C.Krishna Vilasom Library- A Photo Feature

(C.Krishna Vilasom Library, Vakkom)

(A closer look at C.Krishna Vilasom Library)

(C.Krishna Vilasom Library needs maintenance)

(In the old location of the library now there is a thicket of hibiscus plants)

(Level Cross- Thoppikka Vilakom)

(Vakkom now has a male beauty parlor near Thoppikka Vilakom. It is time to beautify the face of our culture too)

Story of a Village Library

(A village library- Strictly for illustrative purpose only)

Wikipedia has killed small libraries, they say. You no longer rush to the nearest library to clear a doubt in history lessons, to read the latest story by your favorite short story writer or even to spend a few minutes with like-minded people (the village bookworms). Do you remember the last time when you visited an old scholar in your village to discuss some issue that you thought needed erudite clarification or elaboration? Today, Wikipedia does everything for everyone; knowledge at your fingertips. Say, information at your fingertips, someone corrects. Do not pass one for the other, they are different, another one interjects. There are times when you want to know about what has happened to the good old library in your village. What do you do then? Either you go there in person to see what the present status of it is or, yes, here it comes, or you enter the name of that library in Wiki search or Google search. Alas, most often you don’t get any information about it. Nostalgia mongers amongst the Non Resident Villagers (NRVs) litter their social networking site pages with images and information about their villages that they have left behind long back. But you do not find a picture of the village library. None seems to be interested.

At Vakkom, a small village where I was born, in Trivandrum District in Kerala, there is a library called ‘C.Krishna Vilasom Library’. Before I go into the real story, let me digress a little bit. Vakkom is a beautiful village and it is rich in money and greenery. It has a very interesting history that runs back to our independence struggle, Communist Movement and so on. I do not want to get into that history in this short piece of writing. But, of late I have found out that this village is more beautiful than the beach paradise, Goa. Vakkom has backwaters and a few paces away from it a long beach, which is still used by fishermen. At the northern end, Panayil Kadavu has a small resort called Kayaloram (Shore of Backwaters) and a huge four star hotel called ‘Vakkom Palazzo’, both remain underused and under advertised. You cross the backwaters at Kaikkara by ferry or by road at Panayilkadavu, you reach the famous Varkala Beach, which is the second important destination of the tourists who visit South Kerala, after the illustrious Kovalam Beach. There are hardworking as well as lazy people in this village. Many young people are in the gulf countries and they have helped making Vakkom an extremely rich village. It is interesting to see at least twenty per cent of the youngsters who are employed in the gulf countries, is on leave at any given time and could be seen in the village riding huge motor bikes or luxury cars. But none goes to C.Krishna Vilasom Library.

(Vakkom has a houseboat too-in Panayil Kadavu)

My tryst with C.Krishna Vilasom Library was sometime in 1978, when I was nine years old. Many a youth who did not have any other ways to pass time found their way to this library. It was located near the first level cross of our village and along the meter gauge rails steam engines passed four or five times in a day. Watching those huge steam engines pulling the rickety bogies was an interesting pastime for us. A dilapidated reading room adjacent to the one room library was open throughout the day and people kept reading a few newspapers and weeklies sitting at a three and half legged table. In the evening a jobless young man came to man the issuing counter of the library which was a dark hole filled with books and only that young man could pick up the books that we used to ask for. My father was one of the committee members of the library and it helped me to get a membership in the library though I was underage. I remember reading almost all the books available in that library and started testing my skills in writing in due course of time. We all used to call it ‘Sree Krishna Viasom Library’ though its original name was ‘C.Krishna Vilasom Library.’

Today I visited the library again after almost three decades. Now this small library functions from a tiny two storied concrete building near the government high school at Vakkom where I did my schooling. This library was shifted to the present location in 1988, after four years I left the school. Talking to a pious old man, Sisupalan sir, who volunteers to conduct the day to day affairs of the library, I came to remember that the small plot of land where the library building is situated now was bought by my father and he had asked my mother to hand over the property to the library committee before his untimely demise. Immediately after my father’s death, my mother promptly handed over the plot to the library. With the help of a benevolent donor from the village and a few contributions raised from people by the committee, the library got a permanent building in 1988. By that time I had left Vakkom for higher studies and had found better and bigger libraries elsewhere. Somehow, I missed visiting this library till I could do it today. Sisupalan sir showed me a few books written or translated by me, which made me really happy. Last year, I had contributed around three hundred books from my collection to this library though I was not personally present when the books were handed over to the library committee. Today, I was curious to know the history of this library and Sisupalan sir was willing to share the history of it with me.

It all started with a Reformation Campaign conducted by a Malabar based barrister in 1930 in conjunction with the Temple Entry movement in 1930. The procession led by this barrister, C.Krishnan, came from Kollam, then Quilon, via Varkala and crossed the Kaikkara backwaters and culminated at the Putthan Nada Shiva Temple premises with a huge public meeting. It is said that when the procession came, the people in Vakkom felled several coconut trees in order to make a floating bridge across the backwaters for the procession to cross it without interruption. C.Krishnan made a speech at the temple grounds and a few youngsters named Malayali Madhavan, Padmanabhan, Sreedharan and so on got so inspired by the speech of C.Krishnan who had asked the village youth to wake up and educate people through reading and writing that they decided to start a library. Padmanabahan was a landlord and had a shop that sold Ayurvedic medicines. He had a couple of rooms left vacant in the same property where he and his friends set up the library. Though C.Krishnan was alive, as a tribute to his name and fame, they decided to call it ‘C.Krishna Vilasom Library’ which literally means a ‘Library in the Address of C.Krishnan’. My father was one of the early members who carried the flame of those pioneers further and he was a member of the governing committee of this library till his death. Sisupalan Sir also remembers the contributions done by Mr.Sumedan who has been coming up with material and moral support whenever the library faces problems of survival.

Though the library was started in 1930, it got its official recognition in 1936 as its name was included as a member library in the Grandhasala Soochi (Library Index). The issue registers since 1936 are still preserved here in this library. As Sisupalan Sir told me about it, I happily reminded him that in a few of those registers my name and signature also would be there. Today, C.Krishna Vilasom has a few patrons from in and around the village. Though it is right in front of the government high school, Sisupalan sir says that not a single student from the school has enrolled as a member in the library. So strange, I think. I see one of my students whom I had taught almost twenty five years back. He is here to pick up some books and that makes me so happy. He is a government servant now but he finds time to read books of his interest (organic agriculture). A girl lends her service as an untrained librarian two hours a day in the evening and rest of the time she works in a textile shop as a sales girl. She has to find an additional job because the government gives a grant of Rs.1000/- per month as a salary to the ‘librarian’; that too comes as a lump sum once in six months. Books are purchased with an annual purchasing grant provided by the government, which is Rs.20000/- (Twenty thousand). As anybody else out there, I am also sure that it is absolutely an inadequate amount for purchasing books. This library has got a computer which has been lying there unused and now out of order for a long time. Sisupalan sir tells me that no trained person is there to catalogue the books or keep an online register. He also tells me that the committee does not have any fund to employ a full time trained librarian.

This article is an appeal to all my friends who are born and brought up at Vakkom and now have decent jobs and fat pay packets both in India and elsewhere. If you really lend a helping hand, C.Krishna Vilasom Library could gather sufficient capital for employing a full time librarian and also for purchasing good books. Also a part of the amount could be used for branding it and spreading the word around. To my surprise, I found out that neither the Member of Parliament nor the Member of the Legislative Assembly has ever supported this library despite repeated pleas. Hence, some political pressure also could be put on the concerned authorities if politically influential people volunteer to initiate the MPs and MLAs about the plight of this library. And I am sure in each village in our country, there must be a story similar to this. We cannot go around and do it for all the libraries in our country. So let us start with our own Village, Vakkom and its own C.Krishna Vilasom Library.

As an end note; before writing this piece, I went to Wikipedia to look for some information about this library. I also searched for images in Google. I came out empty handed.  

Looking for HMT Watches

Children search for things everywhere, just like monkeys and dogs do. They are on an eternal hunt for some treasure hidden somewhere by someone.  Peeping into the old cupboards where parents hide their secrets, looking under the cots, searching for flowers, fruits and roots in the wayside thickets keep them engaged with the mysteries of mother earth. As they grow up, they lose interest in those mysteries and they start believe in the apparent and palpable. That’s how they become law abiding citizens in a controlled society. Trees, birds, animals, rivers, winds, rains and sea waves stop talking to them. The silent but curious conversations with the animate and inanimate slowly fade away leaving them to become passive consumers of newspapers and television channels. Each time, they remember their childhood they tend to think of those good old days of incessant searching. Then they feel the ultimate fear of discovering something for themselves; they may even chance upon their own souls. So they come back to the mundane realities as fast as they could and stay calm or they pretend to be so. Our story of HMT watches start from one such search undertaken by myself when I was a child of eight or nine, along with other kids of same age.

I do not remember who had told us that secret; it was simple but exciting. If you collected the cigarette packets of Scissors brand and searched for the letters ‘H M T’ at the pasted edges of the unfolded packet and sent them to the company you would get an HMT watch. In those days kids of my age never had a chance to wear a real watch. We satisfied our desire to have a wrist watch by making one out of the dexterously folded coconut tree leaves. We could make many things out of these fronds; square-balls, snakes, whistles and wrist watches. That was quite an organic origami. Plastic watches came with frozen needles stuck up in shapeless dials. Balloon men brought them to the festival grounds and parents living under the pressure of controlled economy hesitated to buy even those plastic watches. Real watches came to kids when they passed the school final examinations with considerable marks or grades that assured them admission in decent pre-degree colleges. Someone wearing a watch after the results were announced heralded his/her success to the world with that lone shiny ticking symbol at his wrist.

Finding the packets of Scissors brand cigarette was not a difficult thing as my village had enough smokers who could afford Scissors cigarette. We used cigarette packets to create various things. If you cut the packets into small pieces and folded them together you could create a long chain. You could make lamp shades out of thrown away cigarette packets. You could even create your own ‘video game’ with some interesting additions to a packet. However, finding the letters H M T in these packet was a different ball game altogether. Disappointment came with the realization that not any single packet carried all three letters. Some had ‘H’, some had ‘M’ and some people claimed that they got ‘T’ also. None got three packets with all those three magical letters. If you got two, the third one was perpetually missing. Those who claimed that they got the missing letter, were not ready to exchange it for the one extra we had. After almost a year long desperate search for those three letters, we all gave up the idea.  Soon we came to know that it was all a hoax. The cigarette company did not offer any watch to anyone even though they painstakingly collected all three letters and sent to the company.

In childhood you are susceptible to all such weird ideas. You may not be interested to finish your homework but without any complaint you would write some mantra for hundred times, or copy a pamphlet that praised some gods, ten times in order to gain good marks in the examination or to receive some sort of blessings from the invisible gods. It was the time that a child imagined traveling to school on a pony or riding a cycle fitted with some kind of an engine. It was a time when each child envied a man or woman wearing a wrist watch. I got my first wrist watch when I passed my school final examinations and needless to say, it was an HMT watch. I flaunted my watch which had a golden yellow dial and a steel chain, with lot of pride. It was not a cell-powered one or a quartz watch. I had to wind it every morning and it was a fulfilling exercise. I wore it for a long time till it became a part of my body and felt like attaching no special qualities to it. When Gulf money brought more and more fashionable watches of international brands like Citizen, Seiko, Rado and so on, HMT watches went out of fashion. Even claiming to have an HMT watch became a thing of shame at that time. In due course of time, my first HMT watch went into the drawer of my writing table and stayed there ‘dead’ for a long time.

(Shibu Natesan and Anil Janardanan in Trivandrum, mid 1980s)

Winding watches or mechanical wrist watches had always attracted Shibu Natesan. He got his first watch when he went to Trivandrum Fine Arts College in mid 1980s. It was not a gift or something like that. As an artist, the child in him had not grown up so he was always searching for something that excited his imagination. In one of those search trips undertaken by him, he came across an old wrist watch in someone’s hand. That person was ready to part with it for a small amount. It had a faded golden sheen to it. Shibu managed some money and got the watch for himself. When he wore it, the watch looked quite trendy and I coveted one for myself too because I thought my HMT watch was not so ‘cool’ in front of his trendy old watch. The Trivandrum Fine Arts College aura was so powerful that whatever the students in that college wore looked naturally attractive. I still remember the jeans and cotton trousers that Shibu had bought from different markets. He would go to any length to get something that he had fancied. And I think that character trait has become only stronger by the passage of time. A few years back he became an avid collector of HMT watches that ran on winding. He does not fancy the cell-powered watches produced by the HMT Company. The story of Shibu’s HMT craze is fascinating.

I should start with a small anecdote. It happened to be just a couple of days before we started our journey to Thiruvannamalai. Shibu has this tendency of getting into any watch shop, however small or big it is, and asking for the ‘mechanical HMT watches’. Often the shop owners give him an emphatic NO. Due to the flooding of ‘time’ market with affordable and very expensive wrist watches from national and international brands, most of the shop owners as well as customers naturally believe that HMT watches no longer exist. Even if they exist, shop owners say, they are ‘left over’ old pieces. They do not mind selling them in the ‘old’ price. The fact is that they just want to get rid of their remaining stock of the HMT watches. Interestingly, the shop owners have even forgotten that once upon a time all the watches were mechanical. They blindly believe that HMT has stopped producing watches. Some even think that the company has already been locked out as it is a public sector company.

(Shibu Natesan in one of his sketching trips)

We were on the way to book our bus ticket to Thiruvannamalai. It was drizzling and we were rushing to the nearest shop where they booked the tickets for buses and trains. Soon a small watch shop came in our view. Shibu did not hesitate a moment to get into that shop and demand a mechanical HMT watch. They looked at Shibu and then to me as if they were seeing two aliens suddenly materialized before them. The shop owner gave out a cynical laughter when he heard Shibu’s question. Without hesitating for a second, the shop owner said that HMT no longer produced wrist watches. Shibu raised his left hand at him and showed a mechanical HMT watch that he had bought a few days before from Thumkur in Karnataka, the third factory established by the Hindustan Machine Tools (HMT) company for producing watches exclusively. The shop owner was not pleased. He stuck to his argument saying that he had been running the shop for the last twenty years and if Shibu could prove that the watch at his wrist was ‘original’ he would shut the shop forever. Shibu laughed at his arrogance and gave his watch to the shop assistant. He used a magnifying glass to check the seal and make and sheepishly told the shop owner that it ‘looked’ original. The man was not ready to listen. He was saying that if Shibu could prove it, he would stop his business. Shibu told him calmly that he was not a representative from the HMT Company and his intention was just to tell him that the mechanical HMT watches were still available in the market.

While walking back, Shibu was repeatedly asking me whether we should go back and show him the company receipt that he had obtained while buying the watch from the original showroom of HMT in Thumkur. I was not in a mood to make someone go pale with shame and embarrassment. So I advised against that. Nor was Shibu in any mood to stop that poor man’s business. As we walked on, enjoying the droplets of rain falling on our faces, he told me about how he was initiated to the world of the mechanical HMT watches. It was almost a decade back. Shibu was visiting Thiruvannamalai with his British wife, Kate Bowes, and he happened to see a watch shop that sold an interesting array of watches. While browsing through the watches, Shibu found a mechanical HMT wrist watch. The make was simple but it was beautiful, especially when seen against all those glittering sleek watches and heavily decorated large dial watches. The price was phenomenally low and Shibu was hooked not only by the beauty of it but also by the price. When he bought that watch he did not know that he was going to collect more than twenty mechanical HMT wrist watches, which were released under different sub-names.

We do not know whether our first Prime Minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru considered the maximum ‘time is money’ too seriously or not. However, we know for sure that Nehru wanted to take India to the next level of modernity by establishing several industries. Hindustan Machine Tools was one such industry that was meant to produce tractors, machine parts and other mechanical tools. In 1961, in collaboration with the Japanese watch producer, Citizen Co., HMT started producing wrist watches and Nehru released the first batch of the mechanical wrist watches in the same year. The company went into expansion mode till mid 1980s and became one of the biggest watch producers in the country. But due to various reasons including the lack of enthusiasm to compete with the other watch makers, HMT watches became less cool. But during the first three decades of its inception, HMT had produced a lot of interesting hand wound wrist watches under different brand names. Janata is one of the most famous brands of HMT watches and I wear one such watch gifted by Shibu last year. Shibu travels any length to find out whether any small watch shop still keeps the hand wound HMT watches. Some days he rides his green Enfield Bullet more than hundred kilometers combing each and every street in several southern districts for HMT watches. Sometimes his search has taken him across the state borders within one day. After collecting almost all the hand wound brands of HMT watches, now he is on a hunt for a brand called ‘Jawhar’.

Shibu’s interest in HMT watches does not end up with collecting several watches from the same company. He has more or less studied the whole history of the HMT Company and also has made connections with the major show rooms in India. He is also familiar with the facebook groups that promote old and cool watches. To my surprise he told me that most of the HMT watch collectors were young IT men and they were very active in the social networking groups for promoting and collecting HMT watches. His incessant combing operations have brought him many friends who are equally interested in watches not only as sellers but also as mechanics and collectors. Interestingly, Shibu has found out that the HMT Company has outlets even in the major post offices in India from where even you could send HMT watches as gifts to people!

(A view of Thiruvannamalai town, with the Arunachala temple in the middle. It is where we hunted for more HMT watches)

In Thiruvannamalai, our walking expeditions are punctuated by the visits to every watch shop. Shibu asks the same question in every shop; Do you have mechanical HMT wrist watches? Some of them show us the cell-powered HMT watches, which are obviously designed to give a competition to other watch makers. But we are not looking for those new and trendy watches. Shibu wants this particular ‘Jawahar’ watch and none has it. One of them tells him to come back after a couple of days and without fail we reach that small shop on the stipulated day only to find the man who has promised the watch missing indefinitely. Someone gives us a wrong address to find out an exclusive watch shop and we end up walking at least two kilometers without find it and finally we come back to the same spot from we set off for that shop only to find out that the shop stands right there a few paces away to our right. But that exclusive shop also fails to satisfy Shibu’s hunger for a particular HMT watch. He promises me that he would continue his search till he finds out the Jawahar brand and feels his mechanical wrist watch collection complete.

Travelers in a Storyland

(Shibu Natesan sketching a Lambadi tribe girl)

Stories of travelers, especially when recounted by travelers themselves, evoke a lot of curiosity, respect and admiration amongst the listeners. Travel worn people gather around food or anything that make them warm, and share their experiences; often these stories retold amongst the peer group of travelers are often taken in silence. If there is a fool in the tavern or inn who is just there to entertain people, at some stage even he would turn silent for he too knows for sure that even the best of his histrionic abilities would not match up with the hardship undergone by these travelers. When heard by a young woman, from behind the curtain of her father’s house, even the moor’s complexion turns fair and lovely too. With each word that he utters, her heart skips a beat, in anxiety she shivers, in a passion she burns and obviously she would fall in love with him as she comes to understand the scars on his body as experiences of life. There are people who come to the taverns in order to tell the story, in order to make others tell it. He may not be a shrink who helps others to shed their inhibitions by recalling their dreadful pasts. But by revealing his own sad stories, he makes them cry and crying is infectious; it makes the witness to cry. Tears and laughter possess people like the fragrance of Arabian scents. They toss people like ships caught in storms. May be the end of each journey also would bring tears without words. I ask why I shed silent tears when I was about to leave the Old (prayer) Hall in Ramanashram in Thirivannamalai? Did I listen to the stories that Ramana Maharshi was telling me on those days of my sojourn there with my beloved friend, Shibu Natesan?

By now at least a few of you might have recognized the references that I have just used in the first paragraph. Andrei Rublov of Tarkovsky, Othello of Shakespeare and Zahir of Paulo Coelho. I could have said a title and then said ‘by’ so and so. I avoid using ‘by’ here because I want to make the characters referred here belong to the authors who had created them. Characters are free once they are rendered on paper and they don’t belong to the author anymore once his purpose of narration is over. But somehow I want to make the characters, incidents, pictures and everything, belong to somebody; an author. It is easy to declare the death of an author. It is easy to say that the sign and signified are different. It is easy to say that meaning changes according to the reader. But at times, I think the author need to be alive and be attached with his character. I think it is the time to revive the dead author. An author should live even if the Romeos must die. Theoretical facilities have helped us in coordinating revolutions both in speech and deed, and in class room and in the market place, yet sing and signified are tied together in an invisible relationship. They are like a couple about to be divorced or divorced for long, but still thinking about wrecking revenge on each other. Hence, I want to recount the story of my journey with Shibu to the places that I had never been before, keeping the authorial voice intact. I do not want to be invisible; I want to be present and gradually fade. Initially the author speaks for the work of art and years later, works of art speak for the author. It is the fate of the author to belong to the work of art that he has created once for all. Remember one could sire an emperor as well as a pauper.

(Myself at Shibu's Studio. pic by Shibu Natesan)

This trip has been over due; the trip to Thiruvannamalai. Each time I was invited to visit the place by friends who have already settled there, I thought the time was not right. Nothing was preventing me from going there. Friends have inviting, their hospitality has been legendary and attractive stories about the place have been abundant. It was almost a decade back that I came to know about Thiruvannamalai from Shibu. May be I knew about the place and I knew about Ramana Maharshi. Shibu had said that he gave thousands of rupees to the mendicants who frilled the roads of Thiruvannamalai with saffron clothes, dreadlocks and pleas for alms. I thought that was obscene; spending thousands of rupees on beggars was a bit too much for me. Then the times were different. People in the art scene had a lot of money and when there is a lot of hard cash in your hand, it is imperative to find avenues to send them adequately. You do not feel like giving it away on charity back at home or elsewhere because you always feel that they do not deserve that charity and even you are afraid that the charity spent back at home could be taken for arrogance. So it is always good to spend on beggars who really need it as they do not do much of work other than saying an occasional ‘Om Namah Shivaya’ with folded hands. Beggars and dogs remember people very well. As I walk along the streets of Thiruvannamalai with him, I experience his popularity amongst the beggars, first hand. They have matured and he too has matured. Today he does not flow money to their hands; he is discreet. But he is very caring when he talks to the mendicants. They know him. And some of them, he says, are not seen anymore there. They have vanished; they may be dead or gone to the better places for begging.

Charity could have been the last thing to goad to me to Thiruvannamalai. I thought the calling had not yet come. So the postponement was natural. Besides, I am not a born-traveler. I do not ‘enjoy’ my trips to the lands hitherto unknown to me. I do not get excited by new experiences. Therefore the idea of travelling is a bit tiresome for me. However, this time the call came, with full force. I had no other way than going to the place, that too with the person who told me first time about it and had promised once that we would travel together when time and opportunity came. The call initially came from EtP, Ekalokam Trust for Photography, led by noted photography artist, Abul Kalam Azad. But somehow, it did not work out though it was a temporary postponement. Then came the call of Shibu, and this time it was hard to resist. When I reached Trivandrum, Shibu was already on trip to North Kerala and Karnataka with the noted novelist and essayist, P.Surendran. They visited Shravanabelagola in Karantaka and the surrounding areas in the Bellari District where Shibu extensively sketched the people from the Lambardi tribe. Shibu had driven his Gypsy car all the way and was pretty much tired when he came back home. When I visited him at his home, Chithralayam (House of Painting/s) at Attingal, he was not in a mood to drive again. Hence we decided to travel by bus. The original plan was to drive together but considering the nature of travel and the chosen destination, we decided to take a Volvo bus to Thiruvannamalai.

(Novelist P.Surendran in a Karnataka village, pic by Shibu Natesan)

We needed some warming up exercises before we undertook the journey.  Between us warming up could happen at any time with simple conversations which often go for hours. May be we are two people who could talk to each other for hours without feeling the need to stop. Generally we talk about art, art related events, people and little bit of gossip. We discuss grave topics at times and without any effort switch to things really mundane and comical. We have this penchant for pulling each other’s legs for no reason and it saves us from bitching about others. When we feel the urge to bitch we bitch against each other. We make comical gestures of physical fighting, but from safe distances and go into silence without any warning. He takes up a sketch pad and sketch at times, when I pick up a book and read. Sometimes, we watch rains lashing at the trees and plants and at other times he gets up to make some tea, exotic tea bags dipped in hot water. We sit and sip tea and ruminate about our destinies aloud. Sometimes he feels that he has a huge studio and now he does not want such a huge studio as he enjoys more working in the open, drawing, sketching and painting people and places, objects and things or taking photographs just for the heck of it. Shibu’s photographs are aesthetically perfect and they show a painter’s touch. Upon a query, he told someone that he never would like to be known as a photography artist. May be this statement of his could console so many souls that exclusively subsist on photography. When he talks about the size of the studio, I think of my whole possession in the world; a bag of clothes and a lap top. We, two friends, rather brothers, stand at two opposite poles in our material circumstances. It must be one of the reasons why we have always been drawn to each other.  We are similar in many ways and dissimilar in too many other ways.

Our journey was supposed to start on 7^th August 2014. We had three days in hand before that. So we decided to explore the nearby places. Though it was not a scheduled and chartered exploratory trip and there was no timeline created for such extempore expressions of our corporeal bodies, time was one important factor for us. This time, however time manifested in form of HMT watches. Anybody who enjoyed their first watch in the pre-liberal India would remember this brand name, HMT. There are a few stories that connect Shibu and myself with HMT watches. Yes, today, I wear an HMT watch gifted to me by Shibu himself almost a year before. But that alone does not suffice the story. I think our story of HMT watches demand a full chapter. You may wait for it in the next chapter. 

A Journey to the Unknown

I was a believer. Then I became a non-believer. When you believe too much in anything, it is natural that you start doubting it at some stage. When you disbelieve in something for a long time, you tend to believe in it. Love starts like that; from a sort of aversion it becomes something that cannot be separated. Extremes are there always in life. There are people who always cherish a midway. They are safe; they are there to win. They are there to go a long way. There was time when people who believed in extremes were adulated. Today, the wheel has turned. If you are extreme in anything, you are despised, avoided and ostracized. You may not be called an extremist. But your extremism would bring you no friends. Ironically, even the so called extremists make friends today. That is called international networking. Without networking, extremism cannot flourish. A thing that used to flourish without networking was love. Today love also needs networking to flourish. People want to stay connected. People want to be in touch. People do not want to talk, converse and even remain silent in the presence of each other. People just want to be in touch. What’s up?

My mind is not calm. I do not believe in anything. I believe in love and I suffer. They say, people move from one thing to another, one destination to another, one song to another, one art form to another, one person to another, one way of meditating to another in search of peace and happiness. Who actually wants happiness? None wants happiness. We all need a little bit of sorrow in order to understand the value of life. But we need peace. It is the only way to understand and indentify both happiness and sorrow. I need peace. I do not want to give it a chance. Like any other ordinary human being I want peace to be my permanent state of mind. If one is searching for that, I am sure you are not going to get it. You have to go through this; this disturbance and sorrow in order to realize calmness and happiness. It is a process; without one the other does not exist. To acknowledge the other is the best to way to recognize one’s own self. And I do not want to get into that bullshitting of Indian spirituality and its clichéd jargon.

Despite all disturbances in me, despite all skepticism in me and despite all that turmoil that I am going through today, I am going to a place where they say one could transform. They do not assure me calmness. They do not assure me happiness. But they assure me that if you are receptive enough you could change because this place is the place of change. They say, it is a dhyana bhoomi, a place to meditate. Oh, I do not like the word meditation. Let me say, it is a place to concentrate, focus and be silent. Good. They say again, it is not a karma bhoomi. It is not a place to do things. It is not a place of action. It is not a war filed. It is a landscape filled with vibrations of purity. Purity? That does not mean that you need to act like a pious being. Pious beings also err and they err in the most ridiculous fashion and they regret their acts in the rest of their lives. So you need not be pious. You just need to be open and see. You just need to be there, inhaling and exhaling, the way you do otherwise. You could go to this place like the way you go to a market, a mall, or a film theatre, or a library. You could change even in these places.

For me, the best place is of contemplation is graveyards. I love to be in graveyards. Romantic poets used to spend their time in graveyards, contemplating on the meaning of life and also the meaningfulness of death. I am not a romantic poet; but there is a romantic in me who wants to be away from the din of daily life. Hence, I am attracted to graveyards, just the way some people are attracted to cliffs, from where they feel like taking a plunge to the unknown, without any flying aid. It is suicidal. But life itself is a suicidal act. So I am going to a place where I think there would be graveyards that would make me calm. I want to be inert. I want to listen and I want to recount. I want to write to my beloved from there about the scenes I would see, the songs I would hear and the visions, I hope, I would have. I have my beloved’s heart and mind with me. I have my beloved’s eternal body with me. I have the goddess with me. So this journey is with my goddess. My another journey to the unknown. 

(pic by Anil Nellivila)

Anatomy of an Unknown Chair: Mansoor Ali’s Show at Maskara Gallery

(Mansoor Ali)

The interior of Gallery Maskara in Mumbai reminds of an old chapel in a war torn territory where rustic old parents come to pray for their sons who had gone to the warfront ages back, perhaps never to return. Kindled by faith they oscillate between hope and despair. This is a hangover of having seen too many Tarkovsky movies when mind was fresh and not overtly corrupted by theories and ways of seeing. There in the gallery I too oscillate between hope and despair as I watch the sculptural installation of Mansoor Ali, who has been obsessed with the idea of ‘chair’ for a long time. As I know the artist, I understand, while doing these works he too moves like a pendulum between hope and despair. The gallery director, Abhay Maskara, who has written a small introductory note, posits Mansoor’s works strictly in the context of politics, power games, corruption and the human beings’ greed for holding on to the chairs, the positions of power. May be, that is an entry point, one of the many doors to get into the skin of those works, and that entry point should not be wrong either. However, these works of Mansoor evoke a series of images and thoughts in my mind and I would like to jot them down. And let me tell you my dear reader, it is not a critique, nor is it a note of appreciation. It is a silent prayer in which, though people would like to focus on one thing, as desperate as they are, they tend to wander into various ruminations, tragic and comic.

Mansoor’s chairs raise the fundamental aesthetical values flagged out by Plato and also in due course they pose this perennial and disturbing question of originality. A chair is not a chair but an object three times away from the ideal conception of it. According to the ancient philosopher, in his Platonic view, the original chair is there in the custody/imagination of god. And then comes the imagination of the crafts person and the final chair is the outcome of these two imaginations, a physical object. Therefore, the chair that we see today around us is an aesthetical interpretation of these two imaginations, perhaps not the representation of the original idea of the chair. Joseph Kosuth was perhaps arguing this case, but more in a desconstructionist verve, when he placed a chair at the gallery and pasted a dictionary definition of it on the wall. It was as good as ‘This is not a Pipe’ by Rene Magritte. But as I stand in front of Mansoor’s works, I feel obviously that the artistic intention is not to raise the already raised questions of structural linguistics and the deconstructionist clamours that followed it. But I see Mansoor’s chairs as a tragic-comic vivification of the world hierarchies that either seeps down or vapours up to the various layers of society, vying each other to replicate each other and find satisfaction in such replications.

Four chairs come to my mind: The prime ministerial chair that the noted cartoonist R.K.Laxman had drawn repeatedly in his pocket cartoons. Jawaharlal Nehru was the first victim of that chair and the saga continues till in the case of Narendra Modi. But what amused me amongst them was a large chair where a small Lal Bahadur Shastri sitting with his legs dangling in mid air. R.K.Laxman was either obliquely referring  to Shastri’s small physique. Or was it was an ironic understatement that Shastri was not big enough to occupy a chair that Pandit Nehru had occupied. Chair, when seen in the political context is not just a chair but it is a musical chair, it is an electric chair and above all it is a machinery of repression and oppression. The second chair that comes to my mind is also from the same time, where Chittoprasad Bhattacharya, the Communist artist, had cartooned a chair; this chair has two occupants at a time, the kings of post independence India and the common man. Both of them want to occupy it and they are on an uneven scoot fight. And today we know who has won. The third chair is none other than the chair of the Imperial power in India, the peacock throne. And the fourth chair is the chair in Kiss Kursi Ka, a novel written by Amrit Nahata, which later on became a satirical movie on Indian politics. 

Mansoor Ali’s chairs perhaps comprise all of these chairs. As visual objects or sculptural installations these chairs evoke a visual impact. But I am afraid whether they have become too illustrative as the direct connotations of politics come naturally to these works. I feel it as a curse of the contemporary artists; the more they are inclined to comment upon the existing socio-political climate the more they get entangled in the meanings cleverly planted by the very same climate and its productive agencies. It has been happening with many an artist not only in our country but also elsewhere. Where the singular and monumental objects fail the artists tend to repeat the same image in the same ensemble several times or repeat it many times as components of a whole exhibition. The solace lies in the fact that Mansoor does not attempt to create familiar structures with the familiar chairs as that has been the norm for many contemporary artists these days. Some make trees, buildings and even skulls using steel utensils and some others make vehicles out of bone pieces. In both the cases these components are used as alphabets to create a visual statement but in the case of Mansoor’s ensemble of works, they are not alphabets but visual images that evoke multiple reactions but tied to the political critique.

‘The Restless Chair’ rotates and it rotates faster when the viewer approaches it, and it has all the visual characteristics of an authoritarian structure, in this case Indian parliament. In another work, Mansoor employs the same parliament structure and the work is titled the ‘Weight of the Political Brain’. It is a weighing machine, an industrial scale, and the weight of the brain here is equated as the weight of the parliament building, which in this case weighs around 1.33 kilograms. In another work titled Monument to an Unknown Politician, he uses around seven chairs of different sizes (the smallest one is three inches in size) in rusting iron/steel, and implies that to reach the top one has to start climbing from the smallest one. But I tend to call it a wishful work as in today’s Indian politics, where dynasty is rampant, small chair has lost its value altogether. To sit on the biggest chair you need to take birth in the right womb at the right political palace and also at the right time. Exceptions are there but they will be rendered useless within 49 days after staging a dharna at the parliament street, in peak winter. The best work in this exhibition is ‘Anatomy of an Unknown Chair’ which adequately deconstructs a rocking chair and displays its components in a glass case exactly the way objects are displayed in an ill maintained Indian museum. How an inconspicuous chair starts resembling ancient weapons and guns when it is deconstructed! It is a very interesting work indeed. The title is loaded as it reminds one of the India critique written none other than the first Indo-Anglican writer, Nirad C.Chowdhury who perhaps gave birth to the literary genre later flourished by V.S.Naipaul and Salman Rushdie, especially in their India baiting.

This show of Mansoor sticks out because of ‘Anatomy of an Unknown Chair’. The other work that receives the viewer at the invisible threshold of the gallery is titled Beautifully Corrupt II. This is an architectural structure made out of small dysfunctional chairs and they are filled with cobwebs. Does it resemble a government office that has left its mission of public service behind and has gone into an eternal lull? Or is it a contrast between the defunct public sector and the optimistic corporate sector? Or is it a statement saying that the chairs do not matter anymore? Mansoor's show evokes too many questions in a thinking person’s mind. For the rest of the wine drinkers, it is ‘an Abhay Maskara presentation.’

Balbir-Michael Marriage: A Possible Beginning of a New Chapter in Indian Social History

(Michael Giangrasso and Balbir Krishan getting Married)

Balbir Krishan came to meet me all the way from Bagpat in Uttar Pradesh and it was in 2011. Facebook had brought me several friends from different places; ‘like’ ing spree was not an epidemic yet and in its naivety facebook-izens were updating their daily routines as status messages. Facebook had not evolved as a public interface of ideas and activities. Hung over by Orkut and Yahoo chat rooms, people were still using facebook as an exclusive chat room. When Balbir Krishan introduced himself as an artist, I happily accepted him as my ‘friend’ in facebook. One day he expressed his wish to come and meet me as he wanted to show me some of his original works. Reluctant as I am in meeting ‘strangers’, I politely discouraged him from coming. I found it was atrocious to expect someone to come and meet me from Bagpat, just to show few works. People still say that they would like to meet me; they call me from Dubai or Canada or Calicut and say that they just want to meet me. They are ready to travel any distance to meet me. I dissuade them, telling clearly that I am one of the most boring people available on the earth and they may be disappointed when they see me in person.

(Balbir with myself in Pradeep Puthoor's Opening at Nature Morte)

When Balbir called or when I agreed to meet him, I did not know about his personal details. I did not know about his life story, I did not know anything about his sexual orientation, nor did I know anything about his art. Generally I test the patience of the people who would like to work with me. I test their seriousness by showing some kind of disinterestedness. If they persist, I acknowledge their grit and even accept that offer to work with them. I made Balbir also to wait. But he insisted on meeting me. Finally I relented. He came to Musui Foundation, where I have my evolving dream archive, on a cold November morning. He struggled slightly to get out of the auto-rickshaw. Assisted by friend, Balbir came supporting his steps with a pair of walking sticks. He had a shy smile on his face and a mournful voice. He spoke to me about his life, its struggles, the tragedy that had rendered him a physically challenged person, his art, his village, his sexual orientation, the opposition that he faced from the society. I listened to his talk silently. He showed me the works. To cut the story short, Balbir had his solo show in 2012 in Delhi to which I wrote a catalogue essay introducing him to the mainstream art circuit. Some hooligans came to the gallery, attacked him, broke his works and left him shell shocked. But that incident made Balbir quite popular. Even Salman Rushdie referred him recently in one his speeches.

Balbir is a married man today. Michael Giangrasso from the US is his partner. They got married in the month of June 2014 in New York. In India, gay marriage is a criminal offense. However, as they are legally married elsewhere, they cannot be questioned. Balbir and Michael are now supported by many of the gay activists in Delhi and elsewhere. They lead a happy and normal life, just like any other married couple. They go out to see exhibitions, they just roam around in the city, visit friends, invite friends over and remain happy. Balbir’s transition from a lonely artist mourning over his fate to a happy, famous but a shy married man is not without its own suspense and thrills. Balbir was teaching in a school in Bagpet. When people came to know about his sexual orientation and his overt affair with Michael, they literally chased him out of the village, first forcing him out of the job. But in Delhi, at Michael’s place Balbir found a new life. A supportive partner, Michael does not limit Balbir in any manner to pursue his creative career. Their honeymoon days in the US were rather museum visits than indulging in any other pleasures that the US could offer. If you have seen the pictures of Balbir-Michael wedding in facebook, you know how happy they are about their marriage and also about visiting museums.

I have not visited Michael’s home where Balbir stays now. But somehow, they have taken me into confidence. Balbir calls me or writes to me about the developments in their life. He even asked for my ‘blessings’ for his marriage. I was overwhelmed. Balbir has always been a bit shy in front of me. Whenever I meet him at the exhibition openings, he speaks to me with great respect and discretion. Michael, though we are not friends in the formal sense, appreciates my writings and shows the same respect that Balbir has for me. I am very happy about their marriage and also very appreciative about their silent and normal life in Delhi. They keep themselves away from the fashionable crowd that generally pretends to be gay because that is much cooler than being a heterosexual. Balbir and Michael do not flaunt their presence anywhere so that they get noticed and looked at with admiration. They are not the activist-types who want to fight on anything and everything just because they are differently oriented, sexually or otherwise. Balbir and Michael, we accept it or not, represent a silent rebellion. Unlike many, they could get married there in the US and now fearlessly live in India. They are fortunate in that sense. But their dignified life in the Delhi society as a proud couple speaks volumes about the freedom that they have gained for themselves. I may be wrong, but I want to believe that Balbir-Michael marriage will be marked as an important event in future, as India would evolve more and become tolerant and reasonable about issues like gay marriages and general sexuality.