An artist says “look at this”, gently directing our view to something specific, to see just the way they see; and feel what they feel. In this way they want you to connect on a deeper level, and to converse with you. Art is a means to make the viewer look at familiar things in a different perspective.
perspective
Audience of One
Even if my work is understood by just one person in the world, that is enough. What truly matters is someone who connects deeply on a spiritual and emotional level. One gentle soul who feels that connection, not through words but through silence. In that moment, all the effort and purpose of the work is fulfilled.
On freedom and the burden of choice
I value autonomy: the freedom to choose one’s own path, free from coercion or influence. This freedom is integral and forms the core of my values. This comes with a cost; the choices are mine and so is the blame. Some decisions are irreversible.
To choose one’s own path is to carry both the upside and the failures without excuse. It is easier to follow someone else’s path, to direct the blame when things fall apart. But true autonomy offers no such excuse. It asks for vulnerability and courage: to face regrets, failures, and still to say: this life is mine.
Faded
Those friends I once studied, worked with, people I had known so closely, now feel distant – lost in time. I remember those relationships as if they were from another lifetime, faded like a forgotten dream. We drifted apart, our choices have taken us in different directions.
Some connections served their time and dissolved.
As I grow older, I realize it isn’t just distance that separates us, but also our ideologies and values. Perhaps some friendships are not meant to endure, and it’s gentler to let them go; slowly drifting away. Those attempts to revive them didn’t endure.
Like a chapter in a book, perhaps they were meant to last only that long. Some connections served their time and dissolved.
man+machine
I’m grateful to have discovered algorithmic trading. It has given structure and logic to what once felt like a chaotic process. I now see a framework where each step is governed by logic and reason.
That discipline is something I always aspired to embody, but could rarely sustain as a human being. Now I have a partner in the machine, one that reflects back the kind of reasoning I value: precise, methodical, and rational.
The sheer capacity of machines fascinates me: it can perform thousands of calculations, checks and balances every second, every minute, every hour, without pause. They don’t get tired. They don’t lose focus.
For me, there has been a tectonic shift in the decision-making flow. There’s a ruthless precision in every move. It follows logic, uncompromised by moods or emotions that often derail human judgment: fear, greed, frustration, or stress.
All said and done, a machine is only as reliable as the logic it is programmed with. What it offers me is not perfection, but consistency—a steady presence, an assurance that it has my back when my own judgement is clouded by emotion.
Intentional Living
We live in a time where worth is measured by outcome, efficiency, and scale. That erodes the inner dignity of labour. Doing the smallest task with full presence, and thereby imbuing it with dignity and meaning. This shift in mindset—“what I do matters, however small”—restores meaning.
That’s where intensity arises: from a willingness to commit fully to this brushstroke, this canvas, this conversation, rather than diffusing oneself into everything at once.
Intentional living, for me, is about conscious attention. The opposite of being pulled along by speed, distraction, or habit. I have deep respect for the artisan who works with care and devotion, a singular unwavering focus, as if it is the only thing in the world.
Intentionality is less about slowing down for the sake of slowness, and more about living intensely in the moment—with full heart, mind, and spirit. For me, that’s where dignity and purpose live.
obscurity
At the personal level, many painters carry traits that steer them away from publicity. Introversion, perfectionism, or fear of ridicule can make exhibitions feel threatening and interviews unbearable.
This fear of public scrutiny could burrow deep and ruin with self-sabotage. The realisation that intense exposure could distance them from the very thing that keeps it authentic. An ideal scenario would be that an artist works in obscurity but is completely outside the sphere of influence or scrutiny. A feat rarely achieved by artist.
These hesitations are amplified by cultural narratives that equate obscurity with authenticity. Since the nineteenth‑century slogan “art for art’s sake,” bohemian subcultures have elevated the unrecognised artist to heroic status, casting commercial success as moral compromise. Van Gogh’s posthumous image established the modern template: the misunderstood genius who dies poor yet triumphant in integrity.
Artistic reputation is never built alone; it relies on dense networks of curators, critics, peers, and collectors. Painters who juggle care work, battle social marginalisation, or simply lack time for networking miss the informal circuits where opportunities circulate.
Acceptance
The ability to see things as they are: ones age, limitations, regrets, the road behind and the road ahead; without denial, embellishment, or self-deception. “Acceptance” is one of the most powerful forces in a meaningful life, especially when facing moments like a mid-life crisis.
Acceptance isn’t passivity. It’s not resignation. It’s clarity without illusion. To see reality as it is. To free oneself to live this actual life, with all its limitations, beauty, and rawness.
Acceptance is not giving up, it’s growing up. It redefines strength.
It allows grief to do its work. At mid-life, you grieve:
Unlived lives
Past regrets
Faded youth
Failed expectations
The death of certain dreams
Acceptance gives you the permission to grieve what won’t return, and begin building what still can.
make art for
make art that is not intended for public viewing
make art for its own sake
make art for healing yourself
make art to give a voice to those wounds
make art for God’s own glory
make art not for the immediate but for the future;
a time capsule for the children’s children
make art not for any monetary gain but pay it forward
make art as you plant a tree, for those fruits they will bear
make art not for any legacy but as a letter to the person whom you will never meet
Wisdom
The most profound and wise thing to say is “I don’t know”. It requires true humility to realise the fact there are many things beyond our understanding.
Keys to Wellness
Get high on music
Meditate through movement
Sink down in aroma
Float through nature
Spread love
Beauty
“Beauty will save the world”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot
What is beauty? And what does it mean?
Dostoyevsky here must be referring to a redeeming quality of beauty that is deeper than mere aesthetics. He must be talking about truth and goodness. What does the world lack that it necessitates saving?
Does he consider the world corrupt and broken from its ways, of God’s original design? He must be referring to men and women than the world they inhabit. He must be referring to the way humans have exploited and driven themselves into corruption.
So, beauty here might be either an innate inscription deep within the hearts or something that pierces us from outside. Beauty might be something or someone outside a human system. Beauty might be a light that illuminates the path, open our eyes to what is true and good. It must have a redemptive nature. Without which, we would spiral into chaos and destruction.
What is true and good must be beautiful. Is it possible for something to be beautiful yet be against truth or goodness? Can something mimic radiance only to lead us astray?
What is a photograph
A photograph is an artefact that is frozen in time. It always represents a moment in the past, beginning from the time it is recorded. It could be yesterday, the last decade or a generation. It becomes a time capsule saved for future.
A photograph is meant to record a life event, a place, a relationship which we want to cherish and reminiscence. It is a window to the past, tethered to a day or place that matters the most. It awakens diverse emotions; nostalgia, longing, joy, heartache, contentment.
A photograph offers solace to this life of constant change and degeneration. That past is always blissful, endearing. We stay young, beautiful and cared for. It takes us back to the times with fewer regrets. We were innocent and unaware of the pain we would go through. A time we wish we could go back to undo the wrongs.
Return
Earth to Earth,
Dust to Dust,
Ashes to Ashes
As I open my eyes, I see wide open sky. I find myself lying here among the grass and the shrubs. I do not remember how I got here, or how long I’ve been. All I can sense is the song of the birds.
I see a butterfly hovering over my chest. There it made a home in my ribs. A plant has risen from the place where my eye was. I can barely move. I neither feel my arms nor my legs. All I see is a mound in their place.
A deep slumber is approaching as I lay sinking into the earth. I do not know when I will wake up again. I shall take a leave now as I return to earth; dust to dust; ashes to ashes.
Why I write
To heal a fragmented mind ravaged by the digital age
to embrace the potency of written word,
to start at the root of communication,
to know the mind of the person writing this,
to give shape to those scattered pieces of the subconscious,
a face and a name to those inner demons,
and a stash for those fragile memories
above all to think, feel deeply and live consciously;
a visually inclined man making an acquaintance with the word
What does writing do to the self?
a journey to the essence of thought
for a word as a means of inflicting emotion
in hope that writing will transform oneself from the inside
[[writing]] [[art]]
Two
Two roads
Two pills
Two eyes
Two halves of a brain
Two sides of a coin
Two poles of the earth
Day & Night
Man & Woman
Mind & Heart
Faith & Reason
Duality, Dichotomy, Paradox
The tension and the fusion between two seemingly opposite entities. What makes two a figure of extremes and a whole; all at once?
Epitaph
Weep not nor relent
My life to you was only lent
In love we lived, in peace I died
You asked my life it was denied
Grieve not nor to sorrow take
But love my children for my sake
–
From an epitaph on a tombstone of Teresa D’ Vaz, wife of a heartbroken man, Andrew D’ Vaz. Aged 26 years, she left him too early with a wound, a void and children who remind of her. They entered into a covenant, till death do them part. Yet death separated them.
The gravestone made in 1889, stands remarkably intact here in Our Lady of Good Health Catholic Cemetery, Cuddapah. It has withstood the test of time through generations, standing among the graves of brown men and women. Carved by undertaker/sculptor, Samuel Mullenex from Bangalore.
Lone wolf
Artists live in a separate world they construct over the years. This bubble of privacy is surprisingly wide and opaque to even the closest relations. You see, they are highly sensitive to stimuli. And this meditative state of mind is the soil in which ideas are grown. They cross-pollinate and flower into complex shapes of beauty.
Silence is the state that clears the doors of perception. We see the hidden valleys in bright light. Those emotions crashing like waves just under the surface are now visible. They well up and seep through the heart. An artist can not work in a state of noise.
Art making can be a rather lonely, thankless affair.
David Bayles & Ted Orland *
And Artists thrive in this state of isolation. It might be thankless as the artist wades sifts through thousands of strands looking for that way. That special direction which leads them to the place of clarity.
Personal observations from a series on ‘Art & Fear’.
Citation: Art & Fear
Listening
A truly good conversation gives us something to think about; it presents a new thought process, and a different perspective.
Being a good listener means one is open minded, curious and humble. The conversation has to be about the other, not about oneself. Listening isn’t just about words, but of the hidden cues, the emotions rolling under the surface. A conversation can happen without a word. Silence speaks a thousand words in an instant.
Humility, in conversations, would mean to accept that one doesn’t know it all. There is a whole lot to be learned from someone. There is a different perspective to be understood from years of experience in this thing called life. They have fought a different battle that we don’t know nothing about. There might be many stories to be heard.
[[Narcissists]] would put their entire attention when the discussion centers around them; and then quickly lose interest when the discussion goes elsewhere.
Masks we wear
Every human has a dark side hidden under the surface. We wear masks that warp perceptions of who we truly are. The words and actions speak different things. The wider the gap, the darker the hidden side is. Some are able to fuse these two identities remarkably well. So much so, without conflict or even cognisance of this existence.
A person of integrity is someone whose actions speaks the words. When there is unison with the words, thought and actions, there is a harmony. One should ‘listen‘ to the behaviour. Appearances are deceptive.
In politics, diplomatic relations are contrived. What the person speaks is different from what he or she does. And these [masks] are even more prominent here. They are made of swarms. They are a legion.