Up and down and turn around....

With a viral that has left me with sea legs and a lurching tummy for the last week, I have occupied myself with the finishing details of two of my current paintings. I always find that in the concentration and focus of working in my studio, even the most damning of headaches quietly creep into the back spaces of my consciousness, leaving me able to exist in a suspended state of  a "perfect" existence. That in my opinion is called Luck in the time of Viral!

The Collective Studio has had its share of ups and down in the last few months. The up factors start with a wonderful group show of Lee Hayan, Kim Seola and Schon Mendes to be hosted by Sakshi in the month of August. A great result for N. Divya who came second in her painting batch in her undergraduate program, and Kim Seola who was truly he toast of her M.A class with a display of water colours that stood on par with the work of those who were her examiners. Karishma D'souza has just been awarded a residency for 2012 at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, and Malavika Rajnarayan has been invited to the Can Serrat international artists residency program situated just outside of Barcelona in Spain. And perhaps most excitingly, Sonatina Mendes will soon be moving into her new studio-home built as a project by the Collective Studio. From the family in Bombay we had Mithun act in his first Bollywood movie Daana Paani and our Samera invited to be a jury member for the Print Week Awards.

The down side at the Collective Studio is that Kim Seola's father is critically ill with a long suffering health disorder that puts him in and out of hospital frequently. Lee Hayan's father too has a long standing kidney ailment that requires daily medical intervention and has just undergone an emergency hernia operation. N. Divya's mother in Chennai has been diagnosed with a spinal injury  that is giving her considerable pain, and needs a two week rest period. Malavika's maternal grandfather has suffered a stroke in Bangalore. Not to forget the recent hospitalization of our adopted granddaughter Aditi and Surendran  who currently is with a bronchial congestion that would put a wheezing bus to shame! All in all not the best health bulletin to report. Begum of course looks cool in the "pre-monsoon-kill-the-lizard-and-put-it-under-mama's-favourite-chair-to-frigging-freak -her-out" season!

But with all this happening, the love and care and consideration in the Collective Studio brings together energies that otherwise alone would not be there to tide us through the sometimes exhausting aspects of emotional worry, and physical health issues that need attention. However the see-saw of life in an interesting thing to encounter with ones eyes wide open. The views from up or the bottom are in fact really the same landscape of life; it's just a matter of how we guide our perception, and whether we want to hold the entire vista of what the vision of life truly entails.

* Standing: N.Divya and Lee Hayan. Middle row:Sonatina Mendes and Malavika Rajnarayan. Seated at bottom row: Kim Seola and Schon Mendes.