Little Feels
Last week, we put together a new book shelf for our home. I'd wanted to change out our open shelf for a closed one for a long, long time, but it was the arrival of Abhi with his voracious curiosity but innocently wounding touch with books, that rushed the purchase ultimately. As I moved my books from our old shelf to the new one, a set of forgotten books brought me to pause.
Books can often offer an interesting peek into our past selves– a time capsule of interests and plans from a space and time. These books were about nurturing the inner child and designing for children, subjects I was deeply interested in at the start of my career. I used to marvel at the wonder of children and the endless possibilities of the world as seen through kiddie-sized glasses. I even wrote my Master’s thesis on the role of graphic design in children’s education. I drifted away from it over the last several years, and here I was, flipping through these pages again, and immediately feeling at home with my younger self.
Life has changed tremendously since I last wrote here. I gave birth to our little baby boy, Abhimanyu, on the winter solstice of 2019, and our little world changed forever. The larger world has changed a tad too, *cough*, but we’ll talk about that another time. My baby is now 15 months old. The past year and some spent with him have felt like a second childhood– really, a gift, to be suspended in time. A chance to rediscover the world along with him– to relearn to see, taste, hear, touch, smell...and feel.
Abhi is currently busy flipping pages. A lot of pages in a lot of books. He's certainly gone through a lot more books than I have in the last year! And he is very, very engrossed in them. In the quiet of these moments, I watch his increasingly steady hand hold still, eyes moving from one side to another, flipping pages, forward, backward, backward, forward, upside down, downside up– absorbing enormously and working out patterns. All through one of the most special, sacred design objects of all time!
My mind has been brewing and brewing and brewing over the past year of maternity leave, with little time to spill ideas out into any form. Watching him read his books, though– pardon me if I'm being dramatic– I felt absolutely overcome with the need, no, desire, no, duty to create a book for him. Now, I had to set some boundaries so as to prevent it from suffering the fate of an over-indulgent design project. So, here was the plan: buy some felt, make something simple.
I quickly doodled a random bunch of things that Abhi likes, and started to figure out a sequence. But between all the breaks and extra time to think about it, these random things slowly and surprisingly drew themselves into cohesion– a little book about him discovering his senses, and through them, the world. Here's Abhi’s Little Feels!
When Abhi turned 3 months old, something shifted dramatically. From one day to the next, he was suddenly alert as a meerkat (I suppose that's all babies at 3 months). His tender new becoming was punctuated beautifully by the awakening of spring. So for the very first time, we introduced that special space of his home: the balcony. As he opened his eyes wide and surveyed the scape, he quickly turned to the skies. His little eyes had caught a bird mid-air. It glided up and down, and down and up, dancing in the crisp spring breeze. He watched in awe, and I, him, as his little eyes traced the flight of the bird around the scape. His balcony gaze has almost always been upwards since.
As soon as he could crawl, Abhi went straight for the plants (Yes, the plants we had on our floor for the last 7 years have now relocated). He needed to touch those leaves. Pull them, rip them, crush them, mash them, taste them, bite them. Long leaves, thin leaves, prickly leaves, succulent leaves, creeper leaves, herbs, dried herbs, whatever he could find. He loved spinach as a 6-month old. I mean, I didn't think kids liked spinach. I don't like spinach, and I'm not a kid. When he started to walk, leaves were what he would pick first on the streets. His little friends, tender, friendly and beautiful.
Steam those apples, they said. Steam I did, and they became molten gold to Abhi. He'd flap his hands at the sight of them being brought in. You don't need to peel them, JUST GIVE THEM HERE, his eyes would say and his voice would scream, in a language I most certainly understood. You could tell he loved how juicy they were, melting away in his little toothless mouth. These days, the apples aren't steamed. But Abhi loves a good chunky one just the same. He has teeth, you see. Only some, but they'll do.
The first time Abhi heard the pressure cooker's sudden shrill whistle, he burst into tears, frightened and confused at the sudden scream of an inanimate object. Over the next few times, he tried to be brave, holding on to mama and simply observing it. He asked to be picked up and held tight, while he watched. He would look at it, then look at me, as if in anticipation of some reassurance. Soon, the sound of the whistle would draw him from whichever room he was in, wearing a serious expression, yet curious enough to be wanted to be lifted up, but this time to really understand what all the fuss was about. Today, the siren cuts through any noise to reach Abhi's little ears, prompting him to drop everything and bolt into the kitchen while excitedly babbling baby talk, demanding that I attend to it immediately. He has got to go attend to it, he has got to go see it. He has got to stand there and watch as I release the pressure. Tsssss, he hums perfectly in unison with his friend (or pet or muse or love? You'll have to ask Abhi). Meanwhile, mama is obsessed with watching the sound escape his wee bunny teeth on full display.
The days of cooking Abhi a simple oat porridge for breakfast are long gone. It begets a bored side-eye these days. Surprise me, lady! he seems to say. Pancakes. Pancakes of all kinds. Sweet, savoury, red lentils, white lentils, green lentils, bananas, buckwheat, quinoa, you name it. It's not to say he loves them all, but you know that moment when the batter hits the pan and ssss quickly transforms into that pancakey smell? He magically shows up right next to me, flapping his arms again, asking to just hand it over already. Smells like breakfast, mama!
Abhi seems to like the book so far. It seems he enjoys the feel of the soft bundle and loves the tactile layering of elements. So much so that he has taken on the challenge of peeling them all off right away. Circular elements are priority targets. Pictured below, the banana slices are now off the pancakes. So…I’ll be trying to save this one for a little while longer.
Abhi now takes matters into his own little hands. Literally. He picks up what he wants, turns it around, studies it, observes it, feels it, tastes it, puts some rocks in it, rattles it, listens to it, rolls it, flings it away. What does it do? What else can it do? What can I use it for? Is it fun? Is it useful? Observing, seeking, asking, tinkering, creating– traits so deeply engrained in us as children. More than ever, being with him has taught me to look with fresh eyes and nurture my curiosity every single day.
Working on this non-design project that turned into a design project (of course!) and then back into a non-design project taught me a few things. I love drawing and pretending to be an illustrator, but I go through hours and hours and hours of deliberation in order to get to the crux of what I'd like to draw. But working with a completely different medium and trying to remember that this was meant to be a present to my child, and not an elaborate design project, helped let go of any pre-notions. I had to abandon the urge to refine or perfect and simply create. The simplicity of the exercise liberated me to make work quickly. Of course, everything said and done, it still took me weeks to finish, because “working” often just means a half-hour window per day these days, hah.
Using felt (what a weird material) freed my hand in ways that I didn't anticipate. All of it was "sketched"on the fly, drawn with the aid of small things like bottle caps and cut and stuck with regular glue. It’s almost weird that I’d never quite approached a project this way, with a new medium– I’ve always been so fixated with the usual tools of the trade.
Finally, as much as I strongly intended to not think of this as “work” because I feared it would contaminate the intent, I must admit it got me unstuck as a creator. And besides, as somebody who embraces art and design as my chosen language to express myself, life or work, I think to myself, does it matter anymore? I enjoyed the process so much that I’ve now found the courage to revisit my old dreams of designing for kids. I don’t have a plan per se, but wish me luck and hold me accountable.
I set out to make Little Feels for Abhimanyu, and it also became about him. In so doing, it is now a personal journal of sorts– a time capsule of him and I growing together, but also individually, in this time and space. Thank you, Abhi.
PS. It's been nearly 2 years since I last wrote on Handful. A lot has changed over this time. Handful started as a vessel for my thoughts at a time when I was immersed in a growing love for food as a medium of expression. Interestingly, over time, food is what led me back to my roots in visual arts, and I will continue to experiment with interesting crossovers and document them on Handful. Over time, many of you had asked for ways to follow along besides social media. I’m happy to say I’m finally creating a newsletter to share updates. I’d love to have you join me! No spammy stuff, I promise <3