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There was this old bungalow off Cunningham Road, mustard yellow with these deep verandah columns I must have sketched three times. Beautiful proportion, proper classical. Last I heard a builder had bought it but nothing was happening, so I kept assuming I'd get one more chance at it. Went past today for something else entirely and it's just a pit. Not even a construction site yet, just an excavated hole with a hoarding. I stood there like an idiot for ten minutes. I have the sketches. That's the thing that keeps me going at it, but also the thing that stings a bit. Because the sketch is lovely and someone else will see it later and think oh, what a charming old house, what a nice moment in time. They won't feel the actual loss. The paper keeps the building but it can't keep the fact that it used to be someone's home, with someone's washing on the line and a dog that barked at me the first time I set up my stool outside the gate. I don't know where I'm going with this except that drawing things as they vanish is a strange job to have chosen. Some days it feels like the only honest thing I do. Other days it feels like taking photographs at a funeral and calling it art.

There's this house on Nandi Durga Road, off Bull Temple Road, that I've been sketching on and off since February. One of those old bungalows with the blue-grey Mangalore tile roof and a verandah that curves around the side. Bougainvillea going feral over the compound wall. Every time I went there I told myself I'd finish the painting before someone bought the plot. Well. Sold last week. Demo crew arrives next month probably. I sat across the road this morning with my little stool and finished it anyway. Put the bougainvillea in, put the morning sun exactly where it was hitting the columns. Doesn't matter that it'll be gone. Feels like I'm packing a suitcase for something that's leaving and can't take anything with it. That's half of what I paint these days, isn't it. Anyway, if you're in Bangalore and you know a house like this that hasn't been touched yet, the ones with the old teak windows, the ones nobody's renovated into a cafe, send me the location. I want to get to it before the bulldozer does.

So I finally worked up the nerve to paint my grandmother's childhood home, the one she grew up in, in a little town near Mangalore. She's told me about it so many times. The jackfruit tree in the back, the veranda where her mother used to grind spices, the red oxide floors. I've never seen it myself, it got sold decades ago, but I pieced it together from her stories and old photos my aunt had. Finished it last week and showed her yesterday. And she just looked at it for a long time and said "which house is this?" I explained, and she went quiet. Then she said "no, that's not how it was at all" and started describing it again, the windows were different, the roof was lower, the jackfruit tree was on the other side actually. I sat there with my painting that was completely wrong and felt like such an idiot. But then later she called me and said to come over this weekend, she wants to sit with me and draw it properly together. She said "I'll tell you where every brick goes, you put it down." I don't know if the painting will be better the second time, but I think this is actually a win. Just not the kind you frame right away.

Sold a set of three watercolour sketches of houses off MG Road to a regular client last month. Flat ₹6,000 for the set, which felt fair at the time because it's a nice round number and I priced it on the spot without thinking. Then I tallied up the actual drawing time, not even counting the two mornings I went back because the light was wrong. Twenty-one hours. That's ₹285 an hour before paper, paint, and the frames I threw in as a "goodwill" gesture because they're a repeat buyer. I keep telling myself the goodwill matters, the relationship matters, the next commission matters. And it does. But I did the same maths my old architecture firm used to do on billable hours and I winced. The worst part is I know exactly why I did it. Round numbers feel easier to say out loud. I'm still scared that if I quote ₹9,000 or ₹10,000 for a set, someone will just go "okay, no thanks" and I'll have lost it. But honestly, the client who haggles over ₹3,000 is not the client I want anyway. Still haven't raised my price for the next set. Working up to it.

I went back to a street in Malleswaram today. There was this old house with a blue veranda I'd sketched in 2022, beautiful chettiar-style columns, the whole thing sagging just a little in that way old houses do. I wanted to paint it properly this time, in watercolour, give it the treatment. Pulled up to the spot and it's a construction site. Apartment going up, probably 14 floors from the look of the pit. I sat on the compound wall of the thing next door and painted it anyway from memory. Came out alright actually, maybe better than if I'd had the real thing in front of me, because I had to really remember what I loved about it. Weird feeling, documenting things as they disappear. But I'm glad I have that old sketchbook at home. At least someone drew it.

Went back to my old street this morning because I heard they'd started demolition. The house we lived in till I was eighteen is gone already, just a pile of brick and those stupidly bright pink plaster chunks. But the last house at the end, the one with the bougainvillea that always looked like it was on fire, that one's still standing. The family came out and asked what I was doing, and I told them I used to live here. The woman offered me chai and I sat on their steps for an hour sketching the facade across the road. My own childhood home, and I'm drawing it from someone else's porch. The really strange part is how much I remembered wrong. The balcony I was so sure faced the main road, it faces the side lane. The window I thought was mine, wasn't even in our flat. I've been carrying this wrong mental map around for sixteen years and nobody ever corrected it because nobody ever asked. I keep painting these old houses as if I'm documenting them properly, but I can't even remember my own correctly. Maybe that's what the whole project actually is. A record of how unreliable I am. Anyway the chai was good. That house has maybe two weeks left.

I got a message from a friend on Tuesday morning, a photo actually. The old house on 4th Cross, the one with the red oxide floor and the wooden balcony with the turned railing posts. Gone. Just the compound wall and a pile of rubble and two men sitting on it having tea. I have eleven sketches of that house. Eleven. From different angles, different mornings, different light. And I still felt like I hadn't really looked at it. That's the thing that gets me. I could draw a building a hundred times and still not be sure I actually saw it, and then one day it's a pile and the sketches are all I have and some of them are wrong. The proportions off, the balcony too high, the shadow in the wrong place. When I was an architect I used to draw buildings so they could be built. Now I draw them so they can be remembered and honestly I'm not sure I'm any better at it. Different job, same feeling of missing something. Not looking for advice on this one. Just wanted to say it out loud somewhere. Tuesday was a bad day.

Small thing, but it took me two months to work up to it. She came over on Sunday for lunch and I'd stacked everything I've done this year on the dining table, all of it facing down, which is a terrible way to show anyone anything, I know. Twelve sheets. Most of them are the old houses around Basavanagudi and Malleswaram before the builders get there, ink first, then a wash over it. There's one of a house on 4th Cross with that lovely peeling turquoise on the gate that I'm actually quite happy with. She went through the whole stack properly, which I didn't expect. Then she said, very gently, "these are all so old and broken. Can you also do nice ones? Some flowers? Something bright for the wall." And the thing is, she was being kind. She wasn't being dismissive. She genuinely thinks I've spent a year drawing ruins and that it must be a little sad to live in that all the time. I've been turning it over since. Because half of me wants to explain that the house is going to be gone by next monsoon, that's the whole point, if I paint it pretty and new then it never existed at all. And the other half thinks, she's not wrong, why am I so drawn to the ones that are leaving. Anyway. She took the turquoise gate one home with her. No explanation available for that.

Someone bought one of my originals this week. A small one, the old house on Mosque Road with the bougainvillea that's now gone. Honestly I nearly didn't even put proper glass on it, I was planning to keep it herself and just did a simple frame. But a friend insisted, said you frame everything like it matters. And the funny thing is, the buyer was someone who walked past while I was sketching it on site, months ago, and asked me about the house. She remembered me. The painting was still sitting in my pile of unsold work and she recognised it. I keep thinking about how close it came to being a flimsy frame. And also how the house itself is just a slab now. But this little paper version went somewhere with someone who actually cares about the building that was there. That feels right, somehow. Selling art is weird. But I'll take it.

The owner of the house I sketched last month called me yesterday. He'd found my number through a mutual friend, wanted to know if I still had the drawing, said the building comes down in March and his mother grew up in it. So now I'm sitting with a scan I made in ten minutes at Malleswaram, one of those old houses with the sloping Mangalore tile roof and the wooden pillars on the verandah, and it suddenly has to be a proper painting. Funny how that works. I've drawn it three times over the years and never once thought of it as important until somebody told me the date. I said yes before I'd thought about what I was promising. I'm not a portrait painter, I don't know how to put a family's feelings into a watercolour. I'm going to do it the way I know, and hope the light on the verandah does the work. Anyone else had a drawing become heavier after the fact? Not the ones we choose. The ones that choose us.

I need to say this somewhere. Two years back, a friend's sister asked me to do a sketch of their old house in Basavanagudi, the one with the red oxide floor and the wooden pillars, before the builder came in. I said 6,000. Family-adjacent rate, I told myself. She was thrilled, paid half upfront without a word. It took nine days. Ink on cold press, 12x16, and I redrew the facade three times because the perspective on those pillars kept going soft on me. Fine. That's my problem, not hers. But then came the framing. I wanted it to look good for them, so I got it mounted and framed properly. 2,800. And the drive to and fro, two trips with samples, another 600 in autos. So 6,000 minus 2,800 minus 600. Plus paint, paper, my own time. I did the arithmetic that night and just sat there. The thing is, I have not raised my rate since. Same 6,000 for a similar size, and I know two other people who were quoted it too. It has become THE number. I'm scared to touch it because they all know each other. The house is gone now, by the way. Demolished last March. So the drawing is the only record of it, which makes it worse somehow, like I should have charged more for that. If you've broken out of a friends-and-family number without it turning into a whole thing, tell me how. I genuinely want to know. 🙏

Mine: I walked into a small space near Richmond Town with a folder of my old house sketches, feeling very serious about myself. The owner looked through maybe four of them and said "these are nice, but who will buy pictures of buildings that are going to be demolished anyway?" I didn't have an answer. I still don't, honestly. Went home and painted the same street twice, out of spite. So, what is the worst thing a gallery has said to you? The one that stung, or the one you laughed about later. Give me both if you have both.

Moved my desk out to the front verandah last week because the bedroom studio was hitting me with four walls and no air. Best decision in months. The auntie next door has now asked three times if my AC is broken, and the dog from two houses down comes and sits at the gate watching me paint like he's critiquing my composition. The light out here is genuinely different. I keep catching myself sketching the same old house across the street that I've painted maybe six times already, but at this hour the shadow falls completely differently and I can't help it. Downside is every passerby thinks you're available for conversation. Today the plumber who was fixing the neighbour's tap spent ten minutes giving me unsolicited advice on mixing skin tones. He wasn't wrong though. That's the embarrassing part. 🙂

I keep reading these threads about which platform is dead and which algorithm is punishing you and I have no insight to add because the only actual sale I got from social media this month came from a throwaway reel of me sharpening a palette knife. Just a plain knife and the ring of it against the sharpening stone. No music, no talking, 11 seconds, shot on my phone propped against a mug. A woman from Pune messaged asking if I could do a similar one of her grandfather's old house before it gets demolished. Paid a deposit before I even sent her a sketch. Meanwhile the carefully staged studio shots I spent an afternoon on, the ones with the good light and the composition I actually thought about, got maybe 40 views between them. I have stopped pretending I understand any of this. The algorithm wants what it wants. Sometimes I think it's just picking the videos where I'm clearly doing something and not performing. The minute I set up the ring light it knows and punishes me for it.

My water jar is a plastic bucket from a bakery near my old office. Two rupees, no lid. Someone had scratched "Bindu" into the side with a compass point. I have never met Bindu and I am weirdly attached to her. Here is the actual thing though. I paint the old houses and the sky always comes first, because once the light is right the house can be wrong and it still reads. But I got so used to chasing morning light that I forgot how to paint in it, if that makes sense. This past week I've been going out at half six to a lane behind Basavanagudi with the bucket and a cold steel tumbler of chai and just standing there instead. Twice I came back with nothing painted and did not feel bad about it. Yesterday I finally put down the wash and the paper buckled because I was standing in the shade, not the sun, and hadn't noticed. All that looking and I still got the direction of light wrong. There is a house on that lane with a green wooden gate and a small Ganpati niche above it that I have walked past for years. Scaffolding went up on it on Tuesday. I don't know if it's a repair or the end. I am telling myself repair. What I want to know, and I'm asking properly: do you all ever go out and just not paint? Because I cannot decide if this is discipline or if I have simply become a woman who loiters with a bucket.

I'll go first. A small space in the city took four of my old-house watercolours last year, contract and all. Felt like a proper step. Then it sat in their store room for eight months and got shown once, in a group thing, hung behind a pillar. I found out from a friend who happened to walk in. The part that stung wasn't the not-selling. It was that I'd told my family "a gallery has taken my work" and then had to quietly un-tell them. Na, is this normal? Or did I just pick the wrong people? If you've been through it, what did you do next - did you pull the work out, wait it out, or just keep going?

Went back this morning to the old house on the corner near Sunday market. The one with the chajja that's been drooping for years. The demolition guys were already there, and the front wall is gone since last week. I sat across the road with my little stool and drew the gap where the drawing room used to be, the staircase just hanging there in open air. Thing is, I've painted that house maybe six times over the last two years. Every time meaning to catch it before this exact morning. And when it finally happened I almost turned around and went home because it felt like standing at someone's funeral with a sketchbook. But I forced myself to sit. Twenty minutes. The plaster dust kept drifting over my palette. There's something strange about drawing a thing while it's actively becoming a memory. The sketch isn't even good, honestly. But I'm glad I did it instead of driving away. I think that's the whole practice some days, just showing up even when it hurts to look.

I got my first gallery show because a gallerist saw me sketching a crumbling old house from the street and stopped to ask what I was doing. I thought she was going to tell me to move along, honestly. But she watched for a bit, gave me her card, and two months later I had a wall. Pure accident, zero strategy. What about you guys? What's the weirdest way a gallery connection ever happened for you? I want the stories that don't fit the "I emailed, they said yes" template.

Was out sketching near Ulsoor Lake this morning and the way the light hit those old houses near the market… it was just golden. Made me think about how much of what I try to capture is just about that fleeting light, you know? The same crumbling wall looks entirely different at 8 AM versus 3 PM. It’s a race sometimes, trying to get it down before it shifts. Does anyone else feel that intensely about the light where they are?

A friend from the old logistics job, someone I genuinely like, asked me to make her something for her mother's 70th. Something small. She said she'd pay for materials. So I did. Torn paper and a wash over a photo of her mum's old house on Rua do Almada before they knocked it down. I framed it. And when I handed it over I said no charge for the work part, because it was for her mum and because I'm an idiot. Turns out that was 40 hours. Not 40 hours of pure magic either. 40 hours of me redoing the roof line because the paper kept lifting, and driving to the framer twice because they cut the mount wrong. She gave me 60 for the materials. Materials were 90. I didn't say anything and I'm still thinking about it a month later, not because of 30 euros. Because she'll tell people she got it for free and now the next person assumes that's the price. Anyway. I'm not writing this to be told I'm too soft. I know. I'm writing it because I finally worked out my rule and it's late: materials up front, and the labour is a gift only if I'm the one who chose to give it. If I offered it out of guilt on the doorstep that's not a gift, that's me avoiding an awkward minute. No idea how to walk the 30 euros back with her though.