The world you’d be entering
Would be in a season of protracted spring
For creative flowering
With Generative Artificial Intelligence and drones
And so on
TECHNOLOGY PILOTING
The visual communication landscape will be different in the next few years… and you will not only navigate it but also create its pathways.
Many skill combinations will be useful here. These will be in the form of augmentation not replacement.
Changes will impact all communication industries… films, advertising, music, kid edutainment, digital media, tv, book publishing and even art exhibitions.
I have been involved in most of above.
Equally importantly, GenAI, drone videography, etc empower the individual producer or director.
15 years ago… Nano & Bio Buzz
The buzz was about nano and bio, the subject of following short films
From a VisCom point of view too, new capabilities were becoming accessible
Motion Graphics & 3D modelling and animation
These are particularly visible in Title sequences and SFX scenes
Other than large, organised industries…
Institutional or domain specific outreach &
Individual, social media content
should be looked at seriously by fresh graduates.
These shape culture and values in more democratic ways and provide greater control to the individual producer.
AESTHETIC JUXTAPOSITION
All of us have enjoyed sighting…
The moon with a flanking star,
A garden bloom with its flighty visitor
And evening figures with rooted shadows.
In these moments, we have experienced aesthetic juxtaposition…
Which is the subject of our study today.
Specifically, we will look at Poetry, Painting, Film and Music coming together.
Examples will taken from my own works.
Humble Messengers
Treasurer
Once was a jungly hood,
Thick with sandal and rosewood…
Whose throbbing, leafy heart,
Keeps alive an elephant of art.
– Bolbul
वन मन
गहन, दुर्गम और मदमस्त
कुंज जिसके शीशमी थे दरख्त,
उसकी धड़कनें संजोता हाथी,
निजी… समझ के थाती ।
– बोलबुल
Un-Victorian
Something my pen said
Made the sinuous listener flush red,
Leaves trembled foot to head…
Did I exceed a poetic remit?!
– Bolbul
तारीफ़ गलत
न जाने कलम ने क्या कहा
कि गुलाबी हो गई लता…
सिहरे पत्ते शरम से, आसमां तक ज़मीं से,
भला क्या हुई मुझसे ख़ता ?!
– बोलबुल
No Shame
Their friendliness iridesced. The lass, fair like ivory denture… when she flashed, the lad watched charmed… rooted like gum.
Inevitably, time introduced disunity… in the shape of a cavity. We watched first hand, the grief they experienced!
Unable to witness further, we abolished the pain… leaving nothing of us but fame.
– Bolbul
अगर हम ना होते
एक थी हँसती दोस्ती… कुड़िया दांत सी गोरी, मीठे जब कौंधती… तो देखता मुग्ध कुड़ा… मज़बूत कंधेवाला मसूढ़ा । दोनों के बीच नहीं थी दूरी ।
मगर समय ले ही आया नामुराद दरार… और हमने नज़दीक जा देखा, हैं बेतरह बेक़रार ।
न सह सके सितम हम… मिट के भी खुद, मिटाया उनका गम ।
– बोलबुल
Fine Art to Animation
Skies Rock
A night tent side-flapped
By a bush breeze in the lap
Of the Sierras at Dunlap…
Plays to two men and a film crew,
Words filling the valley with life-brew –
‘Breathe, breathe in the air…
Long you live, high you fly…’
Tired out, driving from south Bay…
The reclining minds, imbibe the dark beer
Of sound which a heady thermal forms…
Rising to a watchful ridge,
Serrating the sky at 5000 feet.
Turned birds by next morning,
The two men clasping delta wings,
With parrot green and goose down coloring,
Drive to the edge of the ridge
And catch surging winds.
Etching grooves in the sun,
For the duration of a classic album,
The two men give the camera
Reels of memorial ephemera,
While below rabbits run,
Digging a hole… then another one!
– Bolbul
Scanty River
Why she asked the Rio Grande
To take her daughter’s hand
And lead her across the water
To where her dahlia flower
Would climb like a money plant…
She no mas understands.
Now looking at the white sands,
The river’s dumped into her eyes,
Forcing two unceasing currents…
Mothers ask, ‘Isn’t there somewhere,
A welcoming brown earth
To give us care?’
– Bolbul
Once… by Thousands
Trickling through a verbal stenosis,
Mum’s words tumble to the doctor
About her child’s condition aortic –
‘Will she walk, talk, normally live
After the surgery?’
But pursed are the doctor’s lips,
Her eyes static on the cardiography.
‘Doctor… Doctor… Doc..’ mum pleads,
Then ‘Greta!…’ at which
The doctor deadpans, ‘But she already did,
For twenty years, no less!,
Swum, played the trumpet and tennis!’
Doctor Greta wasn’t even six
When the valve in her left ventricle
Looked the same… even her mum
Had voiced that worried question.
‘I did mother… just bring her!’,
She finished.
No coincidence –
This was Greta’s thousandth patient?!
– Bolbul
Ambition on Flight
Ball Games History
A painted story of the evolution of ball games.
Sunny Gavaskar
An architect and pillar of modern India
Who made life livable for many.
English verse patterned after Sanskrit ‘namavalis’.
Name Paean to Sunny
On, on play for folks, Sunny
Cricket’s crowning blade, Sunny
Centurian nonpareil, Sunny
All the world prevailed, Sunny
Pillar Atlantean of greens, Sunny
Yudhishthir pitch-mid, serene, Sunny
Dadar Mumbai lamp, Sunny
Team yajnya’s feeding hand, Sunny
Floppy head, cotton blanc, Sunny
Padded, gloved, magic wand, Sunny
Flash first of billion hopes, Sunny
Ray last at day’s close, Sunny
Swell in fan hearts, Sunny
Master courageous arts, Sunny
Mower lightning pace, Sunny
Sage, concentrated face, Sunny
Stringer four petal blooms, Sunny
Aromatizer directions four, Sunny
Bouncer receiver, poised Sunny
Hooker beyond compounds, Sunny
Never spin bamboozled, Sunny
Striking clean, clear-head, Sunny…
(sample)
श्री सनी नामावली
क्रीड क्रीड जिष्णुजनाधार सनी ।
क्रिकेटमुकुट कंबुजयकार सनी ।
शतकशूर हस्तौ यष्टिधार सनी ।
यशकीर्तिभात जगजात सनी ।
तृणक्षेत्रे स्तंभसमान सनी ।
पिचसुस्थित निर्विकार सनी ।
दादरनंदन मुम्बईमंडन सनी ।
भारततपोवन प्रभंजन सनी ।
फ्लौपीमंडित श्वेतधारी सनी ।
हस्तप पादरक्षकसः मुरारी सनी ।…
http://thebolbul.com/ball-yoga
Around us… DU Spring Flowers show
At the Docks
Winter flowed into spring,
A full river carrying
Fishes of impressions…
After which an angler brush wielding
I was that evening.
Dabbing ripples of imitative making,
Of colors intensely light or dark
From Delhi University’s park…
Where stood purple, white, gold fringed stock…
I cast a net of canvas.
As afternoon flowed into evening,
Lovers and walkers gathered around watching
The jumping and jostling fish
Turn into colored wavelets,
Harbingers of spring… impressionistically etched.
– Bolbul
SOCIAL ISSUES
Deferential Calculus
From the side of the street that bleeds,
I heard their grey haired diplomat-ese
On channel after concerned tv channel,
Holding up the sanctity of realmathematik.
Under the accepted regime,
Contrary to what hoi polloi think
About equal human rights,
Or the value of love and kids’ lives…
Deference is accorded only to the one
Annointed head of the national button.
Why, so long hangs the sun,
Justice shall wait… or come
After the passing of the memory
Of playgrounds and apartments…
Of the decimally neglible civilians.
Hail the mathematics of one,
At the expense of the number system!
– Bolbul
Up and Lonely
Can’t escape feeling guilty,
For sitting with honeyed, morning tea
And being healthy…
For planning work
And scripting a movie
With a sun-red ending.
For nights here
Now stretch beyond the noon
And dot the earth
With falling stars… while the sky’s
Smoked by a wooden, burning moon…
– Bolbul
Unheard Of
(Storm Henri, Aug 21)
After the storm left,
The moon came out to inspect
The town of the poet.
The girlfriend with graces he oft-compared,
In the tenderness of Eastern couplets,
To lunar exquisiteness,
Walked about a shelter handing sandwiches
And bottled juices to children…
With hair and faces like whipped beaches.
The highschool album he kept
To fill a nightly cup with youthful zest,
Had been a mile swept.
All featured friends and students,
Hung on calls frantically initiated.
Bars and cafes sold mud
And Molly’s bookstore was sure to be liquidated.
His tome on nature, on a toppled shelf,
Had its stanzas shredded.
The Moon, sauntering to the window
Of the poet, stuck a note.
‘Never seen this before…
Wish up and down the country,
I could tell folks
For whom to vote.’
– Bolbul
Forestall
Rain should fall, not walls..
Especially seven stories tall
And they won’t, said many
Who heard whispers – clinging
To wet and shivering bricks,
To rusty balustrades and girdings –
If those with dry moorings,
Could hear anything at all…
But for years they didn’t
And now the many,
With the monsoon’s coming,
Have moved to the safety
Of the land of no recall.
– Bolbul
PETS & ADOPTED
Add-ictive
How may one picturize Flash –
A dog of as many parts
As his piebald splotches black?
Perhaps best to piecemeal ask
The palms he licks,
If any handshake compared with this,
The thighs and knees
He paws for biscuits,
And eyes following his trysts
With Mini, docile and sweet…
How it all adds.
Best to stitch patches taken
From the night watchman,
The gardener and so on…
About his darting after rival gangs,
About nosing flowers where butterflies hang,
About his silences
After school bells rang.
So many are the facets
Of engagements that
A novel, patchwork art
Alone would capture the eye magnet.
– Bolbul
WOMEN’S IMAGE
Freely, 2021
Oil. 18×24 in.
Headpushing winds, a mum
Models free self-definition…
Her mind, the figure, the saree wind
And the hopskipping child behind…
Refurbish the Indian wish
Of a leading, ancient kind.
– Bolbul
Lover Crane
I crane my neck… and fly
Beyond windows and walls
When the day stalls
Or a snowflake falls,
Riding the light in my eyes,
Breathing the openness
Of the lanes of heights.
So watch your head
Beloved, ‘cause I
Won’t have you block my sky.
The arches of ambitions
You plant in our conversations,
May backrest at times,
My nightly worn spine,
Even induce an odd dream-line,
But ad nauseam
Their rise seems an encagement.
So let them not confine
My nesting grounds and hovering eye,
Cause I
Won’t have you block my sky.
Don’t you sometimes think
That nearness should be a heaving, loping thing –
A breath bound to an elastic string,
Warming feathers, on the shoulders,
Then drifting back,
Flapping solo behind the pack.
So let your lungs relax
And their feverishness die,
Cause I
Would rather take you to the sky.
I crane my neck… and fly
Beyond windows and walls
When the day stalls …
– Bolbul
Trill Pill
(Mama to Infant)
Give me that look again,
My pickup pill, my will,
My light over the hill…
Say – I’m all the sun
You need… mum
When the snow touches the window sill,
And every moonbeam to pin
Where dreams wear thin.
In your arms I rest,
Your north, south, east and west…
And we shall plant
On cheeks joined,
A pink Kiss-Me-Quick forest.
Give me that look again,
My pickup pill, my will,
My light over the hill…
– Bolbul
GOLDEN CINEMA
Red Dot
She was a red dot bright
On stylized silver halide
Where characters and scenery are black and white…
For her indelible Gangetic belle chrominance,
For her sunrise irises and sunset mannerisms,
That Bihari lass Kumkum.
In her feet’s playful ‘chham chham’,
I saw mirrored river currents
Nuzzling sailboats of a land regal and ancient…
And my heart sang… ‘Ganga mother,
New turmeric cotton I shall offer,
In your darling daughter’s honor…
For the privilege of watching each film
Colored by Kumkum… everlastingly vermilion.
– Bolbul
PS: Kumkum is worn as a red forehead dot by Indian women. Written for the eponymous actress.
Silver to the Screen
She coated the screen with ebullience scarcely seen… particles of which made silver halides blush. For her, India was lush.
When she succumbed to small pox,
Lost was a populi vox…
Some, pondering vagaries of fate,
Even now… like the poet,
Feel their eyes moist.
Blessed were the years she was alive…
– Bolbul
(all of thirty five)
Gita Bali
चाँदी बलखाती
न रजत कण, ना युक्त हैलोजन… रीलें चमकाती थीं उसकी शोख, अशोक थिरकन । हथेलियों लिए, भारत का मन ।
जब यकायक ले गया उसे चेचक, डूबा था दिन में सूरज । लुटने का ग़म… शायद अब है कुछ कम ।
कितनी मोमबत्तियाँ जली थीं, जब उजड़ा पर्दे का चमन ?
– बोलबुल
POLITICAL HUMOUR
Wasn’t This Coming?!
TV Anchor:
Gosh! Political accountability… eternally apparitional,
Is to appear… on your channel!
To ailing constitutionalist folks,
To citizens glazed-eyed and hoarse,
What an intoxicating deal!!
Eminent Lawyer:
The jury are accordant
That the narcissist Puffer was rotten,
His power misbegotten.
Expect the sentencing
To deliver life’s sunset in jail.
The decision will stand,
Should the fish appeal.
Courthouse Reporter:
Twenty years… neither eyes nor ears
Believe what has transpired!
…
KID LITERATURE
https://thebolbul.wordpress.com/jungle-mungle/
An area of excellent opportunities in Delhi…
Many publishing houses – OUP, MacMillan, Scholastic, Penguin etc
WaferWorks
Ep 1: Lonely Lab Lamps
Indian Institutes of Technology
Runaway Runway
In a room on the flight path to Palam,
A late teen and IIT freshman,
Found black nights startlingly welcome,
Beguilingly handsome and a pal incomparable…
Whose company poeticized his imagination…
http
Is Tarah 