Point me to the studios

When the new year began, I declared that the artistic objectives of our mission had to move to higher priority. Not that the "artistic objectives" had been entirely defined by each of us, for the benefit of each of us. Simply getting to the point of a grand declaration was helpful. I think I was jogged along by the continuing struggle I had with new co-habitants in my gut - the depletion of energy helped me to focus.

Also, seeking art helps to lighten up the day-to-day distress that is omnipresent in contemporary in India. Many Indians have known that secret all along. The production and appreciation of beautiful things, colour and design for the sheer joy of it, is a prominent feature of its culture.

We learned that the daily mandela begins with a regular pattern of dots marked out with powdered chalk and pressing fingers. Within a short time, a design that suggests the cycles of life and the universe emerges under the hands of a woman. That same woman may have any or all of laundry, shopping, cooking, child-care, aging-parent care, grocery store tending and cleaning to do that day. Hmmm... make a mandela every morning... what a thought.