Sketchbook 10:I have reached Mumbai

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On Curiosity and Beauty

We often dismiss things by saying "nothing out there worth knowing" or "been there, done that." But Mumbai has been teaching me otherwise. Every sketch of a woman's face, every bird captured mid-flight, reveals that beauty runs deeper than first glances suggest.

Coffee Cup Chronicles

Life at MTV fills sketchbooks in unexpected ways. Meeting notes transform into character studies, coffee cups become canvases. The mundane turns memorable under the right pencil stroke.

Birds and Borrowed Wings

Sitting on the terrace, chasing kites with ink-loaded brushes. They moved too fast for accuracy, so my birds borrowed a little majesty from eagles I knew how to draw. Sometimes truth lies in the space between observation and memory.

Faces That Find Us

Some subjects choose us. Eddie Sedgwick's face found its way into my sketchbook twice - not for any specific feature, but for that ineffable quality that makes beauty linger in memory.

The Laundry Day Gallery

Always check your pockets before laundry - or don't. Sometimes torn currency becomes a canvas for completion, fragments of faces emerging where paper tore away. There's something to be said for accidental art.

 Don ever forget to check your pockets before you put your clothes for laundry.

Letters Never Sent

There's something poetic about a letter that never reaches its recipient. Three attempts to write to Piyush, each one marred by imperfect spelling, each one teaching me something new about calligraphy. The first attempt looked beautiful until the nib betrayed me. The drafts, made with a thinner nib, somehow captured what the final version couldn't.

 A letter that was written for a close friend, Piyush. But forgot to give him. And also did not give him cause there were spelling mistakes.

Took me 3 attempts to complete it. But still the whole letter is not consistent .


The first attempt(below) looked good but the nib got damaged. So had to try again.

 

I made the drafts with a thinner nib which stills looks better than the final one.

Obviously this attempt was a result of my latest interest in Calligraphy.

A week ago I started understanding alphabets by trying to write in different ways with flat nib pens.

 






After a day of practice I thought I Should do devnagri fonts also simultaneously.
 
 
After every letter I practiced, I started writing sentences. Tried to understand the letter in a word.

 

 

Made a few notes of my understandings.

 

This is what I have written the first time the calligraphy pen came to my hand.(right and below)

An exploration with different styles in it.

 

My calligraphy journey began with simple explorations - flat nibs dancing across paper, trying to understand the anatomy of letters. Each alphabet became a new puzzle, and soon I found myself venturing into Devanagari, letting each character tell its own story. During practice sessions, I filled margins with notes about what each letter taught me.

Notes from a Mumbai Sketchbook

Calligraphy teaches patience: three attempts at a letter still feel incomplete
Birds move too fast for truth - sometimes interpretation serves better than accuracy

• Beauty reveals itself in stages: first in observation, then in understanding
  Every meeting can be a sketch session if you're quiet enough
  Sometimes the most interesting canvas is the one you never intended to use

The city writes itself into your sketchbook if you let it. Mumbai's tales told in ink, graphite, and happy accidents.

Until next time, keep your pencils sharp and your eyes sharper. Find more daily sketches on Insta and X