Category: Article

The lost art of letter writing

Neera 3 Comments

Dear Creative Souls,

Yesterday, while waiting in the reception area of the local hospital, where my niece was going through a minor procedure, I felt the urge to write to you. Not just any writing but deep, meaningful, connecting kind of writing. I pondered how to do that. For a long time now, I have been trying to figure out ways to communicate with you on a personal level. One to one, you see.

I don’t seem to be achieving that through blog posts. At least I don’t feel that. Blog posts with their ‘scannable’ nature sometimes sound distant and preachy. As if there is a thin curtain between the writer and reader.

I want to be able to talk to you like I talk to my friends over a cup of coffee.

I would love to have a cup of coffee with you.

Chances of happening that are slim. Not impossible, but slim.

This constraint reminded me of the longing I felt for my family when I migrated to Australia thirty-plus years ago. In those days there was no mobile phone, or skype and the landlines were outrageously expensive. My only way to stay connected with my family was letters. I used to write long, extra-long letters, by hand.

I loved writing those letters. Pouring my heart out to my mother as a newlywed would. Describing the new landscape and history of my adopted country to my father and father-in-law. Bonding with my sisters-in-law through separate notes.

What I loved more than writing letters was receiving them. Those striped edge envelopes with lots of stamps containing neatly folded lined paper with its unique smell. The anticipation of its content. The stories of food, festivals, neighbors, weather. Somehow, even mundane things would sound special. Those who wrote back regularly hold a special place in my heart forever. They gave me a gift which can’t be paralleled. They comforted me through the loneliness of the initial years.

This is how I want to communicate with you. By writing letters. Providing you comfort and support through your creative journey. As your companion. As someone who fights fear on a daily basis.

Speaking of fear, as my creativity was flowing, and I was coming with these ideas of writing all these letters, FEAR popped its head and reprimanded me.

Sweetheart,

Hold your horses. Just think about what you are going to do. Writing personal letters to your readers? What a dangerous idea. That will expose you on the net. You have any idea how vulnerable it will make you. People will know your deepest desires, your failures, your agonies, your anxiety. Do you really want to announce all those things. Don’t forget you are an introvert. Introvert don’t live their lives out in the open.

As usual FEAR was right on many things. I was almost going to drop the idea when I remembered Elizabeth Gilbert’s advice in Big Magic to write a letter to FEAR.

That’s what I did.

That silenced him.

I hadn’t written a letter to anyone for decades now. It still feels great. Writing letters builds relationships, brings clarity and provides comfort. It not only warms the heart of the recipient but also of the writer.

I urge you to write a letter today. To someone. Anyone. Write to your children and leave it in their lunch box. Or your husband and place it in his briefcase. Or a long lost friend you recently found on Facebook. Tell them you were thinking of them. Tell them you were remembering the times both of you have spent together.

Or write a letter to your fears and see how much clarity and mutual understanding it brings.

Photo by Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash

A Martyr or a Trickster, you choose

Neera 1 Comment

As creatives, we have a choice. We can be either a martyr and vow to be committed, dedicated, serious, grim, always-on-the-go, strive-for-excellence fit-more-in-a-day-to-achieve-more type.

Or we can be a trickster and be artful, cunning, play games, have fun, cheat- here-and-there-but-harm-no-one and put-in-less-and-get-more type of an artist.

I was recently going through Elizabeth Gilbert’s book Big Magic and stopped at a section that I had underlined when I first read the book years ago. I started rereading it and laughed my head off.

How could I forget how much I enjoyed it when I read about the martyr and the trickster for the first time?

How could I forget how much I wanted to be a trickster?

Here I am, six years later, still a martyr.

Here is an excerpt from the chapter if you haven’t read it before or need a reminder.

Martyr energy is dark, solemn, macho, hierarchical, fundamentalist, austere, unforgiving, and profoundly rigid.

Trickster energy is light, sly, transgender, transgressive, animist, seditious, primal, and endlessly shape-shifting.

Martyr says: “I will sacrifice everything to fight this unwinnable war, even if it means being crushed to death under a wheel of torment.”
Trickster says: “Okay, you enjoy that! As for me, I’ll be over here in this corner, running a successful little black market operation on the side of your unwinnable war.”

Martyr says: “Life is pain.”
Trickster says: “Life is interesting.”

Martyr says: “The system is rigged against all that is good and sacred.”
Trickster says: “There is no system. Everything is good, and nothing is sacred.

Martyr says: “Nobody will ever understand me.”
Trickster says: “Pick a card, any card.”

Martyr says: “The world can never be solved.”
Trickster says: “Perhaps not…but it can be gamed.”

Martyr says: “Through my torment, the truth shall be revealed.”
Trickster says: “I didn’t come here to suffer, pal.”

Martyr says: “Death before dishonor!”
Trickster says: “Let’s make a deal.”

Martyr always ends up dead in a heap of broken glory, while Trickerster trots off to enjoy another day.

Martyr = Sir Thomas More
Trickerster = Bugs Bunny

Martyrs are stereotypical starving artists, literally dying for their creativity. It is surprising how many artists want to be martyrs. They are ready to die for their creativity but won’t live for it. We are ready to struggle and suffer rather than have fun with it.

I am the first one to admit that I take everything the hard way. I have always found the martyr’s sincerity more attractive than the trickster’s playfulness.

Not any more.

I am ready to change loyalty and become a trickster. Not because a trickster achieves more with her vivacity than a martyr could with her solemnity, but because I have understood the value of life. I have learned that living a simple life with vigor is better than a complex life full of guilt and sacrifice.

I am pretty sure most of you would also want to be a trickster. You also want to use the energy of a trickster. But you don’t know how to. And even if you make an effort, after a few days, like me, you forget.

I have figured out how to bring permanent change. Ms. Gilbert described it in the next chapter, but I didn’t pick it up in the first read.

The secret of a Trickster lies in a single trait.

“The most wonderful thing about a good trickster is that he trusts. It may seem counterintuitive to suggest this because he can seem slippery and shady, but the trickster is full of trust. He trusts himself, obviously. He trusts his own cunning, his own right to be here, his own ability to land on his feet in any situation. To a certain extent, he also trusts other people. But mostly, he trusts the universe. He trusts in its chaotic, lawless, ever-fascinating ways – and for that reason, he does not suffer from undue anxiety. He trusts that the universe is in constant play and, specifically, that it wants to play with him.” – Elizabeth Gilbert in Big Magic

Trust is what we need to become a trickster. And trust is what I will be developing in myself, my art, and the universe.

What about you?

Photo by Levi Saunders on Unsplash

7 habits of successful writers and how I built them

Neera

It is your dream to become a successful writer. You have been harboring the desire for a long time. You have been setting daily writing goals. You have been attending writing workshops. You have been scribbling here and there. You started writing a book five years ago and you keep promising yourself that one day you will finish it. One day, when the kids are out of the house, when work is less demanding, when you retire, when all the stars are aligned, you will become a successful writer.

If these thoughts resonate with you, you are not alone. This is what I used to think too.

This was until I really sat down and had a good look at what successful writers were doing that I need to do as well in order to be as productive as them.

Here are the seven habits I identified and adopted which remarkably increased my productivity.

1. Don’t just set goals, build habits

Years ago I was setting goals to write a certain number of words every day but failing at it miserably. Something always happened to consume my time and energy. I even used an online app 750Words where people write for years at stretch but I was not able to maintain my streak. I was averaging twenty days a month. I have participated in National Novel Writing Month multiple times and won three times writing 50,000 words followed by months of no writing.

My writing pattern matched my exercise routine and I knew I needed to fix both. Surprisingly it was by fixing my exercise routine I was able to fix my writing.

Almost two years ago I started going to the gym every weekday. I set a time for it, 5:30 pm. This took the decision process out. By the time it was five pm, my mind would start reminding me. I always kept the gym bag ready in my car. When I did that a few weeks, all my resistance melted. Like any gym junkie knows that you always feel good after exercise (because of endorphins release). The habit brought a surprise benefit – I started looking forward to going to the gym. I even made friends there. They would ask me if they didn’t see me at my regular time. Another surprise benefit – my stamina increased and exercise became easier.

I did the same for writing. I bought a journal with 365 pages and started writing a page a day, no matter what. A page fitted roughly 250 words. If I didn’t fill the page it didn’t matter. As long as I wrote something there I had fulfilled my pledge. I did that every morning without fail. If for some reason I missed the morning, I did it at night.

Writing a page a day is a habit now. The day I don’t write doesn’t feel like the day I have lived. With time my stamina increased. I write close to 1000 words a day.

2. Understand writing is a three-step process

When I was a newbie writer, I thought that as would I move my hand on the page or punch the keyboard, beautiful writing will emerge on the other end. Something that could go straight in a book. I called it publish-worthy material.

We all know it doesn’t happen that way.

Most of the people give up their dream of becoming a writer at this stage because the magic fairy didn’t move her wand over their fingers.

But those of us who stick around, we find a magic formula. That magic formula is – writing is a three-step process – Idea generation, drafting, and editing. As my mentor, Jeff Goins says, “Think of them as three buckets. Make sure you add something to each bucket each day.“

Keep a notebook just to capture ideas. Ideas will come all day, without any effort on your part. Your job is to capture them in the idea notebook. Then pick one and write it and put it aside. It is called drafting. You will never be in a position when you have time to write and can’t think of anything. And when you have something already written, it is very easy to fix it and make it publish-worthy.

And this is what I do now and it works like magic.

3. Manage your time

I thought when I don’t have to go to work, I will have eight hours extra in my day. I will be able to devote all of that to writing and even the commute time and time wasted on getting ready for work. Within a month I realized how wrong I was. So many things are fighting for our time. Housework never ends. My house is still as messy as it was when I was working full time.

“Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have 24-hour days.” – Zig Zigler

Two things I observed. One, work expands to the time available (Parkinson’s Law). Second, I only get blocks of time available for writing. I started using those blocks most effectively. To learn more about those read my post Use 90-minute bock technique to get more out of your day.

4. Become a smart reader

Writers are avid readers. Sometimes our writing suffers because of reading but sometimes our reading suffers because of writing. Recently I was not getting enough time to read so I went on to find ways to include more reading in my schedule.

I used Pierre Bayard’s method (How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read), to select which books I wanted really read, re-read, refer to, skim, and never wanted to open (read my post So many books, so little time). Using the system, I got rid of several books and prioritized the rest. Then I chose five strategies to get more reading done – set a dedicated reading time, read at least 20 pages a day, sprint reading at times, subscribe to audiobooks,  and quit reading early if I don’t like a book.

5. Show your work

I have been writing on and off for twenty years. I have boxes full of notebooks and countless files on the computer of my writing. But none of it was any good. Why? Because I was not revising it and making it worth sharing. It was only when I started writing for this blog that I started growing as a writer.

Showing your work, even if it is on a blog, makes you a better writer. Because now you are writing publish-worthy material. If you are serious about your writing, start a blog in a quiet corner of the internet and start sharing your writing with an audience. Even if you don’t want an audience you can publish for yourself. No one will find your blog unless you actually tell anybody. The notion that someone might read it will make you work harder.

6. Have multiple pieces of work in the pipeline

For years I was working on one novel. I wanted to focus all my energy on it. No distractions, I would tell myself. But the novel didn’t go far. I ran out of ideas. In fact, I got sick of it. I parked it aside and started writing short stories. Some I was able to finish, others just wouldn’t go anywhere. Then I started a non-fiction book. Last year I got into blogging.

All this time my novel was incubating in my head. Suddenly the whole story became crystal clear. Now I am able to go back to it and finish it. The same thing happened with some of the unfinished short stories.

Successful writers never stop at one book. They might be concentrating on one at a time but they have several in the pipeline.

7. Understand the higher purpose behind your writing

Most people dread writing, consequently, they won’t write even if their lives depended on it. Yet some of us find our calling in writing. I believe if some higher power has selected us to write, it will also give us the aptitude to write well.

One of my writing teachers used to say, “Writing is receiving.” That was why at the beginning of each session she would make us sit quietly and write. An act to receive with gratitude whatever we were given.

Our job as a writer to write, keeping in mind the teachings of The Bhagavad-Gita, “Do your labor without expecting the fruit of your labor. Labor is in your control, the fruit is in the control of the higher power. It will decide when to bring the fruit of your labor.

Want more?

Here is a related article worth reading 21 Productivity Hacks from 21 Prolific Writers.

What writing habits have you been able to develop? Share them here with other readers of the blog.

Photo by Kat Stokes on Unsplash

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10 Learnings from the first year of blogging

Neera

Today marks the one year of this blog. 27 July last year, was a turning point in my life. After a lot of apprehensions, I bought my name as the domain name to start blogging. I finally came to terms with the fact that if I want to take my passion for writing seriously I need to start putting my work out there.

The same evening my father passed away. It doesn’t matter how old you are when you lose your parents, you lose a part of yourself with them. Overnight I grew up from being a daughter to a mother. With that came the realization that my time here is also going to end sooner than later.

Losing parents bring us face to face with our own mortality. Was I ready? Had I done all that I wanted to do? The truth shook me to the bones. Like everyone else, I was postponing life. Too busy with the busyness of the life that I was not even living it. “It is not death that a man should fear,” wrote Marcus Aurelius, “but he should fear never beginning to live.”

Work was not fulfilling. House was empty. There was emptiness all around me. In that silence, I could hear the tiny voice in me. It said: Make something. Do the things you used to love. Read the books you want to read. Write. Draw. Leave some legacy behind.

I decided to make writing my life’s mission and blog my portal. But if only it was that simple. It is easy to set up a blog but it is hard to write something worth sharing regularly. Then there is the technology that chews up your precious time in learning new skills and troubleshooting. I persisted and learned a lot.

The whole year has been a steep learning curve not only in blogging but in life’s lessons. Here are ten things worth sharing here:

1. Choose creativity over the competition. All my life I was raised to compete. It is the survival of the fittest, our generation learned from Darwin. The only way to lead a better life is to be the best student, get the best job, be the best employee, win promotions, marry an ambition person, accumulate wealth, own the biggest house, drive an expensive car and have holidays at exotic places. Nowhere there was room to slow down, to take it easy, to get in touch with the creative soul in yourself and you will have to compete for anything. Wallace D. Wattles imparted with the knowledge more than a hundred years ago, “…a man must pass from the competitive to the creative mindset to achieve whatever he wants to achieve; otherwise, he cannot be in harmony with the Formless Intelligence, which is always creative and never competitive.”

2. Start whatever you want to do because the boldness has the genius, power, and magic to it. Doing anything worthwhile takes a lot of courage and commitment. So many times we feel so overwhelmed and paralyzed with the enormity of the task that we don’t even take the first step. Yet it all we need to do to begin any journey doesn’t matter however long. Once we are on the path and concentrating on just the next step, we overcome many obstacles that otherwise seemed insurmountable. I experienced this first hand this year with my blogging journey. And I will continue to test this theory with my other endeavors.

3. How we spend our days is how we spend our lives, pointed out Annie Dillard. Get hold of your days and you will have a hold of your lives. Seneca, a Roman Philosopher wrote two thousand years ago “You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, though all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last.” Don’t let other people make demands on your time. Put your life’s goals first otherwise one day it will be too late. In Seneca’s words, “In guarding their fortune men are often closefisted, yet, when it comes to the matter of wasting time, in the case of the one thing in which it is right to be miserly, they show themselves most extravagant.”

4. Find your calling. “The purpose of life is a life of purpose.” wrote Robert Byrne. We are not here to earn a living and raise children. Even animals do that. All the intelligence that Nature bestowed in us is for a higher purpose. Each one of us has to find our own calling and then fulfill it. “The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.” said Pablo Picasso.

5. Follow your bliss, says Joseph Campbell in The Power of Myth. It will help to fulfill your purpose much easier and joyful. “If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Wherever you are — if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time. It is no rocket science when you are in touch with yourself but very hard to know when you are far removed from your own soul.

6. Art is innate to humans. Art is not a painting or a drawing or a statue. “Art is a habit,” explains Seth Godin, “Creating art is a habit, one that we practice daily or hourly until we get good at it. Art isn’t about the rush of victory that comes from being picked. Nor does it involve compliance. Art in the post-industrial age is a lifelong habit, a stepwise process that incrementally allows us to create more art. Art is passionate and personal. Great art resonates with the viewer, not only with the creator. Art is a personal gift that changes the recipient. The medium doesn’t matter. The intent does. Art is a personal act of courage, something one human does that creates change in another. Art is not perfection. You can be perfect or you can make art. Pay attention to what art is and then make art. Because art is a worthy legacy to leave behind.

7. Never doubt your creativity. Learn to listen to the tiny voice inside you which wants you to create. To make something that will make you happy as it used to when you were a child. It doesn’t care whether it is good, sellable or will make any difference in anyone’s life. It wants you to create something which will make a difference for you. Something that will make you happy. Listen to that voice because if you don’t, it will die. And with it, a big chunk of you will die too.

8. Build stamina. Put the hours in. Stamina is very important. “Doing anything worthwhile takes forever. 90% of what separates successful people and the failed people is time, effort and stamina,” advises Hugh Macleod who can’t be beaten on stamina.

9. Listen to everyone, do what your heart desires. There are too many people advising too many things. Listen to all of them and then ask yourself what you think. Meditate on it. Your answers might be different than others. And that is your truth. Try to bring that out. Follow your own path. You never know where it might lead you.

10. Continue to learn. Never stop. Never give up. Make several tiny adjustments like the airplane does through its course. There is a solution to every problem, you haven’t found it yet. Whatever you are trying to do, someone has done it before you and left behind lots of notes or at least a number of clues. Persist and you will figure it out too. Too many people get frustrated and give up. Don’t get counted with those. Get counted with the few who go all the way and fulfill the purpose of their lives.

I am looking forward to next year’s learnings. Here are ten of my favorite posts that really enjoyed writing.

1. How to find the purpose of your life

2. Finding Balance

3. How not to waste time

4. Become a “scenius” rather than a genius

5. Work-life balance – have we got it all wrong?

6. Who are you writing for?

7. So You Want to Write a Novel

8. How new-age creatives not only surviving but thriving

9. Words are better than 1000 pictures

10. So many books, so little time

Do any of my learnings resonate with you? Let me know which of my posts you enjoyed this year.

So many books, so little time

Neera 2 Comments

There are so many books I want to read but it doesn’t matter how much I try I can’t seem to go through them fast enough. My reading buddies are always ahead of me. Today I decided to find a way to get ahead, and thus began the search for strategies.

One of my problems is that ever since I started writing (which was more than two decades ago) I have become a slow reader. I call it ‘deliberate reading,’ when I am savoring the good writing, mulling it over in my head, responding to it mentally, thinking how I can use this sentence structure or even the idea in my own writing. It frustrates me but I can’t get rid of this annoying habit. Then I found out that it is a universal problem for all writers. Amit Chaudhuri wrote in an essay in The Paris Review:

The number of books we buy far outnumber those we read. Again, the reasons for not reading are multiple—deferral, because of the paucity of time, is a common one. But a powerful cause for not reading is because the writer in us—I use the word “writer” not for one who’s produced books, but for whoever is possessed by the possibility of writing—takes over from the reader. This might happen when we’re transfixed by the jacket and keep studying it, unable to proceed to the first page. The image on the cover, its design, the lettering—these have thrown us into the realm of possibility. Once we’ve entered the story which that possibility engenders, reading the novel itself becomes redundant. We may not write a word, but the writer in us predominates. A version of the novel emerging from the jacket—or even the title—holds us in its spell. That’s why the crowd of unread books on our shelves is never, generally, a burden. They signal a possibility—not that we will one day read them but of how the idea, and moment, of writing is constantly with us.

The Moment of Writing by Amit Chaudhuri

How many books can one read in a lifetime?

Looking at the number of books being produced every year and the number of books that have been printed since the Gutenberg invented the printing press, there is a very little chance that we can read even a fraction of those.

Let’s say you are an above-average reader and read 52 books a year (although a 2012 study by the Pew Research Center found that adults read an average of 17 books each year.) Assuming you started reading at the age of ten and you continue to read one book a week till you turn 85, that would mean (75 X 52 = 3900) you will be able to read, at the most, 4000 books in your lifetime.

When you come to think of it, it is nothing.

According to Google’s advanced algorithms, there are 130 million books, 129,864,880, to be exact, in the world (reported by Ben Parr).

It means that you need to be awfully selective of what you read.

You need to be strategic about what you read rather than what you can get your hands on i.e. books bought on sale or got from the library because they happen to be displayed when you walked in.

What books should you read?

I found the best strategy to select what books to read in How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read, written by the University of Paris literature professor Pierre Bayard.

“There is more than one way not to read, the most radical of which is not to open a book at all.”

Pierre Bayard

In this tongue-in-cheek book, Professor Bayard points out that we think of books in two simple categories “books we have read” and “books we haven’t read.” But in fact, there are several more categories. He suggests the following:

  • books we’ve read
  • books we’ve skimmed
  • books we’ve heard about
  • books we’ve forgotten
  • books we’ve never opened.

Prof Bayard argues that we shouldn’t be ashamed of not having read everything, and that talking about books you only heard about should be more open and natural. It is better to strive to think about the ideas within the books – even if you only heard of them – than being a walking encyclopedia of citations.

He has a classification system to keep track of how he had interacted with the books in the past.

  • UB book unknown to me
  • SB book I have skimmed
  • HB book I have heard about
  • FB book I have forgotten
  • ++ extremely positive opinion
  • + positive opinion
  • – negative opinion
  • – – extremely negative opinion

I find this classification an excellent way to categorize the books on my bookshelves particularly the unread ones and this way figuring out which ones I want to skim through, which ones I want to read and which ones I want to give away to charity.

How fast you can read?

One way to go through more books is to read fast. Staples collected speed reading data as part of an advertising campaign for selling e-readers. The campaign also included a speed reading tool that is still available to try. Go ahead and take the test to see how fast you read.

Kevan Lee in The Art of Reading, Remembering, and Retaining More Books recommends five ways to read more books including speed reading through new technology. Spritz and Blinkist take unique approaches to help you read more — one helps you read faster and the other helps you digest books quicker.

Use eReaders and Audiobooks

For a long time, I remained loyal to physically books giving arguments like, I like to hold a book in hand, I like to underline it, I can easily pull it out from my bookshelf whenever I need to refer to it…

Then a few years ago I bought a Kindle. I have been carrying it with my holidays and have never felt short of books. I can read multiple books on it, just like I do at home, depending upon my mood. Kindle is also a great source of old classic books that you can get for one dollar.

Recently, I took membership of Audible and now I have become a fan of it. I am listening to it in the gym while walking and cooking. I can easily go through a book in five days.

Now I have divided the books into three categories. Books I want to listen to I buy them on Audible, books I want to read I buy them on Kindle or get them from the public library and books I want to keep I buy physical copies.

Strategies to go through more books

John Rampton gives 25 strategies in his post 25 Expert Tips to Reading WAY More Books This Year I picked five out of those to incorporate in my strategy.

  1. Set a dedicated reading time. For me, it is at night. Sleeping with a good book is the best thing in the world.
  2. Read at least 20 pages. This can be done in between chores and whenever I have a few spare minutes.
  3. Read in Sprint. This strategy involves setting up a timer for twenty minutes and read fast. Knowing the timer is on will keep me from distractions.
  4. Quit books you don’t like early on. This is something I really need to do. I keep hanging on to books I know I should let go.
  5. Build a reading list for the year on Goodreads and let it help you reach your goal by prompting you titles related to your previous choices.

Here it is, my strategies to go through more books.

Do you have any more suggestions for me? What are your reading habits? Please share them with me through the comments section.

Story of a tribal artist

Neera

I found Bhajju Shyam sitting quietly on a shelf of the Airbnb accommodation at my recent trip to Edinburgh. Of course not in person but in a book. If there is one thing I like about Airbnb, it is the unexpected discoveries I am going to make there, particularly of books.

Normally I wouldn’t have picked up this book in a bookstore. It was too thin for a coffee book, too simple as an art book and too scanty as a memoir. Yet it had something going for it that I read it in a single sitting, took photographs of it, researched the artist and writing a post about it a month later.

What was so special about it?

To start with, it’s the title, The London Jungle Book, based on Rudyard Kipling’s famous The Jungle Book it invites you to the adventures of a jungle boy in a different jungle. Then it’s the cover of the book, where a rooster is merged with Big Ben. The freshness of the story is the hook the alerts the reader to a new perspective on the things we take for granted. The beautiful narration by two polished writers (Gita Wolf and Sirish Rao) is also praiseworthy, which captures Bhajju’s voice perfectly, never overpowering it with their own. And finally Bhajju’s unique creativity and use of his traditional art form to express it. The book is a delight.

Bhajju Shyam is an artist from the Gond tribal village of Patangarh, in the forests of central India. “I never set out to be an artist,” he says in the book, “My mother painted the walls of our home, as is our tradition, and she would ask me to paint the parts she couldn’t reach.” The family sent their three children to school but were too poor to put them all through the full term. “One of us would have books, the other would have a uniform and the third would have a bag. If we were all one child, we would have made it through. But we were three and there wasn’t enough to go around.”

But Bhajju had something going for him. He had the opportunity to work for his uncle as an apprentice. His uncle happened to be Jangarh Singh Shyam, the most brilliant Gond artist of the time, and the one who brought Gond art from the wall of the village into the public eye. Bhajju started by filling in the fine patterns on Jangarh’s large canvases, but when his talent became apparent, Jangarh told him one day that the time had come to strike out on his own.

When Bhajju came to London his creativity got ignited through the cultural shock he experienced. Everything was different. He was feeling so many emotions at the same time. He expressed them in the only way he knew, his art.

“I have drawn my own face with 50-50 expression and all the thoughts tangled in the strands of my hair. I am thinking of everything I will leave behind, and I show these things using Gond symbols. The radio: the music I like to listen to when I work; the porcupine: our symbol to ward off danger; the cow: prosperity; the cart: contain all the necessities of life; the plough; the land that feeds us; the mango: my food; the rooster; the keeper of my time; the cot the palace of rest; the tree: the forest; the mouth (with the word language written in Hindi): my language; the other images are my children, my parents and my home.”

His naivety about the common things, things we take for granted, is a breath of fresh air. At one place he says,

“I had never been on a plane before, so I kept trying to get a glimpse of the machine that would carry me to London… The way it happened was like this. It was night and I couldn’t see anything outside. Inside there were only queues and lines of people. So it was queue up, get a stamp on a document, sit down on a row of seats, wait. Then queue up again, another stamp, another row of seats. After this had gone on for a while and we had sat down in one more row of seat in a sort of long waiting room, I asked the man sitting next to me, “When are they finally going to let us get on the plane?” He looked at me strangely and said, “My friend, we’re inside it!”

His fresh perspective about everything is enchanting: viewing England from air for the first time and seeing it like a green sari surrounded by sea creatures; perceiving Big Ben as the timekeeper of London and comparing it to rooster, the timekeeper in his village; thinking of Bus number 30 as a dog, a loyal friend; the London Underground a giant earthworm, and English people as bats that come out to play at night.

So impressed was I with Bhajju’s work and his story that I decided to visit the restaurant where he had done the work. His work has a beautiful mix of innocence and sophistication.

Bhajju’s work began to be known throughout India, and his first international exposure cam in 1998 when he was part of a group exhibition at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs in Paris. Since then his work has been shown in the UK, Germany, Holland, and Russia. In 2001, he received a state award for Best Indigenous Artist.

Since then Bhajju art is captured in many books The Night Life of Trees, The Flight of the Mermaid, Alone in the Jungle, Creations, That’s How I See Things.

If you get a chance do get one of his books. Also read Maria Popova’s post The London Jungle Book: What an Indian Tribal Artist Can Teach Us About Rediscovering Our Capacity for Everyday Wonder.