The revelation and the pivot. Interesting times indeed!
For more than a decade, my world has been shaped by words. They have been my way of understanding, of questioning, of holding together the fragments of experience that did not always make sense. Poetry has become both language and refuge, a place where thought could soften into feeling, and feeling could find form.
And then, almost unexpectedly, the words began to pause.
Not disappear, not fade, but pause. As if they had said what they needed to say for that moment, I often wonder!
And then in that pause, something else began to move.
Lines – The glorious, infinite, and searching for meaning marks of Time. The wielder of the weight of words, the back-breaking and mind-bending, looping meanings of life and existence.
At first hesitant, almost unsure of themselves, like me. When I reflect back, there was a certain dissociation and then a connection. Slowly, with a kind of quiet insistence, they began to take shape. What I could not articulate in sentences started to emerge through strokes, curves, and unfinished forms. It felt less like I was creating and more like something within me was finding another way to speak. The silence got louder, and one was forced to take a look at the lonesome inner churning.
The lines did not ask for structure. They did not ask for clarity. They simply continued. Yes, made way and also gave way for inner chaos to unfold.
And in continuing, they began to form stories.
Stories that did not rely on grammar or definition, but on instinct, emotion, and the movement of life and the way I moved through it. Stories that unfolded in fragments, much like thoughts do before they become language. Each sketch became a moment of translation from the internal to the visible, from the felt to the seen and the heard.
This shift has not been a departure from writing, but an extension of it. A very visible extension and a deeply felt one. A restless energy that does not want to be subdued or misunderstood ever again.
A pivot.
A quiet crossing into another dimension of expression.
Where once I searched for the right word, I now follow the flow of a line. Where meaning once arrived through wordy reflection, it now often arrives through form, through space, through what is left unsaid even in the image.
It is a different kind of listening. And unlistening to untruths and facades to keep up with.
A different kind of knowing. And unknowing of the limitations that shackle the feet and mind in life’s crisscrossing paths.
This crossroads has opened new perspectives, ways of seeing that are less defined, yet more wonderfully expansive. It has led me to reconsider what expression truly means and that creativity does not belong to one medium but moves fluidly between them, choosing its own path. Much like a river unleashed and breaking its banks in the search for freedom.
In many ways, this journey into sketching feels like a return. A return to the inner knowing, the expansive space inside oneself, the cosmos we carry and the infinite potential in it.
A return to something instinctive, something unfiltered. A return to the self, before it learns to explain itself.
There is a quiet strength in this unfolding. Unbridled, untamed and held close.
A blossoming that does not demand attention, yet holds its own presence. Through these lines and forms, I am rediscovering purpose, not as something fixed or declared, but as something that reveals itself gradually, through practice, patience, and trust in myself.
The words are still here. They have not left.
They are simply resting, watching, and waiting. Quiet sentinels of Time, my companions who have changed form and are alongside me.
And in their place, the lines continue, sketching themselves into stories, into art, into a new way of becoming.
I have added a few sketches for reference and will be adding more as the journey continues.
In consonance and resonance with the lines,
yours truly,
Komal Gupta
