I live for how the museums make you walk slow and breath in all the colors and strokes. I live for the long conversations you have with strangers from far off lands.This time it was a couple from Hamburg, Germany. I live for the happiness that builds within you when you see an empty table in a busy cafe placed perfectly in the corner next to a french window when you are tired after walking for miles and are craving for a cup of coffee and muffin.
I live for how art keeps oscillating from past, present and future and never stops for a minute. Isn't it quite strange that several iterations we make, the journeys we walk, the measures we take in order to find for that one perfect style and solution that solves nearly everything. But art, art doesn't know any boundary, it doesn't like to be constrained in any sort of specificity. It likes oscillation, it likes movement, it likes to travel, intermingle and blend. Doesn't it sound so liberating? I live for this liberty.
Unlike other days when I love to stay in my studio and work, today I thought to take myself on a solo date. I thought to pay a visit to Delhi's Indian Habitat Centre and National Gallery of Modern Arts and soak myself in art. The best thing about visiting such places like museums, exhibition galleries, cultural centers, art streets, churches and parks is that you can walk at your own pace, take maximum of 2 minutes to decide what food you want to order, spend 4 hours in one gallery and there won't be anyone rushing you and most importantly pay attention to what you 'think' and contemplate on that. Solo dates are somewhat similar to meditation for me. After coming back from Mumbai I forgot my weekend rituals which involved me going to Fort area, walking on some random street and when I used to get tired, I resorted to Barista Coffee Shop and write down long journals and letters and sometimes sketch, and there were days when I used to go to Worli Sea Face and read there while watching the sun set. I almost declared that Delhi doesn't have nice places to visit, a 'proclamation' I have now started to highly doubt. With places like the ones I mentioned above, Champagali, Hauz Khas, Khan Market, Lodhi Colony, Triveni Kala Sangam, Indian Internation Centre and many more that I am yet to explore, one can never get tired of Delhi. And solo dates to these places can be cherry on the cake (although I am always the one who passes it to my mom).
Today while strolling past the art works, I realized two things, the sort of epiphany which occurs when you least expect it. After attending quite a fair number of exhibitions, I did realize this twice or thrice but never got a chance to elaborate on the same and you see this is how solo dates help. The first being the idea of 'collective'. I think there lies a great power in the collective, not only does it help to produce voluminous artworks, but it also is more like a journey inwards, a journey within. While an artist - as of that matter, perhaps anyone while working on their own version of Sistine Chapel - keeps on producing work relentlessly, not only does it help to produce a polished granite block but it also does help to understand ones true being. Later when one looks at the collective, the energy that emanates through that can be breath taking. While walking past the works of Rabindranath Tagore, Gaganendranath Tagore, Amrita Sher-Gil, Jamini Roy and all the other amazing ones, I realized that as much as 'talent' takes all the limelight, qualities like perseverance, patience and grit are like the bass of jazz music, it makes what jazz is.
Secondly, diversity. As much as it is important for one to find what they truly like and their unique predilections, it is so important - and I can't stress more on this - to give liberty to ourselves to fly and to taste different flavors that life has to offer.
I have learnt that, the art never resides in the constrains drawn by us, it can never survive there. If it exists, it exists in the oscillation. It exists in the freedom and the acceptance. I think I live for this oscillation and welcoming experiences with arms wide open.
I live for all the low-key and amazing things which slips through our eyes if we forget to stop. Lastly my friend, I live for that stop.
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