A road trip and a poem

The illustration and the poem hand in hand create the rawness and the simplicity of the message. Pic/@kamachi_studio

When artists meet, it's impossible that something beautiful doesn't come out of it, and that's just what happened when poet-artist and marketing professional Omkar Jadhav and creative designer Namrata Vijay Gosavi went on a friends' trip to Panchgani early this year.

The duo had first met in Mumbai five years ago, before Jadhav moved back to his hometown, Pune. During the trip, Jadhav read out a poem on his experience upon returning to Pune, and his difficulty adjusting in what felt almost like a new city. Pune, which had for so long managed to retain its peaceful, small-city feel, was suddenly witnessing development that had outpaced its humanity. "In Mumbai, you know there will be potholes and pollution, and the sensation of one being too small in this big world. But I found that Pune, too, was becoming a cement jungle," he says. "The poem mourns that loss of what once was; you can transpose that to any place in the world and a similar sentiment will echo," he adds. A few lines of the poem, titled Bharle ka khadde (Are the potholes filled?), go: Bharle ka khadde, purli ka mansa, traffichya dhura madhye, distaath nahi pharsa (Are the potholes filled, are the men buried, in the smoke of the traffic, my sight is limited). Hearing Jadhav recite these lines, Namrata - co-founder of the Mumbai-based creative studio, Kamachi Studio, was inspired to make art around it.

Namrata, a JJ School of Art graduate, has been in the advertising industry for five years. Last year, she and co-founder Vinay Darekar wanted to build something of their own, and Kamachi Studio was born. "Vinay and I started the studio because we were always in love with design. Given how much AI was taking over the industry, we wanted to get out before it got really bad," she says. It was on Instagram that the studio's posts (@kamachi_studio) caught our attention, with Jadhav's verses beautifully illustrated by Gosavi. "The illustration is hand-drawn and painted. This is our bit of resistance against AI; we're saying there is visceral beauty in art that is made after hours of toiling. The same illustrations can be made by AI in 10 minutes, but sitting for over two hours and creating something from scratch is an experience I choose every day," Namrata says.

The illustrations transported us back to school, bringing back memories of opening a Bal Bharati book and reading a poem while also savouring the poignant illustrations that accompanied them. To this day, we can recall them word for word. "That is exactly what I hoped to achieve," says Namrata, "all these books in our childhood had hand-painted covers. The rawness of such design and art just hits different."

We agree and hope that humans never stop creating, even in the face of a barrage of AI slop.

Omkar Jadhav and Namrata Gosavi