Memories of Ice Cream
I’m drawing a set of cityscapes for a client in NYC. They want to feature their favorite memories from different parts of India. The first drawing I made was of Kolkata, featuring some iconic locations on Park Street (Issue #14). Last week, I drew the second. It recreates a cherished childhood memory - going to Nirula’s in Connaught Place (New Delhi). Each piece is drawn with a fountain pen on 8x10” artboard, ready for framing.
I shared this image on my social media with the question -
“What is your favorite Nirula’s memory?”
I received some wonderful answers, and was re-shared by the Nirula’s IG page. They reached out to say thanks, and I was just thinking about how this is an incredible achievement of humankind. Within a day of me drawing something in Chicago, it can be noticed by the unwitting subjects all the way on the other side of the world. A drawing can generate nostalgia in hundreds of different minds all over the world, triggering dormant memories of tastes and smells, sending currents along neural circuits long-forgotten. And for a moment you are lost, away from your world, floating in a space and time that exists inside your mind, a world created by your memories and your nostalgia.
Smell and taste are deep repositories of long memories. Both are finely tuned senses, thanks to millions of years of evolution. We should be more thankful to our pre-historic ancestors for this. But quite literally no one even remembers them.
A memory can lie dormant inside the vault of our mind, so quiet you’d forgotten it was there. But an old taste, or a smell, even a hint of one or the other, and suddenly it is awake, as fresh as yesterday. It is a moment of great joy for me to chance upon such a memory, because I know that any such memory is uncorrupted by my over-thinking conscious mind.
Below, a timelapse video of this drawing.