A Crumbling Institution thanks to Neglect

At the age of 81, Mrs.Wakankar looks alert. Her body is fragile as the old photographs framed and arranged on the decoloured walls. But her mind is very alert. She has some difficulty in speaking and you need to sharpen your ears to listen to what she is talking. She welcomes us to her humble room. Against the blaring sounds of brass bands down there in the street, we tell her why we are in Ujjain.


Almost eight years back I had come to this place, Dr.Wakankar Sodh Sansthan (Wakankar Research Institute), a three floor building near the heart of the Ujjain city. The landmark is a decorated clock tower building and the place is known as ‘Tower’. The clock shows seven o clock and we are standing before it at 12.30. The city administration seems to have no interest in preserving its heritage. Life goes on around it without heeding to the plaints of an ailing clock. May be people like us only would notice it as we are strangers to the city. Some one tells us about a petrol pump, which is next to the research institute. But the petrol pump turns out to be as unnoticeable a thing as a pan shop. It has two small vending machines; one for the petrol and the other for diesel. No big vehicle can fill gas from here. Feroze likes it and he clicks his camera away to bliss.


First time when I visited this research institute with my wife Mrinal Kulkarni and her brother Manoj Kulkarni, Mrs.Wakankar was looking healthier. Time has ploughed through her body by now. Mrinal and Manoj had studied painting under Dr.Wakankar, when they were kids. Now as we are here, I remind Mrs.Wakankar whom everyone calls ‘Vehni’ (elder sister in law) or ‘Thai’ (elder sister in Marathi), about my former visit. She smiles at me and wonders how we three, me from Delhi, Somu from Vapi and Feroze from Kochi got together to conduct a tour like this. Now it is our turn to smile at her. She is motherly and benevolent.


The discoloured walls of her two room apartment on the left side of the first floor of the Dr.Wakankar Research Institute tells us the story of the neglect that she faces for the last few years. Dr.Wakankar Research Institute was the dream of Dr.Wakankar, one of the most daring archaeologists and art history researchers in India. He found the Bhimdedka caves in Madhya Pradesh. Being a strong RSS follower, he was not supported by the central or state government, which were mostly headed by the Congress leaders. Against all odds Dr.Wakankar worked towards his goal. He became a part of the Vikram University and set up a museum of his findings there. He worked with the Oriental Research Institute of India for several years.


Dr.Wakankar’s intention was to set up a full fledged research institute in Ujjain and he was successful in establishing the centre in the middle of the city. Late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had asked Dr.Wakankar to shift his loyalties, which he refused to do. She was reluctant to acknowledge his services. However, the Congress government had to confer him with Padmashree during 1980s. He passed way in 1988.


The decline of the research institute started in 1990s. The institute now houses the research materials of the late scholar is opened for the scholars who do research in the concerned areas. One of the family members mans the institute, which is losing its attraction fast. There must be reasons for this decline. The Wakankar estate is now family property and with no one to heir this adequately and professionally, it has just reduced to a lucrative real estate. Mrs.Wakankar is the last woman standing to protect the legacy of her late husband. But once she fades from the scene, there are all the possibilities that this golden treasury of research materials going into wrong hands. The neglect that the building faces is out of the lack of interest from the decision making people. Mrs.Wakankar says that she gets no grant from the government or from the university for which her late husband had worked selflessly.


Mrs.Wakankar, however is not desperate. She does not lose her grace while discussing the matter with us. This former Magistrate of the Juvenile Justice court knows how to deal with the situation. But she does not have the energy to fight with the establishments and deaf bureaucracy any more. So she leaves it there. But she is sad for one reason. Dr.Wakankar, a pure Spartan in his life style, used to impart art education to the young people in Ujjain. He taught many youngsters who later became accomplished artists and scholars. Mrs.Wakankar feels sad for the disinterestedness shown by the ex-students of Dr.Wakankar. She had treated all of them like her own children. But now the mother in distress is not attended by any of her famous kids.


The institute was flourishing as an art training centre during 1970s and 80s. Everyone in North India knew about this art training institute. The students from this institute were allowed to sit for state level examinations that gave them diplomas. These diplomas were sufficient enough to get a job or a get an admission for higher studies. Self less people gave their services to the institute by contributing in several ways. But with Dr.Wakankar’s death things changed considerably. Mrs.Waknakar feels that the government should now take care of the institute.


“I don’t complain. But nobody helps. May be people have lost interest in this institute,” Mrs.Wakankar says. But that is not true. People still take interest in this institute. Some parents in Ujjain send their children to study painting in this institute. But their attendance is sparse and irregular. There is no regular teaching system either. One huge institution is withering away here and nobody would like to look at this side. Mrs.Wakankar at the dusk of her life looks at us and tells us to go and visit Vikram University Museum, which her husband set up. “I don’t know they are interested to show it to anybody or not. But if you insist they would,” she says.


While saying good bye, I bend down and touch her feet. She blesses me. Feroze trains his camera at one of the pictures of Dr.Wakankar framed and kept their on the wall. Mrs. Wakankar comes to him and asks, “how do you three guys from different parts moving together?”


Feroze smiles and clicks a beautiful picture of this grand old lady.


Later we visit Kalidas Akademy. Ashok Vajpayee, who now heads the national lalit kala academy was the person behind the establishment of this institution. Supported by Madhya Pradesh government, things look smooth here. R.P.Sharma, the exhibition co-ordinator talks to us and informs us that the Akademy is not interested in modern art as its focus is on crafts and tradition. We see several sculptures and paintings done by traditional artists in and around the building. Some are in the neo-classical academic style. That has become a part of our art tradition!


We start our drive towards Indore by evening. We reach Indore by six thirty. We move around the city, negotiating the traffic which is in snail’s pace. We look for a decent accommodation in one of the hotels. But all the hotels are full as the marriage season is on. Some hotels offer accommodation but they want us to check out at 9 am. That is strange. Twelve o clock is the usual checking out time in all the cities. But in Indore it is different they say. That is really funny.


We drive to the outskirts and find a so so hotel, which has a big rooms and a lot of power plugs. We are happy and but to our dismay we find only one plug is functional out the many. But we don’t have any other option. We have a light dinner and we sleep in no time.


Our next stop is Dhar district.


PS: Looking at Feroze in the morning is very interesting. He keeps working on his computer or camera. If not he is looking at his mobile and finding new properties and features of it. Feroze is a ‘mobile workshop’, I comment. Then Feroze tells me the story of another photographer who always repairs things. This man one day invited his friend for a photo shoot together. They were supposed to go on his motor bike. When the friend arrived, he found two wheels and a skeletal frame of the bike. Rest of the bike was in two iron vessels. But the friend told him that the bike would be ready within ten minutes. And to the friend’s surprise, the man fixed his bike in ten minutes by assembling all what was scrambled up in the two vessels to the skeletal frame. And they did go for the shoot on the appointed time.

Madhava College, Ujjain

Ujjain, the city of famous Mahakaleswara Temple. We reach here during the Mahasivaratri days. The festival is just a couple of days away and the town is already full with visitors. Besides, it is marriage season. Brass bands play in the streets. Horse driven carriages and the ‘suar’ autos take people around. There is bustling business going on in the shops.


Signs of modern life are everywhere. However, Ujjain drags you to the past. It evokes a sense of mythology in you. In the old part of the city, there are crumbling buildings. The new architectures try to imitate the old glory of buildings. You feel a certain amount of stillness everywhere. Within this stillness this hybrid city grows like an amoebic organism.


Madhva College, one of the oldest colleges affiliated to the Vikram University is our destination. There is a fine arts section in this college. In Madhya Pradesh undergraduate colleges have fine arts as one of the papers. Even if you are a commerce or history student, and if you are interested in art, you can opt for the fine arts paper. Many students study fine arts because it is easy to get ‘passing’ marks.


But there are two colleges here in Ujjain that offer full fledged post graduation in Fine Arts. When I say fine arts, you don’t think that these MA courses offer everything that comes under the term fine arts. They call it MA in Fine Arts though they are offered a course in painting. Madhava College and Government Girls College have these post graduation course.


There are ten students in each year. The admission starts in July and the course finish by February. Practical exams are done during January and February. Theory examinations are conducted during March-April.


The first year MA has History of European Painting, Portraits, Landscape and Composition as its subjects. Final year has Mural, life study, history of world art, history of eastern art and criticism of art.


“How many teachers do you have in this department?” I ask Alok Bhavsar, Professor in Government College, Ratlam, which also has a similar course in fine arts. He is in Madhava College as an external examiner. When we reach there, practical examination is on. Those people who look responsible are reluctant to talk to us.


Like the officials in any other institution with defined hierarchies, these teachers do not want to make any comment on their institute. “The principal is in a seminar. And our head of the department is on leave. Please come another day, we will talk then,” says one lady. I ask for her name and designation. She does not want to reveal it.


I have faced such situations before also. You need to gain the confidence of the interviewee. You need to make him or her feel that you don’t mean any harm to their person or profession. You should offer them anonymity. You need to extract information using soft persuasive techniques. They should not feel that they are imparting vital information. A mutual warming up is needed to continue the conversation.


I explain our mission to them. We want to do a survey on small town art colleges. We need to know, how these institutions are functioning. We are going to come out with a report that would ultimately help the small town colleges to improve their conditions. We are sincere in our mission. But we don’t know what would happen to our report.


Now Alok Bhavsar takes up the responsibility to talk to us. In Madhya Pradesh, the condition of the fine arts colleges is more or less the same. There are no competent teachers and facilities. However, all of them try to keep their neck out. Students come from middle class and lower middle class families. They don’t have higher ambitions or aspirations. Many of the boys who come from remote areas of the state study art to earn some money by working as poster and banner painters. Some of them join in small advertisement firms. Those students who come from middle class families aspire to become art teachers in schools. Some of them, when they are in college, desire to become full time artists and they do some exhibitions in Ujjain.


“She is Dr.Neeta Thomar and is a guest faculty here. She recently did an exhibition at the Jawahar Kala Kendra, Jaipur. But she does not have the ‘himmat’ to do a show in Delhi or Mumbai,” says the lady who seems to have the charge of the ongoing examination.


I look at Dr.Neeta Thomar. She smiles. She approves of her lack of ‘himmat’ which could be translated as the lack of ‘courage.’


So nobody becomes a full time artist here. Even if they want to, circumstances are not conducive. They don’t have exhibition halls. They don’t have the names of successful Ujjain artists so that they can look up to their reputation and desire for the same success.


However, R.P.Sharma, the exhibition co-ordinator of the famous Kalidasa Akademy has a different opinion about that. “We have a decent enough exhibition hall here. Artists can rent out this space to do shows. We do annual shows of traditional art. But we are open to the modern contemporary young artists. But nobody takes interest in doing shows. When we invite these boys and girls to participate in our shows here, they do not even respond to our call,” Sharma says.


Sharma, though he handles a lot of traditional art and crafts in Kalidasa Akademy, a beautiful building designed by the Mumbai based architect, Hema Sankalia in 1979-80, is not happy with the situation of the modern art scene in Ujjain. “Nobody understands modern art here,” he says pensively. To escape from the trap of lethargy, he and his five friends have formed a group of ‘Six’ and do shows every year.


“That gives me some kind of happiness. But I am sure the artists who work from Ujjain are destined live here and die here,” he sounds fatalistic.


We look around in Madhava College Fine Arts section. The works of MA students are displayed there. Most of them are landscape sketches and portraits. Some of them are ‘affected’ modern paintings. Mural is one of the strong fortes in this college. But they do experimental mural on ply boards pasted over with jute clothes. Teachers show us the mural works with great enthusiasm.


I am sorry to say that all those works, including the murals, portraits, still life, and sketches, do not rise above the class works of a second year BFA student. Do these students lack talent?


They do not lack in talent. They have good sense of drawings and colours. But they don’t have any clue to move forward. Are the teachers responsible for this situation?


“We are not responsible. Most of the teachers are guest faculties They don’t know whether they are invited in the next academic year or not. The department does not have any interest to make them permanent teachers. So nobody gives his/her hundred per cent to it,” opines a faculty who request anonymity.


Besides, the teachers as the government servants are having transferable jobs. If the government asks them to go to another college, there is no chance of objecting it. So no teacher belongs to any one particular institution. They are always under the threat of replacement and transfer. So what they do mostly is protecting their jobs.


Do the students get reference materials? The teachers claim that they have a full fledged library, which has ‘History of Art’ books. We visit the library. Two small shelves filled with old books are kept in a corner. None seems to touch the books. Though the teachers say that they get the art magazines like Art India and Kala Dhrigha regularly, the students do not seem to have any access to those journals.



Somu takes out the names of a few contemporary artists and asks the students whether they know the works of these artists. The students look at each other. “Subodh Gupta, we have heard his name somewhere,” one of the girls says, though she is not sure where she has heard his name.


“Do you access internet?” Feroze asks.


The students know about internet but none is ‘familiar’ with it. One of the students asks for our ‘passwords’ as we give them our email id. We are surprised. He thinks that to send an email one needs to know the password of the addressee also. The college does not have internet access.


Government funds all the activities in the college. The teachers say that many students come from very poor backgrounds and they don’t even have money to buy painting materials. So some kind of scholarships is given to the students. Teachers also do not have any clue about internet.


In short, these students and teaches do not have anything to motivate themselves. But the problem could be seen from a different perspective also. Why don’t these children take initiative to educate themselves in art? Most of the successful artists including Subodh Gupta come from rural backgrounds. But all of them have worked hard enough to become what they are today.


We tell the students about the success stories of the Indian contemporary artists and ask them how many of them have charted their future lives as artists. One girl comes forward to say that she wants to become an artist. But what to do, she asks. The usual explanation is given by the other girl students. They will get married and new responsibilities will come over them. Period stuff. Ujjain is a place where there are a lot of theatre activities and literary activities. But what about art?


There are couple of art discussion forums here. But the students do not go there. The teachers do not encourage them to speak about art. And they are reluctant speakers mainly because they find their language inadequate. As I mentioned in one of my articles last year, English is the problem. The experts should seriously attend this problem.


A few months back in Chandigarh there was a seminar on improving the syllabus of small town art colleges. Alok Bhavsar says that nothing has happened so far. The discussions are regular at the department level. But nobody addresses the real problems.


Looking around the city, Feroze registers his objection for the term, small town art college. “It is not a small town. A full scale city ambience is here. It is not different from Delhi or Bombay. I think, they are complacent people and they find happiness in being called small town people,” Feroze says.


That is true. If they want they can be competent like any thing. But for that they need to get sufficient direction from within the institution primarily. And they should be able to absorb the ambience of the contemporary life.


The students even today paint village scenes in the lines of Jamini Roy. They still paint the pictures of temples in Ujjain. They do model studies. They do the run of the mill still life. It is surprising to see that not a single student has painted a city scene or a street scene, which right there outside the college.


The problem is really serious. I am afraid that these art students would never make it. They want to go to Mumbai and Delhi. But that is just a romantic thought. For small town art colleges, the course is just a cosmetic addition. Not even cosmetic addition, may be a painful reminder of a cosmetic experiment, which has gone seriously wrong.


These colleges look nobody’s responsibility. Madhava College fine arts faculty started in 1960. It is there now because it was there. It is a maze constructed within two rooms.


At sharp one o clock, one guy comes in and nods his head at the students. The students pack their things up and walk out. It is lunch time.


That shows the attitude of the place. They go by rules.


Later, one of the students comes to us. He says he can do wonders if he gets support. I like his attitude. But Somu cuts in.


“Do wonders, support will come to you,” Somu tells him at his face.


I think there is a lot of sense in Somu’s comment.

Fauji Daaba and a Flat Tyre

Lesson one: When you are on the road, dont drink too much at night. In Partapur we had a good party with the visiting artists and I had drunk quite well. Hence, yesterday morning I got up with a heavy head. Then and there, I decided I am not going to drink during the travel. Let me see whether I would be able to stick to my decision.

It was time to say good bye to Partapur. We had an important place to visit there: The Living Museum. So we go there accompanied by a friend from Sandarbh. Somu asks him not to tell the directions so that he could recollect the way for himself. We reach there and I too remember the place very well as I had gone there coulple of times before.

Living Museum is a concept developed by Chintan Upadhyay. A small village, almost a kilometer away from the Partapur main market, is where the Living Musuem is located. The word ‘museum’ might give you certain ideas about the building and location. But this does not have anything to do with those common notions. It is a double storied shack formerly used as a village community centre and at times it doubled up as a classroom. It was lying abandoned for long time and when Sandarbh started in Partapur, Chintan decided to activate this abandoned space.

This museum has got a lot of house hold utensils and other living tools. These are the actual tools used by the poor villagers who eke out their daily sustenance from farming and cattle rearing. They all wear minimum clothes and work throughout the day in farms and dairies. A couple of buffaloes respond to our arrival with a harsh sort of mooing. Skimply clad women look at us with some kind of amusement in their eyes. The Sandarbh boy who accompanies us opens the doors of the museum for us.

Living Museum functions in an interesting way. People can keep their traditional and living tools and utensils here as in a museum display. Whenever they want to use these tools they can take it away. Once the work is done they bring it back to the museum. However, what you see are the old and rusted tools, which have interesting shapes and structures. Many of them have gone out of use thanks to the change of pattern in life. While seeing them one can connect to a time when these tools were really used for carrying out daily chores.

We have become too much depended on the modern technology. We have almost become slave to these gadgets. If the mobile phones show poor connectivity we get disturbed. I am supposed to write a blog. We come back to the Sandarbh office. I open one of the lap tops we are carrying and suddenly its display is scrambled. I dont feel challenged as we have a master lap top with us with the latest softwares. It belongs to Feroze. We call it Pentagon and the other computer FBI.

Feroze opens the Pentagon computer for me and suddenly it crashes. Virus? Feroze is suddenly gloomy. He calls up his son and takes a few tips from him. This 19 years old young engineering student is a computer wizard. He can fix any modern gadgets just by looking at it. He has an eye for technology.

Some people are like that. They can fix the machines easily. Bhavin Mistry is a young artist friend and he can fix computers using any available tools. Recently he repaired a computer using one small kitchen knife as his sole tool! I am not a technical person at all. For me computer is ‘Microsoft Word’ and internet. Anything goes wrong, I call the lifeline numbers. While Feroze fixes the computer, I remember A.J.Cronin’s essay titled ‘Overhauling’. Some people keep overhauling their gadgets all the time. Give them a cycle, they will overhaul that also.

I finish my blog in Feroze’s computer, which is ready by now. After lunch we leave Partapur and drive towards Ujjain. On the way we visit two acres of land recently acquired by Sandarbh near Partapur. Sandarbh is planning to start its permanent residency programs here. Will it go against the founding ideals of Sandarbh, I wonder. Sandarbh is all about moving. But one cannot be a rolling stone all the time. Sandarbh too needs its permanent headquarters.

Landscapes change around us. Inside the airconditioned car we dont feel the heat outside. In central India, it is already summer, though the early mornings and evenings are cold. The rural Rajasthan landscape is predominantly brown in color. The sky is sharp blue today. It soothes the eyes. It has the freshness of a teenager. The rigor and vigor will increase as the summer months would progress in the coming days. I look at the changing colors of landscapes. Somu drives and Feroze takes a nap at the backseat.

In Gujarat we experienced the quality of roads. Throughout Gujarat roads are in a good condition. The public transport system is more or less good. May be that is the reason why many people want Narendra Modi as the Prime Minister of India. Recently someone commented that India need Naredra Modi as Prime Minister and central government should be led by the Congress Party! People are so desparate as they are caught between vying ideologies and their innate demands for progress and development.

As we enter Rajasthan, the roads change in quality and complexion. Pot holes appear in regular intervals. Palak Raval, who was with us during the first day had proudly commented on the quality of the Gujarat Roads. “Roads tell you where you are,” she had said.

That is true in a way. As we enter Madhya Pradesh, suddenly we find our vehicles running on a rough path. Optimism is the best tool when you are on the road. We hope for this bad patch to finish and get into a better road. But better roads never seem to come. Tossed and bumped inside the car we feel like pieces of fruits in a juice machine. Some kind of alertness come back to us.

For the last few days we have been eating vegetarian food. Suddenly I tell that we should eat some non-vegetarian food today. Somu is not a non-veg person. But he too wants to eat some egg today. So we wistfully look for some restaurants or dabas that sell non-veg food. Most of the wayside restaurants in Madhya Pradesh do not sell non-veg food. Finally we find one person standing with a few trayes of eggs and a stove.

We approach him and ask for omlets or scrambled egg. He smiles.

“I sell only boiled eggs,” he says.

His expertise is in boiling eggs. He may not knowing how to make scrambled egg or omlets. But there must be another reason. A business is operated according to the demand of the people. Here people are not asking for scrambled eggs. People are comfortable with boiled eggs. Then there is another way of making a business successful. The person can create a demand for scrambled eggs or omlets. But this guy must be lazy, I think.

“Go two kilometers from here and you find ‘Fauji’ daaba. There you get non-veg stuff,” one boy who sits on his cycle carrier lazily tells us. He almost sounds dismissive. He does not like our presence there.

Fauji Daaba, suddenly the sign board appears on our right side and we feel as if we had found an oasis. Fauji in Hindi means soldier. Soldiers are supposedly eating non-veg. We are happy for the oasis, which eventually turns out to be an oasis. It is just a mirage. This fauji who doubles himself up as the cook and cashier tells us that he does not serve non-veg food. Finally we settle for the usual vegetarian food.

Fauji looks really a soldier in his well built body and crew cut. He has a straight moustache. And his voice has a commanding power. Even when he spells out the menu for us, he relives his parade ground days. He shouts the names of the items. We order our food. We feel that we have a strong appetite at that moment and order for larger portions.

If someone wants to know about the food, this is what we order, Dum Aaloo (two plates), Dal Tadka (two plates), Bhindi (two plates), salads (two plates) and tandoori rotis. Once he gets the order the Fauji gets into action. He moves fast as if he were moving through trechnes and enemy terrains at the border. Soon the place is filled with different kinds of aromas.

The cool breeze touches us. We hold ourselves together. I lie down on the charpoy and look at the starry sky. I look for some constellations up there. But the sky suddenly looks like a modern gadget. I dont understand anything. I leave my effort.

The tandoor is ready and the stove started glowing. We go close to it and feel the warmth. On the other end, we find a television playing the Zee TV Sa Re Ga Ma program. Fauji’s family members, a wife and a daughter sit on the floor and watch the TV. We too watch the TV for a while. Sonu Nigam and Suresh Wadkar speak to the competing kids with compassion. Canned laughter and canned tears jerk out of the television.

Finally food comes. We think that we can eat a lot. But we dont eat. The appetite has gone. We eat the food in silence. Each of us has withdrawn to the private world.

Ujjain is forty five kilometers from here. After food we are considerably energized. Somu reves up the engine and we jump into the car. We leave Fauji behind.

We are now very close to Ujjain. A huge archway with sign boards and directions welcome us. We read out the distances loudly. Suddenly our car shakes and shivers. It is ten at night.

Yes, we get a flat tyre. The rear left tyre is punctured. The car wobbles and comes to a halt. Right in front of us there is a check post. Huge trucks queue up to get an entry into the city. Only by 11 o clock they are allowed to enter.

We dont feel challenged. We take out the tools and start working towards changing the tyre. We put the jack under the car and lifts it. Suddenly the jack fails and the car comes down with a thud.

I walk into the night and look for a puncture fixing guy and luckily finds one near the check post. He is reluctant to walk a few meters to our car. I request him to come along. Finally he relents. After two hours of harrowing struggle (thanks to the complicated structure of our car) we get our tyre fixed. The young man who helped us do not charge us too much. The tube has got four holes in it thanks to the usual suspect, a sharp nail. Nails are the worst enemy a traveler can confront when he is on the road.

Exhausted by now we somehow want to reach a hotel. Finally we get a decent hotel and we fall down on the beds.

Before sleeping I think of this temple town. I have been here before. I had visited the Mahakala temple, one of the most famous Shiva shrines in India, with Mrinal, long back.

With some sense of happiness and contentment we sleep.

PS: While driving towards Ujjain, I came up with this idea of making a short film once we reach in Bastar. I conjured up a story quickly. It is going to be a very simple moive. One man comes to visit Bastar. Another person starts following him. Or he thinks that he is stalked by somebody. The film is about of stacking and surveillance. I am sure it is going to be an interesting experience.

Partapur- A Contemporary Art Site

“Before coming to Partapur I didn’t know anything about this place. For the last five days I have been traveling around this village and now I have found a site to do my public art project,” Anke Mellin tells me. Anke is an artist and curator from Germany. She is in Partapur to participate in the Sandarbh International Artists Workshop. “I like the people here. They are very intelligent and they know how to negotiate with foreigners,” she adds.


Perhaps, the people in this village did not know how to deal with the foreigners a few years back. They used to look at the visitors with awe and suspicion. But with the Sandarbh Workshop quite active here, the villagers have become used to the presence of foreigners.


Sandarbh Workshop for Site Specific and Environmental Art, established in 2003 by the artist Chintan Upadhyay is now well-known all over the world. It has already conducted two workshops in the US and in May 2009, it will have its chapter opened in London under the leadership of the UK based artist Ivan Smith. In Hungary, artist Eross Istavan is working towards starting a Sandarbh Chapter. In Baroda, Chintan had already done a Sandarbh Workshop. In Delhi and South Gujarat too there will be annual Sandarbh Workshops soon.


Years back, when Chintan started Sandarbh Workshop in Partapur, a small village that aspires to become a town, in Banswada district, Rajasthan, he had this idea of bringing art to the people. He believes that art could happen anywhere. It is not necessary to have galleries and urban museums to showcase work of art. “Sandarbh means context. I can make art anywhere. If I am sitting in a restaurant and if I am making a drawing on a piece of napkin, I am converting that space into an art space. Partapur is a village and at the same time it is a context for the art to happen,” says Chintan.


Sandarbh has three annual features: there is a ten days long Indian artists’ workshop. The month long workshop is for the visiting artists from different parts of the world. The third feature is a six months residency program in Partapur. Artists could stay here for six months and do any kind of art they would like to do. The basic idea is to do public art projects with available materials and with local participation.


When we are here, the month long international artists’ residency program is about to start. Yatin Upadhyay, who leads the Baneswar Lok Vikas Sanstha (BLVS), an NGO in Partapur, gives able leadership to the ongoing workshops. To help him out and also to do the organizational works artist Shreyas Karle is here. Another young artist Lochan Upadhyay also works full time with Sandarbh. Interestingly, none here works for remuneration. “It is a voluntary act and you are welcome,” says Chintan.


Many young artists have already been a part of this workshop ever since it started. Many have gained fame and fortune in the art scene. And all of them, whether successful or not, take a lot of pride in being a part of Sandarbh. Two years back I also participated in Sandarbh Workshop as an observer.


I have very special memories about this place. All of them come back to my mind once we reached here yesterday night.


The drive from Baroda was smooth. Palak Raval, a Mumbai based artist, who participated in Sandarbh last year, also joined us from Baroda. She was going to Partapur to work as a volunteer in the ongoing workshop. Her job would be to facilitate artists.


I like this idea of Sandarbh. It gives you a feeling that the whole program is yours. Nobody owns Sandarbh. You can be part of it and if you want you can start a Sandarbh in your place. There are no hierarchies and bureaucracy in it.


The moment we struck the main road that leads to Rajasthan I fell asleep in the backseat. The Gujarat Thali treat by Kishu was pretty heavy with all its sweet dishes. My body and mind relaxed as the music system in the car played out the old numbers by the legendary singer, Kishor Kumar.


I woke up after an hour and found that we had already crossed around seventy kilometers. Then I expressed my wish to drive the car. We changed seats and I drove the car for half an hour. While I was at wheels, the ambience inside the car changed dramatically. Palak, who was humming tunes and cracking jokes also became silent. Feroze was giving me directions.


“Wives never like to drive when the husbands are with them,” Feroze says. “They give a lot of directions and they never believe that their wives can drive properly.”


“Mrinal stopped driving because of me,” I tell Feroze. He smiled.



Somu was like a tensed husband. Feroze was like a considerate one. I was the hapless wife. After half an hour, Somu tricked me out of the driving seat.


Later Feroze took the charge. He is an excellent driver. After watching Feroze driving, Somu made peace with himself. Then he slept. I became the navigator and ‘spiritual guide’ for these ‘excellent’ drivers.


Do I feel bad for being a bad driver? I don’t. I can drive people crazy. And I do it well. Nothing to worry.


We reached Partpaur around 8 O’clock at night. The place looked so familiar to me.


After having a quick shower, we all reached one of the rooms in Sandabh office where a party was going to start.


In the party we meet three Korean artists, Ko Hyun Hie, Ri Eung- Yoro and Ryu Seung –gu. All of them belong to a famous environmental artist group in Korea called Yatoo. Anke Mellin is from Germany. Egami Heoshi and Nagashima are from Japan. Umesh Kumar from Karnataka is the Indian participant this time.


Egami Heoshi is a great entertainer. He dances well. Nagashima is a drummer. He has brought his drum kit along. But in the party he prefers to play a bucket. He covers the bottom of the bucket with a towel and uses the sticks to create drum like muffled sound. He does it quite well.


There is a dholak (percussion instrument) also. Yatin plays it well. I take it from him and start playing it, following the rhythm created by Nagashima. We all sing songs from our respective languages.


Later Palak told me that I sang well and complimented me for my ‘good’ voice. I felt good. I forgot that I was a bad driver. I should say that Yatin and Shreyas are wonderful singers. Yatin sings Rajasthani folk songs and Shreyas sings classical songs and he plays harmonium too.


I speak to the visiting artists. They are all excited about the works that they are going to do in Partapur.


Today our plan is to spend time around Partapur. Our next destination is Ujjain.

Meeting Gods in the Morning

When you travel you get a feeling of becoming an island in yourself. You see a lot of people in the streets going ahead with their daily chores. They look at you with some sense of detachment. You reciprocate the gaze with the same detachment. Do you feel that you are a bit more important than the others around you? May be you feel so because you are away from your daily grind. You are not a husband, you are not a son, you are not a father and you are not a lover now. You are just a being caught in a limbo, limbo of uncertainties. Still you are happy because you know, in this uncertainty, there lies all the excitement.

I am not a great traveller. Feroze Babu is a great traveller. So is Somu Desai. I would qualify myself as a reluctant traveller. But once I am out in the street, nothing holds me back. I am not worried about what I left behind. I am sure everything can be taken care of. I have great friends in this life.

We are still in Baroda. In a couple of hours we will be driving towards Rajasthan. Kishu Chauhan wants to treat us with a farewell lunch. We cannot say no to the invitation.

I forgot to tell you one thing. As I claimed before, we are not going by a caravan. Yesterday, we took out the caravan. I drove it for a few meters. Feroze also tried his driving skills in it. Within no time, we realized that we are not going to drive a huge van without power steering. It is quite strenuous. We should not exhaust ourselves in driving itself.

So now we have a Travera on our disposal. It is a good SUV, spacious and comfortable. Somu keeps the key in a chain around his neck. I am sure he is going to do the major part of driving. He does not feel like handing over that key to me or Feroze.

This morning , we went out to have a cup of tea in Akota, a place in Baroda where we stay in a flat owned by our friend Asit Shah. Anubhav Nath from Delhi is with us. But when we came out, he was still asleep.

When you have your first cup of tea and you know that you are not going to have another cup of tea from the same stall, the tea taste good. I can’t say whether it taste good or bad. It tastes different. And that taste lingers in your tongue for long time.

Standing before the small tea stall, I imagine the road ahead and the experience which is waiting for us.

We walk towards a junction to have some breakfast. Gujarati breakfast is very light. We get our breakfast on a piece of newspaper. We eat from it. It does not taste anything except the strangeness that it gives. Feroze enjoys it as he is new to Gujarat. I had already lived here and I know what the food is like. I am not a foodie and I need guard my stomach.

We see a lot of houses with traditional art motifs stuck on the wall. They are mud mural replicas from the Kutch region and is called Abla in Gujarati. Feroze clicks a few pics.

On the verandah of a single house, a young woman gives lessons to a lot of young children who sit on the floor. A rare site these days. I see a row of small foot wears kept neatly along the wall. The children are very obedient, they seem.
We see a lot of people, both men, women and children standing in a crowd. The women are squatting on the pavement. They are all daily wage labourers. They are picked up by contractors. IF they are not picked up, they go back to the shacks from where they come to the streets. I don’t want to look at those children. I cannot look at helpless children struggling in the streets.

When you are on the road, you become over sensitive. You are vulnerable when you travel. The person whom you meet on the road, the person who gives the directions, the person who tells you from where you can buy booze are the angels of roads. You are at their hands even if you feel you are the most powerful person in the world.
We come back. Now we are ready to go. See you soon.

PS: Feroze tells me about a doctor couple, his close friends. Husband is a veterinarian. Wife is a gynaecologist. Husband knows everything in the world like computers, literature, photography, except his field. Wife is so devoted to her profession that she keeps making offerings to all the available gods before and after she attends a complicated pregnancy. Husband wants to read The Hindu newspaper when he is in toilet. He goes nuts if he does not have his Hindu. One day he was in a hotel room with no printed material around. He wanted to use the washroom desperately. Finally he took the ‘dos and dont’s pasted on the door of the hotel room, telephone directory and menu card to the toilet.

When we are together, perhaps we also come to know the private fancies of the friends. I am waiting for that.

Somu talks about the thirty three crore Hindu Gods and goddesses. Each god takes care of three people in India, according to him. “Still things go wrong,” he chuckles while pointing at the dried coconut offerings hung from a huge archway leading to a local temple in Akota.

Hope one God is there to take care three of us.

Art Routes- Roads Taken but Forgotten

Faculty of Fine Arts, MS University, Baroda holds a very high position amongst the Indian institutions that impart education in art. Yes, we do have other prestigious institutions like Sir J.J.School of Arts, Mumbai, Kalabhavana, Santiniketan, College of Arts and Crafts, Kolkata, Madras College of Art, Delhi College of Art, Faculty of Fine Arts, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi and so on. I cannot avoid naming the institutions like CAVA, Mysore, SN School, Central University, Hyderabad, Chitrakala Parishad, Bangalore and College of Fine Arts, Trivandrum. There are certain elite schools that teach fine arts and theories like the Arts and Aesthetic Department, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, Srushti School, Bangalore, Raheja School, Mumbai, Stella Mary’s, Chennai. India has got hundreds of other art colleges. However, it is an art student’s dream to get admission in Baroda.

Baroda fine arts faculty has a history of fifty years. Considering the history of other institutions, this is comparatively a new institution. But within the ‘short span’ of ‘fifty’ years, it could gain a covetable position in the history of Indian modern and contemporary art. Thanks to the devotion and hard work of many stalwarts like N.S.Bendre, K.G.Subramanyan, Gulam Muhammed Sheikh, Ratan Parimoo and so on, this institution grew in prestige with each passing year. Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda became a byword for excellence in the Indian art scenario. It would be a difficult task to jot down the names of all those luminaries who studied here. This institution witnessed the birth of Indian Narrative School and also it became the cradle for the Indian Radical Painters and Sculptors Association (Radical Group).

The Baroda myth still continues. And I think it is good to start our ‘Art Routes’-Ways of Seeing Road Trip from Baroda itself.

Baroda gives a contrasting picture. Several students from various regional affinities come here to study. They imbibe the mood and ambience of the place and try to be big in the scene. Many have won in their efforts and many have lost out. Those who have the competency to fight it out, stay back here after their education and work towards success through various levels of struggling. Those who have assured jobs and other commitments go back to their destined places. Yet another lot studies here and then vanishes without a trace.

I remember a classmate of mine coming from a laid back region in India. Throughout the year, he was silent in the class. When he came to the class like a shadow, we, the so called intellectuals who could communicate in English, looked at each other as if we were sharing a secret joke about him. I never heard of him since I left the institute. Sometimes I think about him and wonder whether he would be teaching in some college as an art history lecturer.

In the visual arts departments too I had come across students like him. They could not communicate with the other students. They never got girl friends. They did not discuss their art. I used to think about them as morons.

But today I have a different feeling about them. I want to see all those students in a very different perspective. At the same time I want to think about all those students who would like to study in Baroda but never make it. I would like to think about all those students who study in small town art colleges and never think of higher studies. I think of those students who don’t even know what contemporary art is. I think of those students who study in small town art colleges and shape up their futures according to the available jobs in the industries in their vicinity.

I remember two incidents. I was loitering around the Jehangir Art Gallery in Mumbai. I found several artists working from the pavements. Some of them were displaying their works and some of them were making instant portraits. A couple of them were making caricature portraits of the interested clients.

I sat before one of them and got my caricature done. While doling out the money, I asked him whether he ever wanted to show his works in the galleries. He said he was happy and was not intending to do any exhibitions. Then he told me that he was a classmate of Bose Krishnamachari at J.J.School of Art, Mumbai and they passed out from the institute together.

The other incident is a bit more interesting. I met a guy in Amalsad. He was running a tea stall in front of a small art college. He was an alumnus of the same college. But what surprised me was his story. He was also a post-graduate in applied arts from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda. He told me that he never had the confidence to live in a big city and work for an advertisement agency as he could not communicate in English. After his education he came back to his village and started running a tea stall.

These extreme examples, perhaps illustrate my views on the attitude and psychological make up of the students from the small town art colleges. They don’t want to make it big in their lives because they always feel incompetent and lacking in confidence. Linguistic inability, as my enquiries have proved, is not the only culprit. There is a severe lack of direction during their education. They are not given inspiration to make it big in their lives. They are herded like kids and are asked to continue with the stale academic practices.

But I have found them having tremendous talent. May be it needs proper channelizing. They need more exposure. They need a bit more freedom in pursuing their dreams. They need a bit more access to knowledge. They need a different curriculum.

I am going to see these institutions and meet these students along with my friends, Somu Desai and Feroze Babu.

While posing for a photograph in front of the main building of the faculty of fine arts, Baroda, I remembered all those silent students who were my batch mates. May be I would come across people like them in this trip. I am sure they would be confident and vibrant in their own settings. They may be having a few stories to tell us.

But I want to ask them a few questions: Do they know the big names in Indian contemporary art? Do they want to know about them? Why they don’t know about Indian contemporary art? Do they want to go pursue their careers independently? Do they want to go for higher studies in institutions like Baroda, J.J.School and Santiniketan?

What are their strengths? What are their weak points?

May be I will get a few answers for these questions. May be I will not. I am keeping it open.

I am very keen on this trip as I would like to meet people from a different stream of art. My friends Somu and Feroze too are very optimistic about this trip.

I hope that I would come across people who would give me their stories. I hope that I would be able to tell those stories for a larger public.

We are still in Baroda. But in a way, with our photo shoot at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda, this morning, our trip is already on.

We call it Art Routes-Ways of Seeing Road Trip. Art Routes explains itself. We are looking at the routes through which art is going and the routes where art might go in future.

My way of seeing is different from that of Feroze and Somu. It is different from all those people who read it. But I am sure there are some points where out perspectives converge.

Let us look for those points of convergence. Even if we don’t find them, let us see how divergent we are in our ways of seeing.

(Please see www.artroutes.in for daily updates and photographs)
(In picture from left to right Somu Desai, JohnyML and Feroze Babu)

About Friendship and Vibrant Gujarat Mural Project

I am one day away from the inauguration of the Vibrant Gujarat Mural Project and two days away from the ‘Ways of Seeing Road Trip’.

In Baroda it looks like summer has come early. From Jaipur I landed at Ahmedabad airport this morning. Somu Desai, who leads the Vibrant Gujarat Mural Project, had already come to receive me at the airport. He looked very excited and happy, and I could not contain my happiness as I hugged him. He looked thin after a month of rigorous work.

We were silent for sometime as we started our journey back to Baroda. It was quite unusual for us to be silent when we were together. I looked at the passing traffic and smoked a couple of cigarettes. I remembered what Chintan Upadhyay had told his friends on the previous night.

“There is a strange chemistry between three of us,” Chintan said referring to himself, Somu and me. “Whenever we meet over phone or chat or in person, we have a lot of things to discuss. I just talk about projects after projects and the next day I forget most of them. But then one fine morning I get a call from Somu, asking me when and how we go about one of those projects, which I had told him long back.”

Somu is an artist and he works very hard. Interestingly, he does not look at the art market for his money. Ever since he passed out from one of the regional fine arts colleges in Gujarat, he has been doing commissioned works for various organizations and making money for his activities. Somu likes to be in the company of artists, doing public projects, helping young talents out in finding opportunities.

It is rare to see someone like Somu in contemporary times, especially amongst the artists. Here is one guy who is always ready to take up any project without thinking twice, if the project is proposed by any of his close pals.

Recently he did a project at the Sandarbh Workshop in Partapur. He dressed himself as a driver for five days and worked as a servant to the artists who came for the workshop. May be he was underlining his life mission through this exaggerated acts of a performance piece.

I can never be Somu. But I can be thankful to him for making a few of my projects possible. Had he not been there at the helm of things, those projects would not have taken off. May be, in a given situation he would be a better organizer of art projects than others who claim to have ‘fantastic’ organizational skills.

It is second time I am writing about Somu. Once I wrote about him in Delhi Sketchbook, a column that I write in www.artconcerns.com. Then I did not want to publicly acknowledge him as I was trying to make out the real mettle of this person. So I gave him a pseudo name- Moon D. Only a few people knew who this Moon D was. Considering my request they all kept the real identity of Moon D under cover.

But many people in the art circuit were curious about this personality called Moon D. Someone called me up, some others telephoned me and some others even confronted me with the same question: Who is this guy?

To many I smiled and to some I gave vague answers. To one particular gallerist, who follows my writings very keenly, I gave a very specific answer: “Moon D is a fictitious character,” I told her.

“Oh you write fiction in the name of art criticism,” she chuckled.

“Don’t you think, art criticism in a way is pure fiction?” I countered her.

Moon D remained an enigma for sometime, but the person who gave me Moon D grew in his stature by doing commissioned works and public art projects.

Today I don’t have any problem in saying Somu’s name as he has proved his worth as an artist through his performative pieces, videos, public art projects, gallery based works and finally his magnum opus for the time being, ‘The Vibrant Gujarat Mural Project’.

I met Somu in November 2007, when I went to Partapur to be a part of the Sandarbh Art Workshop. On the first day itself we hit it out well. We shared cigarettes and a lot of ideas. Another thing that bonded us was our year of birth, 1969, about which I have some superstitious obsessions. I have written about it in one of my earlier posts.

Then we worked together for a project titled ‘New Gujarat Contemporaries’, a group show. The idea came to me when I visited Baroda in 2007, almost after twelve years since I passed out from the MS University, Baroda. Even if many Malayali artists stayed in this city, it had never any special attraction for me.

In December 2007, I was supposed to meet Somu in Baroda. But on the eve of my visit, he called me up and shared a personal tragedy with me. His brother-in-law met with an accident and died on the spot. He was shattered and so was I. I didn’t know the deceased person. But I shared the pangs of my friend. However, he insisted that I should go to Baroda and meet the artists in their studios. His car and rented house were at my disposal. With a young artist couple, Bhavin and Heena Mistry, I visited many young artists in their studios.

I found one thing in common. They were all from Gujarati speaking background and talented. However, Baroda was known for its migrant artists’ community. A thought flashed in my mind. Why these Gujarati speaking artists (many of them spoke English and Hindi too), especially the young ones, were laid back in their attitude? I wrote two articles analyzing this issue and published in artconcerns.com. These articles triggered the interest of the young Gujarati artists. Soon I mooted the idea of having a show titled, ‘The New Gujarat Contemporaries.’

Almost a month later, Somu Desai called for a meeting of Gujarati speaking artists at his residence in Baroda and gave a party with traditional Gujarati cuisine including ‘ubadia’. I addressed that meeting of thirty artists and explained my ideas regarding Gujarati contemporaries. Dilip Narayanan was with me there and he assured to mount the show in his gallery. All the artists present there agreed to participate in the show. It was something like a revival of the Gujarati pride.

An artist friend even made his dog to drink a glass of beer for the sheer happiness that he wanted to share!

Somu kept a low profile throughout but worked as my front person to meet and discuss with the artists. But within a few weeks half of the artists backed out from the project, citing the ‘theme’ of the show as a bit ‘parochial’. I was not surprised. I knew the people who worked for creating schism amongst the artists. Those people were generally against me and some of my friends.

Myself and Somu had the bitter experience of visiting an artist at her home, who first gave the full vocal support on the meeting day. When I called her over phone, she was reluctant to speak. Then she told me innumerable reasons to avoid the meeting with us. We somehow convinced her and reached her home. She received us with some kind of impatience and told us point blank that she was not a part of the project anymore. It was surprising for us because we thought that she would be beyond influences.

Somu and me faced artists who after delivering the works at his residence taking it back in the next hour without any logical explanation. The opposition was so strong and they wanted to destroy us. But we stood through the trying times. And finally we did the show with fifteen artists in OED Gallery, Kochi. The show was a moderate success.

I pay my respect to Somu at this juncture because he stood with me like a rock. All of a sudden he became an alien in Baroda. His friends started looking away and he decided to leave Baroda for good.

But now, standing in front of the finished mural project, I feel so proud of Somu. It was Somu again who saw me through this project.

On 2nd January I came to Baroda to visit Asit Shah to do a documentary, the first documentary in my life, on senior artist Jeram Patel. In between the shooting, we were discussing how the huge factory space could be utilized when there was no work happening. I immediately suggested why we could not make it a huge mural in the line of Mexican Murals.

I opened the internet and showed the Mexican Mural images to Asit. Somu was there with me assisting me in the production of the documentary. It was at the same time the Vibrant Gujarat of Narendra Modi was being held in Gujarat.

“Let me re-conceptualize the Vibrant Gujarat theme as a visual project,’ I said to Asit. “Why can’t we change the whole space into a mural that narrates the story of Gujarat in contemporary visual terms?”

“I don’t take a single rupee to do this,” I added.

“I will take the responsibility of executing it and I also don’t want any money,” Somu added.

“I don’t expect a profit from this,” said Asit Shah.

Within the span of thirty minutes, we finalized the project. Somu asked for two weeks to finish the project, which I found too small a time to finish such a mammoth scale work. But I did not have any reason to doubt Somu’s abilities as an artist and as an organizer.

We all worked as per the curatorial points discussed. We delivered what we were supposed to do as per deadlines. The artists worked well and within a time frame of twenty days they finished the mural.

Today I am standing in front of the mural. I feel so humble. I conceptualized it. The whole thing is my idea. But I want to dedicate all the credit to Somu Desai, who followed my curatorial directions with dedication and added a lot to it with an enthusiasm and verve that only I could find in Somu.

“JohnyML has vested interests in Gujarat. He is a right wing person.” The accusations are still there.

But I ask all those critics to come and see the project. It is fabulous. It tells you again, ‘nothing is impossible’.

I can say today that I made it possible because Somu was and is with me.

I am not a Gujarati. I don’t have any vested interests here. But again and again I feel that I can do a lot of things in Gujarat provided Somu like artists are with me.

My salutes to my great friend. New Gujarat Mural Project belongs to him. I am just a reason for it.