Peace Tree #Calendars 2012

I have been toying with a gazillion ideas for the calendar but seeing as the time is short, I am focusing on one theme only for 2012 calendars. Around this time last year, I had written something down while painting a calendar for my room.

It went like this (I have edited it one year forward for 2012):

"The world, as we knew it ended with 2011.


This year,

There will be more trees
There will be more peace
There will be honest sweat glistening off fields and offices,
There will be unlearning of redundancy and blind dogma
And then some new learning of life and living.

The world will not end in 2012.
But it will be reborn."


I am still not sure if I will create a design that incorporates the entire text because honestly, sometimes it feels uninspiring and something that you just say without really meaning it. But while I was sketching for the first two lines, I had made, what I call "Peace Tree" that looks like this:



So while I continue to mull over the original idea (that I had named 2012- "This Year"), I am painting a Peace Tree Calendar 2012. Also, I don't like the fact that calendars have a short life and at the end of the year that they are designed for, they are discarded.

So I have plan to have a perforated break between the dates and the painting like this:



The idea is that at the end of the year, the painting bit can be separated from the rest of the calendar, framed (or not) and put up somewhere, like other posters and paintings.

Figuring things out

The past few months, while I have been happily painting away and logging in to our Facebook page to beam while I see the 'Likes' and read the comments, I have simultaneously been figuring out how I want to shape this little venture. Your business managers will be appalled by this confession- a business start-up WITHOUT ANY PRE-PLANNING?
:/

So here is what I have figured out until now. I am basing this venture on two premises:

One, buyers do not know best anymore (sorry, but there is too much one-sided media advertising and consumerist-hype that does not give us people the fair space to explore and decide what we want).

Two, it is not business, it is personal. So if I over-price my products, it reflects on the person that I am. In this case, a greedy b****. And I will not let that happen.

I also have to share why I chose the name "A Little Part of Me". The "me" in our business name is not meant to denote the artist. Instead, it is meant to convey that through this business- through posters, lamp shades, wall hangings, craft projects, stones and everything else that comes in my way- we celebrate the non-consumerist, non-market side of everybody who chooses to be part of it. It is about creating something for the love of creativity. For the love of imagination. And for the love of personal choices and likes/dislikes. So whether that part of me is a bathroom singer or that part is the inexplicable love for the Twilight series, this business will celebrate it (the latter, with gritted teeth, sure but it will celebrate it).

The 'Me' also signifies individuality and exclusivity. I strongly believe that one should not have to pay large sums of money to be able to get exclusive things.

In the last few months since we have started out, I have learnt several times that greed is a powerful tempter. When somebody comes up to me and says "hell, I would pay 100 rupees for this; you are crazy to sell it at 40 rupees", out come the greedy serpents and coil around my brain and whisper/hiss things like "why not? you could finally afford to move to a place of your own." But it is my frustration with over-priced products that made me start this venture. So I will keep prices low and celebrate non-branding like nothing else never has.

But in order to keep prices low, I will not resort to having little children work for me at dismal wages, nor will I compromise with quality of the product. This exercise is actually the most challenging of all. Can entrepreneurs choose to cut down on their own expenses, their wants and their lifestyle in a way that will empower them to survive in the limited profits that their business generates? I am working on this same principal.

So I have decided to make everything that I want. I have resorted to using public transport for long-distance commuting and for shorter-distances, using my bicycle or walking. I have given up buying goods from branded stores. For example I source my cloth from Khadi and will soon try to stitch my own kurtas and shirts. I fancied a stole that I saw in a bling-bling store recently and I am now knitting it because I'd be damned before I pay rupees 1200 for it (their MRP after generous discount!) I have given up drinking diet coke or eating at restaurants. If I want a burger, I will get my own meat, mince it and cook it myself.

There is, of course still to much consumerism in the way I live and I still a long way to go before I can shed the effects of media and advertising from my life, but this little start makes me feel incredibly empowered.

Because, and I will say this again- it is not Business, it is Personal.