चाय-बिस्कुट

डुबाया बिस्कुट चाय में,

पर आया आधा हाथ में.

चम्मच ना दिखा दायें बायें,

भागे दोनों हाथ फैलाएं.

नापा हमनें प्यालें का तल,

नरम हो चूका था करारा पल.

आहें भर किया संतोष,

सब्र के मीठे फल का दोष.

ऐ बिस्कुट! नीयत ही तेरी डूबी है,

मेरी तबियत के लिए तू जरूरी है.

तू चाय के लहरों में गोंते खा,

क्यूँ बनता है तू सूर्पनखा.

पर लेनी थी अभी आखिरी घूँट,

खुरेदेंगे जो गया था छूट.
यह प्याला पाताल नहीं इतनी गहरा.
तुझे तो पा ही लेंगे, मेरे पास चम्मच जो ठहरा.

- खुफिया कातिल का चाय भरा प्रणाम.

Brainwave. Issue 09. Matter Matters.

After the lotsa bots, this issue is about Chemistry. Unlike the last issue, we have kept the theme strong in the cover story while letting the regular section talk about other thing. Starting with 'Ask us why' - the question this time is 'Why do dogs chase cars?' All of you have seen Dark knight, the second of Nolan's movie on Batman would remember Joker's line very well - 'I'm a dog chasing cars. I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught it.' Here is the page where Srinath Perur has put a fitting reply to this question - 

That's Mr Perur drawn above by my very skilled friend Upasna Mehndiratta. She has done the portraits of all of our regular section contributors. I often succumb to flattery when it comes to her work :) 
Next in the line is the introduction page for the National Chemistry Laboratory. I have been trying to do a mix of both digital and hand drawn artworks for the magazine. In the past few months, I have built a small archive of hand rendered textures to add a human touch in the vector illustrations. This one is one of the first of the babies to come out from this experiment. 

The good thing about working with vector illustration is that it operates as lego blocks, you can create new layouts with it. This poster was done in crunch hours for bookshops and the vector illustrations came in handy for this purpose. Also, you can see our detective Gaia Goel on the poster, illustrated by the talented Prabha Mallya. She has drawn the fourteen page comic as cover story about the adventures of Gaia Goel. You should get your hands on it.


We have done an article on the Jaivana, world's largest wheeled cannon which I had seen during my trip to Jaipur. Here is a small hand rendered infographic done for this - 

My housemates from college and colleagues from tsk design would know how much of a pro I am at Pocket tanks. One of the most beautiful artillery game I have ever played is featured in the 'Try Out' section and guess who is the writer :) 

For our 'History Maker' section, we have Marie Curie's contribution to Chemistry. I picked up charcoals for this illustration and did a bit scratchy drawing for it.

 Have you ever heard of "Darwin awards'? Well, this prestigious award goes only to those who sacrificed their lives while executing their finest stupid idea. 'Nuts & Dolts' pays homage to those great souls and this time we have done it as a comic.

Here is one comparing the role of alchemist verses a chemist. I named the .tiff file for this illustration -  Full Metal Alchemist :)

Lastly, we have Mad Mimi to wrap up the issue with her modern age witch craft in progress. You can send one of your crazy experiment ideas too to be the contest prize winner.  

That's all for now. There is quite a bit of work in progress for the next issue which has a good dose of instruction manual drawings and some hand done typography. Till then play some tanks.