Voyaging to Innocence: The February Edition
'A Nation from Scratch' : Raju Tai | Charanya Ramakrishnan
After the January edition of “Voyaging to Innocence”, I share with you today the second in the series of digital prints featuring artists’ interpretations of 12 different poems by Indian poets (released in monthly editions). This project is conceived as an anthology of digital wallpapers for desktops/laptops combining poetry and visual art.
The poem and artwork for the month of February revolve around a subject that is inevitably contemporary, and yet, a matter of personal negotiation. The poem by Raju Tai manages to achieve a surreal intimacy with a deeply political thematic without it appearing impersonal and synthetic. The poem’s vision is innocent without being naive, and hopeful without being unrealistic. As events in the national sphere unfold in the hyperreal and semantic realm, reading this honest, familiar musing on the nature of nationhood made me question, once again, the narrative that has come to define our living.
Adorno pointed out the impossibility of creating and setting up a “private life” within the larger political catastrophes that plague modern societies - “There is no true life within a false life”. But Raju Tai’s poem imagines a nation from scratch that is built on trust and dream, where even the smallest of connections and objects acquire value. The real meaning of community emerges from the simmering gentleness of her words.
Charanya’s artwork is a collage that scratches out comradeship and meaning from fragments of maps, news and everyday things. The raw aesthetic and the deliberate wishful abstraction in the collage make it an organic union of word and image. I embrace this vision of a country where “Tea Temples simmer with ginger” & “Sighs are national anthems”. I yearn with the poet and the artist for this heartfelt imagination of a community that is inclusive, and devoid of jingoistic bombast.
I hope this labour of love finds a home in your desktop screens!
Click on the image to properly view, download, and set it as your wallpaper.
You can also use this link to view and download the wallpapers to set as your desktop background.
Raju Tai can be followed here
Charanya Ramakrishnan can be followed here.
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