the house on 4th Cross went down this morning and I have two sketches of it

Went for my walk at seven as usual and the compound wall was already rubble. They'd been at it since about five, I think, because the dust was still hanging in the air and the man on the JCB was eating breakfast out of a steel tiffin box, sitting right there on the machine, perfectly calm.

I've drawn that house three times over two years. Once from the road, once from inside the gate when the watchman let me in because I gave him chai, and once badly, in the rain, standing under someone's tree. All three are in a folder and now the folder is the only place the house exists.

What I keep turning over is this. I have the drawings. I have the proportions, the railing detail, the way the light came through the jaali in the afternoon. And I still feel like I missed it. Like documenting a thing is not the same as holding on to it, and I've been telling myself for a while now that it is.

My husband says at least I got there. He's not wrong. But knowing something is different from feeling it, na.

Anyway, the JCB man offered me his chai. I didn't take it, I was already late for nothing in particular.

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Inês Costa·2h

There is something in the drawing being done in the rain, badly, from under someone else's tree. I think those are often the ones that hold the house better than the careful ones.

I work with old photographic processes and I have the same trouble, the places I have printed are gone now, or changed enough that it is only a change. What you have in that folder is not a record, exactly. It is more like the house kept somewhere it cannot be knocked down. That the man on the JCB ate his breakfast on the machine while yours sat in a folder is almost the whole thing, no.

Ananya IyerOP·2h

The bad rain one is honestly the truest of the three, and I have never been able to explain that properly until now. All the edges ran and the perspective is wrong at the gate, but the house is in there more than in the careful one.

Old photographic processes, that's lovely. Which ones? There is something about a medium that fights you a bit, the plate, the water, the light going, and you end up with the place rather than a picture of it. And yes, the tiffin box is the whole thing. He will be on another site on Monday. The house will not.

Ananya IyerOP·1h

The rain ones always come out truer, and I've stopped fighting it. Once you're standing under someone's tree getting steadily soaked, you're not composing anymore, you're just trying to get it down before it goes. That urgency ends up in the paper.

Old photographic processes for this kind of work is a lovely kind of stubbornness. What do you shoot, if you don't mind my asking? There's a man in our sketching group who does wet plate of temple facades and the slow part of it seems to be the whole point, you have to stand there and let the place happen to you.

"Kept somewhere it cannot be knocked down" is going to sit with me all day, honestly.

Kasia Nowak·2h

I keep coming back to the man with the tiffin box on the JCB. Everyone else in that scene is losing something and he is just having his breakfast, and somehow that is the part that makes it real for me. Not the rubble, the ordinary morning.

I do think you already answered your own question a bit, when you said the folder is now the only place the house exists. Two years of drawing a thing is two years of paying attention to it, which is more than most people who walk past it ever did. The sketches are not a substitute for the house, they are the proof you were looking.

I have the same thing with a face I drew maybe six times, never once got it right. I still have all six. The wrong ones hold something the good ones don't. Your rain sketch is probably doing that job for this house, even if it does not feel like it.

Ananya IyerOP·1h

The tiffin box is the part I can't shake either. I got the whole machine in, the arm, the dust, all of it, and the only thing anyone has asked me about is the man eating. Fair enough.

And thank you for that last line, "the proof you were looking." I'll be honest, I've been circling the other thing all morning, that I should have gone more often, drawn it in better light, done it properly. Which is a stupid way to treat two years of showing up.

You said you have the same thing. Same as in old photographs, or same as in the drawing badly in the rain? Because those are two very different kinds of grief and I want to know which one I'm talking to.