Meet Mr. Maalpaani

My inspiration for this unique piece was "Mr. Bhatia" from the Indian Sitcom "Office Office"... remember the fat government official who won't pass any files forward until you feed him something?

The story began a few years back when i got a piggy bank to put aside some extra money... (one of those small earthen ones) :) just for the heck of it... As is the story of all "smart alec" ideas, this one started off pretty well and lost steam within a few months. i forgot about putting in any "extra money", (being a student doesn't leave you with much of "extra") and lost track of how much i had put in it, in the first place.

so,after much speculation about the "thousands" that i may have accumulated in these years, i broke the piggy bank.... only to find a measley 475 rupees. i was shattered... much like the piggy bank that lay before me. so i made up my mind, to buy a new one as soon as possible and start amassing my retirement fund again. i bought another one of those earthen pot thingys and this time, (due to the abundance of time on my hands) proceded to show off my artistic abilities on it.




With a little POP for detailing the features, and ceramic paints; came into existance "Mr. Maalpaani".. a govt. official who drinks all the "maal" as if it were "paani". You can see his profile and face above; his frontal view and even his little posterior in the photos below.

A Psychedelic spark

Another little something my mind conjured up a week ago. I am a man of many interests... and one of them happens to be a craze for pets... i've got a huge aquarium back at home, i.e. with my parents, and here in bangalore i've got three fish bowls (all of which hold an assortment of fishes) and also a cockatiel... i'd go for more of those little critters but thankfully i've got my friends to restrain me.

so anyways.... getting back to this piece of art. one of my old fish bowls had developed a crack while cleaning and had started to leak, which promptly lead to its replacement with a new bowl and keeping aside the old one for throwing it away later.

the bowl was stowed away "out of sight" and pretty soon it fell "out of mind". it was only last week i found it while cleaning up my place and didn't exactly feel like throwing it away.

so i borrowed my friend's glass paints and got at it... in two days i became the proud owner of... of.... you know what... i still don't know what to call it... but it makes a heck of a sight on a power cut night :)

Flowery t-shirt

This is a little something i made for my little sister. It was essentially my girlfriend's idea, with a few improvisations in the painting idea. We'd thought of getting a plain white t-shirt and paint something on it to give it to my sis. We got the T-shirt, (after a lot of running around, cuz we didn't wanna spend a lot of dough just on the raw material) and decided on using the spray paint technique...( :) ah the old school days... what fond memories of getting your clothes messy with paints and getting thrashed by your mom).

And this is what we ended up with...

The paints used are acrylic and are totally washable so you don't have to worry about spoiling the other stuff you wash with it... you can also iron, without harming the print after turning the t shirt inside out. My little sister liked it a lot so the whole thing was pretty much a success... We made this around two months back and the colors are still as good as new (don't judge by the photographs.. my camera ain't that good).

here's another snap of what the whole shirt looks like..

An empty mind is the Devil's workshop

Thus spake a great ponderer, whose name i fail to remember in spite of pondering on the thought myself. Like many sorry postgraduates churned out by this great country of our's; i am currently jobless and preparing for a lot of entrance exams... GRE, TOEFL, CSIR NET.... the list does not cease to end. Now i'm not going to get into the details of how many hours i spend studying every day (purely private and personal information, carrying no relevance to the topic of this blog), but i will describe here what i do when i am not studying. To keep the inner artist alive in me (and also to keep myself sane, due to the pressures of "unemployment" :) which so many of my friends may understand) i've just created some things lying about in my home into these works of art (i'd like to call them that). So i guess an empty mind is not exactly the "devil's" workshop.