Beliefs 02: Such A Lonely Word

Here we are, months from the previous post, and I make my unawaited comeback with another serious (yawn!) post on my beliefs!

Some background: An abridged version of Abraham Lincoln's biography that I read when I was very young had a profound impact on my appreciation for honesty. Though it isn't a quality always respected in society, especially here in India, it is closely linked to integrity, which is. Another early push in this direction was an incident where I joked about a particular uncle lying about something, and his nieces immediately said "He never lies". I think he was brought up in some ashram that way, but the point is, that kind of trust in another person's honesty blew me away. I made a mental note that I'd be a "He never lies" kind of man myself.

This doesn't mean I was a Mahatma Gandhi from a tender age; I lied when it was easier to do so (though not much) for more than a decade after these events, but eventually came round to the 100% honesty track. The quality is most often tested when an opinion is asked for, or an admission is to be made - an understanding set of friends and family helps in the initial stages of this. My modified approach is to speak only when required, to minimise situations where I get into trouble for telling the truth. Trust me (ha ha), honest people are feared and disliked often, which flies directly in the face of my occasional regular need for attention and to be liked adored. I balance this by sometimes shamelessly self-promoting the fact that I never lie; since it's the truth, I don't feel so bad about it. 

There are perks - respect, trust, and the potential to get away with blatant large LIES at some point (not that I will). The only failures so far are time-related - usually accepting a deadline and grossly missing it - there's still work to be done. I'll get back to you on that in a week.

Like any other belief, there is no rational basis for full honesty; the choice is an invitation for more struggle than one would otherwise need to face. Even so, I think I am far more committed to this than in minimising cruelty - a not-so-comforting statement about my preference for fact over feelings. Like the previous post on vegetarianism, sharing my personal code is partly an attempt to win people over to my point of view, since most of my beliefs survive better in a climate of agreement.

Don't worry, there aren't many more, I swear.

Uncanny! Strikes Back

If you've been following the news in India this past year, you'd get a sense that there seems to be a lot of anger in the air. This reminds me of a certain Dr.Banner. 

When things don't go his way, he gets angry. And you wouldn't like him when he's angry; he transforms from a normal individual into a large, angry, violent mass. At this point, reasoning with him is useless, you'd better just get out of the way until things cool down.

Did I mention he gets bigger the angrier he gets?

This affliction started when he was exposed to a dangerous sort of chemical radiation (vitriol?). After the initial exposure, it doesn't take much to initiate the transformation again.

Maybe it WAS something on the radio

As you can see, there is no specific colour for Dr.Banner's alter ego - saffron, green, blue, anything is possible. His education and profession are immaterial as well. 

Unfortunately, even when things do go his way, he is still, as his name suggests, a banner. You can't win with this guy. 

Hulk is the strongest one there is.

Comic Stripper 06: Water Cartoon! Show

The latest comic competition held by IDC in Mumbai as part of their conference on sustainability with a "focus on water" led to these two. If you've been following the Comic Stripper series (here, here, here, here and here), you'll know that I try out a style and then forget about the meaning I was trying to convey, stubbornly sticking to the final product even if it doesn't make much sense. 
The simple storyline of a fish throwing garbage out of the water as revenge for humans polluting the oceans is lost to anyone who sees this Japan-influenced single panel entry:

Of course, the irony of chewing synthetic gum is lost on that fish

Anyway, this was my second entry, the first one was a simpler attempt at a paper cut-out look, using stock cowboy vectors and a lazy punchline:

I would have used the word "shit" instead of "stuff" if I had my way

Notes:

• Do
• Re
• Mi (couldn't resist)
• The second comic (which has been shown here first, just to make things dramatic difficult) was more of a forced attempt to make at least one more idea. Since it didn't come naturally, I felt the need to "dress it up", of course, further obscuring the joke. Ah well.
• The first one was the result of some day dreaming, like the more random one-joke strips of Calvin and Hobbes that I enjoy. I trust those kind of ideas instinctively, and don't bother as much about the finish. As much.
• I also broke out of monochrome, with no idea how, so I lifted the whole colour palette and patterning of the Japanese-style one from a simple Google search, but I don't think some dead guy from 100 years ago would mind. The skin tone and expression on the woman's face was directly inspired from this image of Chitrangada Singh, since I felt an Indian character would be more relevant to a competition held in Mumbai. Plus, it's Chitrangada Singh.

Anyway, to balance all this self-deprecation, both comics were selected among a group of other finalists (=they won!), and will be exhibited at the conference and published. Details of that here.

Beliefs 01: Not Pleased to Meat You

This blog doesn't see many serious posts, but then again, I take my humour seriously as well. I don't know how successful I'll be, but I've been wanting to write about belief systems, and mine in particular, as they are the irrational underpinnings to even the most rational person, and it's important to acknowledge them. This is the first of (hopefully) more to come:
While I still believe that "Life feeds on Life", and it is in the natural order of things for humans to be omnivorous, I find it hard to accept the cruel and inhuman (irony) ways in which animals are treated before they become meat.
With this mindset, I began quitting meat as a first step to do what I thought was ethical. Since June 2014, every three months, I quit one animal's meat; as of March 1, I do not eat chicken, pork and beef. By June 2015 I will stop eating mutton and lamb, following which I will be a piscetarian (seafood eater). While I may be uninformed, I believe the fish I eat lives a free and unhindered life in the sea/river right until its capture and death, which is the most you can hope for if you're going to be eaten. With a Coorg cultural background of intense non-vegetarianism, I felt three months per meat was a reasonable time to reconcile with this major change in my diet (also, a nice round figure of one year to achieve my aims).
I don't believe my attempt is the most ethical or absolute, but it's part of a sincere attempt to minimise the distance between what I know to be right and what I am doing about it. Since the underlying rationale in this change of diet was the opposition to the cruelty and lack of dignity of animals before their death, an interesting corollary is that I would still eat the meat of animal that I knew was not mistreated in its lifetime, meaning I am not becoming vegetarian. Of course, the more I know an animal in its lifetime, the less inclined I am to eat it (I don't know if the same goes for most people). The ethical questions of the egg and dairy industry remain (among others), but those'll be answered sooner or later ("Sooner!" cried Cow, until she was turned into a pair of shoes).
While this post is no attempt to adopt a holier-than-thou attitude, it is part of a larger realisation that it isn't enough to evolve and experiment with a rational and moral code for myself without letting everyone else also in on it as a viable alternative. While there may be a selfish motive behind it of creating a world I find more comfortable living in, I hope that in this case, most people would agree that a world with less cruelty and more respect for other species (and our own) would be more comfortable for everyone to live in.

Old School

A recent offer to illustrate a magazine article for a friend's submission allowed me to expand on my favourite black-and-white lineless Sin-City-ish style. The illustrations of nostalgic objects from architecture college life were too low-detail for only black and white, and I naturally rebelled against adding lines to increase the complexity. Rather than add another solid colour, I decided to add a pattern, preferably one with a relation to the object being illustrated. In keeping with the nostalgic feel, I also deliberately misaligned the fills by a small amount like the human error in old prints (telling you that was the main reason for this post).

Each image had a 'state change', sort of like a before/after image which would alternate with a mouseclick in the digital version. The other images are in this folder, along with other graphic artwork.