Artists Speak: Malati Shah

Artists Speak: Malati Shah

The rest of the paintings for the series titled: A very Long Sunset With Magnolias.

Wheee! Kaza on a Magnolia petal

One for Shiela Ghodawalla who gave his child a ride, clippity clop

One for the engine driver, choo chukha choo!

One for Lachami, wending her way home to her cows. "Lacchaamiii!" he called out to her.

One for the raven, over the hill!

One for Hari, the dhaba walla, who gave him a glass of hot cardamom tea.

Beneath the shade of the old Magnolia tree, Gulab toiled all day, happy and content.

One for Coonah, still there after more than a hundred years.

One for the Queen of Cherry Hill as she went to play cards with her friends.

He planted the shiny red seed.

One for the little school boy who showered Gulab with rose petals. "Petals for you!" he cried.

One for Aunty Santosh, who had found him lost and alone many years ago when he was little.

He remembered what his wife, Kusum had said to him that morning. "Gulab, bring me one of those flowers that look like the moon."  He set off at sunset with an enormous bunch of Magnolias.

One for the little girl with ribbons in her hair.

And it rained, and it snowed and the sun shone and the little red seed sent forth shiny leaves in licking flames of green. "When you grow up," Kusum said to her child, "you will have a magnolia in your window sill."

One for Tsering and baby Norbu, who had come from Tibet not so long ago.

One for Uncle Ben, as he waited and waited for his beloved.

And for Kusum? A seed from the Magnolia tree, high on the hill, bathed in moonlight.

A very long sunset with Magnolias

Gulab the gardener rose with the dawn and climbed up the high hill to the big house with gardens all around.

And it was so!

One for the little girl who loved to paint.

Elemental Grammer

A turquoise blue apostrophe
perched wistful by the pond
the orange stops and hyphens
darted midst the fronds.

In one sharp exclamation mark
the kingfisher dropped like a spark
within the brackets of his beak
he held, a rhetorical question mark.

some pictures.

A Bubble said...

So I said, "Okay!  You can have my studio!  You are my best creation!"  And with that I handed over the keys to my Barsati Studio in Defense Colony to my daughter who was going to leap from New York to New Delhi with a sudden change of jobs.
 
It was my last day there.  I had already moved most of my paints, paper, scissors, stuff. I went over  and mounted the high staircase, up and up, past the doctor's clinic, past another door, past the generator and the invertor, past the French Girl who lives on the First floor and then to my room with the Ferlinghetti Poem number something something about "...a Van Gogh sky...I dip my paintbrush..." scribbled on the door, slid the bolt back and was in there again, a quiet, square room with windows all around.

I opened them all, french doors, windows and a breeze blew in as I sat on the moodha in the middle, a slightly rickety Buddha of a woman.  And then that wind, it became a flash of twisting lightning all around and the rain came down in sudden torrents and a comic bubble came up over my head, and the arrow pointed to my mouth and I said,
"BARSATI!" Loud and clear it came out of my mouth, the word.

  Beautiful and apt.

A perfect farewell to a place I loved and made some of my best pictures in.

A square little room with a large and empty terrace which I preferred to keep that way.  Little peepul trees grew in a few crannies and I left them there, for soon I knew the house would be torn down when my landlady, Aunty S would no longer be here on Earth to sip a glass of sweet sherry with me in the evening, in her little television room downstairs by the tiny green garden filled with bouganvilla.  I sat there often, chatting amiably with her when I had to wait to be picked up and go home in the evenings.  I always introduced myself to her older friends as, "Aunty S's 'kotheh walli!"  Which made them laugh, with a little shock and glee!

I had lucked out with this space.  When I returned to India in 2004, I realized I would need a separate studio space when the battery of staff at the old family bungalow made it clear that lettuce seeds, electric bulbs, grocery lists were a thing of every moment as far as their time to communicate with the Lady of The House was concerned.  So when I asked my friend from High School, who deals in property deals, he said he'd keep a look out for me, but difficult now that Barsatis are a thing of the past.  But sudden luck when another school friend called him up and said that, due to the scandals around their renter and his too young fiance, he was moving out of the city and the room was free again...he barely put the phone down, when he remembered my request and so I found myself mounting those high stairs that April morning.  When I saw the space, it was so perfect, so sweet, so like a gift up in heaven...like a kabadi player before he enters the field, I bent down, touched the threshold, and raised my fingers to my forehead...blessed!

I have always been lucky with finding a perfect parking space, and this time was no exception.

Now my daughter is there, enjoying her brief time in heaven on earth because Aunty S just passed away, and the clock now ticks faster.

Slug

Slug slow
Gliding across the road
Apprehensive feelers
Slugs don't really want to go.
Slug, slug
The sun has come out
Melt away slug
Slowly dying
Slowly moving
Every act of yours
Is slower and
Heavier than the snails
In their curly homes.
Slug slow.
Why are little boys
So urgent to make you go?
Sprinkling salt on you
Those nasty brats
To help you on
And sometimes
I've seen you
Squashed to a mush of gooey
Nothing
In the middle of th a road,
Mashed into pulp
By an impatient
Man about town
Stepping lightly
With his swinging
Black umbrella.


1974
Simla

Bats

Bats so black
Etched upon a
Blue black sky.
Wings like waves
Upon a page
Precocious at any age.

Wings together as in prayer
Then serrated cutting air.
And sailing in the sea of sky
Black on black
As night draws nigh.

And now the full moon bounces up
Makes a picture book of shapes
Of angled stars and angled wings
And scissored stars cut out of sight
With jagged wings and noiseless flight
The bats come streaming through the night.


Malati Shah
2009
New Delhi