I Will See the Sky Tonight...

I don't want to go there

Where you are not

Instead I will see the sky tonight

Will try to find you in the stars

And I know you will show your hand to me

Yes! I am not compelled by the distance

Time has given me

I can fly down if I wish

Because I have wings

But I don't want to go there

Where you are not

There is only the 'rest'

The soulless Body

Instead I will talk to your soul

My ears will have your voice

Which echos around ethereally

And I know you will answer me 

Because I am the first one

You holded her hands

After a generation gap

And it's you who is in me

Still giving your fraction

Until I am alive

So, I don't want to go there

Where you are not

You are in the paper

My hands are holding just now

In form of the 'words'

You had given me 

Some years back

When I truly needed them

Still I need them & always will be...

Infact It's not only me

Everyone who met you once

From your surrounding

Have you in the form of your words

Then Why should I go there

Where you are not

Instead I should see the sky tonight

Should search you out in the stars...

(From a granddaughter)

Is Perfection Imperfect or Imperfect is Perfection?

The world around us is full of binaries - the opposite factors, and the connection/relation between them interests me. I see them, analyze them and try to explore their antagonist affinity by juxtaposing them. These binaries directly come from the world around me, in which I live and experience the things. Each experience in daily life even of a small venture or datum, leave a stamp over the thinking process, which later on converts into the central ideas for my works. 

Among these ideas, the one is about ‘Perfection’ and it’s binary ‘Imperfection’. Although perfection is considered an ultimate objective but experience of ‘perfection’ lies in its deficiency. This hiatus status gives birth to its opposite factor ‘imperfection’ which sometime reaches to the core of the ultimate. Thus collision begins which contains summation also. So, it implants distraction and connection both in single time.

The nature itself has created binaries i.e. day/night, sun/moon, sky/earth, heat/snow, fire/water, men/women etc., which are considered to have opposite characteristic to each other. Though nature had not differentiated and discriminated between them but it was the man’s intellect who determined these differences which later on resulted into masculine/feminine, strong/weak, good/bad, black/white and so on. The volition towards the exploring binary oppositions led me to depict the idea of ‘perfection’ & ‘imperfection’ into my works.

'Perfect Imperfection' Embroidery on cloth, Pen on Paper & Jute on Stratures

Before going to the outer world, I analyze myself as a personality and my responses to the world around me; and while doing so I feel that I am more comfortable with doing things ‘perfectly’. This perfection brings a certain aesthetic for me to enjoy and play with, but then I analyze the positive and negative aspects of it also. Here I can recall one of my teacher’s words, ‘You don’t have courage to destroy a drawing, why you want to make everything beautiful?’ I can extend this statement further and should write the experiences and oscillating thinking process of my study days as a painting student. Yes I was the one who used to feel romantic while painting instead of expressing the potency or force. A person who is in love cannot create energetic lines and cannot be perversive to his/her canvas. Or it may be my ‘nature’ being a female as women is considered more near to meticulous, detailed and soft approach of working rather than male beings of the earth.

It may be the reason why female students are more sincere, calm and obedient during the academics right from the class one to college time.  And today I am firmly experiencing it being a teacher and unable to delude my own student days. Anyway analyzing the gender differences is not the point but thing what I want to say is ‘gender nature’ could have responsible to a stylization of a female artist. Here some other things also I may include which I felt strongly those days, that a person who is a ‘skilled’ painter it is more difficult to do ‘distortion’ which actually needs a constant perseverance; Whereas who cannot draw accurate creates ‘distorted’ in first attempt even in attempting to make a accurate one. This is the reason Child Art is one of the pure form of art which is natural/easy for a child but difficult to reach by an academically trained ‘skilled’ painter and when one acquires the state of a child in his/her age of above 25-40 s/he acclaimed a more ‘matured’ artist.

Here when I am putting the word ‘skilled’ in inverted commas when I am using it along the word ‘artist’, it has a reason. Yes that was another thing which I learned being a painting student that ‘skill’ doesn’t only mean the accuracy of drawing and painting, it is more associated with the accuracy/success of execution which ultimately reaches to the communication. A communication which an art work and viewer has, and art work which has a successful communication is ‘skillful’. 

So, skill is a double meaning word like many of the other things. Now I wish to go back where I left the talk of ‘perfection’. Making things neat and beautiful, doing deeds calculative is not merely perfection because doing single thing in a time may lead it's other aspect untouched. Beauty is not only the one which is pleasant; the unpleasant could also look beautiful. I agree that roses are universally beautiful, no one can claim them ugly but one who is suffering in ‘Virah’/departure of the beloved may find them unpleasant or painful, the way ‘Virahini Nayika’ in Hindi literature feels the sorrow in ‘Spring’. And other could find beauty in ‘trash’ also, is the reason a number of artists have painted the ‘unpleasant’ scenes and moments in a beautiful way. Suchwise, although perfect things seems more articulated, decontaminated and genuine; but the coin has similar other side too. 

And what the perfection is all about forsooth, I try to execute in one of my work. Though the idea was a far existed one in mind but taking up some new material was experimental. Idea should be mingled up with the folk and tribal arts because it was created during the ‘Folk & Tribal Arts Workshop’ held at Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, New Delhi. Taking up the objective of promoting the Folk & Tribal artisans of the country, Centre invited the artisans from all over the India and young artists were instructed to imbibe their thought processes while siphoning the Folk & tribal elements from these invited artisans works.

Embroidery pieces using 'Sujani Embroidery'of Bihar (Including Chain Stitch & Kachha Tanka) 

Taking up two white painted statures and cross-weaved with black dyed jute is to juxtapose the opposites- the ‘perfect’ and ‘imperfect’. The first one is calculative attempt, neatly embroidered pieces which are stitched at their apt place as according to the ‘chhat pooja’ scene, a event majorly celebrated in Bihar, as I have taken up the 'Sujani embroidery' of Bihar state as a folk element to modulate with the idea. And the second one is a disorganized gesture including the replicas of embroidery pieces at few places made by pen on paper and leaving sewing needles into pieces without completing the work.

The 'Original' & the 'Replica'

Some Details

This idea of ‘perfection’ as a process and result I started analyzing more consciously, when I started confronting more ‘busy’ days than of earlier. When one do work only for the inlying satisfaction, aesthetic pleasure or as a hobby, one can find all ‘perfections’ competent, but when one wants to move on the circle by entering into the more professional sake, things could have a different face. I recall the college days while of my post graduation from Jamia Millia Islamia. Taking admission in Jamia demanded the complete change from routine to work style. Now the daily work place was no more near to the residential place, so expending the majority of time in travelling between Rohini to Okhla was the foremost thing which required thinking upon the ‘habitual’ nature.

Although I used to submit my all assignments in time, but at few times they jumped the deadlines or difficultly completed within the deadline. The reason was not that carelessness or insincerity but that was the habit of trying to achieve the entity of one thing and letting the remained things undone or untouched until that touched one reaches to its ultimate. And one could not ever forget that life is not about the doing one thing in a time, it demands multiple aspects in a single time.

Using a good font, visually interesting apparent presentation, detailed study or analysis could give a soul satisfaction and aesthetical pleasure to a ‘perfectionist’ but it could bring the instantaneous negative impression and one’s weakness into peer’s hands, if not completed within time. So, the question here is this ‘perfection’ perfect in itself if it is bringing negatory sides? I must say NO. Infact a CAPITAL ‘NO’, the way/thing which is inapt to fetch the eventual purpose cannot be perfect ever. It is comfy and palatable in process because one is over-involved into it, but the process is not the eventual purpose but process, submission and result all are combined. And satisfaction also doesn't lay in process and presentation only it’s upto you where you are exceeding it.

So, these intermingled thoughts puts the questions like Where is perfection then? And how could one define it? Perfection is imperfection or imperfection is perfection or they both are perfection otherwise they both are imperfection. 

(P.S.: Perfection generates the quality of patience, clear output, detailed analysis and so on but according to the need of time, place and space it should be versatile not stubborn. Otherwise it automatically turns into Imperfection)