Dad’s 70th birthday was celebrated in style in 2023. Both Aditya and I had made a surprise visit to Chennai from London and Singapore respectively on the day of this birthday and caught him by total surprise. That was not it, we had planned for a 2 days trip to Orissa, a state in India which we had never visited before.
Bhuvaneshwar and Puri are temple cities of Orissa. The sketch below is of the 11th century old Lingaraja Temple, the largest in Bhuvaneshwar. It displays the classic Kalinga architecture which is very different from the temples we see in the south of India. I stood at this spot for 30mins to sketch this grandeur on a one fourth size of a A4 paper with a black gel pen. Cameras were not allowed into this temple, so had no choice but to complete it right there.
