BRIDGE 1
BEAUTY –
You are born a girl and you grow up to learn that your job is to look beautiful, what do you do? You try to look beautiful. Now beauty is subjective, my idea of beauty may not be yours but I guess this holds true for most women. Rishinandini is a girl who has grown up wanting to be beautiful, always. Be it the clothes, shoes, bags, anything, it had to be beautiful. Her ever evolving creative mind began to dream of creating this beauty she saw all around her. The fashion industry, the runway, the models, luxury brands allured her towards choosing her career. She doesn’t know how to stitch clothes, how to draw fashion illustrations, but this ardent dream of hers has seemingly blinded her. Like every human she has this ambition, this vision for her creativity and this hers.
FIRE –
Rajasthan, in India, is the land of kings and queens. Legend has it that the aristocrats or the Rajput clans from back there were divided into three lineages – Agni (fire), Surya (sun) and Chandra (moon). Rishinandini claims decent from Agni. She believed that her lineage was that force that gave strength to her family, strength to fight the wars that their ancestors once did which in her opinion isn’t any different from fighting the wars that the 21st century. This force has sustained her family, her family’s heritage, customs, traditions and lands. She felt like she owed her existence to it. In hindsight, she had always connected to the element fire. It is where everything began or at least she strongly believed it did. Ever just stared at fire and felt like its summing up your entire life within all its flames? Flames of memories, regrets, ambitions, all rising up into the air, eventually becoming cinders, its beautiful to watch. Then, that’s when they disappear and you come back to watching the flames below again. Every winters when her family would finally manage to gather in their hometown in Rajasthan, almost every night there would be garden parties and get-togethers out in the cold. Bonfires would be set up to comfort them all, help them survive the brutally cold air. And this is what brought her emotionally close to fire, sitting there amidst her reunited joyous clan, feeling complete for once. Yet she would be silent, observant, and nostalgic. As she stared at the fire, troubled by the thought that another year was nearing its end. Her memories ablaze.
BOUDDHA –
A cocktail is a funny thing. Mixture of spirits that don’t necessarily always gel together but with a pinch of salt, a dash of tonic water and maybe even some lemons if you please, there couldn’t be anything better. Such is Rishinandinis family. They’re a cocktail of Nepali and Indian cultures. The experiences we have as a child are always the ones that stick on. The older we get, the more we remember our fond memories from childhood. If one would ask Rishinandini to reflect on this, she would always pick memories from her time in Nepal. Her mother’s father, a very respectable man, had served as the Chief of the Nepal Army and was at that time private advisor to the monarch. If you could imagine the world to be Nepal, then the world was at their feet and Nepal was her private summer playground. Summer because she lived in India and vacation time was the only time she, her elder sister, younger brother, and nanny who was Nepali would get to go there. They would be the first ones to be escorted out of the airplane and below would be waiting their grandparents accompanied by their convoy. Running down the aluminum stairway the three kids would immediately hug them and pay their respects. To Rishinandinis grandfather, there was nothing in the world that was impossible, he had once driven a car all the way from Germany to Nepal. He had taught her how to be brave. But just like the sands of time, he slipped away from her life – the cause of his sudden death being cancer. After that, Nepal was never the same for her. The county is in the doldrums today and looking out of the airplane all she sees is broken homes placed on a devastated land. The cliché mural, that is the symbol of peace and serenity, on a renowned Buddhist stupa she’d see every now and then in Kathmandu saddens her today and compels her to ask, ‘what happened to the good days?’.
YIN-YANG –
What is life all about? We can never tell. Just like the Yin and the Yang, the good and the bad everything in life is circumstantial. The dark days of our lives are followed by the happy days of our lives and vice-versa, and so the cycle goes and life moves on. Rishinandini is an accumulation of such experiences. She’s been good, she’s been bad. She’s had bad days, months and even years as well as good ones. As a child she would see her parents fight almost every night over financial and family matters and now she sees them living peacefully in Switzerland and going to places on romantic vacations. She had experienced the warmth and passion of love as well as the cruel aftertaste of betrayal. She has lost her best friend forever and feels stupid about why she ever even gave in to her. She prides herself on all her successes in life and how there are so many that look up to her, so many lives she has been able to touch and make a difference to. If there’s anything that can describe what her life is all about in a nutshell, nothing could do it better than the Yin-Yang.
PEACOCK –
Rishinandini was an adventurous child. As a child she would love to wander off on her own especially in shopping arcades probably because her shopping list differed in many ways from her parents. She always enjoyed her independence. This ultimately led her to going to a boarding school in grade seven back in her home state Rajasthan. The bird peacock is mostly found in this region and has for centuries been associated with the royals belonging to the state. Undoubtedly the bird’s beauty is something one cannot fathom, one of nature’s priceless creation. Her boarding school’s emblem was a peacock standing upon a sword. The palatial school dates back to the 18th centaury and was originally for the Rajput princes. Hence, the imagery of a peacock and sword. Spending almost half her life there, the school practically brought her up, groomed her and became her family, her home. Her school wasn’t just any school to her, she was so attached to it emotionally. She misses it, every single bit of it, every day and it’s very hard for her to accept that its over for her. While physically she may be in New York today, she can still imagine herself walking down the hallway of her classroom as if her soul were left behind.
DANDELION –
It’s cold, windy. Suited up, she was escorted to a chopper. Her brother escorting her with strict instructions to take pictures. That vociferous flying box takes off, slowly catching altitude. Her life was going to change as she stared out of the wide window; it was a breakthrough. She had been longing for it ever since. She saw all the mountains, the remnants of winter snow on them, the lakes down below, the entire civilization grainsize. She was anxious, nervous, and was slowly beginning to getting used to it and didn’t care anymore. The time had come, the side door opens somewhere in the middle of the magnanimous sky. She blinks, screams and then just lets go. That was the first time Rishinandini flew. Feeling alive as she sailed through the sky, feather light like delicate dandelion flowers dispersing. She had always kept her entire world to herself. She constantly fights wars within her every day. She’s lost. But she’s also found. But that one flight she took made her realize that letting go of everything and trusting yourself are the only two things that keep you sailing when your life becomes uncertain. She longs to feel alive every minute of her life, see the world, go wherever life takes her and experience everything worth experiencing because who knows if there will be a tomorrow. We sometimes tend to forget how precious and limited our lifetime is. Be a dandelion, sail, go far, get lost, be found, but don’t ever give up just like Rishinandini didn’t on her dream to fly.
STILL LIFE SET –
