The Epic, Book of Queens, © Amruta Patil, 2009

feet

He made a tear in the waters
Parva/The Epic, Book of Queens, © Amruta Patil, 2009

loaded dice and abrasions

All images from Parva/The Epic © Amruta Patil

seated scribe

© Amruta Patil, October 2008
First appeared in Biblio

anatomy of excess

Jerky, premature excerpt from the novel-in-eternal-progress, '1999'
First appeared in Tehelka (Fiction special issue on the theme of 'excess')
Text and image © Amruta Patil, December 2008