Bookshelf/Nalini Malani

She derives a lot of substance from what she reads and thinks if language is rightly orchestrated, it could prove a great source of painting ideas. Meet Nalini Malani, an artist who developed the habit of incorporating ideas 8212; generated from her reading material 8212; on her canvases early in her career.

8220;I modelled my way of working like a novelist would. I would not write, I would paint a diary,8221; she says. Her work has been close to the print medium. The books she can8217;t do without, Global Parasites by Winin Pereira and Geremy Seabrook and Tending The Earth by Winin Pereira, have deeply influenced her works. She based her series titled The Mutants8217; on Pereira8217;s findings about the earth. 8220;Tending8230; is about bio-sustainability. Global Parasites is a more angry book 8212; about dispossession, about how the colonial nations were robbed of their worlds. It8217;s like a Bible for me,8221; she says. Pakistani writer Sadat Hasanmanto8217;s short stories fascinate her.

She has used his story Toba Tek Singh as a basis formany of her works. 8220;The story, to me, shows the absurdities of making boundaries.8221; And the last book to feature on her top four list is Italo Calvino8217;s The Invisible Cities. 8220;It8217;s a crazy book; a fantasy, a conversation between Marco Polo and Kubla Khan, a plain dialogue that means the opposite of what8217;s said,8221; says Malani.