bushahr times tiffinbox starts blogging!

Eyjafjallajökull :: © 2010 tiffinbox

Eyjafjallajökull’s nearest active neighbours are Katla, to the northeast, and Eldfell, to the southwest. Hence they are considered the mom and the doctor in this representation of how when you are sick, and you try to speak while you puke, you can pretty much expect your name to be miss-spelt. Perhaps Eyjafjallajökull’s real name is Jake or Kaju or Jaku and while he spoke, he just spilt a few extra letters.

This is a somewhat delayed but humorous look at the Eyjafjallajökull eruptions that created some news. But, yeah, we are lazy.

Bizzare thought – Sriparna Ghosh    |    Illustration – Rohit Chaudhary

The cherry bowl :: © 2010 Sriparna Ghosh

-

Triund :: © 2010 Rohit Chaudhary

Triund is like a Friday night. You can very well see what is ahead and you know what you have just left behind. The tingling of a cool weekend to look forward to and the madding week left behind. We all know what that feels like. And Triund feels just like that.

(more…)

After a marathon horror movie watching weekend, I think I am on the edge of my own screenplay. Not that it seems difficult. Don’t get me wrong. I have been a horror/zombie/slasher movie junkie since cable TV happened.

I flip through TV time shift, only to stop on promising movie names which might sound like Hell and Below, Secluded island, Don’t look back, Don’t look back twice, Watchers (or weight watchers… or return of the killer weighing machines), anything with Lindsay Lohan or Diane Keaton in it. Or no. Wait. Just Lindsay Lohan.

But I digress. Just like romance films and their annoying little happy endings, horror movies have their own clichés. Here is a rough primer on how to write your own:

1. The hero’s family/girlfriend/children will never believe the existence of the zombies/ghosts/vengeful souls. Doesn’t matter if neighbours and pets are mysteriously turning up butchered in your bathroom or your doorstep, the family always says, “Honey, I think you need some help.” This is usually before the ghost literally slaps the daylights out of the girlfriend.

2. Pets always die first. Or the chesty neighbor.

3. Basements and attics are playpens of the evil. The first few scenes will have someone creep up the creaking stairs. The hallway bulb flickers and fades. Hand moves to turn a bright, shiny knob. Knob turns painfully slowly. “Michael! Where are you,” says chirpy voice from downstairs. “Be right down, honey!” Leaves door closed but turns back once to look at it.

4. The hero/heroine will always do one Google search. Or a trip down to the nearest newspaper archives to search for a 50-year-old murder case.

5. During the search, the local Sherriff will say, “Trust me sir, you should stay away from this. Nothing good will come out of this.”

6. Children will always sleep alone. Even if daggers are mysteriously flying out of drawers, neighbors are dying, basement doors are banging, kids need their nightmares.

7. The ghost always befriends/possesses the youngest member of the family first.

8. Rain on climax night. Always.

the wwf seals :: © 2010 Sriparna Ghosh

So, those (in the title) are the animal sounds made by each in the picture above. My favourite is the “wha”, which is made by the Red Panda.

These animals were drawn as seals for the WWF-India panda calling website. The intention was them to form the indentifying elements for the various partnership plans as mentioned on their site, and also appear on the various merchandise which is handed over to the partners.  Since this website spent a lot of time in making, a lot of decisions were changed midway, and hence these innocent animals were rejected of a place on the website. Well if it is of any consolation, their smiles did win some hearts , but their sounds went in vain.

So, in order that this post is of a bit more consequence than just showing some rejected work, here is a list of animal sounds that might come handy at  some point in your life.

Grrrrr. Now buzz off.

-One person from each house in our neighbourhood gets up early to keep the garbage out. So the trash is just kept out, without any knowledge of it’s journey henceforth. Cause who cares where your pencil shavings go and how. Who cares where your tea bags vanish once you are done with your tea.

But lives of some people around us, do depend on the garbage we dont care about. Their job is to collect, sort and dispatch garbage. For them the wheelbarrows with identification numbers painted on them are like their briefcases. And like once in a while, we like to change the things we carry and change the way we look, these carts are given a fresh coat of paint, and gleaming numbers.

While they bask in the sun on this very bright day, it does bring a cheer looking at these carts waiting to dry. Well, they didnt say “yellow yellow dirty fellow” for no reason.

the dirty fellows :: © 2010 Sriparna Ghosh

The agenda

A group of 5 people set out to experience the desolate topography of North Sikkim. High on list is visiting the blue waters of Gurudongmar Lake, driving through the uninhabited Yumthang valley, and chilling under the winter sun at Lachen and Lachung, two main villages of North Sikkim. If the word count of the narrative below puts you off, maybe you could skip it and instead have a look at the pictures from this trip. Here is the flickr link.

Day 1

We are in New Jalpaiguri (NJP). Our train kept its promise with the official arrival time, 1100 hrs. We set out for the taxi stand in anticipation of reaching Gangtok early. It is the 29^th of December and yet it’s pleasant outside. We have the company of a Gangtok resident, who suggested we group up, to reduce the taxi fare. We were happy to oblige as she knows the language and is happy to do the negotiations. But things aren’t meant to be this easy. First, we learn about a bandh (for a separate state of Gorkhaland) from 12 to 5 pm, during which taxis won’t hit the roads. Instead of taking a taxi from NJP station, the local lady thought it would be wise to get one from Siliguri (half hour drive from NJP station), which has a bigger taxi stand. So, we set out for Siliguri (Rs 300 for an entire taxi). A good one hour ticks by in negotiating the price. Rs. 1800 is fixed for the front 2 rows of a Mahindra Maxx Jeep. And by the time our driver finds 4 more passengers for the last row, it’s already 2 ‘o clock. Once we are on the road, eventually, our driver tells us about the presence of middlemen (dalal) in Siliguri and NJP, who take their share from the drivers for getting passengers. Rs 600 from our fare went to the dalal’s pocket. And for some mysterious reason, which forces us to believe that maybe he too is a part of it all, the driver asks us to lie to anyone who comes asking about the fare; Rs. 140 (per person, for a total of 10 people) is what we have to ‘officially’ tell any inquirers. (more…)

It should be safe to say that we at tiffinbox will have our first official visiting card in a weeks time. More important is the fact that this happens to be our 3rd year of operation. But this definitely doesnt mean that we didnt have any cards for the last 2 years. We did. Those printed at dear old Nehru Place, on completely normal paper, looking completely ordinary. But somehow people did get impressed, and that led to our laziness in getting proper ones. Also, during the few spells in between when we werent lazy, we were broke.

Magically, 2010 has started on a good note, showering us with some increase in wealth and also appropriate proactivity. We wanted to continue with the way our last cards were (due to the oft. recieved compliments ) and decided to have 4 different designs on the back of the card, with snippets from our work. The front side is common for both of us (we like conserving paper).

We are also lovers of screen printing, for reasons more than one. It adds texture. It smells amazing. It is also cheaper than offset when printed in low numbers (anything less than a 1000 pieces which is a lot for a small firm like ours). We would also like to argue that it is more environmentally friendly (we have an environment reporter trying to figure our the truth… updates soon).

But it entails certain low points as well. Like, we are bound by the number of colours we can use. It is recommended that each face not have more than 3-4 colours at the max. We cant print gradients or bitmap images. In case we want plenty of colours, then it is both complicated (for us and the printer) and risky (the printer is human after all).

So, as opposed to a single file one would need to send to their offset printer, this is what we had to provide to our screen printer.

© 2010 tiffinbox

The colours each of these 7 screens will be printed in is shown on their sides. And by the end of it all, we expect our card to look like the one on top.

There are 3 other designs, none of which are as complicated as this one. Those will not be posted online, and we wait for you to meet us if you really want to see them, and the end result of this

Cards are being printed on Karess Springo Sandgrain White paper (300 gsm).

A Horse wrapped Zebra :: © 2009 Sriparna Ghosh

A Horse wrapped Zebra.

I consider Zebras to be graphically spectacular creatures.  To me a zebra is a horse wrapped with a ribbon.

So when I started making this illustration, a problem came about when I had to choose a color, for both the horse and the ribbon to wrap it in. There was no clear word on whether the stripes are black or white. Hence there was no way to decide the colour of the horse in question.

So, my Hobra here has both.

Initially, the theme for this illustration was to be ambiguous about the colours, as it is not clear here whether this animal has white stripes or black. But later on after some more research I came about this following information on Wikipedia which clearly states that the stripes are in fact white.

{It was previously believed that zebras were white animals with black stripes since some zebras have white underbellies. However embryological evidence shows that the animal’s background color is dark and the white stripes and bellies are additions.}

This artwork was made as a submission to the weekly illustration challenge at illustration friday