Eyes

Eyes. They look at me from everywhere. When I stand before a bunch of students, their eyes carve a trajectory for me to move. In turn my eyes fix them in my words and movements, making them oscillate like rudderless boats caught in violent storm; for I move fast and gentle at once, enthralling them and enthusing them as in a rollercoaster ride of language and poetic metaphors. Eyes look at me from the roof where invisible presences watch me keenly; amongst them I see an array of personalities from the world of politics and literature, blessing me with their cunning winks and clever smiles. They goad me into a trance helped by the magic waves of language and eyes they keep me in place, yet rotating round and round in my orbit. Eyes, scattered shards of the thousand suns.

They come behind you, walk along with you, at the next bend, they turn and look at you, leaving you spell bound. You are a nobody in the street of spectacles of which one beats the other with height and another beats yet another one with might. The polyphony of seeing is what makes the streets look better than the polyphony of speech. This is a street of gazes; of seeing, looking and watching. Some eyes are porous and like sieves that filter views. Some are like opaque letting none of the views. Some are more like mirrors than lenses; they reflect everything and refract a little. It is a market place of eyes where people buy ways of looking and never the ways of seeing. They buy glasses but never the visions. However the variety of views enthuse you. How can you escape that variety? Your eyes meet the eyes that you have been searching for all this while.

 (From the Andalusian Dog by Louis Bunuel and Dali)

When two pairs of eyes meet, it is not just recognition that happens. Sometimes ages and eons come into being in that one fraction of collision of corneas. They stand still like four black fishes in a white pond lined by red waves. Then they communicate with the movements of the fins and tails. Have you seen eyes breathing? Then you should see the eyes that you have been searching for all these years in a market place. Eyes can see, sleep and dream and they can also be blind. They can remain awake for ages and also they can kill all dreams. That’s how eyes behave when war happens. That’s how eyes behave when the war of interest in happen in our own quotidian lives. When we shut the door behind us and throw our shoes away from our shoes, we turn blind to the world. We kill the ability to see and watch. We just become illuminated pipes that pass information and entertainment brewing in the corner of a drawing room. When you close the doors, you are also closing your eyes. War occurs when you close the doors.

I have seen thousands of hungry eyes looking at one single female body, fully clad and empowered and happened to be in the middle of a thousand prisoners. It was an evening filled with magic and electricity. The woman walked into the jail. The eyes of the prisoners turned into sharp weapons of mass penetration. She stood there fully clad yet naked like a corpse laid up there in the tower of silence. Setting sun casted shadows of people and against the backlight the male bodies looked like hunching eagles waiting to swoop down. Their hapless necks that would perhaps receive a noose later than sooner resembled the naked necks of the ugly vultures. I could see a sea of corpse decomposing in a war field, but with their eyes moving and them fighting alone the hungry vultures. Ah…think of it. Eyes fighting with the fighting vultures while the bodies degenerate into yellow and black streams. It looked exactly like a farmland of eyes where a lonely woman farmhand had just appeared. Eyes came out of their sockets and silently marched along the field, crossed the ground, came near to the stage and climbed on her body, one by one, with a lot of patience, when she sat there smiling innocently, magically and enthralling at a crowd blinded by lust.

(Another scene from the Andalusian Dog) 

I found it so beautiful a scene that I could not have imagined any other instance from literature or real life. Story of an Eye must be an immediate reference. Georges Bataille had said it all. But I have something more to add not exactly in his way but in the way that each person in the world who has gone through the experience of eyes and experiencing the eyes. That’s why Bunuel decided to run a razor across the pupil of a beautiful lady on a bizarre night. That’s why the piano had the dead corpse of a donkey whose eyes still remained open. That’s exactly why Fellni ended his La Dolce Vita with the eye of a dead fish. I eat that; it is hard and white. It has seen the orgies of unknown creatures under the sea. It has seen decay and resurrection. It has seen how it got distributed amongst five thousand people. Eye, for the fish is a body and the sight itself. Eating eyes of a fish is the only divine thing as far as eating fish is concerned.

I have been with different kind of men and women. They all have shown some interest in eyes. But their interest ends where the interest of the eyes begin. They know that eyes are something to see through and to be seen. They keep the eyes beautiful and they protect it more than their lives. One can afford to lose any limb except eyes. But people do not know the interest of the eyes. Eyes are independent entities and it cannot be controlled. I cannot judge who is a right person who controls his or her eyes and who is the wrong person who does not control his or her eyes. May be they are all trying to control but failing miserably. You can stop your hands from stealing but you cannot stop your eyes from looking. The moment you try to stop looking or seeing, the fundamental conflict starts. Wars are the result of controlling the very looking and seeing or gazing. Once you start looking and seeing, war ends because you see each other in better light. But eyeing is dangerous; it is more lethal than fingering. When you eye on something there are all possibilities of a war. A strategist is one who could look and at the same time negate even the existence of his eyes.

(Revelers looking at the eye of a dead fish- the last scene from Fellini's La Dolce Vita)

I was not planning to talk about war anyway. One of the persons whom I had befriended or rather he had befriended me, a couple years back had this strange passion for taking the pictures of the eyes of the girls who used to come around him. As he was less charming in his physical as well as mental attributes, his only way of attracting young chicks was by feeding them with currency and gifts. Once he threw these much needed items they came pecking and saying the most wonderful thing that he had been wanting hear desperately. Those girls said they loved him and he believed in their words. He just wanted to click the photographs of their eyes in his mobile phone. He did not even want to have any physical contacts with them. He just wanted to click their eyes. They were just willing models. Rather their eyes were the unwilling models. They held their fluttering eyes for some moments so that he could click. Once they left, this man zoomed into those eyes till they became abstract dark patches. He said they looked like sex organs. He was so excited to have a collection of such eyes pictures. One day he opened the albums in his phone for me. And lo…I saw a thousand eyes, beautiful eyes….locations of his displaced carnality.

I come back to my classroom. The eyes of the students sparkle. I do not know the names of these boys and girls. But I can identify them from their eyes. Except one or two students, the other pupils have such eyes that each pair told me volumes of their adolescent desires. I see admiration merging with the vast expanse of vast desire, which they themselves are incapable of identifying. I see respect tinged with the love for an elder. I hear their eyes telling me that they needed a father like me, a friend like me and a companion like me. But here I am, a pair of eyes, fixed in the orbit, rotating around one sun, so bright and fierce in and by habit. Perhaps, my eyes too are fixed on that sun with feminine rays. And perhaps I love that fire and fierceness. And that original attraction that holds me in this orbit saved from all rains of meteors and strange celestial bodies.

Ghost in a Bus

I hear strange souls speaking while I am in a bus. They come to me, pull my ears and demand my attention. Often, while in bus rides either I am reading or looking at my mobile phone screen, racing to the last pages of a book or trying to debate things which are known to me and unknown to others. It is difficult when people speak two different languages and yet desire to communicate. Emoting icons that have been amply designed, developed and profusely provided in the mobile phone apps by tireless innovators in the realm of communication, come handy on such occasions; where words fail, different types of faces do the job. They represent a sort of ceasefire, boredom and permission to go. When you are distracted by the ordinariness of your own talks, when a yawn unknowingly escape from your mouth and the sudden release of your boredom causes some panic in you as the feeling of irreverence for the one in the other end starts haunting you, emoticons step into help. There will be a day when silence would take over all sorts of communications and everyone would feel the peace of being alone. A world of Buddhas. A world without wars. Terrorism could be one of those cheap games at the last row in a supermarket.

Hills come up suddenly; behind them clouds and sunlight do some airbrushing to make the evening so luscious and vague, in taste and look. A shower touches your elbow resting on the window. Slanting lines of water vigorously slice up air and everything beyond them looks photoshopped by a fresh hand who has not yet satisfied his curiosity in using too many filters in one go. The pastel effects and frayed edges make the journey easier as the shutters fall one by one with a cascading thud leaving the inside of the bus a dark cave. Soon the white lights open their eyes turning the standing figures so dark and stark; dark skins shine like metal plates coated with printing ink. A sudden brake, the forms move up, down, forward and backward, printing the images of one’s own self over others making the bus a print making studio of sorts. I see a heavy bottomed woman falling on the lap of an unsuspecting guy, who before holding her back to position sees her flying away to the driver’s cabin, through the windscreen, without shattering it. Like a painting of Chagall, out there figures float by. A goat flies away along the paths created by angels during their nights’ work. A pair of lovers in their wedding suites holds on to each other to resist the painter’s order to fly.

 (A Painting by Marc Chagall)

I hear souls speaking. Today, while sitting alone in an Express Bus with no other person around, I heard someone calling out. The voice asked me, shall I come and sit next you? I said, yes. Then I felt the presence of that soul, heavily breathing. It had a weeping voice and it looked golden and blue. From the voice I thought the soul next to me spoke in the voice of china cups filled with crystals and water. As it went on with its wailing, I heard the voices of the forests, of the winding paths, the lonely churches, lost cemeteries, a gong that has been frozen in the middle of the air, a waterfall that has been vanished into thin air, the birds that have gone into the tome of an ornithologist, the snakes that have slithered on the books left unread, the doors that have never been opened or closed, the windows that caught a sky permanently as it backdrop, a house that has lost its eye, a moon that has just forgotten to rise or set, a planet stopped half way in turning, an angel decided to fly with a devil, a converted demonologist, the voices of three witches, that of a black soldier, the excruciating pain of a boxer who has just received a deep gash down there at his right eye, the penguins that slipped from one glacier and vanished, and of those inane voices of some minions.

I hark upon the voices hard. They make sense through the nonsense. The disembodied voices tell me the stories of success that has never been felt by the ones who have succeeded. One of the voices tells me how the students should respect their teachers. How they should wish the teachers as they walk in. It had a very boyish tone. I tried to locate the voice but in vain. It also clearly told me that if someone dies on a Thursday night and before Friday noon, the passing of the soul over to the other world becomes much easier. Then again the voice told me that the best form of death is when it freezes the person while he is at his prayers. The voice spoke of rigor mortis. I wanted to ask why the voice chose to speak of death in that cold and windy night. But I could not raise my voice. It was too heavy a feeling that even if tried to turn my neck and see from where the voice came. I kept my eyes closed and tried to listen to the noises that are familiar to me. I did and I heard the revving of the engine of the bus, the harsh noise of the tyres, the sharp noise of the tireless winds, the voices that the children had left in the primary school. I felt an eerie shock as I listened to the voices of children in the night. Their voices still linger on there in the school. The voice inside the bus had ceased.

I closed my eyes and tried to see the places in the darkness on either side. Yes, I could see. Even if I am rendered eyeless, I could ‘see’ these places. Now the bus comes down and then it goes up. Here comes the culvert and a bump. Right under the culvert there flows a stream and the little fishes with eyes above their heads always focus on the sun. Beyond the stream there is a stretch of paddy fields. A wave of green comes to you as wind flows by and it stops half way leaving a green line in the middle of the expanse. Like the waves in the sea , the waves of the rice blades do not come to you. I could see darkness and feel the utter silence of the darkness. I see the bus running through the tunnel of darkness, heavily panting and taking a difficult turn, blares its horn like a sickly horse that has just finished a task that it thought it could never do. I do not open my eyes. The soul has not just left my side. It sticks to me. It whispers something into my ears. I can hear it but now it has become absolutely incoherent. For the first time, I ask, why so incoherent. It is meant to be so, says the voice. I get down at the junction where the memory of a street lamp still lingers on and lights up the place without any source. I walk and listen and stop and listen. The soul has left me. But I am sure, in these words and sentences, it is there somewhere, lying hidden, listening to all what I have been telling so far. 

Flying Horses and a Dead Man’s Ashes

Our party office is like an island of light. Those who walk past in darkness, when they just cross this spot, turn their necks and look at this block of light. A few in fact walk by. Most of them are inside the vehicles; cars or buses. They too crane their necks to see this patch of light. Two momentary visions come into a speedy collision, make a spark and depart, leaving some sort of mark in memory. Some boys race into darkness by their speeding two wheelers with utter disregard for safety. Most of them think that they are the characters from a video game; programmed to win or die. On these roads, death is a deferred possibility and life a wish. Survival makes a tight rope walk in between. I could see it balancing on the invisible thread of hope, moving a step at a time and shaking more than it could proceed. We, from inside the office of light get to see them. We too are hopeful and we want them to walk on without falling into the deep darkness of despair.

What do these people see in us, when they look at us? What do we see in them, when we look at them? They see madness, poetry and love in us. We see rage, contempt and sympathy in them. One of them calls out to us and says, ‘I thought some of you were sensible. Now I am sure all of you are crazy.’ We smile at him. We see young women and old women passing by, with their heads bent. We see men wearing yellow clothes going back to their homes reluctantly. They were teachers once. Students hesitated to enter their classroom. Today they themselves find it difficult to get back to their homes. Trapped in a village, trapped in habits, trapped in moralities and beliefs and trapped in one’s own self, they move like ghosts that have lost their graves. One of us tells them: ‘We are mad. But don’t you see our madness is poetic. Poets have changed the world.’

So have mad people. One of them comes up from the darkness wearing a crown of light and clears his throat. He tells us a story about a mad man who had just lost his life a couple of days back. Madmen live longer. Madness is a sort of ultimate disease. Mad people generally do not get any other illness. They drive even the diseases away with their unconventional lives. Illness colonizes a structured body, a structured life and a routine thinking. Madness defies all these. So madmen live long. Madwomen speak to nothingness so they make epic poems of nonsense which we do not understand. Their grammar is different and form unpalatable. In their metaphors acid rains and merges with the ocean of dark dreams. So we say we do not understand; and they do not understand our grammar, our form, our structure and our done to death metaphors.

This madman lived a royal life. He had two horses. He never rode them. He bought them and let them free. He but rode on winds and clouds. He ate breakfast in one city and lunch in another and dined with beggars and slept in railway platforms. Back in the village his horses appeared in dark alleys scaring people away from their own skins. Some said that they had seen those horses flying at night. Their owner never slept on his fluffy bed kept ready for him by his beloved wife. He was fighting world wars in railway platforms and sharing coffee and pizza with Italian mafia dons. He felt the iron bucket that he always carried had pearls and diamonds in them. So much was his anger if someone dared to touch it or even tried to come near to it.

A couple of days back, he died. He was found dead in a railway platform. His horses came flying. He thought so, at least. We do not think much about the people who are really dead. But we in a lit up party office could even discuss a dead man’s thoughts. The narrator continued: the corpse had to be taken for postmortem. They found nothing but maps of non-existent worlds, weapons of mass rescue, languages that have been never spoken and a rhyme he had learnt in his primary school in his body. Doctors wondered how he survived on without the usual innards of a human being. They even suspected whether he was a real human being or an alien. But his wife confirmed that he was real as she had made love to him and made babies. Finally his body was handed over to his wife and our narrator. They took him to the cemetery in the town. They gave her a receipt of the body.

Madmen’s wives and friends are not really mad, though madmen strive very hard to lift them to his own realms. But the unfortunate ones remain the regular world of struggles. The dead man’s wife was not mad. But somehow she lost the receipt of his body at the cemetery. On the next day she went to collect his ashes. She wanted to immerse it in a sea. He and his horses had tried once to cross the sea on a plank of strong intuition. Horses flew away and the madman sunk. He was saved by some fishermen and they knew him for they had shared some country liquor with him in one of his revelries before he had gone completely mad. She went to the manager of the cemetery and the man refused to hand over her husband’s ashes as she failed to produce the receipt. She had lost it in the commotion. You could say that the horses came, stole it and flew away. Whatever be the case, as we do not have proof to disprove the existence of these flying horses, she did not get the ashes. She cried and pleaded and the manager finally gave her a pot full of ashes upon seeing her plight. Before she left, he called out and said: It is not necessary that you get your husband’s ashes.

She did not stop to hear it. She wanted the ashes and she had it. The narrator stopped there. He was about to leave the office, out bit of light. He stepped out and we too got up to leave. Before we could say anything, a pair of flying horses appeared from the sky and took our narrator away. We stood there in silence as if we were participating in a communion of ghosts. Then we too decided to step out into the darkness. We smelled a dead man’s ashes somewhere in the air.

Contemporary Art is Dead, Long Live Folk and Tribal Art: New Weihe at the Saffron Block

(Hugo Weihe, the New CEO of Saffron Art)

Hugo Weihe, former International Director of Asian Art at Christies recently took over as the CEO of Saffron Art. Good news. But what struck me first was that current international trend that indicates foreigners coming to Indian shores, taking up highly paid jobs, depriving Indian experts of their reputation, opportunity and livelihood at one go. Indians have this perverse satisfaction of keeping the fair skinned foreigners as highly paid servants for the simple reason that they had once subjugated our forefathers as chaprasis and table boys. Okay what if they are paid today in dollars or pounds, after all it is all from an Indian kitty. Foreigners often feign that they come with expertise (as the world has mistaken white skin for excellence, oh dear Lord) and they could hide their shame in openly saying that their countries are facing some economic crunch and there are a lot of downsizing going on in huge firms. This may sound very cynical, especially when coming from me, who has been a stringent critic of Indian contemporary art and its bubbled up market that got burst a few years back for the right reasons.

More than my apparent cynicism what made me glued to this interview of Hugo Weihe, which otherwise I would have neglected for it being yet another piece of bravado, was Weihe’s claim to build the Indian market from the ground up. That’s it, I said to myself. As an Aam Aadmi Party volunteer what I do is exactly the same; start at the ground level and work upwards. Like any other AAP volunteer, I too believe that redemption of India democracy and the establishment of a corruption free society in India starts from the grass root level. Now when I see a foreigner, a white man, saying that Indian art market should be built from the ground up, I sit up and take note. But my democratic elation had a very short life for what I found in the rest of the interview was his ideation around getting Indian antiques up in the market. What’s that, I ask myself. Did he really mean to say what he has just said?

 (Gond Art)

Saffron art is a homemade brand and we should be proud of Minal and Dinesh Wazirani for their efforts in bringing up the prices of Indian contemporary art works through carefully crafted marketing techniques and at times by clear rigging of the market through sophisticated ways. One and half decades old Saffron Art, now has grown into a global brand so that now it could easily invest in Weihe, who had done a lot of things for the Asia section at Christies. It is heartening to see that Weihe really wants to do something for bringing the Indian art market back on track, which had been derailed and left there to rot for the last six years. But I was appalled to see the wordings and the craftiness with which Weihe answered the questions put to him by the reporter. To a question directed to him about his moving from an international brand to a relatively regional branch, Weihe says that he has always been moving towards India as he had put a lot of effort into the Asia section at Christies. I found that it was an answer that has minimum sincerity that too entirely related to a career move.

I have my reasons to suspect Weihe’s claim that he has always been looking at Indian art. He never says that he has been looking at Indian contemporary art. As you read on the interview, you come to know that Weihe is a person who blatantly promotes the idea of grass roots but his grass root has a lot to do with the grass-grass-roots where the works of art from the past flourish rather than the works of the modern and contemporary Indian art. I read the interview with a shock because Weihe does not even address the modern section of Indian art, which in fact has been the main sustenance of the Indian art market during the winter years since the global meltdown. If we go by Weihe’s argument, we are soon to embark on a scenario where there would be no Husains, Razas and Souzas, Gaitondes, Padamsees and Brootas. We are going to face a scenario where modern and contemporary art has no role. That means in the coming days, the market for modern and contemporary art would further collapse. Only one consolation is implied in Weihe’s answers and it is nothing but that Indian modern art market will be free of ‘fakes’ for some time to come. When there is no market for the originals what is the use of producing so many fakes?

 (How to make this an antique piece? A Very Hungry God by Subodh Gupta)

If so, what does Mr.Weihe plan to promote? Reading between the lines as well as right from the lines we could see that Weihe has only praise for the latest infatuation of Saffron Art; the folk, tribal, antique, miniatures, decorative and native art. If you add furniture, the scenario becomes all the more clear. Weihe while keeping a tactful silence over the modern and contemporary art, emphatically says that the future market is for tribal and miniature art. He is all praise for the Indian museums like Prince of Wales Musuem in Mumbai where a lot of antiques and miniatures are presented. He is happy that a lot of school children are visiting these exhibitions. His only worry is that there is stringent law in place regarding the exporting of antiques, national treasures, miniatures and so on. Once you work on the relaxation of it, then things will be smooth for the exporters of ‘Indian’ art. Folk and tribal also find a good space in Weihe’s plan of action. Still the question remains: what is the role of our contemporary artists in such a market scenario? I am not asking Mr.Weihe to answer it but the question should be answered by somebody.

It is quite sad to see that Weihe’s interview is shared and celebrated in the social media mostly by the contemporary artists. Without understanding the content of his interview and the intent of his job, these artists celebrate his arrival at the top of Saffron Art establishment. They hope that this man would alleviate them from the present state, in vain. But there are people, very intelligent people, the movers and shakers of Indian art market who had already seen this coming. It was Mr.Anupam Poddar, who withdrew from actively collecting contemporary art a few years back and started putting his energy behind the folk and tribal art. It is said that Ms.Kiran Nadar also has a good stock of traditional art in India. If you see the way many of the galleries have made their course changing, we could see how most of them shifted to tribal and folk art. How they easily shifted their parlance from cutting edge to folk and tribal. Decorative art and art without author also have become the new fad and also traditional furniture takes a lot of space in the art market today. When Shalini Sawhney started her Guild Gallery in Alibaug, she reserved a good space for folk, traditional, tribal, miniature, decorative arts and traditional furniture. As a market sensitive gallerist, I believe it was the right move she did well in advance. May be people like Shalini have already seen it coming and in its crest Mr.Weihe.

(New indications? A work by Jagannath Panda)

I am not really worried about the Indian art market because the Indian middle class take a lot of time from now to understand art or feel the need to collect art. But their apathy will not stop artists from making contemporary art. As we know contemporary artists cannot make folk and tribal art. Nor can they make furniture. They can become tribal in their attire but they cannot make Gond or Warli art. No one explains why Indian art market should move in this direction. Where will then the contemporary artists go in this scenario? Mr. Weihe says that art events like Kochi Muziris Biennale would bring a lot of difference in the Indian art market but he hastens to add that it would promote tourism. What a joke that is. Does he expect folk and tribal art in the Kochi Muziris Biennale? But KMB is not a trail blazer. It is a follower of the market. Hence, I will not be surprised if I find folk and tribal artists in the forthcoming KMB and also a devoted furniture section. This new interest in folk and tribal art also explains why the doyens of Indian contemporary art market like Peter Nagy, left the scene or divested his shares in the art market. Have some Indian contemporary artists been already advised to change the track and bring in some folk and tribal elements in their works? Now the Indian contemporary art galleries need to explain a lot to their artists before they down the shutters or shift to folk and tribal art. May be they need not answer at all. I know many artists will never ask why because they will wait; if the scenario changes for good, why create enemies? 

My Tryst with Hair Dyes and Mairu Complex

Those who dye their hair, forgive me, for which I do not hold you in bad light. This piece of writing is to see how my reluctance to dye my hair is seen in public, interpreted and at times judged. I had my own oops moments as far as dyeing of hair is concerned. Once, in Delhi, at the Lalit Kala Akademy premises I was standing with a well known novelist from Kerala whose novels had once ignited our youthful affection for anarchy. Reading his novels, many had left home to the shores of Haridwar and those who were already living in Delhi had attempted to see the life around in a new light. The power of his writing was so infectious that we all used to think us as souls having wings of dragonflies and body of French ghosts.

There at the Akademy, he was standing before me, against the sun and its weak rays were passing through his mop. I found a violent tint in his semi dark hair which had once set the hairstyle trend of Mallu rebels inclined to consuming anything that was a contraband, including literature and drugs. Foolish I was and naïve to the ways of the world, I blurted out a question that in the coming days would give me goose pimples of embarrassment. I asked him in all my innocence, why his hair was violent. For a moment he was startled and his human reflex took his right hand over his head to see whether everything was right over there. I repeated the question and he smiled as if he knew what I was asking. He must have obviously taken it for my arrogance and impudence but being a soft spoken person he answered me something through a wry smile. Later in the evening, someone informed me that the hair color was caused by the fading hair dye. Sense dawned upon me at that dusk but it was too late. The novelist had vanished and I wanted to apologize to him.

(Malayalam actor Mohanlal, 56 years old)

The story of hair dyes starts at home. It was long back when my father was around the same age as I am today. He had a thick moustache and fast receding hair line. His mop was dark and moustache white. It was a daily ritual for him to blacken his moustache with an eyebrow liner pencil. Standing before a mirror, he did this ritual religiously to his satisfaction. This transformation of a white moustache into black was an interesting metamorphosis and generally we children take our parents’ transformations quite naturally. The only hair dye that I used to know then was having the same brand name as the almirah we had. I saw that in many other products including the refrigerator, an enviable luxury that always one of the rich families possessed in the village. We used to go to these houses to collect ice cubes and those household people generously distributed ice cubes to such curious school kids. I think it is the only brand still holding the attention of the consumers when it comes to hair dyes.

My father lost patience with his moustache and life as a whole and departed when I was hardly fifteen. Ever since my contacts with the grown up men were deliberately kept in minimum and those intimate friendships that I had with those elder men made me believe that men had black moustaches and black hair. My knowledge of hair dyes was limited to the eyebrow pencils. Then slowly I grew up. I was concerned about my falling hair when I was in my late teens. Each time, when I saw a few strands of hair stuck on to the oil stained towel, my heart sank to the unfathomable depths and from there looking up I could see only a noose hanging from the roof. I knew that hair fall could cause suicidal tendencies in men than pimples do to young girls in their teens and later. Then as the thoughts of revolution and love overpowered me in due course of time my obsession with hair, hair falling and hair colors was kept on the back burner only to simmer up and down in some lonely moments when you existentially entered in the twilight zones between a frivolous life and a future life with an assumed mission. Hair was one of the deciding factors in those moments. A philosophical blurting out of the word ‘mairu’ (literally meaning a strand of hair but gloriously said as an expletive in Malayalam) helped in easing out things and you once again became a normal human being who wrote poems and love letters for imaginary girls.

Today, when I go out to meet people as a part of my party work, some of the people whom I meet recognize me and exclaim how I have grown old. As my partner says, age is a number. But it is not necessary that people know that maxim and measure up others by that scale. They count the age not in numbers but by the change in the color of your facial hair. It looks like they feel a secret satisfaction when they see me with a lot of white hair. To my surprise I see most of them with dark and thick hair. If something has changed in them it is just their coarseness caused by village life (despite the riches they have already amassed) and the horizontal expansion of their body mass. Those who do not recognize me, often young women and men, call me uncle and I look around to see whether it is aimed at me or not. One of my fellow party workers has a full white beard and mop and another one whose age is sixty plus, has thick shiny black hair on his head and a beautifully crafted and painted moustache above his lips. It is not fair to call him uncle as an eligible guy like me stands right in front of them.

I was the happiest man when I noticed my first white hair. The perennial need to grow up and gain respectability in the field of art and journalism must have been the reasons for seeing some white hairs in my head and moustache. The first one I noticed was on a Holi Day in Delhi. The exact year was 1998. I was 29 years old then. While I was closely inspecting my hair after a colorful festival, I chanced upon one single strand of hair that had gone white. My happiness knew no boundaries. One of my artist friends was with me and I proudly declared my coming of age. He smiled at me. The white one was there above my left ear and I immediately looked for a similar on above the right ear. Being an art critic and historian, symmetry was a perpetual concern. Upon seeing one there too I heaved a sigh of relief. That was my first tryst with white hairs. Then it grew rapidly and they say stress causes a lot of hair loss and color loss. That cannot be really true. People who are having really stressful lives sport good hair. And people with no stress go really bald all over. It could be genetic and chemically induced. Whatever be the case, white turning of my hair had given me a great reason to celebrate. My moustache turned white in a funny way that friends started calling me a ‘seal’; that sea animal which has got some white hair hanging over its mouth. Today I believe my hair has gone white evenly.

I do not use any dye. I love my white hair. Some people say white hair is very sexy. It is not just white hair that turns them on; it is real salt and pepper, the right mix of black and white. I do not believe so. There could be people having turn ons on white hair, black hair, no hair, sparse hair and so on. The world has different tastes. But somehow people today have started believing in black hair. They all have attached their health and wealth with black and thick hair and facial hair. Thanks to improved life style and chemically supported life patterns people look younger than the previous generations. Sixty is the new forty, they say. It is true to an extent as we see all fifty plus men romancing twenty something lasses in popular films. Men do not age these days as they too are addicted to youth enhancing products. Women also do not age these days as they depend too much on the same. Healthy life styles and conscious image building keep many people perpetually young. Well known film stars who have gone old by the age of forty do not look bald a day. They all have used expensive technology to grow their hair back and black. Baldness and white hair have become a thing of past. And if someone insists on these two, either they must be idealists or misers. Only problem with artificial hair is that you cannot have hair raising experiences as they do not respond to emotions; they respond to caring. Having artificial hair must be like having sex with a sex toy; it gives a similar effect but no feel; something similar to the experience of a dog  tearing off a pillow, in absolute concentration and joy.

Of late many have started addressing me the way they address an elderly person, which often surprises me as my body image is different in my mind. I think I am still young looking and the mind has not yet absorbed the body image I have at present. Surprise gives way to acceptance the way tragedy composes a person into the tune of calmness. Recently, while I was travelling by a bus and was looking at the whatsapp messages, a school boy passed by to the next seat was heard exclaiming that this uncle is also using whatsapp. I wanted to retort but I smiled into my phone. The other day I was standing in front of a restaurant and was taking a selfie. I heard some girls and boys and giggling and saying, ‘Uncle, super’. It is still an ageist and sexist world. But it’s okay. The only satisfaction that I have in the world of hair dyes and wigs is this: At least I am truthful to my mairu. 

Art in the Times of Constipation

(Marlyn Monroe by Andy Warhol)

This is a small note on my life. Some of my friends at least must be curious about my absence from the blogosphere. Many might have even forgotten me. Nothing stands permanently. Physical presences vanish into thin air, memories turn their tone into darker and duller ones, pictures fade, digital images get buried as more and more images find their place over them. Like we live on the dead bodies of others with grinning skeleton below our feet and we are unaware and happy about it, life goes on. Hence, this note of mine is insignificant to the level of being drab. Yet, I understand somewhere, someone near a window, below the sky, shut out from the madness of life, under the table lamp, must be sitting and staring at the compass and map of a nowhere land where one has not gone and one does not know whether one would be ever able to go. For that one, the invisible reader, I submit this note. Read on kindly.

Life is beautiful. Photographs do not lie. That’s what we believe. But cynical ones amongst us have different opinion about it. They say life is beautiful and yet…They say in those photographs we look cheery and peppy but….True, there are no permanent states of satisfaction and happiness. I feel the opposite of happiness and satisfaction are not sorrow and dissatisfaction. I think, it is anxiety and restlessness. When we experience a moment of joy, we expect a moment of fall; a fall into the depths of despair. We do not expect joy but we expect something gloomy and brooding. But that is a state of mind. Some are gifted with this permanent elation and a common sense of denial. They live happily ever after. As a writer and political activist, my life is in a mess. But somehow, in that messiness there is an order; an order that helps me understand the secrets of life. That is fascinating and painful at the same time.

(Mao by Andy Warhol)

Some friends ask me whether I have permanently left art and criticism. I am indelibly touched by their compassion and concern. I tell them politely what I do is art and art criticism. It is just a zonal and perspective shift that has occurred in me. I have been actively looking at what artists have been doing all these years. My interest in the art of politics was born out of my interest in history, which surprisingly I never had in my college days. History, I used to think as something that burdens human mind and cognitive faculties. Dates and data used to fill me with disgust and horror. But the moment I left college, I realized that there was much in history that I did not understand while I was in there. The problem was not with history but with college and the person that I had been in college. Then came the politics of art. It was disheartening. Soon I realized that none in the art scene had feet of steel, bronze or gold. Everyone was having that of not even solid clay but mulch, the filthy mulch. Still I clung on to my hope of redeeming myself from within that crowd. It was fruitful an effort. Then I saw a lot of political art. In India, whatever comes in the name of political art is nothing but the art of adjustment. It is art of negotiation. It is art of power. I have never seen any murkier art than something called political art in India.

Disappointed I turned to history for my solace and it has been on for more than a decade. My personal library which is currently located in Delhi would tell you how eclectic I was in my effort to survive in the world of letters and criticism for there was no anchor other than the contemporary political history to pit against the contemporary art history. I was writing contemporary art history and I was sucking out of the contemporary political history for my energy. I realized sooner than later that I could not have gone on like that forever. Today, I see Indian art dying out, losing vigor and draining itself of its life sap. Recently I attended an art camp. I inaugurated that national camp. I started my speech saying that when someone invites you to inaugurate something or as a chief guest in the function, your days of rebellion are numbered. You dissent has been co-opted and you are a subsumed entity. While it remains the truth there is some fun in being a chief guest; at least during those moments you are considered indisputable and whatever you say listen worthy.

 (Work by Ron Mueck)

My speech was not written; it was extempore though I have been preparing this speech in my mind for the last two years; exactly speaking ever since Mr.Narendra Modi came to power in the centre. I spoke of the days of implied political emergency in the country. My trigger was just Mr.L.K.Advani. In a way I was exonerating myself from the possible attacks from the right wing forces.  Advani had a different reason to talk about the incipient political emergency. I had a different one. I spoke of the yielding nature of the artists. When they are asked to sit, they are ready to bend their knees in supplication before power. When they are asked to shut up, they would even stitch their lips together. I asked them to beware of such a scenario where artists would be rendered absolutely voiceless. I asked them to speak up because it was the right time to speak up. If you do not speak up now, perhaps you would never be able to. I showed them how artists in this country are divested of their right to speak when the country faces natural calamities. When terrorists attack the country, when natural calamities affect the nation, all the representatives except the artists are asked for views and opinion. None asks for artists’ opinion. Dancers are asked, musicians are asked, writers are asked, actors are asked, but no artists. Why? One has to think. Nobody asks anything to the artists because artists have ceased to be the conscience keepers of the society. They have become co-conspirators in the acts of crime and corruption. They say, they make art and they do not know anything else. I tell them to speak up; not about their art but about their political views, their difference with the governments.

 Unfortunately they become fund raisers. When there is a war, these artists do shows to raise funds for jawans. When there is a calamity they raise funds. What a ridiculous situation they have brought themselves into. One has to think about it. I asked the artists to speak up. But they misunderstood and as expected they started saying that they were not vocal the way I wanted them to be. But is there any person in this world who is not vocal when one’s freedom and dignity are at stake? When one does not have power they at least howl and thrash their legs and hands. Here, our artists remain utterly silent. In their air conditioned and dustless studios they are creating art for humanity. If anyone tells me that great artists in the history have not spoken against power, then I would like to remind them that they all have spoken. They have been even executed for speaking the truth. Artists have done great sacrifices including risking their lives to remain free and say their political views. But in India, the irony is that the artists run with the prey and hunt with the hunter.

 (Art of Excess - work by Subodh Gupta)

My speech was not well received by the artists. They said they were not cut to make political speeches. Their job is to do art. I did not go to argue with them. Someone told me that one of the artists said that my opinion was quite detrimental to the art scene and he was seriously disappointed. Why one should be disappointed at all? When the fundamental rights of an individual are vandalized how can artists sleep sound? How can they create beauty when ugliness is the parameter to judge their beauty? How can they think about human redemption when they know that they are still in shackles? There is a political revolution happening in our country. It has different phases and faces. One could not subscribe to all or none. One has to subscribe to one at least. One need not wear it on his or her sleeve. But there should be some kind of protest happening somewhere so that the social thinkers and political strategists would heed to the human voices of aesthetics and the demand for sublime life. Why are the artists not doing it? I am not saying that none is doing it. Many are and I respect them. There are young artists in Delhi who are vocal against the fundamentalist moves of the central government. But there is a majority that keeps quiet. I say, we cannot create beauty in this time. We need a different artistic articulation. At present none, almost none seems to be able to do it. I know artists who have even switched medium as they find the present one so oppressive but impotent in expressing what they really want to say about the incipient emergency in our country. Some artists have started writing. Some have started doing silent campaigns. I am worried about the majority that has shifted to making godly icons as a covert strategy to survive bad times.

You may wonder how, in these days of no-art criticism, which has been feeding me for decades, I survive financially. To tell you the truth, I started teaching in a parallel tutorial college where I take English poetry and drama classes for degree students. The management pays me Rs.150/- hour. I work for five hours on alternate days. I survive on a meager income. But I am happy to be so. My reading and writing has not been affected by any of these. I do my political work and I do contribute my time and resources to the party. I do not go to teach everyday because I know if I do, the attraction to make money would finally help me to set up my own college because there is a lot of money in education sector. I resist all temptations because I need my time and my freedom. Refusing the big money from art scene is my political stance and earning to fulfill my minimum necessities is again my political positioning. I use a cycle to move around. I am not a fundamentalist of austerity. When time comes I would switch to luxury, which is good for keeping the skin smooth and mind dull. At times I crave for a dull mind. But the time is not ripe yet.

Pirates of the Queer-ebean : About the Myena and Vibhu Faceoff.

(An exhibition in progress at Engendered, New Delhi)

“When the market won’t express something, pirates will. Pirates acting in the own self interest and in the interest of their communities are today some of the most ruthless innovators on the planet.”

                                                 -The Pirate’s Dilemma by Matt Mason (Free Press, New York 2008)

If Walter Benjamin was curious about the originality of a work of art during the days of mechanical reproduction as was possible in 1940s, Matt Mason, in the new millennium speaks of the copy right violator’s dilemma. With the excessive availability of ideas and forms in the form of software and products, creative thinkers/artists do not know where to copy from or how to alter it. Brilliant and clever amongst them would work on the same towards their own self interest and come out with the most stunning ideas and products. Copying/plagiarism and innovating/altering beyond belief are two different things today. When it is not altered beyond recognition, there are all the possibilities of people crying foul as aloud as possible. But the creative pirates do not stop there. Responding to the innovative faculties of the creative pirates, many corporate houses have created open sources (software) and some creative artists have brought out copy left theory. Nina Paley, the animator and film maker is a champion for copy left (free copy right movement) movement. In our daily lives too so many file sharing and downloading software methods force the original producers to release their products online before they actually hit the material market. It is a changing world.

Myena Mukherjee, the director of a Delhi based queer gender organisation (an organisation that stands strong for different sexual orientations) seems to have turned a sudden traditionalist when it came to a show that she had curated in 2013 and its matured versions in the following years in three different cities in India, namely Delhi, Chennai and Mumbai. The show that was titled ‘Wall of Solidarity’, in which the artists contributed one foot by one foot works showing solidarity with gender parity demands of the organisation. To cut the story short, now the curator has gone to court against Vibhuraj Kapoor, the director of a Mumbai based gallery, Gallery Beyond ( incidentally which was the venue of the exhibition’s Mumbai leg) for violating copy right of her show. The show is currently being held in Mumbai (or just finished, I am not sure) as a collateral to the queer gender film festival (KMQIFF) is/was at the Gallery Beyond and according to Myena Mukherjee, it is a ‘commercial’ venture and her idea has been cannibalized by Mr.Kapoor without her permission. The Kapoor hosted show is curiously titled ‘3771919 Wall’. I do not know what it means (It must mean something or nothing). A hurt curator goes on to say that Mr.Kapoor has not only lifted her idea but also her display strategies. 

(Book cover of Matt Mason's book)

I do not know Vibhuraj Kapoor too closely. I have visited his gallery a couple of times. I do not know Myena Mukherjee at all though I have been following her mails and posts in social networks. Hence, my interest in the case is only that of a curious onlooker who has been working as an art critic and curator for almost two and half decades. According to me, this was an avoidable controversy. On the human level, Vibhuraj Kapoor was her collaborator for the same concept in 2014. Hence, she should have avoided a public confrontation and an eventual litigation. Okay, nowadays who cares much for human sentiments? Let’s take it a bit intellectually and in a matter of fact manner. How could the ‘Wall’ concept be Myena Mukherjee’s own concept? There have been hundred and one wall art projects before and after the Nirbhaya issue. So by calling her project ‘Wall of Solidarity’, going by her own argument, she herself was infringing upon someone else’s right to have a copy right. Two, the format of one foot by one foot is a universal thing; was she violating another copy right? While arguing her case, she says that Mr.Kapoor misled a few artists and coaxed them to participate in the show and to make matters worse, he even threatened them using bad language.

Myena has a supporter in Georgina Maddox, a former journalist turned art writer and curator. She, in all right earnest, brings a few people as witnesses and quotes them in her article published in www.mattersofart.net.  One of the artists in his facebook page even thanked the writer for brining the issue in public as he was ‘forced to be a part of the show’. I remember the story of two servants when I was living a rich man’s house for a couple of months. One night, on hearing a commotion in the kitchen at midnight, I went there to check and found those two boys grabbing each other’s balls and necks. They released each other and one of them told me very politely. “Sir, aap jaanta hai mein kitna accha banda hun. Yeh ladka, dekho mere ko bhi pila ke rakha hai.” (Sir, you know well how well mannered I am. But, look at him, he made me drink alcohol). I could not suppress my laughter. How could one make another drink forcefully, especially both of them are servants in the same house and both of them are grown up enough to understand what drinking means? This artist sounds exactly like that servant. “If you have not published this article, this bad man Kapoor would have exhibited my works. You saved me.” He did not say this but this is what I heard when I read his status update in facebook with a link to the DNA article.

(Myena Mukherjee, director of Engendered)

The director of Engendered argues that in the first edition of her show (RESIST), many of the major artists have participated. Good. It is almost like a Dalit activist saying, “You see, my protest was appreciated by the Brahmin priest in the temple.” Myena runs a queer gender platform. But the mainstream artists are not so queer to accept the queerness of the queer (I know most of them personally). They have agreed to exhibit on this platform because they thought they were supporting a cause and also such causes are fashionable enough to bring a lot of press attention. None makes exhibitions on child labour, acid attack survivors (some photographers do). If at all such exhibitions are conducted, they are done by industrialists' wives who will auction the works for charity and occupy more page three space than the spaces in the minds of their beneficiaries. Okay, even if these artists strongly believe in queer sexuality, when they give a work for the cause, those are accepted as works of art which have commercial viability. But then, why and how, Gallery Beyond becomes a pariah (from the brahminical exclusivity of the Engendered, I cannot help saying it) and so hateful as far as Myena and artists are concerned? Does the issue change when the platform changes? Does the gravity of queerness change when a heterosexual gallerist does the show? If we go by the argument, how can heterosexual and the artists who enjoy social success and mainstream adulation contribute to this and Myena could accept? If she could, why couldn’t Kapoor? Why it is not commercial when it is with Myena and commercial with Vibhu Kapoor? I do not understand? If Krishna Chandan exhibits Raqs Media collective, will they lose their intellectual sheen? Or if they refuse to exhibit and accept an invitation from Peter Nagy, what exactly helps them make that choice?

I have not seen both the shows. But I find the whole issue very childish. Maddox has quoted Ina Puri in her article. I do not understand what is Ina Puri’s credibility as an art critic? Ms.Puri talks about fakes in art scene. Can we collate the issue of faking with the issue of copy right or copy left? Coming to the issue of faking, can someone really stand up and say the number of Husains and Souzas sold every other season at the well established auction houses are fakes? Why the critics are not explicit on the ghosts of Husains and Souzas and Bawas churning out paintings even after their demises and them getting authenticated? It is easy to shoot a Vibhuraj Kapoor. Sometimes the bullets can be quite suicidal also. Balbir Krishan and Satadru Sovan criticise Kapoor. But their words should be taken as the signs of friendship and allegiance.

 (Vibhu Kapoor, Director of Gallery Beyond Mumbai)

This issue is very simple. Myena should have let the show happen without any fuss. She should have smiled and let it go. Also she should tell herself three times a day that she is not a great curator or something only because she runs a queer platform called Engendered. I do not have any problem with Myena because I do not know the person or I do not have any reason to have a grudge against her. But this issue sounds too childish and I thought of giving a friendly advice. It will backfire in the court because other than the context and complexion, the shows are fundamentally different and it could be proved. I remember me doing two interesting projects in 2008-09 and in 2012. The first one was called ‘Video Wednesdays @ Gallery Espace’. One of the most discussed projects in Indian contemporary art scene, this year long show gave some dignity to the video artists in India. However, when the second edition happened, I was not even consulted once. I decided to let it go. In 2012, I did the first edition of the United Art Fair. A phenomenal fair, but it went into drains by the second edition and the reasons are well known to all. I kept quiet there too. Gender issues are much graver than a show at Gallery Beyond or at Engendered. They need different kinds of addressing.

I will conclude this article with a quote from the Pirate's Dilemma by Matt Mason: “Acting like a pirate- taking value from the market, or creating new spaces outside of the market and giving it back to the community, whether it is with free open software source or selling cheap Starbury sneakers- is a great way to serve public interests and a great way to make an authentic connection to a new audience.”

Both Myena Mukherjee and Vibhuraj Kapoor are pirates. Or I want to believe so.