#priyasebastianillustration

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Flowers floating on the lake

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Illustrations for a monthly column by Saba Mahjoor in The Hindu newspaper. These are stories about how women navigate their lives through patriarchal systems in a village in Kashmir.

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The Castellated Abbey for The Masque of Red Death by Poe

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#priyasebastian #pastel #priyasebastianillustrator #charcoal #woman #solitude #cloud

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So that's it then. The last of my four illustrations for Saba's monthly column in The Hindu Magazine.

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Portrait of Mirza Ghalib for an essay in The Caravan magazine

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Looks good this way. Many thanks to Creative Director Sukriti, for sending these PDFs my way.

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The poet Mirza Ghalib, by Priya Sebastian. For an essay in The Caravan magazine, November 2022.

[priyasebastian]

I never ever thought I would look on with so much incredulity and horror at the happenings over the wearing of a headscarf in Iran when I drew this illustration in2019. I recall wondering if this young girl in my drawing would have worn that headscarf if she had had a choice. I wondered, 'What is "choice"?' Are we exercising  'choice' if we choose to wear what everyone around us wears, whether it is the wearing of a headscarf or a mangalsutra? No, it isn't. Had the young girl in this story decided not to wear a scarf in spite of the fact that she had had her first period, then she would have exercised choice. To what repercussions? I do not know. That is for another story. Perhaps then her story would have been similar to the story of Hadis Najafi. Society feels threatened when women exercise choice. What happened to Mahsa Amini was beyond tragic. After that Christiane Amanpour was asked to wear a headscarf when she interviewed Iranian president Raisi. Just when we were digesting this incredulity, we learned the latest, Hadis Najafi shot dead. Protest we must if we want our voices heard above stifling oppression. Remember the anti CAA riots? Remember how waves and waves of our farmers stormed the capital to get our government to repeal those Farm Laws 2020? My heart goes out to Iranian women at this time. What more can one say?

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Priya Sebastian

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Illustrations for posters for Bangalore International Centre to mark International Women’s Day.

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Illustration for book cover Firefly in the Dark. Speaking Tiger Books.