The metro construction has finally reached my regular chai stall and I don't know how to feel

There's this little stall near Majestic, been there for maybe thirty years, the kind where the guy remembers your order even if you haven't shown up in six months. I've been sketching it off and on for the past year because the light there in the late afternoon is just ridiculous. The blue tarpaulin, the steel glasses glinting, the way the steam catches the sun.

Anyway, the metro pillar markers have appeared. Orange paint on the footpath. Surveyors with their tripods. The stall itself is still there but you can see it coming, the road widening, the barricades, the slow disappearance.

I painted it again yesterday and found myself being too careful with every line. Like if I got it right enough I could keep it there by sheer effort. That's the thing with painting old Bangalore, na? You're not just capturing something, you're also saying goodbye to it in advance. And you do it anyway because what else is there to do.

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Margaret Hsu·3d

I know this feeling. When I was still doing fieldwork, there was a site I'd visit for years, nothing grand, just a particular bend in a creek where the light fell a certain way through the canopy. When the housing development went in, I went back one last time to paint it, knowing I was recording something that wouldn't exist much longer.

There's a tradition in botanical illustration of painting specimens that are endangered or soon to be displaced. It isn't sentimental work, it's documentation. What you're doing with that stall, the tarpaulin and the steam and the steel glasses, that's the same thing. You're holding it still on the page even as the ground shifts around it.

I hope you keep sketching it right up until the barricades go up. And maybe after, sometimes the demolition itself has its own kind of geometry worth recording.

Ramesh Jha·3d

This is very true what you are saying ji. In our Mithila painting also, we have this same feeling. From my grandmother's time, we would paint the things that are fading, the old marriage rituals, the trees that were cut, the ponds that got filled. Not because we were sad only, but because someone must remember how it looked.

Your creek bend and his chai stall, these are the same thing. The light, the steam, the way things sit in their place, if we don't put it on paper, who will tell the children what was here? 🙏

Ananya IyerOP·3d

That bit about botanical illustration really stayed with me. It's exactly that, not sentimental, just... bearing witness. The thing is, with the chai stall I'm not even trying to make art half the time. I'm just trying to get the angle of that tarpaulin right, the way it slopes, the shadows underneath. And then later I realise oh, that's why I'm doing this.

Your creek bend, do you still have that painting? I'd love to see it sometime, if you're comfortable sharing.

Niall Doherty·3d

Ah sure, I know the exact feeling. There was a shed out near Spiddal I used to pass on the way to the mother's, corrugated roof half-gone, an old red tractor sunk into the ground out the front like a skeleton. Never drew it, but I always meant to. Told myself I'd get around to it next time. Then one day the roof was gone entirely and the tractor was a scrap pile and the whole thing was just... gone. Not even a clean disappearance, just a slow unpicking.

The thing about the orange paint and the surveyors is, it's the looking that makes it hurt. You wouldn't notice if you weren't paying attention. But you have been. So now you're watching it leave in slow motion.

The stall'll hold on a while yet, those lads are stubborn. But aye, I'd get the sketches done while you can. And maybe one more chai before the barricades go up.

Ananya IyerOP·3d

That line about the looking making it hurt, that's exactly it. I think that's why I keep painting these places. Not because I want to capture them for anyone else, but because once you've really looked at something, you can't un-see it when it starts to go.

The red tractor sunk into the ground like a skeleton is such a vivid image. I'd have sketched that, I think. The way things rust in our kind of humidity, that orange-brown against green. Was it a Ferguson, do you remember? The old ones had a particular shape to the bonnet.