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.

Going to the Forest

Everyone, when gets tired of this life
Goes to forest- to be one with nature,
To see how the wind goes through
The foliages and how sun rays
Embroider earth with silvery threads.

Then they have luncheon on grass
Fully clothed in shame and gaze.
Eyes would speak to eyes and
When they are bored they would talk of
What they have left behind.

But you never know, inside the forest
Against the wetness that touches your
Naked heels, with a shadow melting
Down under your feet, the memories
Creeping all over you like weeds.

Stung by the love of a thorn
Kissed by the wing of a moth
Bled by the bite of a leech
You think you purify yourself.
But you don’t know what you are doing.

You are picking up an axe of oblivion
Cutting down all what creeps on you
Clearing the thickets of yesterdays
Building something that is yet to be
You are killing the forest for the love of what…

Don’t go to forests, let them come unto you
Even if you don’t kill the innocent sleep
Even if you are not stained by curdling blood
One day, the Birnam woods will come to you
Where will you hide then….in the forest?

Me No Secular Democrat

To be an art critic or in that case, to be appreciated as a ‘worthy’ art critic, do I need to wear my secular democratic credentials on sleeves?

Human beings have this tendency to form an opinion about their fellow beings even if they don’t know the people about whom they form an opinion. It could be called prejudice. But then it is a strong word. A casual opinion about the other comes from hearsays or from appearance.

During my college days and during my formative years as an art critic, I used to sport a long beard and disheveled hairs. And going by the spirit and philosophy of the time, I too was ‘radical’ when it came to the issues of market economy and religious fundamentalism.

I was never a left party member. I had never worked for any political party. But in colleges where I studied, my fellow students took me for a leftist. I never thought of correcting their opinion as I had many other things to do.

I grew up imbibing the left over spirit of radical leftism. Like many teenagers of my time, I too was fascinated by Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. I was fascinated by Genet and Sartre. Also was fascinated by Van Gogh and Lautrec. Those were growing up days. And like for any other youngster ‘rebelling’ was a vitamin for proper physical and intellectual growth.

So I rebelled against parents, relatives, friends, politics and in general I rebelled against the society. I did not know anything about economics though I read a lot of Marx, Engels and Lenin, ironically.

I did not ask from where the money for rebellion came. But it was good to stand for the struggling human beings and believe that you too were a struggler. Beard was a necessity, later it became a necessity out of no choice.

One day, a gallerist asked me, “Johny, when did you shed off your radical thoughts?”

I wanted to tell her that I never shed off my radical thoughts. I still am a radical. But I don’t know how to define my radicalism. I believe, my life and works are radical enough to satisfy my soul. I never took dowry for my marriage. I never borrowed money from anybody. I never asked my wife to be in kitchen all the time. I never asked anybody their caste or religion. I never conspired to get an academic position. I never pulled threads to get an award. I never asked for anybody’s recommendation to get a scholarship. I never applied for a job in public sector. But I love a lot.

I think that is radical enough.

When I was in Paris, one senior artist patted on my shoulders and asked me, “So when did you finally decide to take a pro-imperialist stance?”

I smiled and shrugged my shoulders because I never said anywhere that I was an anti-imperialist and I would never go to a western country. Yes, I have expressed my anti-imperialist sentiments in my writings. In that case, I stand along with Arundhati Roy, Naomi Klein and Michel Moore. At the same time, my inspiration comes from people like Malcolm X, Bob Marely, Marcus Garvey, Dubois, Franz Fanon, Che Guevara, Steve Biko and so on.

When I did a small curatorial project with one of the commercial galleries in Delhi, many years before the market boom happened, some of my friends asked me, “Johny, finally you also sold off yourself to the market?”

They all were working in schools or banks or colleges. I was jobless by choice.

First time I heard that I was a religious fundamentalist when I shared a platform with O.Rajagopal, then Minister of State for Railways with the BJP Government in center. It was in 2000.

People said, “JohnyML became a right wing person.” You may wonder whether I am so important a personality or not. May be or may not be. Anyway, at that point of time, I was one of the widely read journalists in Malayalam language, reporting from New Delhi.

These days, again I am listening it from people. “JohnyML has vested interests and he has become a right wing man.”

Reason- I am curating a project titled ‘Vibrant Gujarat Mural Project’ in Baroda, Gujarat, where the notorious Narendra Modi is the Chief Minister. And ‘Vibrant Gujarat’ is a phrase taken up by Narendra Modi by the end of last year and implemented it as a program in January 2009.

Modi’s ‘Vibrant Gujarat’ program is to invite multinational corporations to make investments in Gujarat. He is successful in this program.

However, Narendra Modi’s name cannot be separated from the religious carnage that took place in 2002 in Gujarat. Many people from a religious minority were brutally killed by the right wing fundamentalists. And Narendra Modi was nodding his head in approval.

Yes, seen against this backdrop, one can say I am endorsing a person who has caused a holocaust in 21st century. Also one can say that I am going by the corporate heads who want Narendra Modi as the next prime minister of India.

So the title ‘Vibrant Gujarat’ is the problem for the secular democrat intellectuals who would like to question my credentials and accuse me of being a right wing person. If the title was ‘Black Gujarat’, I would have been dubbed as a ‘radical secular democrat’ curator.

I don’t want to be one in that way.

This idea for the mural project came in when I visited Baroda during the first week of January. All the newspapers were reporting on the ‘Vibrant Gujarat’ program by Narendra Modi. I read a lot of reports about the success of it.

Then I met Asit Shah of Art Home Gallery. His factory space was lying vacant and I found the place feasible for any art experiment. The first thing came to my mind was to convert the whole space into a gigantic mural. The theme of the mural came to me immediately: Vibrant Gujarat.

I explained it to Asit and my artist friend Somu Desai who had agreed to lead a team of artists to do the mural. I told them that ‘Vibrant Gujarat’ is the mood of the time. There could be a mural in the line of Mexican Murals, which could speak of the cultural, social and economic vibrancy of this state, Gujarat. Artists are free to choose the images. They can be critical of the political leadership, if they choose to be critical. It was an open curatorial position.

I would have been a dictatorial curator had I asked my artists to come out with such images that would criticize the policy of Narendra Modi and make the project title into an ironic play.

All those critics and artists, even couple of journalists who interviewed me on this project, have problem with the title and the curatorial position, which obviously they do not know. They reached a quick conclusion that JohnyML was endorsing Narendra Modi’s project.

One journalist asked me whether I was funded by the Modi government. Another critic in Mumbai blogged that he was surprised to see ‘JohnyML endorsing Modi’. He wrote how an editor like JohnyML who constantly criticized the right wing fundamentalists when they attacked Chandramohan in Faculty of Fine Arts, do such a project for Modi.

Good. I am doing something during economic recession. It is an art project. It is not a political project. One should be happy that something is happening.

I am not here to make right wing fundamentalists happy. Nor I am here to make the secular democrats happy. I don’t want to wear my conscience on my sleeve. My work speaks for itself.

And I don’t believe that one should go against market economy. And I believe that if Modi comes up with a wonderful art project and ask me to curate it, I would do without any problem. But I will not pawn my conscience to any ideology.

I am a free individual in this country. I carry a passport and I pay tax. I will not waste my energy to earn the status of a secular democrat.

What if I am just a Caravan Fire?

The beauty of careful sewing on a shirt
is the patience it contains.

Friendship and loyalty have patience
as the strength of their connection.

Feeling lonely and ignoble indicates
that you haven't been patient.

Be with those who mix with God
as honey blends with milk, and say,

"Anything that comes and goes,
rises and sets, is not
what I love."

else you'll be like a caravan fire left
to flare itself out alone beside the road.

--Rumi

A friend of mine sent this poem to me today morning. I said it was a beautiful poem. Of course that goes without saying, Rumi’s poems are really great. But I don’t know what to make out of this particular poem.

It is about patience one should have. One should patiently wait for the things to happen in one’s life. May be, this a philosophical and poetic take on friendship, love and loyalty.

In 13th century, when the poet was alive, ‘waiting’ must have been one of the best possible ways to keep frustration away.

Think of those days when telephone density was negligible in our country. We invested all our faith on the efficiency of the post and telegraph department. Telegram always had negative connotations as it brought the news of somebody’s illness or death. People preferred not to receive telegrams.

Inland letters and envelops brought happy news. And we waited for them to come. Postman was a very important person in your life. If you were in love, you waited for him to come and deliver a letter.

In Kerala, even a lyrical genre came into being: Kathu Pattu, which means Letter Songs. Several married young men were in the gulf countries. Their wives were waiting back home for their letters and drafts to come. The lyrical exchanges between the husband and wife, full with romantic and sexual innuendos, and pathos of separation gave birth to this genre of Kathu Pattu.

In Bollywood too Kathupattu had its versions. You must be remembering the famous song sung by Pankaj Udhas, ‘Aayi hai chitti aayi hai’ (the letter has come) and the famous tear jerker sung by Sonu Nigam, ‘Sandesein aaye hain’ (message has come).

Several years before I came to this earth, people said, post man used to run with the mails from one post office to the other. Another post man would receive the letters from him and run to find the addressees.

Then they started using bicycles. Initially, their uniform was khaki. Then it became coffee brown. Now they wear anything they want as they are not very much important in our social life.

Intuition was the most reliable thing during those days. You go to the usual meeting place and strongly wish that your friend would come. And he/she really did come! Don’t you know that great feeling of seeing your girlfriend standing like a red flower under a tree which is filled with blue flowers?

Then came telephones. But you were not allowed to use at your free will. Public telephone booth people, when mobiles came in the market, never allowed you to make local calls to mobiles. If you did, they charged you double.

I am talking about 20th century. Rumi was living in 13th century Persia.

That’s why his poems are filled with the imageries of caravans, dates, setting suns, sand dunes, winds, minarets, prayer calls, lover’s pangs etc. In 13th century you had to wait, wait with a lot of patience. And you needed to profess the virtues of love and loyalty.

In our days, do we really need to wait? Communication technology has made the notion of waiting defunct.

You are connected to anyone you want through internet and mobile phones. You can locate your long lost friend through virtual groups and search engines. Out of no where, one day your friend says hello from six continents away.

Why wait?

Waiting has become man made now. You can refuse to pick up a call. You can put it in call wait. You can trash a mail. You can delete an SMS without giving any importance to it. You can even tell your friend, ‘wait’, poetically or technically.

In the world of chat, you can block someone away. Or you can go hiding by assuming ‘invisible’ status. You can order a person to be away by placing your status as busy. You can write tag lines under your name and tell the world that you are very important and philosophical.

But world does not wait. It goes its own way. No lover waits anymore. He/she is looking for the right person to establish a home.

Someone is going to places and tell the world that he is in a different plane. Someone imagines going to the mountains. Someone imagines walking alone amongst woods.

Rumi is wrong. People love what comes and goes. They like Bollywood. People like what rises and sets.

Yesterday’s struggler is today’s superstar. Yesterday’s superstar is today’s shame. I have seen collectors and buyers and gallerists turning their faces away from the artists whose works did not do well in the last auction.

People just don’t wait.

But I wait. I wait like an ember left by the caravan. I had given warmth to the tired travelers. They may neglect me and go. They don’t even bother to put some water on me. They leave me there to die out on my own.

What if I am just a caravan fire? I die than wait. And I am sure God is with those people who wait. But I know at the same time, God is with the dying ember too because He is the one who gave it light and heat.

Let Rumi wait. I prefer to die like a caravan fire.

(My post, ‘Thoughts Before Valentine’s Day was discussed in some newspaper articles. See one of those in http://www.mid-day.com/news/2009/feb/100902-blogs-react-to-ram-sene-goons-bangalore.htm )