We've stumbled upon a pretty unusually looking social advertising poster in Moscow - here is its part that impressed us quite a lot.
It's Agni, right?
Thursday, November 1, 2012
Sunday, September 23, 2012
Brad Pitt finds Varanasi ...extraordinary
What would you expect of Brad Pitt to say about Varanasi?
Yes, he said exactly that thing in a recent interview published by dnaindia.com:
"I found Varanasi absolutely staggering. I have never seen anything like it before. The city just spills into the river Ganges. It’s a holy place where people go to die. It’s really, really extraordinary!"
Very eloquent :)
Yes, he said exactly that thing in a recent interview published by dnaindia.com:
"I found Varanasi absolutely staggering. I have never seen anything like it before. The city just spills into the river Ganges. It’s a holy place where people go to die. It’s really, really extraordinary!"
Very eloquent :)
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Details on drawing the wall
The details, photos and short video footage on how we draw our wall in Varanasi.
Though it was Artyom's first trip to India, and the first abroad, I was pretty sure, that it would be alright, and in fact it was.
Of course, it was not fast. First we needed to find Mr Mishtra, the owner of the building on the Central Ghat. We have agreed about the painting 6 months before, but I was not sure he remembered. After all, we were just another tourists in the army of them coming to Varanasi every day. So we called Shylesh, who knew all the answers in the world, and he confirmed, that our arrangement was alive and kicking. And so here we are, approaching Mr Mishtra after the evening Aarti at Dasashwamedh ghat
and here we are at his house, right next to the wall, which will soon be ours.
Actually, Mr. Mishtra had only one question - what do we want from him. We needed only his permission, which he gave us willingly and warned us to keep an eye on our belongings - the monkeys were very keen to grab and run with something valuable. And he also instructed his assistants to provide us with everything we needed for our creative assignment.
The assistants gave us the ladder, which, we were lucky again, was lying seemingly abandoned like the local cows right in front of the wall. So we finished the first goals successfully and moved out to look for Pintu, the Varanasi graffiti maker, who had drawn our announcements on the ghats last spring.
We were lucky again, Pintu also was not hard to find. Quite predictably we had to spend around 10 minutes explaining to his friends that we wanted to see him, and then we waited for half an hour in the small shop, that his friends held - it was not our first trip to Varanasi and we knew very well, that the core principle here is never to hurry.
Soon Pintu arrived, and though at first he was puzzled to see Europeans waiting for him, he remembered me and smiled broadly. His friends helped us to make him understand, what we wanted this time - naturally Pintu was not committed to mastering English, not many foreigners want to make a graffiti in Varanasi.
Then we took our time to relax, walked down the ghats to explore local graffiti. There we were surprised to see some really good work - like Space Invader's marks. We will write about that later.
Next day we waited for Pintu at the set time, though in Varanasi nothing is really set, if you know what I mean. Those formalities like being punctual are really evasive there. So Pintu arrived with his team and started painting quite fast, with monkeys jogging up and down the roofs.
Artyom considered the ladder for a while and we decided that it was not meant for foreigners to climb as high as some 5th floor. So we decided to let the guys do the preliminary draft.
Pintu's team was really fast and in less then an hour they have made the base for the drawing with a scrub brush, which we use for cleaning bathrooms in Russia. The rolls? Yes, they know about the rolls, but the brushes are fare more handy )
The priming coat of paint was white, and Artom also took the brush to paint the bottom of the wall, but looking at how the Varanasi graffiti pros worked, we concluded that the paint, that Artyom spent on a couple of square meters would have been enough for Indian artists a couple of walls like that.
The we made the draft drawing. And we were again surprised how Indians made the long straight lines - with a string and chalk. This ancient method was mentioned in books that I read about Indian paintings, from 18th century.
And here you can see how to make a perfect cirle. Well, almost perfect )
Artyom had pieces of cardboard and a sophisticated pencil, which in turn surprised Pintu.
What the..?
Artyom made the M letter himself, because Pintu certainly had no idea about the proportions of Moscow subway logo ) And we climbed another ladder - much more short one, which didn't look that scary.
In one Russian cartoon was a very wise observation - if you stay put, everyone, who you want to meet, will pass somewhere near you. This is exactly right for Varanasi - instead of moving in circles around the city you'd better just sit down and relax. If you can do that, you will be able to meet a load of most interesting people. I will make a post about all of them a bit later.
So we were painting and painting, and the life on the ghats just moved on..
By the evening the wall was ready by some 80 percent
And we celebrated this in Fuji Ganga restaurant, marking our stay there with a drawing on its wall also.
The next day
Now it's finished!
We didn't waste all our pain on the wall thoug.
Stay put, we have more stories about our stay in Varanasi!
Though it was Artyom's first trip to India, and the first abroad, I was pretty sure, that it would be alright, and in fact it was.
Of course, it was not fast. First we needed to find Mr Mishtra, the owner of the building on the Central Ghat. We have agreed about the painting 6 months before, but I was not sure he remembered. After all, we were just another tourists in the army of them coming to Varanasi every day. So we called Shylesh, who knew all the answers in the world, and he confirmed, that our arrangement was alive and kicking. And so here we are, approaching Mr Mishtra after the evening Aarti at Dasashwamedh ghat
and here we are at his house, right next to the wall, which will soon be ours.
Actually, Mr. Mishtra had only one question - what do we want from him. We needed only his permission, which he gave us willingly and warned us to keep an eye on our belongings - the monkeys were very keen to grab and run with something valuable. And he also instructed his assistants to provide us with everything we needed for our creative assignment.
The assistants gave us the ladder, which, we were lucky again, was lying seemingly abandoned like the local cows right in front of the wall. So we finished the first goals successfully and moved out to look for Pintu, the Varanasi graffiti maker, who had drawn our announcements on the ghats last spring.
We were lucky again, Pintu also was not hard to find. Quite predictably we had to spend around 10 minutes explaining to his friends that we wanted to see him, and then we waited for half an hour in the small shop, that his friends held - it was not our first trip to Varanasi and we knew very well, that the core principle here is never to hurry.
Soon Pintu arrived, and though at first he was puzzled to see Europeans waiting for him, he remembered me and smiled broadly. His friends helped us to make him understand, what we wanted this time - naturally Pintu was not committed to mastering English, not many foreigners want to make a graffiti in Varanasi.
Then we took our time to relax, walked down the ghats to explore local graffiti. There we were surprised to see some really good work - like Space Invader's marks. We will write about that later.
Next day we waited for Pintu at the set time, though in Varanasi nothing is really set, if you know what I mean. Those formalities like being punctual are really evasive there. So Pintu arrived with his team and started painting quite fast, with monkeys jogging up and down the roofs.
Artyom considered the ladder for a while and we decided that it was not meant for foreigners to climb as high as some 5th floor. So we decided to let the guys do the preliminary draft.
Pintu's team was really fast and in less then an hour they have made the base for the drawing with a scrub brush, which we use for cleaning bathrooms in Russia. The rolls? Yes, they know about the rolls, but the brushes are fare more handy )
The priming coat of paint was white, and Artom also took the brush to paint the bottom of the wall, but looking at how the Varanasi graffiti pros worked, we concluded that the paint, that Artyom spent on a couple of square meters would have been enough for Indian artists a couple of walls like that.
The we made the draft drawing. And we were again surprised how Indians made the long straight lines - with a string and chalk. This ancient method was mentioned in books that I read about Indian paintings, from 18th century.
And here you can see how to make a perfect cirle. Well, almost perfect )
Artyom had pieces of cardboard and a sophisticated pencil, which in turn surprised Pintu.
What the..?
Artyom made the M letter himself, because Pintu certainly had no idea about the proportions of Moscow subway logo ) And we climbed another ladder - much more short one, which didn't look that scary.
In one Russian cartoon was a very wise observation - if you stay put, everyone, who you want to meet, will pass somewhere near you. This is exactly right for Varanasi - instead of moving in circles around the city you'd better just sit down and relax. If you can do that, you will be able to meet a load of most interesting people. I will make a post about all of them a bit later.
So we were painting and painting, and the life on the ghats just moved on..
By the evening the wall was ready by some 80 percent
And we celebrated this in Fuji Ganga restaurant, marking our stay there with a drawing on its wall also.
The next day
Now it's finished!
We didn't waste all our pain on the wall thoug.
Stay put, we have more stories about our stay in Varanasi!
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Three flights to Varanasi
So here we are in Moscow now, slowly sorting out the photos we made during our trip to Varanasi and writing posts on our stay there. Here's the first one, how we got there in the first place.
The road to Varanasi started from Moscow Domodedovo airport and through Doha - by Qatar Airways. First we have booked the seats online beforehand and printed out the boarding passes.
Then we were perplexed to see a strange Terminator-like metal structure in the illuminator - it was spraying our plane with some de-icing chemicals.
Qatar Airways boasts a cool back-seat in-flight entertainment for every passenger with movies, soap operas, some basic games, news and a lot of other things that make you poke the seat, sometimes causing slight disturbance with the passenger seating in a row before you )
It also has a wide array of maps, showing the position of the airplane. Good for those, who need to keep up their geography studies.
And then we arrived to Doha airport. If Doha is not your final destination, and it is mostly so, you will have a yellow-colored ticket holder, and you will need to disembark from the bus, that takes you from your airplane, on the first stop.
Duty Free shop at Doha. A lot of really cool stuff at good prices - cashew nuts, Al Fakher and other brands of tobacco, alcohol, jewelry and toys.
Clear blue skies above Qatar
Yummy in-flight meal! I love this!
Our first thali in Varanasi. Crunching papad
Are you ready for street painting in the sacred city?
To be continued...
We would like to thank again our partners, Qatar Airways, and Moscow based Indian travel agency IMS-Service, and personally Inderaj for bringing us to India for this art project.
The road to Varanasi started from Moscow Domodedovo airport and through Doha - by Qatar Airways. First we have booked the seats online beforehand and printed out the boarding passes.
Then we were perplexed to see a strange Terminator-like metal structure in the illuminator - it was spraying our plane with some de-icing chemicals.
Qatar Airways boasts a cool back-seat in-flight entertainment for every passenger with movies, soap operas, some basic games, news and a lot of other things that make you poke the seat, sometimes causing slight disturbance with the passenger seating in a row before you )
It also has a wide array of maps, showing the position of the airplane. Good for those, who need to keep up their geography studies.
And then we arrived to Doha airport. If Doha is not your final destination, and it is mostly so, you will have a yellow-colored ticket holder, and you will need to disembark from the bus, that takes you from your airplane, on the first stop.
Duty Free shop at Doha. A lot of really cool stuff at good prices - cashew nuts, Al Fakher and other brands of tobacco, alcohol, jewelry and toys.
Clear blue skies above Qatar
Yummy in-flight meal! I love this!
Arriving to Delhi, fasten seatbelts!
We spent a couple of hours in Delhi waiting for the flights to Varanasi, which start departing around 10 am. Not that we could find any convenient place to rest inside the Delhi International airport, but it was quiet and clean, so we just settled in one of its comfortable cafes and whiled away the hours there. Actually, there is a launge to sleep in, but they charge ridiculously high - USD 100 for 3 hours of sleep. If you are on a budget and need a nap, just check in into your flight and pass all the security checks to find a spare and nice looking horizontal chairs, where you can surrender to sleep. Though I would not recommend doing that if there is no one to wake you up for the flight :)
On a flight to Varanasi
Hello, Varanasi!
Wait, it's a strangely familiar logo, this can't be real!
Checking in the Temple on Ganges hotel on Assi ghat
Are you ready for street painting in the sacred city?
To be continued...
We would like to thank again our partners, Qatar Airways, and Moscow based Indian travel agency IMS-Service, and personally Inderaj for bringing us to India for this art project.
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