Desicritics Author: IdeaSmith

Ideart: Good Karma, Bad Medicine

IdeaSmith — Fri, 5 Mar 2010 17:17:30 EST

A few days earlier I had a thought. The words

Good karma, bad medicine

just formed themselves in my head. I can’t quite explain the thought. It was one of those ideas that just showed itself and vanished before I fully explore it further. It still sounded interesting. I put it up as my Twitter/ Facebook status to see if I could glean anything from it from seeing it in print. Still no luck. It was one of those things that you can just about see from the corner of your eye but never quite catch it straight-on. That’s when it occurred to me that the best way to communicate this thought may be visual and not verbal. And I realized that it had been awhile since I wielded a paintbrush.

The minute I had that thought, the image I needed flashed before my eyes.That was just it. The idea was a picture, not a sentence or story. After that it was just a matter of executing it. Luckily I had a plain black singlet handy and kept waiting for just such a time. A budding artist learns to store away material that could come in useful.

This is a tank top, that I picked up the first time I saw it because it is the thin, stretchy tee-shirt cotton material. There are no big logos or pictures on it and the cut is basic but curved along the sides rather than the straight up-and-down of unisex tees. I hate those since they hang and tug alternately.

The first thing I had to do was figure out a way to get rid of that little logo in the corner (little as it was, it was still in a white rubberprint and stood out) since that would certainly not do with the idea I had in mind. I was out of black paint so I tried dark blue and dark green but the rubber print of the logo showed right through both of these. Finally I coated it with Fevicryl Pearl Black no. 306.

I wanted the picture to be exactly in the middle of the visible area of the tee-shirt. If you are painting a tee-shirt for the first time, I recommend putting it on and marking off the area while still wearing it. Otherwise, one is used to the stark, solid borders of paper and too often the artwork goes over the visible area or looks too small or big. Clothes fall on each person’s body differently and ideally you should always see the garment on the wearer before painting on it. This area usually comes to about 8in x 8in or 20cm x 20cm on my clothes (and I rather smugly report that it turned out a perfect square without using a ruler or even pencil sketching!)

I started with a swirly line using a thin brush and Fevicryl Pearl Spring Green no.311 and then Fevicryl Cerulean Blue no.32. But I realized that a psychedelic design with multiple colours would need to have broad strokes for each colour to be visible and not get lost in too-intricate strokes so I switched brushes. After that it was a random selection of colours applied in strokes, splashes, squiggles and splotches. I painted over in a number of places and in other places I also used the same brush in multiple colours without cleaning the brush. This last gives the effect that you can see to the right of the second dot on the right. The yellow and pink run parallel for a bit before the yellow strikes out on its own. The colours must not be too liquidey if you want this effect since otherwise they’ll merge into each other.

This is one design where red (my favorite colour) was not the most striking note. On the contrary, the red quite got lost in the gloss of the other pearly tints so I used it as background in a number of places. When I had covered the entire square, I dabbed on circles with the Fevicryl Pearl Spring Green no.311 and you can see the colours beneath through the thin veneer of the green, in places.

I originally intended to paint the words over this design in black or white. But I realized the paint area was too small to fit in words and besides, it was too striking to waste as background. Besides, there was enough room above and below for lettering.

I tried for a digital-looking font and a religious-looking orange (Fevicryl Metallic Red no. 356) for the words ‘Good Karma’. In contrast the words ‘Bad Medicine’ at the bottom are in a more graffiti-like font in a Fevicryl Pearl Lemon Yellow no. 302.

Finally I noticed that the painted-over patch over the logo in the bottom right corner had dried and was standing out against the black. So I painted on a stretch in the same colour across the tee-shirt, a sort of rough underline the way one would highlight a graffittied sentence.

I’m not sure whether the finer points like font and colour would be noticed but I’m guessing they would register at a sublimnal level. The message just is one of those things. I wore this with worn-out blue jeans, a silver chain double-looped around my neck with a New Age faerie pendant. It got some appreciation. :-)

[
Garment: Sleeveless ladies tee-shirt

Material: Hosiery cotton

Background colour: Solid Black

Paint colours used:

Fevicryl Pearl Black no. 306

Fevicryl Cerulean Blue no. 32

Fevicryl Crimson no. 04

Fevicryl Pearl Spring Green no. 311

Fevicryl Pearl Pink no. 303

Fevicryl Pearl Lemon Yellow no. 302

Fevicryl Pearl Metallic red no. 356

Fiction: Bitter Coffee

IdeaSmith — Tue, 2 Mar 2010 06:22:51 EST

The Corner Coffeeshop was open for business but its traffic was at a lull. It was too early in the evening for the post-work crowd, too late for the students and AC-enjoying unemployed to be hanging around.

Outside, the sun had gone down but that curious combination of atmospheric density and light's acrobatic bending made it seem like daylight was still around.

Such were his thoughts, where another person would have called it twilight. He grimly thought to himself that she would have referred to Van Gogh's 'Starry Nights' while all along he'd be thinking of the diagrams in the physics textbooks about light refraction.

He was already seated on the bar-stool near the window, his bag on the seat next to his, to save it for her. In front of him was a cappuccino. With deliberate precision, he emptied two sachets of sugar into the cup and tossed the empty packets into the dustbin near the end of the table. She preferred espresso shots but he couldn't stand their acrid taste. But he didn't want another lecture on calorie count either.

Outside, the object of his ruminations had just neared the door and was standing but not entering. Then she squared her shoulders, took a deep breath and walked in.

He saw her from the corner of his eye and put down his coffee mid-sip to receive her kiss. To his surprise, she turned, picked his bag off the seat and sat down with it in her lap. A second later, she seemed to have second thoughts and put it on the table.

Then she turned and said in a rush.

I need to tell you something and I need you to not interrupt. I’m going back to Delhi tomorrow.

But…

She held up her hand.

Don’t say anything. I’m going. The ticket is booked. And it’s one-way.

Her face was set in an immovable mask. She looked beautiful. But unrecognizable. Like a cold, marble statue that was displayed in someone else's house.

When you called me here for coffee, I thought you were trying to rekindle the romance in our relationship.

Her stiff expression didn’t change. She hadn’t even put her bag on the table. He tried again.

I know we’ve been arguing. But we’ve been through worse stuff. It’s…what are we doing?

She wavered and in a slightly watery voice said,

You’re having coffee. I’m leaving.

Come on, you don’t have to do this. Let’s talk about this.

Let's not.

she said. And those were her last words to him. He would think about that often. For such a talkative person, she was leaving him with so little. As if she didn't want to spend another precious minute or word on him.

Across the street, she plugged her earphones into her ears and switched on the iPod. It wasn't serendipitous, the song that came up.

Why she had to go, I don't know, she wouldn't say
I said something wrong, I long for yesterday
Yesterday, love was such an easy game to play.

She'd been listening to the Beatles all evening on her way to the coffeeshop. It helped her relax and focus.

He hadn't said anything wrong. How do you tell someone that they had never said anything right in the first place? How do you explain that after three years? And how do you erase the memory of your own wrong choices?

You don't. You just stop and turn away.

She turned the corner and stopped under the street lamp. She asked herself, shall I reconsider? and turned to look in the direction of the coffeeshop.

It was dark now and the bright lights of The Corner Coffeeshop were attracting their clientele in now. She couldn't see him anymore, there were too many people around. Night had fallen.

Should I?

And in the same breath, the thought crystallized into realisation.

Let me not.

She took a deep breath and walked away.

Coffee was never going to be anything but bitter after this.

Ten Dating Don'ts For Men

IdeaSmith — Mon, 1 Mar 2010 11:52:46 EST

So I just read this article by [Redacted] Guy (yes, that’s what he calls himself) about the ten things he wishes his dates wouldn’t do while out with him. He asks for suggestions, so here are mine. Considering it’s a long list (List! List! My favorite word again!), I put it up as a post. Here’s what I soooo wish guys wouldn’t do when on a date with me.

1. Staring at my bust

There is just no excuse for this. Without entirely condoning it, I’m willing to see that a random guy on a bus or across the street may do this. He has the right to look where he wants. And I have the right to mentally strike him off my list of people I would ever go out with. But when I’m on a date with you, I don’t have that option anymore. Not at least till the end of the date, I’m at least that nice. Be nice to me and don’t treat me like a sex object the very minute we start the date.

2. Ogling other women

This follows from the first since some men use the excuse that ‘I can’t look at you so I’ll look at others’. We’re out on a date. That means you and I are getting together to spend some time with each other. Focus on the last three words. One date does not tie you to me but it does warrant the courtesy of your undivided attention at least.

3. Boasting

Showing off probably comes naturally to the male species especially when in the presence of the opposite sex. Animals do it, insects do it and human men do it too. Only don’t go on and on about it. The showing off is a mating ritual among the aforementioned life forms and ceases once the connection has been made. Assume that the connection has been made the minute the date has been accepted. There’s really no reason to go on and on about the number of foreign trips you go on, how earth-shatteringly important you are to your company, how you were having tea last week with the Dalai Lama and how many thousand books you read in the past year. It’s off-putting and most importantly it’s boring. I tuned out the minute you started throwing numbers at me.

4. Not listening at all

It’s a conversation. That means both people talk and listen. Talk some, I’ll listen. Then I’ll talk and you need to do more than stare around the room, ask the waiter for refills and interrupt to tell me about the movie I saw. Believe me, I could interest you with more than my bust. I have a sense of humour, an opinion and intelligence too. Give me a chance to let you see that too.

5. Calling me things like ‘Babe’, ‘Sweetheart’ or ‘Honeybun’

It’s a first date. I could be your girlfriend but I’m not, yet. We could be friends but we haven’t gotten to the place, right now. Undue familiarity and worse, sexist phrases are instant turn-offs. I have a name, use it. I might permit you to give me a nickname, but at least be original.

6. Playing SuperShrink

You’ve probably heard that women dabble in pop psychology. Maybe I have issues. Everyone does, it’s normal. Don’t put me under a microscope and psycho-analyze me on a date. It’s immensely offensive to tell me I am afraid of getting too close to men because of my Electra complex. If you’re a doctor, that’s work during a leisure activity. BORING. If you’re not a doctor, it tells me you’re just being a creep.

7. Caveating

It’s not cool to be commitment-phobic. I am not concerned with how messy your love life has been so far or how busy you are at work. You can go for a movie alone or have lunch on your own if those are true. If this date is happening, it’s because you agreed to it. Don’t waste my time and yours by coming to a date and then telling me why it can’t go further. If it’s not coming along as well as you thought, just tell me so. I may be disappointed but that’s better than being disgusted. If you’re that terrified of telling me the truth, at least wait till the date’s over. Don’t scuttle it while it’s in progress.

I wanted this list to be a ‘Ten things..’ but I’ve only managed seven. Does that mean men have fewer annoying habits on dates? Or does it mean that women are more permissive? Hmm? Women, add to these if you think up any others. Well, men you may too.

Twitter Fiction: Twocial Etiquette

IdeaSmith — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 02:28:40 EST

“And this is Kunal.”

“Are you on Twitter?”

“Yes, I’m @c00nal.”

“I don’t think I FOLLOW you.”

“I don’t follow you either.”

Kunal frowns as he turns to the Hot Dog stand.

“I think I hurt his ego a bit.”

“You just met!”

“Social boo-boo, telling someone you don’t follow them on Twitter.”

“What rubbish, nobody cares about these things.”

“Some people do. Maybe he’s one of them. Shit, I blew it.”

“Shh, he’s back. Ice-creams? Isn’t that too…I don’t know…something?”

“Ice-cream is cool.”

“Or maybe it’s c00nal.”

“No, this is c00nal.”

He says, holding out a spoon with a bit of ice-cream stuck to it. It’s green, not an appealing shade for food, she thinks.

“Ooh, you got her an ice-cream, c00nal?”

“A bite-sized version.”

He grins.

“A twitterized ice-cream.”

She replies, smiling back as she takes the spoon.

From Ashes

IdeaSmith — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 09:11:32 EST

This is for Dee, the editor I'd like to have, who quite literally showed me the way.

~O~O~O~O~O~Where do stories come from? she wondered. Her editor had told her that her writing had a quality of finesse in it. But, he said, the spark was missing. She wanted to protest, it had been such an effort to get to here after all. But anticipating just that, he had moved his hand in a wiping gesture, as if trying to clear away a fog around her.

“It’s that madness, that raw energy that used to make one want to read. Bring that back. It’s you. Unleash it in your writing.”

She brooded over it for a long time, all through the book-browsing date and the high tea that followed. Then she decided to take a walk. Taking long walks and watching people and noting down what one saw seemed to be the right things for a writer to do. The sea had always held appeal. But somehow, the effort of crossing the road, dodging bratty rich kids in their oversized cars only to scrounge a garbage pile of people on the other side, for seating space…wasn’t an appealing thought at all.

The city is no place for an artist, she told herself. How was one supposed to be inspired by this relentless struggle? It didn’t even have the elements of drama like a war or a revolution or an uprising, a famine or a flood. It was just everyday, niggling grievances. Who would want to read about those? Who would want to write about those, she retorted inside her head. Then she shook herself. Arguing with oneself is the first step into insanity and she’d be damned if she was going to live up to that pathetic stereotype of a writer-gone-crazy before she was even published.

The girl hopped off the last bogey, the one that she had just managed to jump into as the train pulled out of the station. In one hand she clutched a little notepad and a magenta pen, her chosen colour for the day. She did have one thought that should be captured before it vanished into that abyss of forgotten inspiration. One hand holding down the page, she expertly popped off its lid with her mouth and twirled it around to cap its end with practiced efficiency. Rapidly she wove a messy magenta web over the ideas that had caused her to almost miss her train.

Mumbai Metaphors

I stood on the opposite side of the road that runs along the seaface. It was the wrong side, not the one that had the seating parapet along its entire length but the junction of the seaface road and the arterial conduit to the station terminus.

I stood under the tree that has survived attempts to build bigger and more buildings, broader roads and wider pedestrian walks. The same gnarled tree that stands on the side of the road like a senior citizen with memories of a slower, more human-paced city but no energy to brave the pace of today.

The sky was just turning that indefinable shade of evening like the colour of the last dregs of black tea in a chipped white saucer. Sepia, the colour of nostalgia, that one extra element that changes the picture of a dirty, overcrowded metropolis to the magical visage of home.

A rare wind was blowing all around me. February in the city picks you up as gently and playfully as the waves and takes you to the edge of the shore of winter. I felt like I was standing in the middle of a swimming pool, only it was filled with moving, insistent air around me instead of water.

When she looked up, she was standing at the threshold of light, surrounded by darkness. The very edge of a station, flowing slowly into light at the other end. A rusty carriage sat on incomplete tracks, a long discarded project of the metropolitan train network and peered at her through unpainted metal bars. On the other side, across the tracks and the other well-lit platform, high over their roofs rose the skeletal inner beams of discarded mills. Like a will being contested over the rotting body of a dead person, the future of the land they stood on was being dueled over, with no thought to the buildings that still were.

Places have memories, don’t they? Memories of lives that have passed, of habits that were housed under these roofs, hidden behind these walls. The paan-stains, the half-buried cigarette butts, sneaky but woeful reminders of escapes, of stolen glee. And then the finality of ashes that came from burning who knows what? Paper? Cloth? Oil? Human beings? There were stories that led to the ashes but there was no way to trace them back. This place had its endings but not all it was in ashes. Everything else was memories that could be traced by anyone who cared to listen, to pick up those strands and imagine where they led. They were stories to be told.

She looked down at her book again, an abrupt swooshing action. The white pages even with their magenta words glared back at her in defiance. Those words meant nothing and in her mind’s eye, she imagined the magenta whorls and lines slide off the pages. Blood, the only thing that would stick. Hold a pen to a nerve and write, he had said. So she turned a page and begun,

Something was burning.

Twitter Fiction: Equal Sins

IdeaSmith — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 07:00:51 EST

Another writing exercise and this one, I thought up myself! (Pat on the back...thank you, thank you). The challenge was to write a 140-word story about Twitter. Samir and I did this under a timer. And finished in close to 14 minutes. I call this a twory.

~O~O~O~O~O~An 80s song went,

“The instant generation….Instant food, instant love.”

They didn’t know half of it, thought Sanjana. The Internet hadn’t even been around then. They didn’t have Twitter, that two-edged boon that make it permissible to follow somebody.

But was stalking allowed? Her eyes darted about before returning to her screen. Email hacking was passé. His Twitter account lay open to her. With only a moment’s hesitation, she clicked on ‘Direct Messages’. Even her suspicions hadn’t prepared her for what she saw. A screen full of naughty messages, bordering on risqué. That much she had expected, even if the numbers shocked her a bit.

She only didn’t expect to see a row of male faces.

She forced down a wave of nausea and logged out. A few clicks later, she finally took the drastic step as she hit UNFOLLOW.

Fiction: The Winning Point

IdeaSmith — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 07:35:34 EST

Vineet was an ordinary young man with one remarkable talent that came to fore only in his late teens in college. It all started with an inter-collegiate festival.

His college and the hosting campus had a long running feud and the annual festival was both, a new episode in the war as well as a chance for each batch to showcase its coming-of-age skills. When Anveeta, the cultural secretary had called for participants, he had been standing nearby, waiting for her to finish so he could leave the class. But she turned to him and snapped,

“Name?”

and his mind had gone on auto-pilot. Before he realized it, she had written it down and moved on to the next person. He didn’t even have time to tell her that he wasn’t into anything remotely cultural. Anyway, he wouldn’t have. Anveeta was not the kind of person one ever said no to. Not that she had ever asked him anything. Anveeta went with the power pack in college and he doubted that she’d recognize him on the road if they passed. Now that they had spoken, he realized that he would have agreed to anything she asked. Even though she had not really asked.

The festival had twenty-five events with about twelve colleges competing for the trophy. Each event awarded a point apiece for participation and more for clearing each level of the competition. The college with the highest total at the end of the festival would win the shining silver cup.

A bunch of 15-odd people were going to sing, dance, act, talk and strut down the stage for the various events. Vineet found himself herded in with the numbers to grab the participation points. These were the small runs, the ‘singles’ as his buddies on the cricket team called it. First to go were the accomplished artists into the music, elocution and art events. Next were the trained and rehearsed teams – the fashion show troupe, the debating team and the dramatics group. The sports teams had gone straight to the grounds and would catch up with them only at the end of the day.

That left four of them. One of them headed to the advertising contest, having set his sights on an internship at an ad agency that summer. The other two trouped off to the personality contest, more to ogle the participants of the opposite sex than anything else. They left Vineet standing in front of the schedule board.

What could he do? He ran his eye speculatively down the list some three times before he found an event right at the bottom. There were only 3 registrants so far and it sounded easy. So he signed up and walked towards the door he was directed to. To his dismay, it turned out to be a small sized auditorium rather than a classroom. What’s more, it was almost half full. Most of the students were using it as a resting point to lounge in the airconditioning, secure in the knowledge that the peons wouldn’t be able to evict anyone on this day of the festival when it wasn’t clear who was a visitor and who, a student.

It was too late to turn back since the co-ordinator who had registered his name was jostling him from the back. Too bad she was so pretty. She was the only girl to have even looked at him that day. So he took a deep breath and walked up to the raised podium and sat down with the other three participants.

It was two hours before he was able to escape from that room. Outside, his team was waiting, Anveeta hopping impatiently from foot to foot as she gave him an annoyed look.

“So how many points do we have so far?”

Each person spoke up their share while she added it to the tally. When the stars were done, she stopped listening and just starting counting off the remaining heads to allot 1 point each for participation.

“14…15…16…17…shit, we’re tying for third place. We’re never going to get there, dammit!”

“No, we’re at 24.”

Vineet ventured timidly

“Hmm?”

she paused in distraction and looked down at her tally again. He waited patiently while she recounted and turned back at him with a frown.

“The tally is correct.”

“No, you only counted 1 for me. I got 8.”

The rest of the group was listening now. Boldened a tad, Vineet raised his voice a notch but he was beaten by the captain’s low octave.

“That’s not possible. You’ve to cross all rounds and win to get that high.”

“Err, yes, I won.”

“What?”

She was looking dumbfounded now.

“Twist-a-tune.”

He heard the girl behind him whisper to her friend,

“What’s that?”

“It’s a music event. They give you two songs. You have to take the words of one and the tune of another and sing them without a break.”

Still dumbfounded. With a supreme act of bravado, Vineet opened his mouth and launched into an encore of his performance.

“Jaadoo teri nazar, khusbhoo tera badan”

It took everyone a few minutes before someone whispered,

“But that’s…that’s…Om Jai Jagadish Hare…the tune is that”

“Tu hain meri kiran”

finished Vineet.

He was rewarded not with applause but with a shriek from the captain herself.

“24 puts us in the lead!!!!”

“Excuse me”

said a voice at his elbow,

“You didn’t tell us your name.”

The pretty girl coordinator from the mini-auditorium was smiling back at him, pad in hand. Vineet grinned. Well, when she asked like that…

And that was the day Vineet went from being an extra participant to a winner.

The Writer In The Artist Spectrum

IdeaSmith — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 05:43:38 EST

I think all artists need an audience. This is everyone from musicians to sculptors to painters. Everyone who has ever expressed an idea in tangible form or otherwise has needed an audience. To those who disagree - if they didn't, then they'd just keep the idea in their own heads. There is an undeniable need in an artist for other people to experience their art. Art is after all, an interaction between the artist and the audience. It is absorbing impressions and communicating them to the universe outside.

Each art form carries its own framework of the artist/audience interaction and I think we gravitate to art forms that fit our needs the best.

The visual arts, painting and sculpting and other related arts are at one end of the spectrum. The artists are usually recluses. They rarely interact with their audience during the creation of their art and their only communication is in the final product. How often do you see a painter or sculptor standing next to his or her work, willing to talk about it? These people are somewhat reclusive and in some cases even antisocial, preferring the least amount of conversation with their audience.

At the other end of the spectrum are the performing arts - music, dance, acting, oratory. The audience is crucial to the performance as the performer himself/herself. Ask anyone who has practiced these arts and they will tell you how important it is to relate to the audience, to get them involved and enjoying the performance. As a result I think these are also the arts that draw the more sociable artists of all. Immediate and constant interaction with other people is very important to the performer. I'll go so far to say that performers are the artists who need other people the most, during every minute of their performance. (For the after, that's true of all artists).

So where does writing fall on this spectrum? Are we the reclusive visual artists because we hide behind our smokescreen of words? Or are we the vivacious performers because we are constantly engaging and facilitating conversations?

I always thought of a writer as someone who lets you sit on his shoulder and view the world as he sees it. Or even better, he lets you in through a little door, into his mind and allows you to read what he thinks and understand what it is like to be him. In that sense, the writer is exactly in the middle. The visual artist is at one end, holding out his art at arm's length for you to see. The performer is the quicksilver, weaving himself around you to take on your form. The writer, in contrast to both the above, brings you into himself and allows you to experience the world as he does.

I have an interest as well as at least a little bit of talent in music as well as painting. I've performed on stage and I've won some recognition for my paintings. But writing is art that feels most like me.

Writers are the only other people who understand my alternating between being a social butterfly and an extreme recluse. That back-and-forth is the very essence of being a writer. Letting the whole world in and then shutting it all out - it's as natural as breathing for a writer. We have neither the stoic dignity of a visual artist who doesn't need another person till he has finished. And nor do we have the unwavering adaptability of a performer to dissolve into other people. We have a little bit of both and we oscillate, collecting material from the world around us, turning it over in ourselves, carrying other people inside our heads and then examining how we feel about that. The words, the thoughts are constantly shifting and shaping themselves and we chase after them with nets of language to convert them into stories for the next person to ride our minds.

Concert Review: Dischordian + Gillian Grassi - Cafe Goa

IdeaSmith — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 21:29:37 EST

I was at Café Goa this Wednesday (20th January) for the UTV World Movies & Music event organized by the Bombay Elektrik Projekt. As it was, the trek to Bandra is a formidable thought (and I stop short of saying ‘unrealistic’ since that’s what’s I call travelling to town). In typical Mumbaiker fashion, I aim for efficient usage of time so I clubbed this with another event – meeting a longtime friend/reader of my blog. We decided to skip the movie in favor of coffee & chat and come back for the music performance.

The opening act was by Gillian Grassie, a harpist from Philadelphia on a year-long tour of several countries including India to study the relationships between new technologies and independent music scenes around the globe. I managed to catch only the last few minutes of her act and what little I saw was quite mesmerizing. The harp carries associations of white-clad angels and an otherworldy, semi-religious feel of music. Gillian's music was none of those things but managed to bring a sweet freshness to instantly hummable tunes. Her fingers seemed to be feather-touching, almost dancing on the strings of the harp (which was almost as big as her..and here I thought the harp would be a much smaller instrument). The harp provided only a very soft background to the songs which primarily rode on her voice. It's quite impressive to create a song purely from one's voice, virtually unassisted by the grandeur of an orchestra and Gillian pulled it off, holding the audience spellbound. I do wish I had made it to the venue earlier to catch her entire performance.

The headlining act of the evening was Dischordian, a venture by Garreth D’mello (also of Split). Dischordian is described as 'an attempt to move away from the wall of sound and aggression and testosterone that makes up most rock music, an attempt to strip music down to its basics'.

Garreth was accompanied by Howard Pereira on his guitar and Agnnelo Picardo (Aggie), the percussionist/trumpeteer. The last began the evening, hugging a trumpet close to his chest while listening to Garreth and Howard spark up the show. I’ve never seen a trumpet that close. The advantage of a place like Café Goa is the proximity it provides between the performer and the audience. So I kept my eyes trained on the trumpet, an instrument I only have vague associations with, of loudness and some sort of stiff-necked wedding band. Thus it came as a pleasant surprise when the trumpet actually made its entry into the music at ‘The Old Whore’. Aggie led it in with the kind of regal dignity and grandeur that you would associate with a quiet, well-built black man who surprises you with jazz. Yes, jazz was unmistakably what I heard in Dischoridian’s sound everytime the trumpet was a part of it.

Garreth himself has tremendous presence on stage. His face is boyish and manner as laidback and easygoing as his Goan roots. But when he begins to sing, those notions melt away as you are carried off in the power and forceful magnetism of his rich voice. It’s a deep voice, the kind that sounds mature and all-knowing with wisdom that comes from having experienced excitement and grown past it. Possibly because of the selection of songs and the jazz feel that I described earlier, it also felt like a strong but gently caress, the sort that can crush but knows how not to.

I’ve heard ‘The Old Whore’ before, live as well as a recording. It has a classic country-western feel to it. Some artists sound much better in person than on the polished finish of a recording and Dischordian is certainly in this category.

'Scourge of Love' revved up the tempo and suddenly the audience was drawn into the performance, before we even knew it, thumping our feet and trying to sing along (or hum along at least). This is when Swati who had accompanied me clapped her hands and called Garreth, India's answer to Kurt Cobain (which elicited a weak smile from Garreth when I told him later, followed by a hasty retreat).

The piece de resistance of Dischordian's performance has to have been ‘Bucket of Blood’ (I actually thought that was ‘Bucket of Love’ when I tweeted about it);-). It’s a racy, foot-thumping number, all adrenalin and blood-rushes. I’ve not seen Garreth in his former avatar but several people I know have given me a pretty graphic account of his rockstar days as a tee-shirt ripping stage-stud, girls screaming et al. His shirt stayed firmly on and he remained seated but this song was a more than adequate hint to those days. And yes, there were a lot of people screaming, even in that tiny room in the café, men and women alike.

The trumpet was replaced by a sort of bongo (hand-drum?) for the same song and served to showcase Aggie's talent. All artists are trying to communicate something in their own ways and media. Musicians face that challenge by appealing to something whose response can’t often be quantified in words – melody, beat, the combination of the various sounds made by wind and strings and voice. Some instruments like the guitar and indeed, the human voice make that connection a lot more easily but it is a greater challenge to connect with the audience with the more distant (but grand) percussion. Aggie displays as much presence as Garreth does, in a different way. As the lead guitarist and vocalist, albeit with his own brand of showmanship, Garreth is the flash-and-dazzle of Dischordian but Aggie makes his presence felt subtly and yet, noticeably. It’s an impressive talent and makes for a great performance.

Garreth performed solo on 'One of these days' and 'How I wait'', which while melodious, didn’t quite send me into rapture like the earlier songs. They could just be the kind of songs you’d prefer to listen to within the intimacy of headphones and in solitude rather than with a big group of people. Fortunately Howard and Aggie returned to perform ‘She lied to me’ and a cover version of Jello Biafra's 'Are you drinking with me, Jesus?' which really had the crowd howling in appreciation. The other songs they performed were 'Same old conversations', 'Your Right Heel' and 'Baby, Maybe'.

The performance closed a few minutes after midnight.

The neighbors are complaining. You wouldn’t think an acoustic band could make much noise. But apparently we can.

was Garreth’s wry observation as the audience begged him for an encore.

In sum, the evening was well-spent and totally worth the trip to Bandra. The second half was good but I think the first few songs took away the show. Dischordian is great, live in action and I’ll gladly make the trek again to hear them. I would also like to hear their recorded songs to be able to compare it to their live performance. But my feeling is their real talent lies in the tangible connection they are able to make with their audience when they are right in front of them.

* Dischordian is on Facebook and Twitter. The Bombay Elektrik Projekt is on Facebook. My tweets of the event are hashtagged #bep.

IdeaArt: Rose Garden

IdeaSmith — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 06:54:10 EST

This is part of my series on fabric painting (after Peacock and Kathakali). But this was actually painted much earlier than those two.

I had this terrycot shirt checked orange and white. The overall effect was a sort of mustard. It's not a colour I've ever been fond of or one that flatters me. Painting it was a rather delayed decision since it doesn't occur to one intuitively to paint over something that already has a pattern on it. But I realized that the pattern was neither overwhelming nor highly visible. And it would serve perfectly well as a background.

I used several pictures of roses to figure out the basic geometric shapes and swirl-patterns that I'd need to use. It turned out to be surprisingly easy. I started with a round wavy shape (like little kids drawings of flowers) using black paint (Fevicryl no.02 Black). Then I added more waves and curlicues inside it. After that it's just a matter of colouring and adding leaves.

The painting was actually loads of fun, the messy, splashy way. I made blobs of the basic red paint (Fevicryl no.39 Carmine) on the fabric. Then before it was dry, I daubed on the shimmery pink (Fevicryl no.303 Pearl Pin). The pink was probably an older bottle so it had gone a little creamier while the red, newer was liquidey. The net effect was that the pink stood on its own but blurred into the red at the edges to give a lovely shaded effect. I waited for these to dry before outlining and highlighting in black again.

The leaves were done using a similar principle - outlined in black, filled in with basic green (Fevicryl no.06 Dark Green) and daubed with the shimmery green (Fevicryl no.357 Pearl Metallic Green). And finally redefined with black once that was dry.

The details came in later. I added hairfine strokes of black to show the stems. Tiny buds with triangle-shaped leaves in blue (Fevicryl no.32 Cerulean Blue); these were done with a thin brush dipped in colour and then pressed flat down on the cloth. These were given yellow (Fevicryl no.302 Pearl Lemon Yellow) centers. The leaf veins were lined with bronze (Fevicryl no.355 Pearl Metallic Bronze).

I started intending to only paint the back since it had an unbroken visage (the front has buttons all the way down so it's difficult to do one contiuous painting). Then it looked so good that I added some detail in the front to match the theme.

The front detailing is not uniform copy of the back. While the back is just one pattern of roses scattered all over, the front shows a rose-trellis creeping up on one side and small bouquet-like collection of flowers on the other side that look like they've been plucked off the plant and dropped on the ground.

On the same side, I added a tiny rosebud and leaf detail on the collar.

Garment: Waist-length shirt with short sleeves and collar

Material: Terrycot with tartan texture

Background colour: Orange-brown with white threads running through

Paint colours used:

Fevicryl no.02 Black

Fevicryl no.39 Carmine

Fevicryl no.303 Pearl Pink

Fevicryl no.06 Dark Green

Fevicryl no.357 Pearl Metallic Green

Fevicryl no.355 Pearl Metallic Bronze

Fevicryl no.32 Cerulean Blue

Fevicryl no.302 Pearl Lemon Yellow