When Christian Uhlmann recounts those good
old days of his incessant traveling, rebellion and his Hippy days words and
symbols mix up, climates and countries overlap, memories get dilated and the
locations become irrelevant. What becomes relevant is the story of a man who
has many lives in one guise; the guise of a wanderer. Today, Uhlmann looks much
older to his age; the furrows that have channeled his tanned skin by the heat
of the southern tropic are the tell tale evidences of his journeys. For him they
look now remote. At the verandah of the one room cottage, one of the few that
he has made in a three acre plot that he had acquired three decades ago, he
sits on the red oxide floor, pulling at a beeri. Like an old general from the
stories of Marquez he is full of memories and stories. I look around for a
hammock in which I could imagine and image Uhlmann lying down and chewing the
cuds of his yester years collected slowly but steadily. There is no hammock
there. But this barefoot man moves around in Thiruvannamalai both on feet and
by his scooty like M.F.Husain had once done in several other cities in India.
While Husain’s bare feet had invited media attention, Uhlmann’s are taken as
natural. None trains a camera lens at Uhlmann’s feet. But none could avoid
training their eyes at Uhlmann’s face. There is a sinner and a saint living
there; a philosopher and a jester; a rebel and the one who has succumbed to his
own decisions; a bonded one and a liberated one; one with a pair of wings and
one with a huge chain around his neck and feet. But the most interesting thing
about Christian Uhlmann is that he carries all those with a lot of easiness and
flair.
Uhlmann is an artist who uprooted from
himself from his native Switzerland and decided to travel the world to see
people and know them. The Hippies were all over the world. Still their tribe
was a minority. They moved towards those climes where the materialistic
philosophy took a back seat and let the spiritual and carnal liberalism took
the van guard position. Carrying the weapons of nothingness for a battle of
love in the war fields of dreams, music, hash and poppies felt so good when it
was seen on the others and Uhlmann took no time to join the tribe as a new
initiate. The Hippies erased all the man made boundaries in the world and
crossed over to many continents; they did have passports and other travel
documents. But with different languages and different tastes how did they know
each other? Hence, they developed a common language; the language of hair. They
grew hair as if there was no tomorrow. They became as strange as the ancient
sages in a busy city street. A Hippy could recognize another Hippy easily by
hairs. The other universal code was the cloths; they stripped themselves to the
minimum and wore all those exotic and eclectic dresses; a trend which is a
diehard one and has been followed like a genetic code by the rebels all over
the world even today. Bodies were their landscapes where they could mark new
territories for themselves letting their bodies to bear all those tattoos. They
had music and smoke to burn out all the worries of the world.
One may spiritually overcome all the
limitations but when it comes to the crossing of boundaries, legal papers, your
looks and attitude everything become very crucial in getting the visa. Uhlmann
remembers all those days of hoodwinking the authorities. As Uhlmann was
planning to go to Australia from some other country his hip long hair became a
huge issue. One day he was turned away by the authorities and like an impish
attitude, the one which all the Hippies adopt for survival, next morning
Uhlmann turned up at the office of the visa authorities, now with the hairs
trimmed clean, even showing his nape. The authorities were surprised and the
passage was allowed. Uhlmann says how he tricked the authorities. He bought a
cheap wig and pushed all his natural hair into it and went to the visa office.
He also says that perhaps the authorities smelt a rat there but they let him
go. Then it became a ritual for him. Wherever he sensed the trouble with the
hair, he fished out the wig, which had become by now a constant travel
companion, and wore it with confidence. He says that it became a game even for
self amusement. “In one of those days, I lost my girl friend and car,” remembers
Uhlmann wistfully but with a smile filling in his eyes. He says as if that was
something bound to happen. May be after having a series of girl friends and now
Rani, a Tamil woman for wife, Uhlmann seems to be terribly enjoying the fate of
the one who had cajoled his girl friend to Kabul. Allah is great. Afghanistan
did not remain what it used to be since then. The reason may be political; but
god has different ways of punishing people for betrayals.
Ulhmann came to India in late 1970s. As an
artist he carried his works with him always. Besides, he always carried his
flutes. Like Anil Janardanan, Uhlmann is also not a trained musician but both
of them play music for their amusement. They have a musical sense and could
create captivating music at times. But when anything goes excess it become a
bit unbearable for those who have a decent musical sense. Uhlmann has a
collection of musical instruments that include flutes from different countries
and of different make; bamboo reeds and sandal wood. The latest acquisition is
a xylophone that he has picked up from a Swiss flea market last year when he
visited his parental family with Rani. The story of Uhlmann’s visit to India,
to begin with Goa is interesting. While travelling the south east Asian
countries, Uhlmann came to know that there was a place called Goa and which is
an Eden for the international Hippies. Uhlmann reached Goa sooner than later.
“The moment I touched down at Goa, I found out that in terms of Hippy
eccentricities I was nothing in front of those lion like guys and girls who had
taken Hippy life into a different level,” Uhlmann chuckles. He spent some time
there and then started travelling India. He even spent some time in Kanvashram,
ten kilometers from my home in Vakkom. And it was in one of those days Shibu
met Uhlmann and became friends.
Thiruvannamalai was a natural destination
for Uhlmann though today he is more like a native who does not take much
interest in the Ashram related meditation and other things. Uhlmann goes to the
temple town almost daily, primarily to drop his sister in law’s daughters in
school, whose care he has taken upon his happily. Secondly he goes to the
Ashram area to have a cup of tea. It is interesting to know that while most of
the people in the Ashram area know Uhlmann as Christian, in the village where
he has set up his home and cottages, most of the people in the neighborhood
like to acknowledge him as Rani Christian; though people recognize Rani’s
presence in Christian’s life and as the owner of the properties that Uhlmann
has owned there, for the friends of Uhlmann the annunciation comes as ‘Rani’s
Christian’. It is so heartening to see a man who has travelled the world has
finally decided to become Rani’s Christian, which I find as a great
surrendering of all kinds of ego. Uhlmann is happy about the kind of life that
he is leading. He has his cows, dogs, hens and Turkey hens, trees and plants to
tend and take care of. He has his memories around Ashram though he does not go
there anymore.
My meeting with Christian for the first
time was quite by chance. In 2014, when I went to Thiruvannamalai for the first
time, Abul Azad, the photographer and director of the Ekalokam Trust for
Photography who lives in Thiruvannamalai, organizing a lot of photographic activities
was having an exhibition of Uhlmann at his own studio cum gallery. Uhlmann was
not presenting any of his paintings. He mostly presented some drawings and
sculptures made out of palm leaves and stems. They were looking mostly like the
works of the tribal artists. Shibu was invited to inaugurate the show because
he had a different connection with Uhlmann. Though both Shibu and Uhlmann had
forgotten the incident of their meeting and spending time together in early
1980s in Varkala and Trivandrum (then Shibu was a fine arts student) Azad
became instrumental in bringing them together. I was also present at the
inaugural function where Shibu had recounted the friendship he and Uhlmann
shared once upon a time. Shibu had done two portrait drawings of Uhlmann and
had given to him. Interestingly Uhlmann kept those drawings as his precious
possessions and once showed them to Abul Azad. It was Azad who recognized that
it was the same Shibu who became the Shibu Natesan now. The opening of the show
was a happy reunion of sorts for both Shibu and Uhlmann.
Now as we are in Thiruvannamalai, Shibu
would like to do an oil portrait of Uhlmann. Though many people are happy to
model for an artist, Uhlmann does not seem to be so keen on sitting for long
time before an artist. He sits with his long legs folded, on the kitchenette
slab on the side of the verandah where Shibu has set up his easel, canvas,
paints and brush. Uhlmann lights and beedi and drags at it. While Shibu paints
I take a look at the works of Uhlmann, which he has collected in two big
albums. He paints like a company school painter. His perspective is more like
Chirico the Italian painter. He has painted most of the Indian monuments while
he was travelling all over India. He also has painted the people. A cursory
look at the works of Uhlmann would show that he is like an itinerant painter,
looking not for the images and events but for his own reflections in whatever
he sees around him. Hence, in most of the paintings we see the obliqueness of
his vision; he looks at them tangentially often unsettling the proportions of
the architecture and reducing the people and their figures into schematic
patterns. He gives a lot of attention to the perspective lines which reveal the
artist’s position and perspective of things. Uhlmann is also a good
photographer and has taken quite good black and white photographs. The portrait
painting done by Shibu is finished in two sittings. To witness the second
sitting Anil Janardanan comes with one of his friends and he plays different kinds
of music in different instruments. Both Anil and Uhlmann have got a child like
enthusiasm for musical instruments. Finally the portrait is done. Uhlmann is
overwhelmed. He immediately takes a photograph of it and uploads it as his
facebook profile picture. Soon follow the comments from his friends from other
continents. ‘Why so sad?’ is the prominent of questions in the comment box.
Rani, the better half of Uhlmann comes to take a look. She immediately comments
on the apparent ‘smugness’ of the portrait. She is not happy about the portrait
because her husband is sad looking in it.
Uhlmann is not sad. Perhaps while he was
sitting for the portrait he was with himself; those rare moments. Shibu has an
explanation for it; people generally do not like portraits because they think
that they are not ‘beautiful’ in the portraits. When they model, in the initial
moments they are conscious of their looks. So they put on appearances. Slowly,
the painter as well as the model gets into their own respective zones of
introspection. Painter sees what is in the model in those moments and the model
is not aware of how he or she looks like. Finally, when the portrait is
finished, they want to see those conscious moments of ‘beauty’ and
‘appearance’. But the artist has captured their ‘lost moments’, which need not
necessarily be beautiful. The portrait has come out well. I look at Uhlmann’s
feet. I remember one photograph of Husain’s feet taken by Nemai Ghosh. Those
feet looked absolutely clean and unaffected by weather. Husain’s was a
performative act. He took care of the looks of his feet even when he was not
wearing shoes for the media glare. Uhlmann walks barefoot for his own beliefs
and life style. He does not do it for the media. I have seen some of the
photographs in which Uhlmann is seen wearing shoes. Those are the occasions of
his show opening in Switzerland or elsewhere. With or without shoes Uhlmann is
a genuine person. I look at him. Here is a person who has dared the violent of
seas now seen sitting at a rain puddle and see the paper boats made by him just
floating by.
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