Art sees the dragonfly's dream

Hindustan Times

27-04-2025

Art is a powerful tool for the conservation of nature. It captures the luminous sparks of inner consciousness. It blazes into a canvas of visual expression whose meaning is muted but nevertheless is possessed with a powerful voice. 'A bridge between imagination and reality where colour, form and texture touch the deepest layers of human emotion'.
At last week's national-level exhibition, 'Ethereal Visions' (Punjab Kala Bhawan, Chandigarh), Odisha's Sofaiya Yasmeen put up sets of paintings titled, 'Turbulent' and 'Cheering a Dream', comprising seven and four works respectively.
'Turbulent' evoked the disaster wrought upon wild creatures by the proliferation of plastic wastes and harmful human practices. We want the trees but not the bees, her honey and all her money, so as to say. Yasmeen painted a bee hive with smoke around it to depict their homes and larvae cradles being burnt down. Another artwork depicted a beautifully-plumaged Ring-necked pheasant lying dead after literally drowning in a rising sea of plastic wastes.
The other series, 'Dream', was ensconced in nostalgia and positivity. Unlike most artists whose depiction of insects is confined to butterflies, fireflies, honeybees, etc, Yasmeen innovatively introduces dragonflies who are painted hovering around old utensils. One is depicted happily toying with the string of a quaint artefact.
No fly swatters for the insects of those times. 'In the 'Dream' series, I use the artefacts to depict the good times gone by which were less polluted for these little creatures. An era where fewer humans and many creatures lived in harmony,' Yasmeen told this writer.
The wounded trees of Kashmir
The oddity of seeing a tin roof on top of a tall tree. The roof had been blasted upwards and hurled high after the security forces chucked an IED through a window into a hut storing coal and sheltering a terrorist, Saifullah, in Gundh Rahman village near Srinagar. On its return down, it got stuck on top of the poplar tree next door.
The plight of apple trees quavering and leaves shivering with the impact and detonation waves unleashed by a Carl Gustav 84mm rocket launcher's HE shell discharged at a frail, wooden house sheltering terrorists in Panzgam village of Kupwara. Pakistani artillery shells landing on sweet-as-sugar pear trees of the Uri LoC sector, the fruits fallen much before their time.
These were spectacles that this writer witnessed while reporting Army operations live from the inner or point-of-contact cordons.
The Kashmir countryside is so quiet that it would seem the gods blessed it with an eternally-peaceful soul. The meadows bubble with soft sounds of moos and merry brooks, the clucks and quacks of hens and ducks. The discharge of war munitions in a setting so idyllic cannot but impose a searing memory of 'paradise lost' and a contrast of apocalyptic proportions. The flying larks end singing above the roar of the guns.
Kashmir's trees are the imprisoned bystanders to battles. They cannot run away. Terrorists hide behind them to ambush soldiers in orchards and coniferous forests. The bullets leave the bark pockmarked with battle scars.
No medals for the unspeaking trees, which took the bullet for the man.
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