It can not get more exciting, and more simpler when you reach a conclusion which you end up saying from the mouth and then realising what you just said. All i had to do was stop and think and reflect on what just happened.

I am driving my Car towards Bangla sahib gurudwara from Parsad Nagar. As i reach and park my car in the basement, i walk out towards the jora ghar of the Gurudwara.

I say to myself that I just had an entire moment inside my head as i was driving in a certain pattern, sequence, method. It went something like this. The first thought was driving with a friend on a highway to Taj Mahal in Agra. Now as this thought came, the next one was, asking the friend, let’s do this as a day trip. To which i am confused in the head – saying. This will be too tiring for a single day event. Let’s stay the night. So as thoughts develop, we are staying the night, i am able to visualise having dinner together, and then an easy comfortable drive back the next day. In this set of sequence of thinking, one thought follows another and ends with reaching back to Delhi.

What struck me, was that the thought started from the decision of asking a friend, that hey let’s step out from Delhi for a day and drive to Taj Mahal which is nearby. Then what astonished me was that everything that happened afterwards was my thinking and in a very logical way. That it is happening. In this thinking process, there is no abruption, illogicalness of events or me exiting from the thought right from the start point and further i am experiencing emotions, tiredness, moods as i think also. A sense of relaxation, enjoyment, the sunlight on the way, the food. I generate, consume and experience all this and also feel a certain sense of satisfaction in the end.

My question to myself in that moment was, what was this ???? Everything made sense in this sequence of visualisation. As an example. I was not driving back as the first starting point, rather i was asking the friend – Hey would you like to go for a single day? The thought started. It did not start with me dying, being cremated and then me asking a friend, that would you like to take a single day break to Taj Mahal? This would be an illogical, unacceptable thought to the mind, because how can you be dead and then going to Taj Mahal?

Mind thinks and that even in Logic and then when it does, it keeps going. It keeps the visual on. And in this visual, the visualisation keeps happening.

The connection between what i witnessed about thinking and drawing:

The connection with drawing, the process of drawing is very simple and it is a revelation to me. Drawing is following the same principle. When i draw out my thoughts in the sketchbook, it takes me from the first drawn out thought, to the next one, next idea, next visual, next visualisation, (whatever we want to call it at this stage for the sake of keeping the writing simple) in the same sequence of logic. It is called in the art world as – how an artist, a drawer evolves in their work or how a teacher says to the student – oh i can see the progression of the thought. Do more research, read more on this subject, then more thoughts develop etc. You progress to something, and there is a chain of event.

This can be with anything. You have seen something happen in the city, you are troubled by it, and so you decide to draw on it. As you draw, thoughts come to you, the same Taj Mahal mind kicks in. As it develops, it gives you ideas, concepts, visuals, stories to sketch out and you do. but it is far more complex than this. Not only does it give you, it starts more and more stories, narratives. It does not just take you to Taj Mahal but it burst into many many trips which even overlay your existing thought system.

One such example is my recent chat with a student from an art college online who said, the faculties teach us to filter out the thoughts which come and then start mark making. hence you are killing your thinking process and your drawing process at the same time. It is a messy state of creating drawing. This student was exploring mark making.

An artist experiences a lot while making the work, when it is displayed in an exhibition format and when that work is not there anymore as a collector has taken it. What we see is the artist, the artwork, and the world as three separate entities because that is what we see. All of us. We see the world, the world sees us. But the idea of drawing lies somewhere else. We don’t see the drawing as it should be seen. We never knew how it began, how and what is being formulated when we lay down the marks and when it is led to the Art Collector or a museum etc. Now we are seeing the Drawing.

Art and Science Residency, Khoj