Liminal Figures: Portrait of KSR as an Artist and Man

Some men are born to become artists. Some are born to become good human beings. Rare are those become good artists and good human beings.

I have been lucky to find such rare ones in my forty years of life.

Some men are born with a fatherly aura around them. I should have said ‘big brotherly aura’. But after Orwell ‘big brother’ has a different connotation.

A father figure, who never judges you, could play a great role in your life, especially if you are person who has lost the father at a very vulnerable age.

When I met K.S.Radhakrishnan, he might be 37 years old. And now I know how a man feels like at the age of 37.

If I am talking about all those emotional churnings and confusions, I never felt a bit of those vibes from him. Calm, well poised, full of humor and captivating energy, Radhakrishnan was young and old at the same time.

Famous photographer, Prabudha Dasgupta has been Radha’s favorite photographer anytime. Dasgupta had taken several portraits of Radha for his catalogues. In all those you see a Radhakrishnan who looks like a doyen, many years elder to his actual age.

In one of the catalogues published by Art Alive Gallery, New Delhi, we see a photograph of Radhakrishnan, seen through the limbs of his sculptures, clad in a heavy shawl.

Like his sculptural protagonist, Musui, Radhakrishnan hosts a ‘character’ in his physical appearance. The character is that of an emblematic sculptor; a sculptor who is not physically frail, but somewhat aged with existential angst and blessed with visions of hell and heaven.

Heavy tomes in his studio show the pictures of Rodin and Giocometti at work. They are emblematic sculptors of all times. Radha’s personality is that. He likes to be like that. He works in bronze.

In the abundance of materials, Radha is not a fool. He knows his life’s mission.

That’s why when I was going through the worst moments in my life, thinking about leaving everything behind to start a different life elsewhere, Radha said, “Realize your life’s mission. Dig the same place till you find water.”

There is a sufi in Radha’s works. There is a wise fool in his figurative sculptures. There is a saint and a devil. And they are Radha’s incarnations. Only the wise fool in Radha could speak about digging the same place.

It could be as absurd as the works of Sisyphus or Naranathu Bhranthan. But there is a deeper meaning to that toiling. Dig, dig, dig.

Today, I drink from the same well that I dug. Each time I quench my thirst I remember Radha’s words.

First time Radha came to meet me in his white Ambassdor car. That was almost sixteen years back. Now that car lies rusted near his studio in Chattarpur, South Delhi. Radha owns several expensive cars now.

Before Radha bought an apartment in Delhi, he built a studio first in Kirkhee village and then in Chattarpur. As a young post-graduate from Santiniketan, he knew the necessity of a studio. He came to Delhi from Santiniketan and got the Lalit Kala Akademy scholarship. He taught in a school for a while and left it altogether to work in a garage offered to him by a foreign patron who held a diplomatic office in Delhi.

When Radha earned money from his works, he invested all that into the making of a studio.

This studio had been a place for all of us. Most of the successful contemporary artists of these days had spent sometime in Radha’s studio. Old Monk rum, barbequed chicken and vegetables, music from a stereo, rented out mattresses- the studio used to host a lot of parties during the winter days.

Today, with most of the artists having their own studios and homes in Delhi, they don’t get time to travel to Chattarpur. But the doors of this studio still remain open to all whoever wants to work in clay and bronze. Radha’s efficient team helps whoever wants technical help- of course for NO FEE.

Radha bought his ‘first computer’ for me. We together experimented with internet. Today Radha is a gadget freak. You name any latest computer technology, he has it and he knows how to operate it.

Born in a joint family in Kerala, Radha spent his formative years in Kottayam district. As a young boy, without no moustache and beard, Radha stepped out of the train at Santiniketan station. From the same compartment came out was another boy from Kollam district in Kerala.

They spoke to each other for the first time. The other boy was R.Sivakumar. Now he is one of the most revered art historians in India. Currently he heads the Kalabhavan in Santiniketan.

Radha’s friendship with Sivakumar is legendary. They share their works regularly. Whenever Radha has a show, Sivakumar finds time to write the essay. In 2004, Radha’s first monograph written by R.Sivakumar was published. I was in the editorial team throughout and I contributed towards the detailing of works, which constitute second half of the book.

Today, Rahda is having his solo at LKA Galleries in Delhi. This show titled ‘Liminal Figures Liminal Space’ had already been showed in Birla Akademy, Kolkata, 2008. With a few changes, Radha presents these works again for the Delhi audience. This show would travel to Baroda, Mumbai and Kerala in the coming months.

Becoming the Salt of Our Land: At Dandi

(Morning at Navsari)


(Somu Desai at the steps of Saifee Villa, Dandi)


(JohnyML, Anubhav Nath and Somu Desai with Panchkaka nee Vadi members)


(JohnyML at Dandi Seashore)


(Anubhav Nath at Dandi Seashore)


(Gandhi Memorial Sculpture in front of Saifee Villa at Dandi)


(Salt Satygraha Memorial at Dandi)


(Acharya Dhirubhai Patel of Vinay Mandir, Dandi)


(Gandhiji's headquarters at Karadi. It was from here Gandhiji was arrested)


(Akshay Bhai Naik, JohnyML and Anubhav Nath with local kids at Salt Satyagrah Memorial at Dharasana)


(Anubhav Nath collecting salt at Dharasana)


(JohnyML and Anubhav Nath at a Salt Heap in Dharasana)


(Anubhav Nath driving a Tractor at Dharasan Salt Plant)


(Sunset at Dharasana)

5th November 2009. Navsari. Today is a big day for us. Dandi is a few kilometers away. For Gandhiji, and now for us too, this is a transit space. Before reaching the remote Dandi, Gandhiji had visited two more villages next to this diamond trade centre, namely Vijalpur and Matwad.

There is something called destiny, whether you like it or not. From the hotel room window, I and Somu Desai look down at the street. On our front, behind a few blocks of buildings, we get a birds-eye-view vision of a huge building, which is a Parsee School.

Navsari is one of the first few places the Parsees in early 16th century made their homes. I remember my encounter with a ghost in the Parsee dominated Oliver Street in Mumbai, the FALCAT camp that I conceptualized in Parsee settlement in Udwada. It seems that destiny is taking me and my friends to the places which fall naturally into our research interests.

As I said in one of the earlier postings, Navsari is a traditional trade centre of diamonds. The adjoining Surat is a textile centre. A few kilometers from Navsari, there is another village called Bardoli, which according to Akshay Bhai Naik is a ghost town. Most of the people from this village have migrated to western countries. They all have contributed to their home lands by building concrete mansions all over. They are all vacant now. Once in a year they come back, spend a few weeks here and go back to the lands of their choice.

In India there are several places like Bardoli now. Udwada is one prime example. So is the interim village between the north and south of Partapur in Rajasthan, where the Bohra Muslim community ‘lives’. All the streets in this village too are lined by thickly built building, but all permanently abandoned by its owners who have migrated to foreign countries. In Kerala, on either sides of the highway that takes you from Kochi to Kottayam, you see several huge mansions, which are totally vacant and waiting for their owners to come back. There is a difference between the NRIs in some parts of Kerala and the NRIs from other parts of India. While the NRIs from other parts prefer to keep their houses empty, in Kerala, if these buildings are located near tourist spots, they rent it out as temporary/seasonal guest houses and make money out of it. Goa, Jaipur and the townships around the metros in India too are developing this tendency of building mansions and leaving them for annual visits in the name of investments.

Later we would realize that Dandi too has become a NRI backyard for dumping their money as concrete and enamel monstrosities.

**

Akshay Bhai Naik has already arranged our visit to some important ‘Gandhi spots’ in Dandi and its neighborhood. We are told that we would be accompanied by a Gandhian activist in our onward journey.

Panchkaka nee Vadi is one place where Gandhiji rested and gave a speech just before reaching Dandi on 5th April 1930. This small piece of land with two old buildings now houses a few Gandhian residents and a khadi co-operative society.

Late Dilkush Bhai is the founder of Panchkaka nee Vadi. Educated in West, Dilkush Bhai became interested in Gandhian principles and started working towards the propagation of Khadi and Gandhian philosophy. He spent his life in this campus and met politicians and other visiting people and spoke to them relentlessly on Gandhian principles. Now one part of the humble building from where the co-operative society functions is converted into a Dilkush Bhai Museum. Through fading photographs and panels written in Gujarati, this museum tells the story of Dilkush Bhai Diwanji and his involvement with Gandhism and freedom struggle. From the pictures we understand all the notable personalities who gained us our independence had visited this humble dwelling.

We meet Gosai Bhai Patel, Vallabhai Manilal Shah and Komuben Ambelal at Panchkak nee Vadi. When we reach there, they have already taken their position under a huge mango tree.

Gosai Bhai Patel is an ex-MLA from the region. A staunch Gandhian throughout his life, Gosai Bhai, watched Gandhiji from a distance in 1930. He was just 11 years old then. But the memories are still vivid. While growing up, though attracted in Gandhian non-violence principle, Gosai Bhai involved in a few violent attacks against British rule. He recounts how he and his friends successfully attacked a police station and released the captives. Once, he and his friends tried to blow up a railway bridge. But thanks to ‘lack of technological know-how’ the explosion made a sound but no bridge was fallen. Later Gosai Bhai became a strong follower of Gandhism. He writes booklets on Gandhism and is still active in social work, despite his failing health.

Vallabhai Shah is a freedom fighter. But he does not carry an official record on that. He is a die-hard Gandhian. At the age of 85, a bit hard at hearing, Vallabh Bhai gets up at four in the morning and after prayer he spends one hour at charkha making yarn. This has been on for ages. According to him India’s problems stem from the abandoning of Gandhian principles. While demonstrating yarn making for us, he severely criticizes the current Narendra Modi government in Gujarat. ‘Call Gandhi Back’, that is the motto of Vallabh Bhai. He too writes booklets on Gandhian ways of life in Gujarati language and lives in Panchkaka nee Vadi.

Another occupant at Panchkaka nee Vadi is Komuben Ambelal. Born in Baruch, Komuben became an active follower of Gandhiji when she was in her college. She courted arrest several times and led the women in her region to non-violent resistance programs. She too works on charkha every day and spends time in doing social work.

**

Karuna Ben is our guide for the day. Born to a Khadi activist, she was called to Panchkaka nee Vadi after her education and ever since she works for the co-operative Khadi society near Navsari and lives in Panchkaka nee Vadi. She must be in her early forties but she has the aura of an elder sister and she keeps talking about things.

We head for Dandi Beach, where Gandhiji did his famous law breaking on 5th April 1930.

Anubhav Nath breaks into Vaishnav Janato. Karuna Ben looks at him with curiosity and love. Raju Bhai, our driver smiles through the rear view mirror. He has become accustomed to our antics. Somu Desai trains his camera at the sights of his liking.

There are two pictures/narratives in history that are juxtaposed to create a single narrative about the law breaking act of Gandhiji in Dandi. On 5th April 1930, he reached Dandi beach with his 78 followers. Thousands of people had already come from different places. On the same day, Gandhiji did not make salt from the sea water. He took a dip in the sea and spoke to the people. Then he walked a few meters towards east where Saifee Villa was located. Saifee Villa belonged to the leader of Dawood Bohra community, Syedna Taher Saifuddin Shaheb. Gandhiji stayed there for the night and his followers stayed in the tents and makeshift huts along the beach.

It was in front of Saifee Villa Gandhiji made salt on 6th April 1930. The famous photograph of Gandhiji bending over and picking up salt is actually clicked just outside the courtyard of this villa. However, Gandhiji’s dip at Dandi beach and his picking up salt near by on the next day are fused into one narrative in most of the historical writing.

Why Gandhiiji did not make salt at the beach? Reason is simple; practically it is impossible as the beaches have moving waters.

Salt pellets are deposited only when the saturated saline water from the sea is stored in some places and left there for evaporation for a considerable amount of time.

Dandi village had several creeks at that time. During high tide the saline water from the Arabian Sea rushed into these creeks and remained there for months. Once the evaporation is over these creeks were filled with salt crystals. In front of Saifee Villa there was a salt creek. Gandhiji picked up salt from there.

The same spot from where Gandhiji picked up salt as a symbolic gesture of breaking law now has an engraved marble memorial and on the right side of it, there is a life size sculpture of Gandhiji picking up salt. The sculpture does not look aesthetically done at all.

After Mahatma Gandhi’s death in 1948, Saifuddin Shaheb requested the first prime minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru to receive his villa as a donation to the nation. He wanted the villa to be converted into a Dandi memorial museum. Today this building houses a museum full of photographs and footnotes from the life of Mahatma Gandhi.

We take a dip in the sea. We enact the juxtaposed pictures from history by bending over the waves and picking up wet sand.

Inside Saifee Villa, along with the wind laden with the fragrance of sea we inhale history. Anubhav is silent for a while. His pyjama is all wet and he keeps trying to roll it up to make his movement smoother, but in vain.

**

Vinay Mandir is a famous educational institution with girls as day scholars and boys as resident scholars. Run by Dandi Namak Satyagrah Smarak Trust, with Rajmohan Gandhi as the Chairman and Acharya Dhirubhai Patel as Secretary, this school imparts education to all the village kids from Dandi and surrounding villages.

We have our lunch from the school mess. The food is simple and tasty. Karuna Ben has already brought her lunch box, which she shares with all of us. In such occasions we are comfortable in self helpings. But Karuna Ben does not allow us to move. She serves us, pours water in glasses and keeps chatting.

After lunch, Acharya Dhirubhai Patel meets at the prayer hall. At the age of 79, Dhirubhai Patel exudes the energy of a fifty year old man. Born in 1930, exactly the year his village witnessed the pivotal incident in the Independence Struggle of India, Dhirubhai got his formal education from Gujarat Vidyapeeth, Ahmedabad. After education, he came back to Dandi, and worked towards establishing Vinay Mandir. His efforts were not in vain, as one can see how this school has become a thing of pride for every villager.

“The whole of Gujarat coast line has got high saline saturation. Why did Gandhi select Dandi as his destination? Before going into that why did he choose salt as a medium to break the British law?” Dhirubhai Patel asks us with a benevolent smile on his face.

Perhaps, we have some answers after so much of reading on Salt Satygraha. But the answers Dhirubhai Patel gives us reveal interesting nuances.

First of all the choice of Dandi- Thanks to the presence of too many creeks and the regular saline deposit on earth, it was impossible for anything to grow in Dandi. Considered to be one of the most backward areas in India, Dandi had only two pucca building around, of which one is the Saifee Villa, where Gandhiji stayed.

A totally barren land in Dandi had forced the people to migrate to other places. Only a few handful of people stayed back in the village and they lived in makeshift huts. Many had migrated to South Africa. During Gandhiji’s stay in SA, he became acquainted with several of them and heard a lot about this place. On his return to India in 1915, many from this region had followed him back to India. For Gandhiji, in this way, Dandi was a right place for his experiment.

When Gandhiji came calling, Dandi was just a barren land. In 1951, a check dam was built to prevent the sea water entering in the mainland. That made all difference. All that greenery you see here today is post 1950s phenomenon. However, despite the changes, people still migrate to other countries. Dandi is currently going through a real estate boom. With the Heritage Road, the story is going to change completely.

Why salt? It was not just the reason that salt was used by everyone and the tax on it was 2000 times more than the actual production cost. Dhirubhai tells us a different story: Primarily, the British Government levied tax heavily mainly because they wanted to continue a tradition. A strange tradition.

When the East India Company was established, many ships used to come to Indian shores to collect spices and other materials. But an empty ship sailing across turbulent seas would have ended in shipwreck. Hence to balance the weight of the ship, the English people used to fill the hull of the ship with salt from England. They unloaded it in Indian shores. They did not want to waste the salt they brought. They wanted to sell it. But in India salt was the cheapest consumer item. To make the English salt cheap and capture the market, the British administration raised the price of the Indian salt and automatically the English salt became cheap.

Even after the ships changed technology, the salt pricing continued as if it were an unchangeable tradition. Gandhiji wanted to challenge this.

Jawaharlal Nehru and many other compatriots had expressed their doubts regarding the choice of salt as a symbol of breaking the British law. Their doubt was founded on the fact that salt making was possible only in the coastal region and in other land locked areas it would become a problem to ‘make’ salt. The skeptics thought that mass mobilization would have become impossible if salt had been the symbol.

According to Dhirubhai, this emphasis on salt was Gandhiji’s political strategy. He knew that if a centralized symbolism was not available, and other symbols were chosen for different regions, the non-violent nature of his movement would have been flouted by the masses with no proper leadership that understood Gandhiji’s principles to the core. Secondly, he wanted to control the movement completely for a greater purpose. He had trained his satyagrahis. And he knew that the Indian masses were not prepared to take up non-violent modes the way Satyagrahis did. It was imperative to control the situation either by practical means or by emotional symbolism. Gandhiji chose both and controlled the movement from Gujarat shores. It was interesting to see the people in Delhi and elsewhere making salt on the same day, with salt water made out of the salt bought from the market and boiling it in cauldrons in streets and households.

We become silent before the immensity of history and the nuances of it. Anubhav breaks the silence with a question.

“You studied in Gujarat Vidyapeeth, where making khadi yarn in charkha still is a part of the syllabus and practice. Do you train your students in Vidya Mandir also on this? And what is future of khadi as a symbol?”

“Khadi keval vastr nahin, khadi ek vichar hai (Khadi is not just cloth, it is a philosophy,” Dhirubhai smiles. “Gandhiji was not emphasizing on non-cooperation with the British Raj, using Khadi as a medium and boycotting the mill clothes from Britain. He was looking at the economic aspect too. Depending on khadi cloth would have helped at least eight families to share the profit in successive layers of production and consumption. Even today it is possible. Khadi is not turn into an industry even today. It is still in co-operative and small scale industry sector. If it could be made into an industry, if every citizen in India buys Khadi along with other clothes, it would have major economic results in the poor sections in our country. Khadi and its proliferation should be seen as a philosophical move,” he concludes.

We don’t know how to thanks to this man of experience and vision. Humbled by the meeting, we say goodbye to Dhirubhai. His smile is still etched in our minds.

**

Karadi is a few kilometers away from Dandi. It was here Gandhiji set up his temporary office to manage the ongoing salt satyagraha. At Karadi, Gandhiji made a small hut and lived there for twelve days.

The British authorities did not want to arrest Gandhiji immediately after the Salt law breaking. They were taking time. Sensing the mood of the country, they knew for sure that an immediate arrest Gandhiji would end up in mass violation of law and order. Hence, the British wanted to give the impression that they were still watching but okay with the situation.

Gandhiji lived in a small hut. The basement of it is still present there. Every year, during the winter season the authorities re-make the hut in order to evoke Gandhiji’s memories.

On 22nd April 1930, at mid-night, the Frontier Mail Express stopped near Karadi, though there was no railway station. It was a planned move. Gandhiji was arrested in the mid night and without disturbing the villagers’ night, the authorities took Gandhiji into the awaiting train. The train again stopped at Borivili station in Bombay and from there he was taken to Pune by a taxi. No public statement was made on the arrest of Gandhiji. By day break, he was sent to the Aga Khan Palace and from there to Yerwada Jail.

Now at the spot from where Gandhiji was put into the train, there is a railway station adequately named as ‘Gandhi Smriti Railway Station.’

I and Anubhav sit at the basement of Gandhiji’s hut. On our left there is a huge architectural monstrosity designed by some government architect, which now houses a gallery of photographs. It is closed for renovation and we are denied entry.

**

From Karadi we leave for Dharasan, near Dungri station. This place with full of salt fields was selected by Gandhiji for continuing with his law breaking movement. But he could not go there as he was arrested.

However, Gandhiji had made arrangements for continuing with the struggle. Abbas Tyebji, the veteran Satyagrahi, was anointed by Gandhiji as the leader of this movement in the eventuality of an arrest. By the time Sarojini Naidu had joined the team at Dandi. Once Gandhiji was arrested Abbas Tyebji and Sarojini Naidu proceeded to Dharasana and mobilized the people.

Though there were a few incidents of breaking salt law at Dharasana, the authorities did not allow it to continue. They arrested both Sarojini Naidu and Abbas Tyebji. These arrested heralded the closure of salt satyagraha officially. But it was the beginning of a huge movement, which as Gandhiji had envisioned, yielded the independence of India.

Sarojini Naidu and Abbas Tyebji lived in a hut at Dharasana. Now there is a small memorial structure.

Kids from the neighborhood collect keys of the memorial and open the door for us. A structure that reminds anybody of a memorial tomb of Mughal tradition is now collapsing from inside. The boys apply a lot of force to open and close the door.

We drive towards the Dharasana salt plants. Anubhav collects a bottle of salt pellets from a heap. Then we walk across the vast fields where some laborers prepare the ground for collecting sea water.

Anubhav and Somu go near the workers and discuss the ways of making salt. From a distance I could see Anubhav graduating from his Mercedes to a tractor. He drives it and Somu clicks several of those Kodak Moments.

By January end and February beginning, the salt plants will be full of salt, the way snow covers higher altitudes during winter.

Sun goes down behind the salt fields. We become silhouettes of moving bodies. We walk back to our car.

**

For us this visit is all about looking for avenues of aesthetic mediation and interpretation of events, places and history.

Gandhiji has always been a part of aesthetic debate in India. Dandi March is one of the wide reaching symbols/metaphors that Gandhiji had created.

Here our aim is to bring that metaphor a bit closer to the living contexts of our contemporary artists. We want the artists to leave their studios for a few days to travel along the same routes Gandhiji had taken for Dandi March.

Dandi was an experience for us, which I have tried my best to translate into verbal terms here. But when artists visit the same areas, they would see it differently.

This would result into a new visual discourse on Gandhiji. We don’t want to connect our project with any propaganda. We don’t want to take any abstract position or notion by calling our project as ‘Satyagraha’ or something like that. To our surprise, while on the road, we realized that the project would fall in the 80th anniversary of Salt Satyagraha. It is quite a coincidence. No deliberations meant at all.

Contemporary art has a tendency to overtake history with a lighting pace. But we want the contemporary art to take this lighting trip through the actualities of our history, perhaps of the stories of it too.

We don’t want to justify or condemn Gandhiji. Our intention is not to say that Gandhiji is the only example to be followed. Our intention is to see Gandhiji again, feel the ways he walked and experience the people whom he met.

There would be a new discourse, we are sure, outside the written history or established aesthetic discourse on Gandhiji, with this visit.

We want to strike the same route again, this time with the artists, sometime in January/February 2010.

We want to taste the salt of our land. We want to become the salt of our land.

(Pictures by Somu Desai)

Roads Taken Again: Into the Villages of Gandhiji

(Gandhiji's bust at Aslali village. The Siva temple behind)


(Marble plaque at Aslali Panchayat Building, which was a Dharamsala in 1930)


(Old Civil Court at Borsad. It is here VB Patel and Gandhiji were trialed)


(Balcony at JD Patel School, from where Gandhiji addressed the people at Borsad)


(the Ginning mill at Amod, where Gandhiji stayed for the night)


(behind the ginning mill at Amod)

Between Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad and Dandi near Navsar, South Gujarat there is distance of approximately 380 kilometers. A trip by road through Ahmedabad-Bomaby Highway would take around five hours, if the traffic conditions permit.

In 1930 there was no highway. Through there was a main road, rail was the main mode of conveyance. Gandhiji could have taken the main road and reached Dandi in a few days time. But he preferred to visit most of the backward villages located on the either side of the present highway.

Gandhiji’s idea was different. Dandi March for him was not just about breaking the Salt Law imposed by the British Government. It was not just another theatrical and symbolic act of moving the populace towards a greater cause either. In his usual style Gandhiji was trying to understand his country, by visiting the villages, interviewing people, living with them, understanding their problems, proposing solutions, exhorting them to the struggle for complete independence and above all propagating his ideas about non-violence, non-cooperation and poorna swaraj.

Impromptu speeches filled with facts and figures, nuances of laws, lessons on hygiene and removal of untouchability and instillation of political awareness- that was Gandhiji’s style of functioning in these villages. He asked for resignations from the important villagers who held official positions in the British Government. He did not bully them to resign from their respective posts. Instead, he asked them to volunteer themselves for the cause of independence.

Gandhiji is reported to have said the villagers that India had 300 districts (in 1930) and there are 300 district collectors. Using local officials, these 300 people could control the lives of millions of people in India. If, he said, the Indian millions decide to disobey the directives of the officials, the Government would not have done much to stop them. India at that time did not have enough jails to accommodate all these non-violent law breakers and resisters.

The memory of apartheid was strong in Gandhiji. In 1893, despite having a first class ticket, he was thrown out of a railway carriage in South Africa. He found the Indian laborers and businessmen were pushed and pulled around by the South African whites, even if they had the British citizenship by law. Gandhiji wanted to put an end to this apartheid. His experiments with non-violent resistance started then and there. Back in India in 1915, after extensively traveling around the country, he realized how Indian populace was a directionless and scattered one because of the untouchability practiced by them. During Dandi March, he told the villagers that they treated their fellow human beings as untouchables the same way the British Government treated them. It was time for change.

Gandhiji was a corporate thinker, a pragmatist and was aware of the results of his action. For alleviating the poor and the ignorant, he needed data. Hence, during the Dandi March, he asked the village elders to furnish him with a complete data and the demographic profile of the villages. This profiling included education, use of khadi, untouchability, number wells, health, number of cattle, source of income, drinking habits etc. Everyday, Gandhiji analyzed the data with his super brain and super sensitivity and suggested solutions.

So Gandhiji took 25 days to reach Dandi. In 1983, the Australian scholar, Thomas Weber took the same route and extensively documented the then situation and his book ‘On the Salt March: The Historiography of Mahatma Gandhi’s March to Dandi’ still remains the most authentic record on Dandi March. In 2005, Gandhiji’s grandson Tussar Gandhi, with 78 volunteers struck the same road as a part of the 75 anniversary of Dandi March and it was flagged off by none other than the Congress President, Mrs.Sonia Gandhi.

Dandi gets national and international attention once in a while when politicians want a unified symbol of nationalism for gaining political ends. The government had declared a heritage road along the same route Gandhiji had taken, immediately after his death in 1948. Thomas Weber notes that many villagers complained of the authorities bringing rubbles for building the road and leaving it there for ages. It was the story of 1983. Each village thought that they were left out of glory because they did not have enough political clout to have the road going through their place. But Weber told them that they were not alone. Throughout his journey, he found the proposed Heritage Road still lying as heap of rubble and barrels of asphalt, grass and weed overpowering them.

Today, I and Anubhav Nath listen to a lot of talk about the impending inauguration of Heritage Road. This is road is going to connect all the 40 villages Gandhiji had visited and with an enhanced tourism due to this would bring economic and cultural prosperity to all these villages. Each village that we visit tells us the same story. And we do see the work in progress. They say it would take three years. After that Dandi Route is going to be a great tourist destination.

We would find the chances of it bleak as our trip takes off from Ahmedabad in an Innova Car.

Considering the complexion of a changed context and time, it was not advisable for us to hit the road and spend all 25 days walking. It would not have yielded much to our research as we are not sociologists or politicians. What we wanted was the awareness and we chose five main villages that Gandhiji had visited, namely Aslali, Borsad, Amod, Mangroli and Navsari.

On the pleasant morning of 4th November we took the vehicle arranged by the Ahmedabad based young artist, Hindol Brahmabhatt. Raju Bhai is the driver. He is young and cheerful.

Aslali Village is around fifty kilometers from Ahmedabad. At the Panchayat office we meet the village Sarpanch, Janak Bhai Rathore. Surprisingly, he is a very young man in his late twenties. Parthesh Vyas is a clerk in the office. They together tell us about Aslali.

The village has, according to the census data in 1991, a population of 6162. The unofficial records say that it is 15000. The main source of income is agriculture and labor. There are many factories around here and also many people commute to the nearest Ahmedabad for work. Aslali is a village which still struggles to come out of its backwardness.

The Panchayat office was a dharmasala during Gandhiji’s visit. He stayed for the night here. Though a very few people remember the worth of the place, a fading plaque written in Gujarati is supposed to remind the people of a great man’s visit to their village. We are taken to the nearest primary school. Between the road and the school there is small ditch full of weeds and on its banks, on a raised platform we see a bust of Gandhiji with a dried up garland around the neck. As in the case of many public busts and statues of Gandhiji in India, this one too is covered with dust and bird droppings.

Between Gandhiji’s bust and the primary school there is a Siva temple, where, the myths say that Gandhiji had given an impromptu speech. Weber observes that the villages make many stories about the number of speeches Gandhiji had given in different locations at the same village whereas the diary entries of the marchers and Gandhiji’s correspondences of the time tell that the speeches were mainly given under trees, which are either located at the village square or schools.

The school is neat with a lot of trees in the campus. Small little kids scramble around the campus and some of them sweeping their classroom. We wonder whether it is a Gandhian ideal being exercised or the children and forced to do the labor, which is otherwise supposed to be done by a salary earning employee.

The school has around 348 boys and 357 girls. All the teachers seem to be very proud of their village and their school. They show the Gandhi Hall, which is built years back, from where Gandhiji had given a speech to the villagers.

Aslali is a lesson for us. We realize that the story wouldn’t be much different in other villages. There is a talk about the upcoming Heritage Road. Many expect the property prices would go up with the road.

When we reach Borsad it is around 12.30 pm. We ask for directions and someone leads us to an old building, which was the old civil court in Borsad. This humble building still carries the marks of ravaging time. Presence of a huge banyan tree makes the place eternally cool. This building had witnessed the trial of Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel and Mahatma Gandhi. Now it houses a Forest Office, part of a court and an adjacent hut like structure houses a Home Guard unit.

Borsad is historically important as it is one of the villages where the British patrons started a high school. Currently called JD Patel School, this century old school has beautiful buildings and a campus laden with trees. Started off as EMHS (Edward Memorial High School), now it is run by JD Patel Trust. JD Patel was a lawyer and a farmer from this area and he did a lot of work towards Indian Independence. The first Chairman of the Trust was Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel.

In his visit to Borsad, Gandhiji stayed in this school. He addressed the crowd, which flooded the campus, from the first floor classroom with a balcony. This part of the school now houses the girls’ wing. We ask what they have done with Gandhiji’s ‘room’. The school chairman who accompanies us tells that a classroom is conducted from there. There are talks of converting this building into a heritage building. At the same time there was a proposal from the government to take over the building, demolish and make a new structure as a ‘heritage museum.’ Such thoughts occur only in the minds of Indian administrators. With a lot of guts the village and the trust resisted the government move. Now they have convinced the government to keep the building itself as a heritage building. And they too expect that everything would fall in place once the Heritage Road is completed.

JD Patel School is now a rich and prosperous establishment with a lot of NRI support coming in. The former students of this school who are doing well these days both in India and abroad send in donations in cash and kind (computers etc) and the trust has puts its energies to develop the school, college, libraries and advanced education centers. The campus is almost 30 acres big and it is surrounded by the Borsad village.

Amod is predominantly a Muslim village. When we reach there it is already 4 pm. From Weber’s book we had already made an impression about this village. Amod was a village, which had a lot of cotton fields around and a well known ginning mill marked hub of the village.

We expect something big. At the village square people direct us with the typical Indian way of showing directions, ‘over there’. ‘Over there’ we find a row of ruined tile roofed buildings, which from nowhere give an impression of a factory. From the rooms that open to the street and are saved from collapsing, some shops that sell knick-knacks are run. We enquire about the famous ginning mill where Gandhiji stayed and ‘threatened’ people for their apartheid practices.

Sabir Bhai is a young Muslim. He comes out of his flour mill (after a quarter of a century I see again something like that) and confirms us that it was the same building that once housed the ginning mill.

Through a rusted iron gate we go inside the campus. There is an open ground. Books say that Gandhiji stayed in an open space behind the ginning mill. Yes, it is the open ground. Some boys come around us with a mischievous smiles lingering on their lips. We ask them whether they know the importance of their place. They grin and leave us to our task. People now come behind this building to urinate or to fee their cattle in the thickets at the other end of the ground.

Next destination is Mangroli. We reach Bharoch (Broach in history books) by 6 pm. It is already dark and we are already on the high way that leads us to Surat and Navsari. We are asked to take a left turn off from the highway. A 23 odd kilometers into the village we drive and reach a nowhere. We are almost lost. And some villagers tell us that we are in a wrong Mangroli. There is another Mangroli next to Sajod Village, where Gandhiji had visited.

Like monkeys we eat peanuts to calm us down. Anubhav Nath, by this time, has developed this habit of reciting ‘Vaishnav Janato’ at unexpected moments. Started off as a playful recital, by the second day of our trip Anubhav has become quite serious about his chanting. We try to decipher the meaning of the lines. The last lines would not yield to our interpretative abilities. Later this too would be explained to us by Akshay Bhai Naik, a friend and the head of Applied Arts Department at the BA Mehta Kala Mahavidyala, Amalsad, who joined us at Dandi on the next day.

We pass Mangroli and Sajod. It is really late and we don’t want to disturb the villagers at night. They might leave their Gandhian principles behind and handle us for intruding. We observe things, move around a bit and head for Navsari.

Navsari is a rich town, famous for diamond trade. Akshay Bhai has already booked a very good hotel for us. We were really looking forward to the hotel room as the previous night at ‘Royal Night’ in Ahmedabad was not really ‘royal’.

Physical fatigue melts away when good friends join in with warm hugs and pleasant news. In Navsari Akshay Bhai and Somu Desai join us, yes with warm hugs and stories.

Tomorrow is a big day for us. To our friends’ surprise Anubhav chants Vaishnav Janato again. And we all join in with hotel room furniture as our accompanying instruments.

Sleep walks along the fifth floor corridor, comes into the room stealthily and pins us down to the fluffy beds.

At Sabarmati Ashram: Looking for Gandhiji

(Gandhiji's room at Sabarmati Ashram)

(a view of Hruday Kunj at Sabarmati Ashram)

(anubhav nath with kishorlal bhai at Hruday Kunj)

(johnyml signing the visitors' book at Hruday Kunj)


There was a strange sense of excitement that I and Anubhav Nath shared throughout the month of October. We had been looking forward to our trip to Dandi. Whenever we met at Delhi’s Bengali Market over cups of cold coffee or at some exhibition opening we exchanged this feeling of exhilaration exactly the way a betrothed couple exchanged covert glances on a day date.

On 3rd November 2009, we took a morning flight and reached Ahmedabad at 9 am. The morning was warm enough against our expectations on winter. We asked the pre-paid taxi to take us to Sabarmati Ashram. The cabbie was a bubbling young guy, who was willing to give us tips about things around.

Ahmedabad- once this city was called ‘Manchester of the East’. Perhaps the textile industry is not so strong as it was during the late 19th and early 20th century, Ahmedabad has a special place in contemporary history of Indian industries. The roads are wide and more or less clean. At every junction there is a public statue of one or the other national leaders. One could feel that there is a functional government in place as the city looks clean and nearly out of chaos.

We take a left turn from the main road and the car goes down into an underpass. The whole stretch of this bridge and underpass are covered with mosaic murals. The murals tell the story of Mahatma Gandhi as a young Porbandar boy to the Father of Modern India. Impressive work.

Later we are told that these murals are done by Rajesh Sagara, son of Piraji Sagara, a noted modern artist from Ahmedabad. Rajesh Sagara is a faculty member of CEPT (Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology) and when the Municipal Corporation of Ahmedabad wanted the bridges and underpasses to be converted into public monuments, Rajesh took the lead to implement the idea of making a visual history of the city through Gandhiji’s life. In another part of the city, another bridge and underpass carry a series of murals depicting the pictures from the life of Sardar Vallabhai Patel, another proud son of Gujarat.

I remember my trips in Delhi’s metro. Despite the able leadership of E.Sreedharan, somehow, the visual decorations on the plush metro stations are just below standard. These murals are done by the Delhi College of Art students on commission. In London Tube, each station has a mural depicting the story of that particular place, with visual representations of industry and culture related to that place. Both the Metro administration and Delhi Urban Art Commission are huge flops in the case of creating a visual history in public places. They can learn a lot from Ahmedabad.

Gandhiji is the theme of Ahmedabad and the city knows what Gandhiji is all about. But are they particularly interested in Gandhiji in these days?

With the growing number of vehicles and fashionable chic and clothes all around, we get a feeling that Gandhiji’s style of life is the last thing which would inspire the new generation.

Anubhav has dressed for the occasion. He, in his khadi kurta and pyjama looks like an anachronism walking on two legs, the same way the khadi bhandars embroidering the city streets like small little samples of museums.

Gandhiji has not yet become an industry in India. Gandhiji is still a reverent memory. We want Gandhiji to be frozen in time. We want Gandhiji as a ritual. We have forgotten Gandhiji as a corporate thinker, a law maker, a pragmatist driven by humanitarian values. Follow Gandhiji, we can make a big and ‘good’ corporate world where each human being has his/her dignified role to play.

Remember John Ruskin who said Unto the Last. That was Gandhiji’s philosophy of common good. Gandhiji’s corporatism started from this thought, through co-operation with people and non-co-operation with the oppressive governments.

At the threshold of Sabarmati Ashram, we discuss the need for doing common good. And we look for an accommodation. Taking cues from Thomas Weber’s book we have this feeling that we get accommodation within Sabarmati Ashram. At least for a day we would live like a Satyagrahi.

At the bookstall that doubles up as a reception desk we ask for accommodation in Nandini Guest House. ‘It is a museum. It no longer accommodates guests,’ says a khadi clad man behind the counter. We understand what we have asked for. Nandini Guest house is one of the humble architectural units in Sabarmati Ashram, where Gandhiji’s guests like Dr.Rajendra Prasad, Jawaharlal Nehru and so on lived when they came calling.

Understanding our folly, we get out of the campus and a few meters away we find a hotel. It is better that I don’t go into the details of that hotel. Keeping our luggage there, we get back to Sabarmati Ashram.

After his return to India in 1915, Gandhiji founded his Satyagraha Ashram in Kochrab near Ahmedabad. He traveled all over India to understand the soul of India. In the following years he gave leadership to the Champaran Movement (1917) and the Kheda Peasant Movement (1918). It was time to set up a larger establishment for furthering his works. Contributed by the mill owners in Ahmedabad, Gandhiji converted the 30 odd acres of land near the Sabarmati River bordering the old city of Ahmedabad, into his Ashram.

Kishorlal Bhai, who works as a charkha demonstrator remembers, “The old city ended up at the bridge over the river. This was a like jungle. Gandhiji cleaned up the place and started working on buildings in 1917.” The river down there, where once Gandhiji and his ashramites used to do their daily ablutions, is now a muddy canal with the city’s waste dumped to it.

The government has a plan to clean up the Sabarmati River and create river front cities on either side of the river, following the examples of Korea and some western countries.

Hrudaya Kunj, where Gandhiji and Kasturba lived, is the central house in the campus. Now it has Gandhiji’s charka and writing table as memorials. This has two living rooms, a guest room, bathrooms, a kitchen and a huge veranda. Kishorlal Bhai sits there and makes yarn in his charkha. He is a government employee.

The lady who is also an English speaking guide tells us many stories about Gandhiji’s life there and informs us about the places that we must visit during the journey. She even tells us about a goat, whose milk Gandhiji had drunk during the Dandi March, and the successive generations of it could be found in one of those villages.

Sabarmati Ashram has Vinoba Kutir and Mira Kutir, where Vinoba Bhave and Madelaine Slade had lived. There is a prayer field (Prarthana Bhoomi), Nandini Guest House and Magan Nivas. Once a barren land, Gandhiji had converted this land into a sylvan dwelling place.

On 12th March 1930, when Gandhiji left Sabarmati Ashram with his 78 satyagrahis, he had taken a vow that he would never return to the ashram without gaining complete independence for India. He gained independence for India but he could never come back to his abode as his life was taken away by bullets on 30th January 1948 in Delhi.

Sabarmati Ashram has got a modern complex now, which houses the book stall, archives, reference library, exhibition halls of paintings and photographs, micro chip film library etc. Mr.Modi, who is the head of administration, speaks to us about Dandi March. He has not seen Gandhiji. But once he came to Sabarmati, he was taken in. Modi has spent several decades now in Sabarmati Ashram.

Anubhav asks a lady who works in the bookstall for some directions. ‘I hardly leave this place and I don’t know much about Ahmedabad,’ she tells us with a smile.

After a late lunch, we visit Gujarat Vidya Peeth established by Gandhiji for imparting vocational training to students. Gandhiji’s lieutenants were recruited from amongst the students of Gujarat Vidya Peeth during the Dandi March.

There are around 3000 students studying here today- from school to Ph.D. Both boys and girls wear Khadi uniforms. They all carry portable charkhas. Every day from 11 am to 11.45 am, each and every person inside the campus makes yarn in his/her charkha.

“It is not a vocational training anymore as the times have changed,” says Mr.Khimani, the vice chancellor of Gujarat Vidya Peeth. “It is a way of meditation. A way of life. Students do not continue with khadi once they are out of this school. But they learn the values of Gandhiji,” he tells us.

Khadi has become almost impractical now. Gandhiji had his own reasons to promote Khadi- self reliance, boycotting British products, supporting Indian mill owners, imparting vocational training to the villagers, identifying with the poorest of the poor in the country and so on.

For Gandhiji, charkha and khadi were metaphors as well as practical weapons. Today, in a changed context, it becomes almost impossible to make yarn in Charkha. But Gandhiji is not just about khadi and charkha.

Mr.Khimani shows us his three months of yarn. It would hardly make two meters of cloth.

Anubhav wonders how many human working hours and energy might have spent on making the kurta that he is wearing today.

The students look at us with some kind of curiosity. After Tihar experience, we feel that they are also in some sort of disciplining system.

Later, we visit Navjeevan Press, the publication division that Gandhiji established for publishing propaganda literature (later Gandhian philosophy) for uniting India through discussing the country’s illnesses and strengths.

Navjeevan Press does not work for profit. It is subsidized by the government and the Trust. Gandhiji’s works are published and many translated versions are published from here. Gandhiji’s autobiography ‘Story of My Experiment with Truth’ is published in around 16 regional languages and many have gone into several editions.

Gandhiji’s literature was scattered and the copyrights issues were bogging the publications down till a few years back. Then the Trust got into action and bought back all the copyrights from private parties, and a balanced editorial committee was formed for regular publication of Gandhi literature.

Back in hotel room, we think about Gandhiji of his times and Gandhiji of today. One thing is for sure, one cannot escape the magnetism of this man. The moment you stand before a photograph of Gandhiji, it draws you into it. You remember all those pains that he took on his body and spirit for alleviating the people of their pains. As Albert Einstein once said, it would be difficult to believe that a man of flesh and blood like this walked on this earth.

Gandhiji needs a new interpretation. For us, Gandhiji looks like the ultimate example of the corporate thinking, selfless political action, futuristic social planning and an equal society. Gandhiji should be interpreted and understood by using contemporary tools of knowledge and thinking. Gandhiji has a lot to tell us even today. Gandhiji has to be translated into practical terms of today’s world. We need a museumized Gandhiji, at the same time need a Gandhiji in action.

I am not a recent convert who preaches fiercely than the one who is naturally born into. So is Anubhav. We have been initiated to Gandhian reading several years back as students and enthusiasts of human philosophy. But this project gives us a particular context and framework to see Gandhiji again with a renewed interest.

Re-searching Dandi March: Preface to a Forthcoming Art Project

(JohnyML and Anubhav Nath at Dandi Sea Shore. Pic by Somu Desai)

On 5th September 2009, after completing the formalities of ‘Expressions at Tihar’, an art project and exhibition curated both by myself and Anubhav Nath, we were thinking of doing another art project, which we wanted to be different from the usual gallery shows. I have been working on Gandhiji’s Champaran Movement (1917-18) and our conversation mainly moved around Mahatma Gandhi.

As keen observers of the Indian contemporary art scene, we have been watching how the contemporary artists working on/with the images from Gandhiji’s life and times. From Henry Cartier Bresson’s photographs to Nandalal Bose’s Haripura Congress Posters to D.P.Roy Choudhury’s ‘Gyarah Moortis’ came to our minds as a backdrop setting.

We discussed the works of K.S.Radhakrishnan. He had made his protagonist, Musui to host the famous Dandi walking posture of Gandhiji. Vivan’s Sundaram’s juxtaposition of a Giocometti hand with a lump of salt came to our mind. Atul Dodiya’s shutter works with Gandhiji’s images could not have escaped our attention. K.G.Subramanyan might not have painted Gandhiji as Gandhiji but his theoretical discourse moved around Gandhian philosophy of autonomy. Surendran Nair’s ‘Tathagatha, Tathagatha, Tatha Gathaa’ and his famous gift for Gandhiji, an iron knife inside a box of salt pellets were strong reminders of Gandhiji’s presence in our visual discourse. Vivek Vilasini’s photographic series on Gandhiji’s memorial sculptures in public spaces, Ashim Purkayastha’s intervention through the manipulation of postal stamps, Somu Desai’s Vibrant Gujarat Mural, Debanjan Roy’s Red Gandhijis- the floodgates of imageries were opened.

Then N.Ranga’s famous cartoon with a single brush stroke. Gandhiji in Apple’s advertisement. Gandhiji in Mont Blanc pen’s advertisement.

Gandhiji in innumerable calendar posters.

Gandhiji in our daily lives. The five hundred rupee notes.

Our next project has to be on Gandhiji, then and there we decided. And it has to be on Dandi March (1930).

Why?

A quick analysis on the Gandhi images in our visual culture informed us that these images are often used for eulogizing Gandhiji as an indisputable icon. Or else, these images were used for forwarding a critique on the anti-poor policies of the state. At times it was felt that, Gandhiji had become a state tool for oppressing free thinking. And at times, Gandhiji became a universal icon like Che Guevara, which could be used to advertise computers to fountain pens to T-shirts.

Icons have strong symbolic values. They could be interpreted and misinterpreted with equal force.

But what about Gandhiji as an icon of resistance and tolerance, both our world seeks desperately these days? Could Gandhiji and his philosophy on resistance, tolerance and non-violence be brought back into the new global corporate culture and life, using adequate aesthetic interventions?

The idea of Dandi occurred then and there because Dandi March was the one political struggle where Gandhiji implemented all his philosophical strength, the surety of which he had been testing since his South African days. Since 1914, Gandhiji had been sharpening his ideology of resistance. In 1917, when he involved in Champaran Movement, he was still skeptical about his methods. In 1917-18, when he asked the Patidars of the Kheda district in Gujarat, not to pay land tax to the British, though he was gaining ground support, he was not sure of the future of such defiance by people towards the British Government. In the crucial years of 1919 (Jalianwala Bagh), 1921 (Bombay Satyagraha, Khilafat Movement and Non Co-operation movement), 1922 (Chauri Chaura incident), 1929 (Declaration of Poorna Swaraj- Complete Independence), Gandhiji was testing the endurance capacity of his philosophy. In 1930, with Dandi March, Gandhiji could successfully implement it.

We went into a research mode. We collected books and documentary materials. From two locations in Delhi, I and Anubhav Nath exchanged our daily findings for almost two months.

Slowly, we recognized the power of Dandi March. On 12th March 1930, Gandhiji had left his first abode in India, Sabarmati Ashram, near Ahmedabad, with a band of Satyagrahis trained by Gandhiji himself, for Dandi, a village near Navsari, South Gujarat, where on 6th April, he broke the British Tax Law on Salt by making salt from the sea water.

The great march to Dandi was a powerful symbolic act. It was a beautiful metaphor too. Gandhiji, showcased his philosophical and political and pragmatic clarity before the people of India and also before the colonial British Government. The moving power of this symbolic act was too great to resist.

For Gandhiji, salt was a symbol and a metaphor. Today for us, both the salt and march are two symbols conjoined by the power of time and distance.

This symbolism was later enacted by several people who were goaded by research interest (like the Australian scholar Thomas Weber) and political interest (like the Congress party leaders).

For myself and Anubhav Nath, Dandi March is a code that demands aesthetic decoding through direct action and involvement by the Indian contemporary artists

We wanted to experience Gandhiji’s Dandi March. We wanted our fellow artists to experience it.

Hence, after considerable homework, I and Anubhav set out for the Dandi journey on 3rd November 2009. We visited Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad. We took interviews with several Gandhians and local people. Then we followed the route, which Gandhiji had taken for reaching Dandi.

We saw villages. We talked to village elders and panchayat heads. We met Gandhians. We met youngsters who just didn’t care about us or Gandhiji.

The trip was an eye opener.

We decided to make two lists of artists; one who could march with us to Dandi and two, who could visit Dandi and villages with us on a quick visit. While making this distinction we were aware of the fact that many of our senior artist friends might have tight schedules as well as medical issues. We respect them.

In the coming chapters, I would be writing about our Dandi experience.

A Readable Magazine with Academic Depth- Art Connect+

There are few magazines that make you to read cover to cover. Philosopher Francis Bacon says when he talks about books, ‘some are to be tasted, some are to be swallowed and some are to be chewed and digested.’ It is applicable in the case of art magazines also. ‘Some of them are to be happily put into refrigerators for an imagined future use and later trashed along with other rotten stuff,’ Bacon would have added had he been living today.

Though a keen reader of art magazines of all complexions, I should confess that the kind of art writing promoted by several of these magazines has made me to flip the pages as fast as I could.

But here is a magazine, the four issues old Art Connect+, published by the IFA, Bangalore and edited by Anjum Hasan that makes you to read it as if you were reading a thriller.

IFA has been sending me the complimentary copies since Art Connect was launched in 2008. I would say, the latest issue is the best out of the four.

A translated chapter from Marathi novelist Santa Gokhale’s ‘Tya Varshi’ (In that Time) sets the tone of this particular issue. Translated by the author herself, the plot of the novel unveils in the year 2004. There are classical singers and artists who are affected by the national pogroms and global wars live, suffer, triumph and die in the novel. In the particular chapter available to us, Santa Gokhale shows us the predicament of a classical singer who wants to improvise her classical training to the needs of the contemporary times. But her Guruji disowns her for her ‘deviation’ from the tradition.

The conflict between tradition and contemporaneity is what Santa Gokhale wants to narrate and as the former art critic of Times of India, she knows the art scene first hand. She makes parallel narratives of two streams; of classical music and contemporary art to explain her case. Though we are not privileged to read the whole novel, as it is in Marathi, the present piece of translation would help us to understand the intensity of the theme.

Quite naturally, the same conflict comes up again for discussion in a beautiful conversation between the modern dancer Astad Deboo and the theatre and film director Sunil Shanbag. Deboo speaks of the spaces that he uses or discovers when he is invited to perform. Through drawing a parallel between one of the classical dance forms, Bharatnatyam, and the kind of dance he performs, Deboo says how effective the classical forms would have been had the performers dared to use the given space a bit more consciously. For the one should step out of the norms, without discarding or disrespecting them.

‘In the World of Marafat’, writer and researcher Surojit Sen travels through the world of Marafat singers. They are like Sufis, trying to link the individual soul and the eternal soul through the worship of body and the songs in praise of it. Sen traces the history of Marafat singers and narrates the personal lives of a few Marafat singers and through which he brings out the social conflicts that they need to go through in their personal lives.

‘Disappearing Professions in Urban India’ is an essay photo essay combination between Oriole Henry and Clair Arni. Oriole and Clair travel through the innards of Kolkata and look for the traces of the remaining traditional small scale industries like shoe making, wig making, perfumeries and so on. The crisp text and the revealing and poignant photographs make this essay palatable to both eyes and brain.

‘The Story of a Story Teller- Jogesh Chandra Bose’ is a life sketch of the first radio story teller in Kolkata. Written by historian Indira Biswas, this essay tells us the social situation in which radio broadcasting was done during the third decade of the last century. The total radio population during 1930s, put Bombay and Calcutta together, was just above ten thousand. In that context to become a popular broadcaster was a seriously great feat. Jogesh Chandra Bose, a forty year old lawyer did it.

Jogesh Bose modeled his program on one of the children’s program in BBC and assumed the role of an imaginary grandfather, ‘Galpadada’. He used to tell stories and interesting anecdotes. The popularity of the show grew and it became a regular feature in CRS (Calcutta Radio Service). He became so popular that publication of a magazine followed. When the radio station was about to discontinue broadcasting thanks to financial problems, children and grown up in Calcutta wrote thousands of letters showing concern for the future of Galpadada.

Janaki Abraham’s ‘Who has Photographs? A Journey through the Homes in Talassery’ is a wonderful piece of research narrative. By going through the personal and professional photographs taken and preserved by the Tiyya families in the North Kerala, Janaki Abraham explains the social dynamics of caste, economics, culture and politics played within and without these families. Janaki considers two case studies, one of the circus families and the other of an individual who against all odds learnt to use a camera.

What makes this issue of Art Connect interesting is its first person touch in the narratives. Mostly in the jargon filled academic writings, scholars choose to avoid first person ‘I’. Without compromising the academic depth, all these writers have used ‘I’ to tell us about their research and the stories from their research.

While the jargon infested seminar papers go to Sivakasi to supplement the cracker industry, Art Connect+ will remain in the shelves for long time. And a reader would definitely take this issue out once in a while to have a re-look at it, with a smile.

Fifteen Ways of Selecting Artists

Certain pictures prefer to stay in zoom in mode always. Time does not pixellate them in memory.

Year- 1996. Place- Delhi. Location- a private gallery.

A young artist from some village in North India comes to this gallery. A lady, who is a receptionist-cum-typist-cum-accountant sits at the desk. The artist wants to show his works, which are rolled up under his arm.

She asks him to unroll it and show. He sits on the floor. Unrolls the papers one by one. She says, ‘next…next’.

Expectation fills in the eyes of the young artist.

‘Leave them here or come back with more works later,’ she says.

Artist rolls the papers again. Silently he walks out. She goes back to the opened ledger before her.

Anger seethes in me. I too am young, frustrated and arrogant. I feel like slapping her.

But I too walk out with castrated turmoil inside me.

Year- 2009. Place- Delhi. Location- another private gallery.

An artist comes inside. He does not carry any paper rolls with him. He is neatly dressed. He has a stylish bag hanging across his chest. He waits for someone to attend him.

Finally the gallery director walks in.

Expectantly, he approaches her. And he fishes out a CD from his bag.

‘I want to show my works to you,’ he says with a lot of confidence.

The gallerist looks at him and says, ‘I don’t have time.’

The boy walks out as if nothing has happened to his dignity. But I could see a flash of pain in his eyes.

But this time I don’t feel any anger. I say hello to the director and walks into her chamber with her, yes for my business.

Between these two incidents there are thirteen years.

Artists have grown in confidence. They know how to approach a gallery and also they know how to handle rejection.

But, I believe, behind the façade of helpless and the newly gained confidence there is a streak of pain that cannot be wished away.

I find more artists who are rejected by galleries than the accepted ones.

Does it show that all the rejected artists are unworthy of being called artists? If not, why they don’t find success in finding a gallery to show their works?

These questions lead to another question: How do the galleries choose their artists?

I have noticed a pattern during the last five years: 1) Trial and error basis (okay, let’s try this guy. If clicks fine, if not just forget). 2) Facilitate curated group shows and pick and choose those artists whose works are asked for by the buyers/collectors. 3) Talent hunting through campus recruitment. 4) Selecting the award winners. 5) Peer pressure selection (if some young artist is supported by one established gallery, going for the same artist or similar artists). 6) Taking those artists with foreign education tag. 7) Selecting those artists who could successfully handle the existing trend. 8) Taking in those artists who are part of international residencies/ workshops. 9) A set of interests come together to project certain artists as ‘intelligent’ ones. 10) Looking for those artists who are NRIs. 11) Selecting those who are supposedly cutting edge. 12) Absorbing those artists who are in the ‘camp’ of certain curators. 13) Successful artists’ wives. 14) Going by auction results. 15) Cutting nose artists (Five people say someone is a great artist. Then the others fear that if they don't parrot the same they might look fools).

There are only a few countable galleries who choose their artists through intelligent discretion, work on them consistently, build up their history, place them in the right shows and right places. These galleries are not affected by boom or recession.

But unfortunately, we have very few galleries like that.

Those artists who do not fall into the 15 categories I pointed out before, are the artists who move around with the CDs. Interestingly, they read all the art magazines, visit most of the shows, discuss aesthetic issues with successful artists, participate in seminars, keep themselves updated with the contemporary debates and try to be intelligent and intelligible always.

Having said that, I do not mean that those artists who have already found the galleries, are unintelligent.

But why don’t these intelligent artists outside the galleries and residency spaces don’t find a place within?

Is it because we lack intelligent curators or the galleries do not listen to the curators?

To be realistic I should say that all the artists will not get a space in the gallery system. But if the galleries, critics and curators work together many of those outsiders will be inside.

Who will bell the cat, is the question here.

Who should take the initiative? The galleries or curators?

Have curators got autonomous power in the present scenario?

Can galleries work without curators in our times?

These are the questions we have to answer. May be your views will help me to understand this issue better.

(Picture: A still from Coco Fusco’s performance piece ‘Rights of Passage)