Winter on my mind: Part I

The first instalment of The Alipore Post Journal December round-up

Good morning!

This has been such a soothing and enchanting December, and The Alipore Post Journal has been overflowing with too many beautiful poems, illustrations, comics and photo series, particularly on the theme of winter.

Inviting you to visit the website (www.thealiporepost.com) in your own time and explore all the goodness we’ve handpicked for you. In the meantime, here’s some of the work we shared there this month…

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Poems to keep you warm

Artwork by Vibha Surya

• Warmth by Ila Railkar

  
  Winter mornings
  Pink nose and cheeks
  Sleeping in without a care for school
  
  In the embrace of bear rugs
  In afternoons
  The piping hot taste
  
  Of freshly baked bread burns my mouth
  Giggles all around
  Dark evenings
  
  Book and cat curled up in lap
  Before family and friends from afar
  Bring gifts of joy and cheer
  
  At midnight
  When all is quiet
  I muse, deep in my hot chocolate
  How cold winter leaves me warm

• December by Simran Singh (Excerpt)
  
  Every winter break meant a battalion of cousins assembling at grandma’s villa. I sulked through the day by her side because nobody wants to include a skinny kid who cannot run fast in their team. Nighttimes were the best, with my face flushed crimson like the bonfires we sat around– me telling the stories I had learned through the summer so grandma and I could reverse roles.

  
  Read the full prose-poem here.
  

• Divorced In Mid-Winter by Mit Shelke

  
  And in the apartment he doesn't live in anymore,
  I visit every morning. Sometimes with garden plants,
  or alone in the afternoon. I have still
  kept the hundred wind-chimes he once
  bought from Surat just because he wanted to.
  Every time, the breeze passes inside,
  some part of the house breaks into
  song.
  He wanted to look after the house,
  so he turned our room
  into a sky dotted with snow.
  He hasn't seen snow yet.
  The last time he slept next to
  me, I thought of him
  as a black trunk, sinking gently
  into soil.
  The time, he told me
  He had to move away,
  I walked the bridge over
  a metro without a jacket. I have
  never been so reckless.
  The last time we ate dinner
  at a cheap Chinese restaurant in January,
  he couldn't look straight
  When he said he will be gone.
  For the first time in months,
  I looked at him without anger
  I saw him as a tree caught in
  a field of live electric lines. He comes again
  in memory, and he looks exactly this way.
  Four years have passed, the tree is
  in the same place, only surrounded
  by dried grass.
  Still moving deep into the soil.
  I never understood the cold,
  and how things return into
  ground for a season.
  But I have never knelt so long on the soil
  asking for something to re-appear.
  

• this coat is a cup by Pragya Bhagat

  
  this coat is a cup
  warm, grey
  a sleeve for the things that jiggle inside
  a crack in its shell
  winter on skin
  sharp fracture
  makes me think of mother
  of home
  
  Read two more winter poems by Pragya here
  

• Bone Work by Karuna Ezara Parikh
  
  Do the bone work.
  Ask yourself –
  What am I feeling?
  Will this break me or is that creak
  just the sound of my skeleton
  stretching to make room
  for my soul’s swelling?

  
  Read four more poems from Karuna’s gorgeous poetry collection Where Stories Gather here.

Artwork by Song Yuanwen

• Paigham by Swajan Ghosh
  
  Winter climbs on my window sill,
  in half clad leaves of a chestnut tree.
  On a desolate December evening,
  snow riled up on the paint
  breathing mahogany, breathtakingly quaint.
  
  The gush of sleet
  in the wake of November rain,
  bleeding over my glass window pane
  has carefully rampaged over my careless whispers,
  'winter knows your name'.
  
  Brought down in a shudder
  the last flutter of the Fall,
  has hanging photographs, coming off the wall.
  Them bare spaces smeared
  with forgotten love, over time
  unfurled on magazines, envelopes
  and disfigured reneges of mine.

• Winter for me by Yashika (Excerpt)

  
  So is this winter for me?
  Of parched minds and receding beauty,
  Of stale urges and fulfilled appetites
  of the blue that turns into black at two or
  Of the folds which the blanket braids itself into;
  
  the barrenness of spring and cheer of the autumn
  it has never felt like my own.
  the blank winds and cold cups of ceramic, however remind me of me,
  Me, devoid of warm winters and dreariness

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Interview: Karlotta Freier

From gorgeous blossoming flowers to couples in love to the horrors of climate change, New York-based illustrator-animator Karlotta Freier's drawings are tender yet impactful. I have adored Freier's comics, illustrations and zines on Instagram for years, and admired every stroke and color she makes. In conversation with Karlotta, who was kind enough to take me deep into her creative process and world.

Excerpt from the interview:

“I am a very emotional person, so I get enough variations just from showing up in a different mood each day. Over the years, I have figured out that I work best the closer I stick to a routine. The things that help me most are: taking breaks, even under a tight deadline, eating a real lunch and taking time for my own projects. If I stick to these, I don’t run out of energy. And having energy seems to be my best tool to finding creative solutions. Of course, I often end up abandoning these rules that I made for myself, but eventually, I hit a wall. Lately, I have started taking the weekends off and it has been a game changer for me. I actually feel like I am accomplishing more because I am not constantly working from a state of time depravation.”
-Karlotta Freier

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Comic / Kashmiri Winters by Ghazal Qadri

Ghazal Qadri's visuals depict a real-life short horror story of her pheran and kanger in Kashmiri Winters.

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We’ll be sending you the second part of the December round-up in the coming days!
Stay tuned.