June 2011 – Page 2 – My Favourite Things

Christmas Eve 2008. London. At around 7.30 pm that evening, you could have found me at Hyde Park with two friends, Bharath and Krithika. Three Indians with varying degrees of homesickness. Hyde Park was more crowded than usual that day—apart from the casual visitors and walkers and joggers, it was full of revelers at the Christmas Fair being held at the Park. We, too, joined the revelers, but after some time found it unbearably noisy and decided to leave.

We took a path that appeared to have fewer people and after some time found ourselves in the Kensington Gardens. As we were walking along and chatting about that and this, I suddenly noticed a building in the distance all lit up and covered by what appeared to be extremely colourful graffiti—at least from where we were standing.

Curious, we decided to investigate. As we walked closer, we discovered that it was not colourful graffiti, but paintings that were hung on the exterior walls of the building. They were glowing in the dark and against the silhouette of the building, it was a sight to behold.

2-Sylvain-Deleu-365 — Photograph: Sylvain Deleu. Photo Courtesy: http://www.serpentinegallery.org

MF Husain 2 — The exterior walls of the Serpentine Gallery showcase MF Husain’s works

And what an architectural frame! They could not have described it more aptly. It was amazing to see these works of art displayed the way they were, outside the confines of a sterile, gallery interior. Once I got over the unexpected shock of seeing Husain’s works displayed as such, I was able to just stand back and enjoy them. Even though it was quite cold that evening, just looking at the pictures warmed me up.

MF Husain 1 — Reds, yellows, oranges and blues. All my favourite colours in one frame

Allowing Husain’s vibrant and colourful paintings to surround me with their warmth, I felt some of my homesickness dissipate, and suddenly cold, grey, sunless London was bearable. I sent a heartfelt, but silent thank you to MF Husain for making me feel happier than I had felt in days.

Yesterday, when I read of MF Husain’s death, I immediately remembered that evening when he, or rather his paintings, helped me tide over homesickness. For someone who was hounded in the country of his birth, forced to give up his citizenship, publicly declared his homesickness and yearn to come back to India—I wonder what comforted him and kept him going.

R.I.P. Maqbool Fida Husain.

A little over a year back, I started a blog. This blog, to be precise and on 2 June 2011 My Favourite Things celebrated its first blogoversary. 🙂

Looking back, it’s actually surprising that I started blogging. You see, I didn’t have too high an opinion of blogs—I found many of them narcissistic, self-obsessed, and opinionated. But what irritated me the most was bad language and a complete disregard for spellings and punctuation. My dislike for blogs was so great that I got into a rather heated and completely unnecessary exchange with a close friend about blogging and bloggers. The poor guy had just started a blog and I jumped down his throat with a “Not you too!”, and said many things better not shared here. Once again, I’m sorry, Aniruddha.

My Favourite Things is actually my third blog, and currently the only active one. My earlier two attempts at blogging (you can read them here and here), were done under duress. Both were assignments as part of my postgraduate coursework, which I would have failed if I did not complete those blog assignments. I didn’t take to blogging happily. I grumbled and pouted and researched and cursed and wrote and rewrote and edited and re-edited and published blog post after blog post for the assignments. But something changed during those 3–4 months of assignment blogging. I discovered that I enjoyed writing, and what’s more, I could write too ! The grades and feedback that I received for the blog assignments only confirmed what I felt.

Continue reading “1 year, 99 posts, 70,338 words…” →