This is our newsletter #15: SquidInk Studio
This is our newsletter.
“Did you wash the utensils?”
“What should we do for lunch?”
“We should really clean the house.”
“I wanna do something different.”
“Did you wash your hands with soap?”
“I have 15 more work mails in the last half hour.”
“Did you water the plants today?”
“What should we do for dinner?”
“You should really wash the utensils.”
A Balcony Garden
We’ve found solace in gardening.
Every morning nowadays begins with coffee and a glimpse of the balcony, like one would go and check on a loved one.
What used to be a sparse collection of pots with baby plants that were almost shy to show face, is now a slightly crowded balcony garden. The pause from the day’s chaos comes in the form of evening coffee in the balcony, where we spend our days finding gorgeous sunsets (thanks, Bangalore) and discussing what to harvest, what to plant next, how to prevent insect invasions and the likes.
What we’re currently growing (attempting with mild success) is spinach, spring onions, red radishes, coriander, carrots, chillies, tomatoes, ginger, fenugreek, lemon, broccoli, bitter gourd and brinjal (this last one is an experiment, both of us dislike brinjal).
You should try this out too.
Here are a few things that can help with that -
This is the potting soil you can use.
You can mix it with this readymade compost (we’ve not really achieved making our own compost at home yet) but an amazing place to help get you started is Daily Dump.
Why buy seeds when you can slice tomatoes and plant the slices one inch deep into soil, or use store-bought spring onions and plant the bulbs in soil, or you can follow these methods of growing your own veggies.
Here’s a great resource for gardening in balconies.
The goal is to someday be surrounded by a garden where we can fully grow our own food.
Speaking of food...
When we wanted to eat something different in the past, we either went out or we ordered in. But the pandemic put a stop to those things, and so the need of the hour was to explore more recipes. We took on challenges that we never would have otherwise taken on.
From Lemon Tarts to Lachha Parathas to Laddoos, there are sections of both our photo galleries in our phones that are just full of food photos. It makes you wonder, did you even really cook anything new, if you didn’t first take 50 different photos of it? There was a phase where we didn’t buy bread, we baked it ourselves. We did the sourdough starter and everything, the whole deal. Even named it ‘Beast’.
Cooking your own food, especially food that you would otherwise go out and order, really makes you rethink the way we interact with ingredients and time. We set out to make something a certain way, and then with tweaks and improvisations and in a large part, using whatever is available to us at the time, we end up with something that may or may not look like the vision we set out with, but it’s still a reward.
And sometimes it ends up exactly the way you want it to, but no matter the result, cooking these dishes yourself really makes you trust the process and it almost feels like a form of meditation. And you start valuing small achievements, for instance the dal being the right consistency or the chapatis actually turning out soft. Textures and smells become part of you, instinctively adding or tweaking the tadka.
Escaping with Music
One of us claims to be tone-deaf (not entirely true) and the other has been really into music for quite a long time (college band and what not). But nothing spelled comfort in times of anxiety around the pandemic like music.
Being at home often became frustrating, and suffocating even. Nothing that a good, long drive didn’t cure. That, and the Garden State OST. If you have seen the film, and if you live in Bangalore weather, you know how well in sync the two can be. There is a quote from the film that stayed back -
“You know that point in your life when you realize the house you grew up in isn't really your home anymore? All of a sudden even though you have some place where you put your shit, that idea of home is gone.”
“I still feel at home in my house.”
“You'll see one day when you move out it just sort of happens one day and it's gone. You feel like you can never get it back. It's like you feel homesick for a place that doesn't even exist. Maybe it's like this rite of passage, you know. You won't ever have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start, it's like a cycle or something. I don't know, but I miss the idea of it, you know. Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people that miss the same imaginary place.”
Garden State is still our comforter, at times.
Other times though, you want to (or have to) escape into work.
Work from home was new, and intimidating, and everyone was trying to do more and more and more and more, especially in the initial stages of the pandemic.
There was a fear that took time to flush out, but in those times there were the endless Lo-fi playlists to really get lost into, and really be able to focus on the one thing - the work.
Here’s another lo-fi playlist, but with some familiar tracks.
We also ended up discovering quite a few podcasts. This one and this one really stood out.
To watch
One of the things we immediately connected on when we met each other for the first time were films (in college, there was even a film appreciation course involved).
We can spend hours talking about films, characters, actors, storylines and how they should have been or why they were flawless in their flaws. All these discussions end with us telling ourselves we should write films. That day is yet to come.
So needless to say, watching films (and series) is a big part of our lives, even more so during these past few months.
Here’s a list we think you should check out/revisit -
Be (very) inspired
Inspiration overload is a thing. Wherever you look, there is amazing work. By the time you stop scrolling, you’re either fuelled with a fire that rages to flow outward through your hands onto paper (or iPad in some cases), or you are left tired and weary from the weight of awesomeness around you.
Having said that, here’s what has been inspiring us lately -
The comics of Poorly Drawn Lines, Jimmy Craig, Liz and Mollie and Nathan W. Pyle.
The art of Giselle Dekel, Ghost Light Gallery, Soft Horno and Salman Toor.
As for animation, obsessed with Pinot, especially this particular work of his.
Also, traceloops. Been following his work since his early Tumblr days.
Some more recent finds have been Rishav Mohanty and Gaurav Ogale.
We are
Although we are SquidInk, we are made up of Maanvi Kapur and Aniruddh Dube.
We are visual artists based in Bangalore. We went to the same college and have been collaborating ever since, and SquidInk is a result of such a need to collaborate outside of the daily work day, as a channel to let out all the creative energy into something that we don't usually get to do in our day-to-day work.
Maanvi is a Visual Artist and freelance illustrator. She lives and works in Bangalore, and in her free time, she is either pruning her small urban balcony, or can be found reading true crime. You can find her work here and here.
Aniruddh works as an Art Director at a marketing company by day, and obsesses over animation, photography and video during his free time. He has an unhealthy obsession with coffee, and will not be able to register anything said to him before his morning cup.
Until next time.