post 13-art and aesthetics

Feb 08, 2005
I was really surprised to find that EVERYONE unknowingly liked my card the best. It felt good. Got my marks (very good marks) but some how felt no joy of glory.

July 02, 2005
In French
I’m not such a bad artist as I imagine.
Today I found some of my old pieces; scraps that I’d practiced before my class 12 exam. They are not too bad. I like my compositions which reflect what is typically on the road. It’s very realistic, but for some people who are much exaggerated-their idiosyncrasies and their appearances. I like them too.
But at that time…why did I consider my art so bad, so ugly? I do not know-- my marks perhaps. Also the attitude in that school? That my art was very different from others’, I never had the confidence to accept it.
No, some I loved. I liked my ideas, but the effects were never as I had imagined. It was never perfect and I found it difficult to accept such imperfection-the difference between my imagination and the output.
Perhaps it was also the great admiration I had for the other artists- those I considered better than me. No ‘perhaps’. It is certain.
I adored whatever Akku or Tanya drew. And I wished to paint or draw or shade exactly like at least one of them. But I could never do that. That's a pity. It was the end of art for me till my famous poster “La Terre Est Peu Belle, Si On N’utilise Pas La Poubelle”. And after that there was no longer any art in my life. It’s finished, over!

June 22 2005
There are so many things I need to write about! About the AIR meeting, about how repulsive I found the girls and the teachers from another college, with their fake foreign accents! How good I feel that I do not have a mother like A and am therefore not like him. About another friend’s talk in the bus about her family and the war with the rest of their clan-those petty politics –a different socio-economic class! The thought doesn’t escape me but I feel guilty that I’m discriminating-like a capitalist. Then the long conversation I had with S-does she have psychic powers? Do spiritualism and psychic powers exist-or is it all her imagination?

…have to write about the trip too. Aihole was simply MAARVELLOUS. The amazing staircase and the rooftop and the ceiling carving and the side seat in Lad Khan were too good. Badami was also really cool. Those life size beautiful statues and the Agasthya story and tank and cave. I liked Pttadakal stories about how it was called Rakthapuri. It was truly RED. I felt it in Aihole itself, but the redness of the stone seemed to reach its Zenith in Badami/Vatapi. The red mud the red rock reminded me of TARA in Gone with the Wind. Stupid comparison I know. But it did at that time. Silly Americans with so little history and barely any culture –how they have managed to influence us….I’ve lost my own language my thoughts and writings are in a foreign tongue which has overpowered my own. I am a helpless subject. Our heritage is brought down to a low level by such demeaning comparisons-if demeaning is the word I’m looking for. Anyways I know what I mean!

2001 (post it inside her diary back cover)
My first poem (complete lies)
I oft did try
to write poetry
and failure did I meet.
But gave not up my hope
I continue to grope
But I know that one day
I shall have a poem to say
& though this be a great feat I think it will only meet
To keep trying till I succeed
In this human world of greed.