The blog is dead, long live the blog!

After a 13 year journey, I announce the end of the road for this blog. 

When I started this blog, I was wrapping up high school in Chennai. The blog has been my constant companion through college in Trichy, my first job in Bangalore, graduate school in Madison, and now my life here in San Francisco Bay Area. While my commitment to the blog has ebbed and flowed in this period, I have always been reassured by its presence and the optimism of getting back to it. Reading through the 93 posts published here, I can chart the journey of my mind and thoughts over the formative years of my education and career. 

Thankfully, the end of this blog isn't the end of my blogging career. I will be continuing my internet journalling in a different place: a place of my own! 

All future posts will be housed at the electronic dialogue.

Let's us continue our electronic dialogue over there! 

Short Fiction: The Evening Walk (PS: My first published work of fiction!)

In some HUGE personal news, I am now a published fiction author :-) My story, The Evening Walk, was picked up by The Bombay Review for their September 2020 issue. Please check out the story at the link below:

The Evening Walk, by Aditya Venkataraman

Representing Rama

At the juncture of the Bhoomi Puja of the new Rama temple at Ayodhya, the internet is awash with images of Rama, Sita, and Hanuman, some more famous than others. Even Times Square in NYC beamed one of most famous images of Rama. Sadly many of the "new-age" art on Twitter & Instagram feature veiny, muscle-laden representations of Rama that more resemble WWE wrestlers than a personality of Godhead. For instance, 1, 2, 3. 

Even rishis and sages have not been left alone by this muscle fetish. I would love to know how mendicants that lived on offerings and focused all their attention on spiritual enlightenment managed to rock such hard bods! I call it the "Avenger-ization" of Hindu mythology.

In contrast to these "physique dominant" modern representations, the classical representations of Rama focus on His intangibles, such as Karunya (compassion) and Chakravartin (universal ruler). In classical works, overtly muscled representations are usually reserved for demons and rakshashas. A pity how far the trends have reversed. 

By liberally lathering muscles onto the Gods, there is an attempt to project strength and occasionally, jingoistic pride. In many of these artworks, Rama's warriorship is commandeered to score political points; lost in this unfortunate exercise are so many of His other strengths and traits. 

I have also pondered at length about the artistic license that Rama lends. The imagery of Rama is a lot less flexible than that of Krishna. Krishna is an intensely personal God, perhaps rivaled only by Ganesha. He is like wet putty, ready to be crafted and moulded in any form to the artist's desires. From His childhood antics to his grownup machinations, Krishna's actions have been immortalized in numerous works that provide a rich trove of representational raw material. He dissembles, steals, hides, runs from battle, excoriates, and loves fine things... He is deeply human. It is in His perfect imperfections that the artist finds room for grand or silly experimentations with representational imagery.

Rama, on the other hand, is synonymous with perfection. The perfect son, the perfect brother, the perfect husband, and the perfect ruler. Stoic, assured, measured, able, and duty-bound to a fault. His perfection brooks no faults. It countenances no half-measures. Any representation that fails to capture all of his perfections, fails to capture any of them. These Hulk-like pictures of Rama are as close to capturing His essence as a G I Joe toy can capture the essence of a Marine.

My favorite representations of Rama are the utsavar moorthis in some temples, notably Vaduvur Ramar. The divine is inherently ageless. Something transient like musculature cannot grasp the agelessness of the divine. Even the smallest detail in the representation of divinity has philosophical significance: each curve has a story, and each ornament a moral. In an attempt to appeal to today's western taste sensibilities – chiseled jawlines, tank-like upper bodies, 8-pack abs – we cannot discard traditional representational choices.

Art is a form of expression and the artist has the right to interpret any subject as the artist sees fit. However I believe that art also comes with a responsibility to the subject. It is through the conflation of the two – sensibility and responsibility – that we create art that transcends time and place. 

I share below a few of my attempts at capturing Rama on paper, drawn over several months. 

Virtual get-togethers

Originally published in The Hindu's Open Page. 

The virus that separated the whole world has paradoxically brought extended families closer than ever before

Thank you, COVID-19.

Could we pause, for a few moments, the constant doom and gloom of COVID-19 and reflect on some of the positives from this harrowing experience? I am not suggesting we forget the travails wrought by this pandemic and the heroic efforts of our frontline workers. I am merely stating that focusing a bit on some of the brighter spots of our day helps us stay afloat amid the tides of COVID-19 gloom.

Despite separating the whole world, the novel coronavirus has paradoxically brought my extended family closer than ever before. I hail from a large family of uncles, aunts, cousins and their spouses, and a growing number of nephews and nieces. Back in Chennai, the entire family would congregate for every festival in my grandparents’ house. Summer holidays meant cricket with cousins, and conspiring for plans to stay at aunts’ places. Even as many in my generation immigrated to the U.S. and Australia, the family stayed close. My mother and aunts would frequently get together for movies and shopping. The Deepavali congregations in Chennai continue like clockwork; even those in the U.S. get together at least once a year.

COVID-19 put an end to all this. Suddenly there were no more dinner get-togethers. No more movies. No more flights to Seattle or California to meet cousins. The naming ceremony of our family’s newest member went unattended by most of us. Every household in our family is now hunkering in isolation, hoping for better days to come.

And yet, something has changed. The family has come alive virtually. Our family's WhatsApp group, called “Namma Family”, used to be filled with unacknowledged forwards, but has now become the congregation-central for the family. Virtually we reach out to one another on the group through conversation, updates, photos, cooking experiments, and jokes. COVID-induced boredom has spawned off new hobbies and creative experiments in each one of us and the group has become the stage to share our new-found skills.

An aunt suggested a talent challenge wherein a nominee produces a creative work within a day and then nominates the next. What began as a chance for the tots to present their rhymes has now been embraced by the young and the old! With every submission, we are discovering previously unknown facets to our family members. We discovered a cousin’s passion for Sanskrit linguistics, another’s taste in poetry, and a third’s attempts at creating animations from still art. The MBA graduate created a survey to test one another’s knowledge in family lore. The questions brought back cherished memories from decades ago. Even the most reticent members of the group, and newcomers into the family have been swept into this exercise. Every creative project is met with thundering support, and feedback. The creative bar keeps being raised and we eagerly look forward to what is next.

If not for COVID-19, I doubt the Namma Family Talent Challenge would have existed. We would have missed out on so many creative masterpieces from our own and most of us would have continued spinning in the whorls of our day-to-day lives. This has been a silver-lining in my life during the times of corona.

The germ

A poem written in one sitting during the middle of COVID-19 when I was feeling particularly low and helpless. 

What life is this – cloistered, faceless, choiceless

The bug is everywhere; if not now, soon.

Be home, they say. Stay away, they say.

Washing can keep the body safe; what about the mind?

The mask used to be the jewel of the thief;

now it's law. Are we legally required to thieve?

Six Feet of separation Or Six Feet under,

are the only two options, they say.

No hugs, no dancing, no mirthful laughter;

we are all ghost ships now,

charting our silent ways across the inky sea,

no two trajectories ever to cross, 

no two journeys destined to twine;

that's what the germ demands, they say.

My home; erstwhile sanctuary, now the cruelest of prisons;

huddled inside with TP and hand sanitizers,

sink full of dishes, cobwebs in every room, 

I yearn for any guest, except for That One.

No weekend getaways, no summer holidays,

Only the sombre reflection of exponentials.

No coffee shop run-ins, no drunken pub mistakes,

Only the fervent hopes for flattening curves.

What life is this, not of the living, but the dead

Of spirit, if not the flesh.

What life is this, no future, no present,

only the fast fading memories of a colorful past.