During my stay in Bombay I had a skype conversation with Julienne Dolphin Wilding, an artist now based in Barcelona, and a human being of rare integrity and good sense. I was telling her about my plans for the Open Studio exhibition at the end of the residency, which involved creating a hellish cacophony out of sampled hooting and beeping, and painting “Inconvenience is Regretted” on the wall in huge letters, a sign that adorns the construction chaos that is Delhi’s roads, and whose passive aggressive quality seems to typify the relationship of Delhi’s citizens with one another.
Julienne suggested that rather than replicating the mess and frustration, perhaps I should consider an antidote to it. At the time, I baulked at the idea, feeling that honest anger was a valid response. Perhaps it was, but I’d been bothered by a feeling that somehow this wasn’t my own work, having no connection to more longstanding concerns. Her comments stewed in my subconscious along with a dense mishmash of ideas about Cosmic Relativity, and a couple of days later I enjoyed a bout of lucidity in which a new plan for the Open Studio was revealed. Perhaps being away from Delhi also allowed me to see the endlessly perpetuated cycle of anger in which I, along with many of its inhabitants, was trapped. I realised that I could feel compassion for the victims of this hideous, dystopian experiment instead, and that working from this position felt much better.
I’m aware that my Buddhist credentials leave a lot to be desired, if I can’t achieve that realisation while immersed in the pain and ignorance, but I’m trying to be more forgiving with myself as well. Curiously, since returning to Delhi, I have been much less aware of being surrounded by anger. Perhaps I am simply becoming indifferent, but it seems more likely that a lot of it was the reflection of anger that I was carrying.
