It was an exhibit after all, and I remember that there were small pieces of coloured paper at the bottom that would tell you where a particular gem was from.The sparks ignited a different colour in each gemstone — as if unearthing or sourcing a different ore, each with different frequencies of lightning.... They were in glass cases, back-to-back.. As we looked at the artwork, I turned to talk to you — and you kept getting younger.

As I walked into my friend’s gleaming white apartment, I was warmed by the ambience that they had created — with the profusion of natural greens, ferns and leaves; . I kept on talking and realised only much later that you were not there — certainly not in the flesh. The architecture and proportions of the pieces, pitch-perfect.There I was, facing a well-appointed canvas — pristine in its white undercoat — a near-perfect tabula rasa.Late that evening at the day’s end, as I sat sweating and exhausted in the frenzy of paint, pondering upon the canvas I had just created, staring at the shapes and stories it contained, I could hear, with gathering intensity, the prayer call outside — Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar. . with well-framed paintings hung judiciously on the walls.

Each of the stones was from a different region in India. Each gem was a single stone, no two colours were the same, and the colours were all intense — I remember very vivid pinks, blues and greens. I had chosen, in my mind, the colours I wanted to use — deep blue and white — before I had even arrived here. with the quietly kept pair of glass bowls — one containing molten shapes of coloured wax, and the other, an assembly of matchboxes from all over the world; .I swivelled around — you had just arrived. It was the first time I had faced a real canvas mounted on its easel and been presented with an array of acrylics to choose from at will.I was writing in air — dreaming on gossamer silk strings — ink rolling along the long stylized serif surfaces of our endless electric kisses. just like a child who stares wide-eyed and thrilled at opening a box of new toys; . They were sparse on a light background, and were made by points marked by beautiful gem stones in many colours — like a constellation or an outline of a body marked by points rather than lines, or pins marking spots on a map.The sari unravelled to become part of the exhibit in the museum, the artwork layered with narrative hidden in the silkworm’s weave..At a certain point, you were back to your young adult self, hair all black, clothes all black — you suddenly seemed much taller. I had come here to paint the monsoons in blues and whites. Then absence.

At the India Art Fair in New Delhi — amid a swirl of colour, canvas, installation, projection, paper, text — weaving through its intricate poetry — I felt I was in a museum, a tented temporary museum — wrapped in a beautiful tussar sari given to me by a student — looking at two pieces of Indian art. I had come here to hide the subtle rift between the two Bengals under layers of paint. Each kiss much longer than the one before, each one balanced on the lips, held gently in our invisibleness.

I looked up again at your tall self — you were half leaning against a doorway. And before I could come to grips with this medium — the physicality of brushes, sable hair, scalpel, palette, ceramic bowls, tubes of paint, a blank canvas — something induced me to jump headlong into the act, without practice, with my heart doing the talking

All I wanted was a stretch of virgin linen where I could layer my coded narratives; try, at the same time, to express and hide..Sudeep Sen [www.Then you disappeared in the middle of the conversation.sudeepsen..And at the top of one of the designs there was a paisley shape in deep purple — round part on top, curling down and standing on its tip. I had come here to assuage my deep-seated grief of the loss of a child.But by the time I left the studio, I had before me box signs wholesale colours running riot on a grainy canvas space, texture and undulation creating relief against the frozen density of paint, narratives torn asunder from Bengali newsprint, red and white strings providing anchor and balance, an errant feather arrested in mid-flight, white tissues trying their best to absorb blood, and more — all these on a vertical piece of stretched linen, an untutored map, a previously uninhabited terrain.My hands are still dripping — with paint, with swirling fumes and cry of acrylic, with colours emanating the smell of seductive chemical. with books and cds that lay in perfect geometric arrangement on carpets and shelves — all suitably lit and positioned.I had come here to explore a new medium in art as catharsis..The artwork we were looking at had two abstract designs — like the ones embroidered on my sari.

In spirit we continued our conversation.org] is an award-winning poet, translator, editor and photographer; whose most recent book is Kaifi Azmi: Poems | Nazms (Bloomsbury). That one had a beautiful dark pink stone at the very bottom, with other pinks, blues, turquoise, indigo, greens — and many many shades of lavender and purple. I looked at your feet to see if you were standing on something — in fact you were on a threshold.. Closure was just a continuum. The purple glow was the beginning of yet another aleph, a start of a new script, a closure of the last one.. You were much older and your hair was all white and you were dressed in lighter colours. just like a blind person whose sight has been recently restored from the unfocussed monochromatic to a vision that is kaleidoscopic.In our absence we kissed — a long kiss, becoming a series of kisses marking the exact difference in time zones that separated us. Each silkworm glowed — electricity on tenuous gossamer strings, sparking and flickering every now and then..My hair turned from all black to white, and then to salt-and-pepper