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I painted this old house on Wheeler Road maybe three weeks back. One of those 60s bungalows, the kind with the deep verandah and the latticed jali bricks above the door. Sat on the footpath across the road for an hour, the owner's son came out and asked if I was doing it for a project. I said no, just because it's beautiful. He said, "Oh. We're demolishing it next month." Went past today while running an errand. The chajja is already gone. The jali bricks are in a pile by the gate. It took them a week. I have the painting. That's something. But it's sitting in my studio and I keep looking at it and thinking I got the proportions of that verandah slightly wrong, and now there's no building left to go check against. So it just stays wrong forever. That's the part that's bothering me more than the demolition, honestly. That I'll never know if it was my eye or the light. Do other people here live with that? The painting becoming the only record, and no way to verify it?

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. 🙂

There's this old bungalow on Nandi Durga Road, one of those Art Deco ones with the curved verandah and the beautiful terrible paint job, salmon pink over original white, peeling everywhere. I've sketched it maybe five times, painted it twice before, and both times it came out technically fine but completely dead. No life in it. Like a photograph but worse. Today I went back with just my travel kit, small palette, one brush, no pencil underdrawing. Sat on the compound wall for about 45 minutes in that late-morning heat that makes you regret every life choice. And something just… unlocked. I let the watercolour bleed into the sketchy ink lines. Didn't try to fix the wonky bits. Left the verandah half-raw. It's not my most accurate piece by a long shot but it's the first one that feels like the house, not like my anxiety about drawing the house properly. Anyway I'm still riding that high. Chai and Marie biscuits kind of celebration tonight. 🙏

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.

Small win but it's been sitting with me. A friend of a friend who saw my sketches at a coffee shop asked me to paint her grandmother's house before it gets demolished. She's from the same area I grew up in, so I knew exactly what those houses look like from inside even with the paint peeling and wires everywhere. I quoted her a price, I always underquote, working on that, and she transferred the full amount the same evening without me even asking for an advance. Half the time I chase people for months after they say they'll buy. This lady just paid and said take your time, no rush. I delivered it yesterday and she cried. Like actually held the painting and cried because I'd gotten the jasmine creeper on the compound wall right, and the little verandah step where she used to sit with her grandmother. She said I should charge more. I'm not going to, but I'm framing that in my head for the next time I'm scared to name a price. Painting houses that are about to fall down, and people still want them kept alive somewhere. That's the whole thing na. Made my week.

There's this old bungalow on Convent Road, the kind with a deep verandah and blue trim and a neem tree that must be a hundred years old. I sketched it first in 2021, just passing by. Did a proper watercolour in 2022. Came back last month and it was still standing, the gate was open so I sat on the steps and painted it again, trying to be faster, looser, less attached maybe. It's gone now. I walked past yesterday and it's just rubble and a JCB parked on top of it. I don't know why I'm posting this in wins except, I caught it three times. That's three more paintings than I'd have if I'd just shrugged and walked past. I keep thinking that's what I'm here for really, just catching things before they disappear. It's not sad exactly. It's what I do.

Was sketching this old Raj-era guesthouse off MG Road last week, the one they're pulling down next month. Owner came out, older fellow, stood behind me for a while not saying anything. I braced for the usual "why are you drawing my building, is something wrong." Instead he said, "Take your time. Take two hours. I'll get you chai." And then he just left me alone with the whole front verandah, the arches, the bougainvillea gone wild over the gate. Two hours of no one asking anything of me. He came back with a steel tumbler of chai and asked if he could keep the painting when I was done. I said I'd frame it for him. He got a bit quiet. "My grandfather built that place," he said. "Nobody's asked me a single question about it in forty years." Finished it yesterday and walked it over. He wasn't there, his daughter took it, said she'd hang it in the hall. I don't know why that's stuck with me more than any sale. Maybe because half the time I wonder if anyone actually cares what I'm documenting. Turns out the ones who lived it do. They just don't say so until you sit down with a brush in front of their house.

Yesterday one man came to my house, his daughter is 14, she has been learning with me on Sundays since four months. She is good, ji, very steady hand, better than many boys who come and go. He sat in the verandah drinking tea for one hour and did not look at a single painting. Then he asked what scope is there in this work. I did not have proper answer. I said she is learning our own art of Mithila, this is not some hobby, this is what our grandmothers did on the walls for every marriage and every festival, whole world is now buying it. He nodded in that way people nod when they have already decided. Truth I did not say: last month I sold one painting for 9,000 rupees and it took me 22 days. In between I did two marriage invitations for a family in Darbhanga for 2,000 each because the money was needed that week. Her father is not a fool. He has seen my house. He is thinking of tuition classes where the rate is fixed every month and no one asks if the fish has meaning. She will come next Sunday, I think. She wants to. But I am also knowing that one more Sunday and he may stop her. We talk about reviving the art, saving the art. Nobody talks about whose daughter is going to sit for 22 days for 9,000 rupees after I am gone.

There's this old bungalow off Millers Road, the kind with the deep verandah and those green wooden shutters that still shut properly. It's coming down next week for another apartment block. I knew that before I sat down to sketch it, and I still spent two hours on it this morning, then came home and started a watercolour from the sketch because the sketch alone wasn't enough. I keep telling myself it's just practice. Perspective, foliage, that particular way bougainvillea sits against a lime-washed wall. But it's not practice, is it. It's the same reason I took photos of my grandmother's house before they sold it and I've never looked at them a second time but I can't bring myself to delete them either. The funny part is the occupant came out and watched me for a while. Old gentleman, probably lived there fifty years. He didn't say anything, just nodded at the end and went back inside. I don't know if he was pleased or annoyed or just tired. Maybe all three. I'll finish the painting this week. It feels important that it exists before the house doesn't.

Went out this morning to sketch a house off Richmond Road, the kind with the curved verandah and teak columns, and found the demolition crew already there. Roof off, most of the back wall down. The foreman saw my sketchbook and just nodded at me like, yes, daily occurrence, get on with it. So I sat across the road and drew what was left. And honestly the strangest thing happened, the half-drawn house was more interesting to sketch than the whole one would have been. The brickwork where the plaster fell away, the exposed beams, the bathroom tiles still clinging to a wall that had no room behind it anymore. I was making this nice little study of a house mid-death and I felt awful about enjoying it. I looked up the property card later. 1948. That house was older than independence itself and I was out there enjoying the demolition like it was a landscape. I don't know what to do with this feeling. I'm glad I drew it. I also hate that I drew it. Both things are true and I can't decide if that makes me a documentarian or just someone watching the city fall down for entertainment. Anyway. Two studies done, both half-hearted and honestly better for it. Might pin them up side by side and see what the week makes of them.

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.