Artist lounge and 6 months anniversary

Welcoming August with hope and love

It’s 2 am, and I just gulped down a cup of coffee. Honestly, it's blasphemous even for a coffee aficionado like me to have coffee so late at night. I usually have a single cup of coffee in the morning and an occasional additional cup in the evening if I have company.

I have been tiring myself out to sleep these days. I tried to go to sleep at 11, but after tossing and turning in my bed for a while, I got up from my bed, played some nice songs, washed my face, put on my jeans, and made a cup of coffee to present myself in front of my desk to write this newsletter.

Since I live alone in a small home in the hills, I mostly wear my boxers around the house. When I really want to push myself to work, I put on my jeans and a nice T-shirt and sit down to work. It does have a placebo effect on me; it seems to be working as well since I am writing this newsletter.

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I got a surprise in my email when Substack notified me that my humble newsletter now had 100 subscribers. It felt nice, reassuring, and all things good.

A writer needs a reader, and I am grateful to have 100+ of you! Thank you for your attention and time. It means the world to me.

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It’s still raining in Bir, and my gallery is full of photos of lush green mountains. The house is still host to a multitude of guests (insects) of various colours and sizes. Like the gloomy, foggy weather, there seems to be an overarching blanket of gloominess all over me as well. I am observing deteriorating energy levels while my inner mental intent to work diligently is still constant. I seem to be pushing myself a lot to do what I ought to do on an everyday basis regardless. I have been blaming it on the weather for a couple of weeks now, and I hope it is the weather.

It’s been six months since I moved to the mountains and called Bir my home. I say it with a lot of pride that I live in the mountains. The journey that I have had to be able to say this supports my pride. It’s not been as romantic as it might seem, especially these days in the monsoon where I find myself mostly glued to my home. A daunting feeling of loneliness travels with me wherever I go, but since my movement is limited to within my house, I mostly find it right next to me, staring at me with its eyes gouged out. It’s scary, but it’s also fodder for my writing, so I let it stare a bit longer.

I will be visiting home soon and leaving this dementor of loneliness behind me. So for the time being, I am allowing it to draw whatever it wants from me. Wow, I am kind.

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From Bir, all its nearby villages, and my home in Gunehar, the mountain in front boasts of a network tower, which is the landmark for a very famous temple here called Mata Maheshwari Temple. Even though it makes its presence felt no matter where you are in Bir, I comfortably ignored it for the past six months of my time here.

Finally, when a friend who was about to leave Bir for good proposed that we should visit the temple, I almost said no but then agreed just to get some good karma by showing her around on my bike. A 10-minute ride from my home preludes the 30-minute hike in the forest to reach the temple. The weather was misty, foggy, cloudy, and quite humid. Luckily, there were stairs laid down throughout the hike from where the bike was parked to where the temple compound started. After panting all along the way and cursing the humid weather, we finally reached the temple only to find the entire view around us engulfed in clouds. Standing there at the temple, we couldn’t even see the trees in front of us. We climbed to the topmost point of the temple as guided by the priest and slowly saw the clouds open up the view of our beloved Bir.

People usually trek to the temple to see the sunset from there, owing to its height and panoramic view. Let alone the sunset; on that evening, even the sun was hidden somewhere in the thick blanket of clouds. We spent some time taking photographs at the top and came down much quicker than we had climbed.

Fun fact - There were zero people all along the forest hike while we were climbing and descending. Now, that was definitely an experience worth having.

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Last week’s Writing Space was very interesting. On one hand, I was surprised to see 14 registrations for the space, but at 11 am when I sat to start the space, I was equally surprised to see nobody on the call. I later realized that the platform I used to conduct the spaces had not sent the call links to anyone! I went into panic mode and pasted the link on my Instagram, WhatsApp groups, and wherever there was a possibility of people being present who had registered. Slowly, people started joining, and there were ten participants in total, and the space concluded beautifully :)

Grateful to the participants for holding me and making the space seem effortless.

On that note, here’s the link to the 10th Edition of Creative Writing Laboratory! There will be a gap of 2-3 weeks before I host the next space as I will be travelling, so make sure you attend this one!

In the last newsletter, I wrote about my thoughts on facilitating discipline as an artist. I have been trying to do that for myself this past week. As I mentioned above, the weather is not supporting me, but I am trying my best. I want to show up for myself and my art every single day. That is what consumes me entirely these days. I also want to start exercising and keep myself fit so that I can be more energetic and sustain myself, all for my art. Thank you for sticking with the imperfect me; I swear I am trying to be better.

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All this talk about Art brings me to an exciting announcement!
I present to you - The Artist Lounge! The Artist Lounge stems from my long-held dream of documenting the lives of artists. I read Rashmi Bansal’s "Stay Hungry Stay Foolish" and "Connect the Dots" when I was in 12th grade. Those books stayed with me all these years because I could connect with the real-life stories of entrepreneurs whose lives she had beautifully documented. Years later, when I started writing, I wished to do something similar to what she did, but for artists.

While that dream is still there and only getting stronger and slowly taking shape, I thought to document the lives of artists that I know of and have access to here in my newsletter.

I am honored to present my first feature - my favorite artist and a very dear friend. You can find her work here.

I have had the fortune of witnessing

Kruti Gandhi

’s journey up close as her friend. Kruti started painting during the pandemic, and I was always keen to see her progress on Instagram. Inspired by her growth, I even asked her to teach me painting, which she very beautifully and patiently did. I am so proud of her journey as an artist, and my house in Bir has many of her paintings! There is a wall dedicated to her art, with many more pieces on different walls of my house. Thank you, Kruti :)

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As a feature of all my newsletters, I share one song, one book, one plant-based meal, one film/video that inspired me, and some photographic updates from my life.

• I have been listening to Aasa Kooda by Sai Abhyankkar. I am not very familiar with the music of other languages, but this song stayed with me for its beats and the music video. I am yet to find out about the lyrics, but I love it as it is. Do you understand the lyrics? Do comment if you do :)

• I am reading The Right to Write by the brilliant writer and creativity coach Julia Cameron. It is helping me with my writing motivation and discipline.

• This week I made Moong Dal Chilla and Onion Tomato Chutney. Not to toot my own horn, but it was very well made. I took this photograph as a proud chef handling two stoves at once!

• I watched this very interesting commentary on photography - Are You Expressing Your Creativity or Just Pressing Buttons? by Adam Marelli
  I stumbled upon it thanks to Reddit's photography community and the title caught my attention.

• Lastly, here are some photographs from the past few days. Hope you enjoy them :)

I am scheduling this post for 8 AM IST so wishing you a very good morning and hope you have a brilliant day and week ahead. Thank you for reading.