Thursday, November 5, 2009

Metro Construction

My dad took a turn towards the south end road near Rajlakshmi Kalayan Mantap in J.P Nagar and what I saw there was so shocking...the road was dug up in the middle and the trees looked like a man in thirties who had just started balding.Road looked like it was surviving a monster attack. I was horrified to see the remains of this road.Dad saw my reaction and said "Metro construction ".
This road was always my favorite for I always felt that this was the best planned road in the pensioners paradise Jayanagar. Lined with amazing parks on both the sides and huge age old trees covering the road and the perfectly straight road(yep no curves and turns) it was the best road that we could be driving. Born and brought up in south Bangalore this particular road was always close to my heart. The first ride that we had in this road on my friends new red scooty , my summer vacation walks to the city central library enjoying the cool breeze and shade( I used walk all the way from my house in Thyagarajnagar to the city central library in south end circle ), getting down at south end and walking all the way to reach jayanagar to save rs 3 ,My friend zipping in her scooty with me behind her on this road when it was raining pretty heavily without opening our eyes for more than half a centimeter(Rain drops kept falling on us from these trees hours after the rain had stopped)...This road was always so "WOW" for me and now looking at it made my heart weep and the question "Do we need Metro" kept creeping in mind. Well I am not too good a judge to think about pros and cons of Metro but I am sure going to be missing this lovely green calm road and the boulevard of M G road.

Indian Tribal Painting

Well..this is my first blog on my latest interest .No prize for guessing it though..yep the "Indian Tribal Painting".
Few months ago I happened to visit a store which sells all the materials required to make hand made cards. While I was checking out the store I happened to notice a book with Madhubani paintings on it. I browsed through the book and decided to try it so I purchased it . I had heard of the famous Madhubani paintings and was always fascinated by the colors used in it and started trying that out and having finished quite a few designs from them decided to know more about Tribal Painting. This book was the trigger that helped me get started with Indian Tribal Painting.
I started browsing the net to find out more about Madhubani and saw the Warli, Kangra and Kalamkari tribal painting as well . What interested me the most was the simple and yet classy faceless figures of Warli. Warli paintings depicts the simple day to activities like Hunting, Fishing and Farming . Celebrations like festivals and Marriages are shown in these paintings also with animals and nature. Unlike most of the tribal paintings that depicts mythological characters these are based on events in our day to day life . Suppose to be painted on mud walls by this tribe earlier Warli was always done with white paint. The white paint was a mixture of rice flour and gum . Geometric designs like circle, triangle and square dominate these paintings. The circle represents the sun or moon, the triangle represents the mountains and square the feilds used for farming. Human body are represented by two triangles upper depicting the trunk and the lower the pelvis. Men and women are differenciated by a little knot drawn on the head.

Simple yet beautiful these faceless painting do express the joy of celebrations in life .Now I really wonder if we really need eyes, hands and face to express ....Creativity to express by these faceless tribal paintings answers my question.