Sackett's Land

Flamingo Heights

In today's edition of Mint - full page comic. A part of the Small Picture project by Manta Ray.

Cold data, dark thoughts

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Above: watercolour and pen on paper

Everything will be connected. Stupid things like spoons and bins will become intelligent. And data will be at the heart of it. These are the words I catch before falling into a dark, dreamless sleep.

I wake up, or not, depending on the definition of waking up. It’s 1982. I am just about 8 years old. It’s the stone age in my hometown, Kota. There are only a few bicycles around and one of them drops me to my school.

Seasons of mists and mellow fruitfulness.

I remember the words waking me to the world to literature and writing. Since that day and ever since all I wanted was to put words on to paper.

Darkness falls.

It’s 1998. I still don’t have a job. I light up my first cigarette. I get a rush. I blink.

It’s 2003. I step on the airplane for the first time. And once the fears of crashing and ears bursting vanish, I sleep. Peacefully. Tuned to the buzz of the airplane.

2007. Amsterdam. Things have changed. Life seems to have settled down nicely along the canals of the Dam. There’s music in the air. There’s a whisper too. I fail to listen to it, at first. Then it grows louder.

Digital or die.

2013. I am staring at the screen of my mac. It’s hurting cold outside. And dark. My screen lights up the room. I am trying to understand and write HTML, slowly making my way through the online tutorials.

I type in HTML:

Seasons of mists and mellow fruitlessness.

Fruitlessness.

From Kota to coding. It’s been one strange, lonely trip to write an HTML code.

I have questions

In my recent travels to Dehradun, Kota, Delhi and Mumbai, I met a lot of people and saw a lot of changes. And a lot of questions popped up in my mind.

What’s the point of having all the money in the world when you can’t appreciate the birds on a banyan tree?

Why does wealth have to be comparative? Always dependent on making someone else feel bad or lesser off?

Why is environment a geopolitical issue?

Do you always have to buy something to enjoy it?

Why do we have to buy nature to enjoy it?

How did a home become an investment? Home is somewhere you live life. An investment is something which you sacrifice life for.

Why do we think destiny can be manufactured?

Why does art need to have a reason?

When did art become a commodity?

How do people live with 5 hours of garish, loud television with horribly painted faces and obnoxious voices every single day of their life?

Why do people hack trees to make way for parking?

Why do people dump waste in the greens and then complain that the green cover is vanishing?

Why do people install mobile phone towers on their houses?

Why are hospitals in India so damn dirty? Are they trying to scare off the germs?

Why do people believe hype more than they believe their own eyes?

Who’s paying for all those political posters that literally cover more landscape than trees in India?

Why are these questions so tough to ask?

And there are no answers blowing in the wind. The only thing that blows in the wind these days is smoke. Covering the landscape, filling our lungs and making pretensions of a warm cosy night that tempts us to sleep. Forever.

Shorter of breath

And one day closer to death. Hopefully there will be a lot more of picking up the pen in 2013 than this year.

The ghost town of memory

The clouds are heavy. Maybe they know of the impending death. I've heard songs about death and read ruminations on it. But I never knew until two years ago that dying could turn entire cities into ghost towns of memories. Living, breathing, but yet lifeless. For the one who mattered has gone. The smoke from the day lingers. His last breath. How we hung on to it. For, till it was there we lived. We lived like children and our memories lived and his voice lived and his dreams coloured our journeys. But the last breath took everything away. I haven't let go of it. It's frozen.
It was. Until today.
When everyone's outside the room. Waiting. For one more last breath. Death shows no mercy. It never did. It sits with us, has the hospital tea, comments on the lack of sugar, and then it walks in and takes away what it has to. Leaving a whole lot of childhoods and an entire city dead with it.
As I write this, I visit the ghost town of my memory. I run around the house looking for my dad. But all I find are walls. Blackened by death. And haunted by ghosts.

Who's In?

My latest work. Shot in San Luis Potosi, Mexico. A film for Cuervo Cold.
Client: Jose Cuervo
Agency: Albion London
Executive Creative Director: Nick Darken
Creative Directors: Tim Bateman, Hemant Anant Jain
Copywriters: Tim Bateman, Hemant Anant Jain
Art Directors: Tim Bateman, Hemant Anant Jain

Grasmere

"And a single small cottage, a nest like a dove's. The one only dwelling on earth she loves." - William Wordsworth. (In this picture - Grasmere, Wordsworth's hometown).

Lost tales

Was it an old and wise elephant or a chestnut tree looking at me curiously? I guess I will never know. My world is full of stories and magic and who knows which chapter, which tale was this from?

Stupid simplicity

If things can be explained with such stupid simplicity, then the situation with the country is really fu*&ed. Published in HT Mint 23 May, 2012

Seattle

Hey there Seattle. Long time. Well. Over a month now. But I can't seem to get you out of my mind. I thought when I go away, everything will just become grey like the clouds and the rain. But the coffee from around the corner still smells strong. And the guitar, though now out of tune, manages to recall familiar notes that didn't sound so bad then. And the long walks to the Arboretum still make me happily tired. And the trees, filled with elusive birds seem to call me and tell me about the big old owl that sits there, oblivious to the crows who just wouldn't give up. And the Discovery Park. I never see it in the 'places to see in Seattle', but I have it mapped in my memory forever. And Eliot Bay bookshop. And Mollymoon icecream. And the summer days when the mountains suddenly appeared and surrounded the city. And the bar around the corner where I sat down with friends and made them wonder often what's this fascination with beer when I can drink barely a couple of pints. The thing is, Seattle, it's difficult to think of you as grey and rainy and cold and dark when the memories just shine and get brighter with every passing day. Because Seattle,  I can hear you in my friends' voices and I can recall you in that crazy dreamer's visions. And those voices will never fade away. Years from now maybe I will struggle to walk all the streets in my mind but I will, I am sure, still retrace step for step to Ballet with Pat. And I will recall every word of Jim. And I will recall those debates with Kelly on politics and history and poetry. And I will always be a student to Andrew, the most amazing teacher I found. Seattle. You were kind to me. And to me you'll always be the sunniest place on this planet.

For Pat, Kelly, Jim and Andrew.

Life's kinda like that

The hand that rocks the cradle.

Whose is the hand that rocks the cradle? My full page in today's HT Mint. (To see full size and read, open image in new tab) A part of The Small Picture by Manta Ray.

Exhibition at The British Council

The Great Indian Clearance Sale was exhibited at The British Council in February 2- February 7, this year. This was a part of the Unbox Festival. Here are some pictures from the exhibition.

The Emperor's New Clothes

Published in HT Mint on 21st Feb, 2012. See hi res here.

Fresh off the press

My first children's book. Published in Amsterdam by Veenman Drukkers.
With Boyd Coyner. Here are some spreads from the book.

The urban dream

Published in Mint on 18th January. http://t.co/WF8pieW1
I woke up one dark night. Haunted, frightened, shaky like a leaf. I had the strangest dream and in that dream I saw that I had turned into a consumerist zombie. Made of words they wanted me to believe.
I lived in my own luxury cage of EMI, and I lived my life as an advertising script. I consumed sugar water for happiness and I replaced my brain with an app library.
I had all the money in the world and if I missed the trees, I saw them on a LED tv screen.
My car had a toilet and my world was controlled and the sky was blue, projected on an anti UV dome. And I wondered what took humans to convert this planet into a cave of steel. We should have killed all the animals and cut all the trees and spewed carbon by tonnes much faster.
And I woke up frightened. Not sure if that dream was already part real. I switched on my tablet and turned on the app for counting sheep. 

The year of asking questions.

‎2012. The year of asking questions. When you go to a newsstand ask for the latest issue of Down to Earth. There is a little folded surprise for you in there.

It's story weather outside: Children's Film Festival, Seattle

The films
children's film festival seattle  - trailer from unclebob.tv on Vimeo.


children's film festival seattle  - spring love from unclebob.tv on Vimeo.


children's film festival seattle  - bicycle from unclebob.tv on Vimeo.


children's film festival seattle  - bicycle from unclebob.tv on Vimeo.


Credits
Creative team: Steve Cullen, Hemant Anant Jain
Director: Branson Veal
Editor: Olin Padilla
Music: Matt Huchinson
Agency Film Producer: Dax Estorninos, Christine Ogborne
Agency Print Producer: Chris Nielson
Agency Production: Brian Bosworth, Shirley Hendrickson, Yumiko Menikoff, Ramon Vasquez
Agency: Creature, Seattle

 

It's story weather outside
Umbrellas are amazing aren’t they. Much more than holding back rain, they have figured pretty much in children’s literature like boats, like colorful rainbows of imaginations, like flying machines that could carry you away in the wind. There is the delightful magic when a kid flaps open his umbrella and whirls it and sees the bright colors mix with the wind. There is enchantment in the air when kids turn their umbrellas and play with rain and want to set sail on puddles.
We want to bring alive kids’ fascination with umbrellas and we want to set the dark, grey Seattle rain on colorful fire, and we want to huddle around that fire and tell amazing stories from around the world. We want to watch the starry eyes kids go forth then and remember these stories they heard at the NWFF. And whenever they see an umbrella in the rain, they will be reminded of these stories.
We want to make NWFF a part of their lives, their memories and their nostalgia.

The ghosts of the whistleblowers

A tribute to Shehla Masood and all the whistleblowers of India who speak out and are silenced, assaulted and murdered in this great democracy. And the amazing fact is that there is no law in our country which will safeguard them. (Published in yesterday's Mint: http://bit.ly/tqIrgG). With Manta Ray Comics.

The curious case of food safety and factory farming.

And then it was autumn.

It was bitter cold yesterday.
And then it was the hard sun and harder rain.
It was just yesterday when the trees had no leaves.
And yesterday, when it was impossible to see the birds
through the leaves.
It was yesterday, and yesterday was within reach
Filled with the voice that I long to hear now
And suddenly it is autumn
Where did the time go?
I turn to look
And yesterday's gone too.

Static

Below poverty line.

The latest comic for Manta Ray. Published full page in the newspaper Mint on October 12, 2011.
Here is the hi res from the epaper.

That's the planet then

No matter how small
a speck we are in the universe
we still made
quite a huge mess of it

Manta Ray, Tigerwallahs and more.

There are some ridiculously talented and motivated people out there. Dileep and Pratheek are two of them who started Manta Ray comics. Their work is awe inspiring. So, it was obvious that when they contacted me to do a comic for them, I would say, 'I'm not good enough. You guys do some fab work'. But they persisted, pushed and edited something out of me. I am surprised they could. Well, here is that little comic we collaborated on. Hopefully I can make some more comics for them. Need to do something really good for the trust they have placed in me. Thanks guys.

here is the link to The Tigerwallahs on the Manta Ray blog. 

It is also archived on The Small Picture page here.

The day

The northern hemisphere and its weak sun 

makes the dreams, or the lack of, a little longer

Until the sweet song of the chickadees blows away the sleep

And the eye catches them against the blue sky

In groups of eight, in groups of ten

Autumn approaches and if you could read the sky and the trees and the whispers of the wind, its approach would not seem all that silent

There are books to be read and the pages smell sweet

But between morning and noon, the room is filled with roughly struck notes

From carefully placed chords

The guitar looks taller than the mountain I can see from my window

Formidable, not negotiable

The wall is blank, there are drawings, that look primitive

- compared to televisions.

The day grows suddenly still and uncomfortably warm

My mind is on the farm from many years and many miles ago

The bullet rumbles through the field. Dad. Pauses. Takes stock. Smiles

And disappears

The old man, twirls his white moustaches

And in his raspy voice begins to tell me a story

About death

I am a child, lost in his shadow that falls on the lime plastered walls

The story abruptly ends with the sound of cawing

The crow lingers on, talking incessantly

And I am reminded of crows and cities and ecology and smoke

And brains of men that can comprehend neither biodiversity
nor simplicity

I throw paint on paper, scribble ideas 
Inked with anger, which outlasts
my supply of India ink

Then the chickadees fly past again

A blue jay. An eagle.

If I am lucky, the barred owl would be lazing around on the tree

I put my shoes on

and walk out on the revolution.

10^th September, 2011

Some lost cave drawings.

Open publication - Free publishing - More art

Found inside the cave of Hemant Anant Jain. Dating from 2005 - 2011, in no particular order.

And then there's that.

That accident just keeps
on happening.
That hospital stink wakes me up
I look around
Try to find the voice
Then I sleep
Hoping for that one dream
Nothing.
Between death and memory
Life becomes irrelevant