Colors: Solitude II

I’m publishing this series on LinkedIn called Colors to explore a topic that I care deeply about: the Renaissance Mind. I am just as passionate about entrepreneurship, technology, and business, as I am about art and culture. In this series, I will typically publish a piece of art – one of my paintings – and I request you to spend a minute or two deeply meditating on it. I urge you to watch your feelings, thoughts, reactions to the piece, and write what comes to you, what thoughts it triggers, in the dialog area. Let us see what stimulation this interaction yields. For today – Solitude II

Solitude II | Sramana Mitra, 2020 | Watercolor | 18  x 24, On Paper 

Featured Videos

The Unbearable Heaviness of Being: On the Passing of Naren Gupta (Part 9)

On Christmas morning, Dominique and I had breakfast in bed and watched a film on Charles de Gaulle. It specifically focused on how, as the French President capitulated to Hitler, General Charles de Gaulle went to Churchill to reverse that decision and keep fighting in World War II.

In an unorthodox, typically Churchill way, he was supported. One single man. A man with no country, as France had taken away De Gaulle’s citizenship. One man with no resources.

One man with conviction.

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The Unbearable Heaviness of Being: On the Passing of Naren Gupta (Part 8)

Our last free-flowing conversation was on November 14 in our garden.

I didn’t know that this would be the last time I would cook for him. I specifically cooked a lightly spiced Indo-French meal so as not to overpower the wine we were going to drink.

Like many Indians, Naren and I didn’t grow up drinking wine. However, we’ve learnt to enjoy good wine. Dominique, of Belgian-French origin, grew up in a wine culture. Naren always enjoyed the wines Dominique would introduce him to.

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The Unbearable Heaviness of Being: On the Passing of Naren Gupta (Part 7)

After we received our vaccines this year, we started getting together in person once again. One August evening, we spent five hours on Naren and Vinita’s lawn. Conversation flowed, tumbling effortlessly from topic to topic.

We had originally only planned for a socially distanced, masked, one-hour of catching up.

We ended up still physically distanced, but in a five-hour intoxication of serious and frivolous conversational intimacy.

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The Unbearable Heaviness of Being: On the Passing of Naren Gupta (Part 6)

Naren was very close to his brother. They used to speak everyday. Sometimes several times a day.

I always found it beautiful to hear him talk about his brother and how much he meant to him. How they went to Madagascar, just the two of them. One of their most recent trips was to go see polar bears in Canada. Just the two of them.

My father was repeatedly swindled by his brothers.

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The Unbearable Heaviness of Being: On the Passing of Naren Gupta (Part 5)

I have been writing for almost four hours. The rain has stopped. It is sunny outside. There are fewer golden leaves on my pear tree. The ones that are left now glisten as the soft winter sun touches them.

I am unspooling reels of memory.

I am playing recordings of conversations.

Naren loved to travel. Wilderness held a particular appeal for him. Denali. Bandhavgarh. Kaziranga.

The Unbearable Heaviness of Being: On the Passing of Naren Gupta (Part 4)

In the Spring of 2020, as we were each trying to understand the pandemic, the six of us started doing Zoom calls regularly. In addition, we were sharing a lot of notes that each of us  unearthed. Science. Politics. History. Anthropology. We looked everywhere for clues.

Politics, in particular, was a highly contentious subject. Dominique, Vinita and I are centrists. Naren and Pierluigi are conservatives. Our ideas clashed. Especially around the caricature figure of Donald Trump, against the backdrop of post-truth America, conservatives have had a difficult case to defend. The Republican party has become a poodle on leash, led astray by an aspiring fascist.

At first, Dominique and I resisted getting drawn into political discussions. Naren wanted to discuss politics. Enrica wanted to discuss politics. Naren refused no for an answer.

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The Unbearable Heaviness of Being: On the Passing of Naren Gupta (Part 3)

Yesterday, as I cried in Dominique’s arms, he said, gently, Naren was a father figure for you.

Naren was a father figure for a lot of people in the industry.

What he was to me was more than that.

Naren was my friend.

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