On religious faith

"This happened in October of 1944, in the one moment in which I lucidly perceived the imminence of death. Naked and compressed among my naked companions with my personal index card in hand, I was waiting to file past the ‘commission’ that with one glance would decide whether I should immediately go into the gas chamber or was instead strong enough to go on working. For one instant I felt the need to ask for help and asylum; then despite my anguish, equanimity prevailed: you do not change the rules of the game at the end of the match, nor when you are losing. A prayer under these conditions would have been not only absurd (what rights could I claim? and from whom?) but blasphemous, obscene, laden with the greatest impiety of which a non-believer is capable. I rejected the temptation: I knew that otherwise, were I to survive, I would have to be ashamed of it."

- Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved.

Eternal gratitude to Gauphus for this.

Rothko

There is a time and place for all art, and there is no artist like Mark Rothko.

I spent a week in London recently, and it came as much a surprise to me that amongst all the places we went to, all the art, music and bohemian revelry we indulged in, Rothko is my clearest and most cherished memory.

I have never liked modern art before. I have found it difficult to understand: a blotch of the artist's randomness, lack of thought-and-message, and aesthetically unappealing. I had never seen real art before, either, and so I reckoned without the power of the actual canvas. I suppose that is why I love Tate Modern best of all the London haunts: we come to love those that so completely alter our perspectives on things we never expected to understand or appreciate. 

In Tate Modern, I caught a glimpse of what modern art means to me. There were stories everywhere - and art to me is the telling of a story. Not a narrative, but the expression of a feeling or an instinct, rather than clearly formed, flawlessly executed ideas. For that reason, for the freedom and method of their brush, for the simplicity of their stories, I have found Impressionists and Expressionists dearer and more beautiful than classical painters. But modern art is a different cup of tea altogether.

I found this most beautiful about many works in Tate: the suggestion of a story, the intimate relationship (though enchantingly hidden) with people and the diversity of forms of expression. There is something for everyone (though that may be true of all forms of art) - and you are at liberty to become powerfully a part of the creation, a part of the story.

Tate Modern houses eight of the Seagram paintings of Rothko. The moment you enter the room, what strikes you is the gloom: the paintings are all large and dark, painted by Rothko towards the end of his life, when he was suffering from continual bouts of depression and a great amount of unhappiness. They are all blacks, maroons, deep reds and greys. And in the corner, on the far left, is a painting - my painting, my Rothko. It is lighter than most: a background of a dark white or light lavender, and an inner rectangular splash-border of red (a gentler red than most). I know I stood in front of it for over an hour, almost in tears, foregoing the many rooms at the gallery.

What does one see in a painting? What did I see in Rothko? I believe there is one formula that is inescapable for any viewer, any reader, any listener: you will see and hear what you most desperately look for at any given point in time; you will receive what you ask for. In my Rothko, in that room filled with despairing blacks and unforgiving maroons, I saw hope. The faint, heartening glimmer of hope in that red-on-lavender (I still don't know what it's called. I doubt it will make any difference; Rothko was no great shakes at naming his works) in a way I have not seen hope for a long, long time. I saw hope in the midst of enduring, drowning despair, and that is more beautiful than sunrise on a clouded day. I saw hope as I had not seen in Revolutionary Road (the film frightened me with its depiction of despair); the hope of a man who has suffered much, felt anguish and hopelessness, seen the end and no bends in the road, and when all else have given up in despair.

What strength and endurance there must have been in Rothko to give that to his viewer.

Summer Rain

Growing up in Kerala, my friends and I had an inborn affinity for rain. Come monsoon, come unexpected, we'd always glory in the smell of deep red earth and green, wet leaves after a bout of rain. I am no different in Bangalore. I yearn for rain most days with a hope that belies summer sunshine.

Living on a relatively green campus, I've come to cherish rains, especially summer rains. Not just because they cool the earth and settle the ever-increasing dust, but because they are unexpected, akin to hope - manna to a hungry soul, water to a parched desert-wanderer.

This year, we have had a dry, dusty, hot summer, until now. The days have been sweltering, the nights unbearably hot and impossible to pass without fans in the plural. But now, all that is past. Unexpectedly, delightfully, we have had a rain - and what a rain it is! A cyclone in a low pressure belt couldn't have produced better rain, and for a few moments, hidden safely in the cocoon of our rooms, we thought it truly was a cyclone.

It swirls around trees and sways and shakes them like a man would a puppet. It swooshes and spins around and under eaves, balconies and umbrellas like a banshee wailing and flying in the wind. One can almost see a white line of wind through the sleet of rain, and if you wanted to walk about in it, you'd think it was hail; it's so sharp!

I love watching the trees dance haphazardly in the rain. There is some inhuman frenzy of gladness in it. When this is over - and I can hear it yet, beating down on my windows; distant rolls of thunder promising unceasing rain - there will be a small debris of fallen leaves, perhaps a tree or two ripped apart, a few chilblains and fevers and many muddy shoes. But there will also be a clean world, green and wet and dancing heart-glad - and would you not give anything for that?!

Schopenhauer

"The vanity of existence is revealed in the whole form existence assumes: in the infiniteness of time and space contrasted with the finiteness of the individual in both; in the fleeting present as the sole form in which actuality exists; in the contingency and relativity of all things; in continual becoming without being; in continual desire without satisfaction; in the continual frustration of striving of which life consists."