One Hundred Women in My Life

1) K.Krishnamma- My mother. She caused me.
2) Jolly ML- My sister. When she laughed I laughed too. Then after a point of time we laughed separately and cried separately.
3) Gauri Ammal- Maternal grandmother. Like all grandmothers she collected whatever she could lay her hands on only to distribute amongst her grandchildren who visited her during summer holidays.
4) Chempaka Kutty Ammal- Paternal grandmother. She was afraid of thunder and lightning. And she passed away on a stormy night after a thunderous life with moody daughter-in-laws.
5) Indira Gandhi- India’s first woman prime minister. They said she was the only man in her cabinet. She was a live presence in my childhood days. She dominated us through newspapers and radio.
6) Ponnamma Teacher- She was like a mother hen. She collected children from the village and went to school to teach them. I was one of her students.
7) Pushpa Rani- On a rainy day she opened her secrets for me. I was ten and she was thirty five.
8) Reena K- As she was tall she used to be my pair in the dance class.
9) Dancer Prasanna- She came to teach us classical dance, by one of the oldest bus services in my village. And went back by the same bus. Between her arrival and departure, she taught us folk dance. I used to think that the bus came to our village only for her.
10) Sugatha Checchi- She did not have children. So she was considered to be an eternal beauty.
11) Madhavi Checchi- Her husband was always in Gulf. She lived a very virtuous life. One day her husband came back in a coffin.
12) Sreedevi Checchi- I had never seen such happy couple. I imagined one day I also will take my wife behind a blue Bajaj scooter. One day, he did not come back from the office.
13) Sony- Sreedevi Checchi’s daughter. She, without her father, but cared by uncles grew up into a gorgeous lady. I taught her English literature.
14) Abhitha and Junior Abhitha- They thought they were the most beautiful girls in my village. Their mother also thought so.
15) Nabeesa Ummal- The only chaddar clad teacher of our times. She taught Arabic in a mission school so I never heard her speaking in Malayalam.
16) Saliya Umma- Old woman, who was always behind her cows. She still does.
17) Ayithaachi Amma- She sold rice pudding for cheaper price. I used to go and wait there in the queue during cold December mornings.
18) Sheela- Film actress. I used to wonder why her breasts were standing like starched khaddar shirt sleeve.
19) Jayabharathi- Film actress. My father took special interest in her films. So I was always anxious.
20) Seetha Checchi- On a dark night, when electricity went off, under the table our legs accidentally brushed against each other. Since then we became different people.
21) Veena- She was one of the biggest girls in our scool.
22) Rose Mary- The hapless PT teacher. Her name always appeared in the boy’s lavatory walls.
23) Diana- Phantom’s girl friend.
24) Devi- Like any other male chauvinist Malayali, I too learned very early to address a woman by that name. Any beautiful woman was a Devi for me.
25) S.Janaki- South India’s answer to Latha Mangeshkar.
26) Vani Jayaram- South India’s answer to Asha Bhosle.
27) Kalakumari- She was the Prime minister of the school Parliament when I was the speaker of it.
28) Rajina- I have never thought I could see a dark, big, beautiful girl like her.
29) Rajithra- My classmate. She shrugged her shoulders always and with the right hand she adjusted her skirt always before she sat.
30) Sathil- My classmate. So silent and pious a girl.
31) Reeja- My classmate. We dared to talk to each other only we went to college.
32) Raji- My classmate. We were pitched against each other for the school final exams.
33) Baby- It was fun to see her smiling.
34) Sandhya- She came from Mumbai. Like many boys I also fell in love with her. She gave royal scorn.
35) Suhasini- Now Suhasini Maniratnam. I was in love with the roles she played.
36) Geethu- Instead I fell in love with this lady who was a few years senior to me because I thought she looked like Suhasini.
37) Lalithambika Antharjanam- Poet.
38) Kamaladas- Poet.
39) Valsala- Novelist.
40) Ajitha- former Naxalite leader.
41) Demi Moore- Film Actress.
42) Zeenath Aman- Qurbani fame.
43) Sharmila Tagore- Devi (Satyajit Ray)
44) Silukku Smitha- She disturbed my sleep.
45) Suja- She was several years senior to me in college. On a day of student’s strike, while walking back in groups, I tried to speak to her and she brushed me aside. But soon we became lovers. My first serious kiss was on her forehead.
46) Unknown woman- I saw her in a blue film. I was 17 year old. And I could not stand her being brutalized by some hopeless man who looked at the camera all the time.
47) Madhavi- film actress. Her two films were released at the same time. In one she appeared as a famous writer and in the other she was a Bond girl in bikini. To see the posters of these films with Madhavi in organza saree and two- piece bikini was quite something.
48) All the heroines in Chaplin’s movies.
49) Sreedhari- A girl from the village who never spoke to me in her life. In 2010 she turned up at my village home and declared to my mother that she wanted to live with me.
50) Frida Kahlo- I was growing up.
51) Anne Frank- I cried several nights after reading her dairies.
52) Pavel’s Mother- The mother in Maxim Gorky’s ‘Mother’.
53) K.R.Gowry- Political leader in Kerala.
54) Susheela Gopalan- political leader in Kerala.
55) Kochu Lathika Checchi- My mother’s young colleague who teased whenever she got a chance. Even today she does that.
56) Sushmita- She spoke to me in words beyond words. That was love.
57) Veni- A young girl who tutored me in type writing. Old Remington machine and her jasmine flower fragrance. I type too fast.
58) Kunjulakshmi teacher- My mother’s eldest sister. She never says duck’s eggs. She says, ‘Eggs by Ducks’.
59) John Jyohti Raj’s mother- She treated me like her son.
60) Ambi Checchi- Our land lady in Trivandrum. She loudly said anything shown in television. When condom’s advertisement came (that time sanitary napkins’ and condoms’ ads used to embarrass everyone), she spelt out that too.
61) Susanne Valedon- the girl friend of the Impressionists.
62) Usha Uthuppu- You know why.
63) Tara Husain- My classmate in University college.
64) Stella Jasmine- My classmate in University college.
65) Beena Mathew- She liked me and my friends. Her boy friend hated us for that.
66) Uma Devi- a daring woman of our times.
67) Stella- A theatre activist and ACK Raja’s wife.
68) Haseena- she was a very liberal fine arts student.
69) Sreedevi- One of the Pakshikkoottam, a literary publishing group. Now a poet and translator.
70) Sobhana- Actress and Danseuse.
71) Urvashi- Malayalam film actress.
72) K.P.A.C.Lalitha- Malyalam film actress. There is no answer to her acting skills.
73) Kaviyoor Ponnamma- Kerala’s Nirupa Roy. I call my mother ‘Kaviyoor’ as this actress always portrays crying mothers.
74) Neena Prasad- My classmate and a famous classical dancer.
75) Manju Warrier- One of the finest actors in Malayalam.
76) K.S.Chitra- A singer with unparalleled voice.
77) Arundhati Roy- Writer, though she did not produce too many novels, she produced thought provoking ideas.
78) Medha Padhkar- She is a legend.
79) Mother Teresa. I can’t define her.
80) Mahashweta Devi- writer,activist. Aranyer Adhikar is classic.
81) Geeta Kapur- Art Historian.
82) Madhuri Dixit- A fine actress.
83) Nancy Adajania- A fine art critic and curator.
84) Oprah Winfrey- I have followed her life.
85) Maya Angelou- Her writing fascinates me.
86) Bell hooks- Clarit in thoughts.
87) Malini Chibb- One who fought her disability and became a fine personality.
88) Shalini Sawhney- a gallerist who sticks to her style of functioning.
89) Shilpa Nasolikar- I have not met this artist. But there is a lot of energy in her works.
90) Nina Paley- Sita Sings Blues is enough to prove her contributions to the field of animation.
91) Pooja Sood- had she not been there Khoj would have become one of those artists’ initiatives.
92) Anita Nair- the author of Mistress.
93) Maiya- K.S.Radhakirshnan’s female protagonist.
94) Ruya- Orhan Pamuk’s heroine.
95) Rima- W.H.Hudson’e protagonists in Green Mansions.
96) Sweety Nair- One who caused my exodus, laters on hers too.
97) Asha Mishra- the National Secretary of Bhartiya Gyaan Vigyan Samiti. This lady is amazing.
98) Mrinal Kulkarni- My wife, art historian, pedagogue and sparring mate.
99) Karthyayani MJ – My daughter, who has already taken my reins in her hands.
100) God Almighty- In whose book I have included all those unlisted names thanks to many reasons. Besides I always think, He is a She.

Promise

(Photo- Robert Mapplethrope)

Fail not our feast
Forget not to do things till seven o’ clock
Let God be with you
And me till then.

They are butchering
Our brothers everywhere
They have palaces to hide
Ports and faces too.

Fail not our feast
Tonight, before
Forests, poems and dreams
Wake up
We need to avenge
The innocent blood.

But promise me
That even if you don’t turn up
You won’t scare me
With ghostly appearances
That you don’t occupy
The throne that I deem mine.


(Translated from Malayalam by myself)

A Date with KMM and Connaught Place: A Photext Feature

This date was long over due; a date between the National Award winning film maker and artist, K.M.Madhusudhanan (Bioscope) and myself. We had called each other and fixed our meeting at Triveni Kala Sangam, New Delhi. From there we thought of going to Connaught Place, the enchanting shopping arcade of New Delhi.

Any artist who lives today in Delhi has something to do with Connaught Place. During the days of their seemingly endless struggles, they used to walk between Mandi House and Connaught Place, weaving dreams and scheming about life. Buildings looked grey and roads looked narrow then; people were absolutely uncouth. Artists walked along the footpaths thinking that they were Baudelaires in making and they were in the streets of Paris.

Times have changed. Connaught Place looks totally different today. Madhusudhanan says that it is more like Manhattan now. True, from the outer circle, you turn your eyes at the Barakhamba (Twelve Pillar) Road that leads to Mandi House, you see a different scene. The erstwhile greys have gone into hiding. This is the spring of urbanism. Each building there seems to have acquired a distinct identity, whether it is Statesman Building or Gopal Das Bhavan.

Madhusudhanan comes to Triveni Kala Sangam at the appointed time in his Versa car. One may wonder why he moves around in a van-like vehicle. He is a film maker and he carries a lot of books and equipments in his car always. His car, bags and brain are moving libraries.

I call him Madhu. Those people, who know him as a filmmaker, do not know his contribution as an artist. Madhu was one of the leaders of Indian Radical Painters and Sculptors Association (Radical Group). He was instrumental in formulating the manifesto of the Radical Group, which was titled ‘Against a Retrogressive Aesthetics’. Today some people call it as ‘Kerala Radicals’. One can twist history, but trust me, history has a lot of energy; it will straighten itself up.

(K.M.Madhusudhanan)

During early 1990s (after the sad demise of K.P.Krishnakumar, who used to offer chocolates to pretentious art critics and books to artists, in 1989), Madhu, after his stint as a teacher at the NID, Ahmedabad came to Delhi. He joined as an editorial illustrator at the Economic Times. Simultaneously he worked with the noted theatre directors namely Prasanna,B.V.Karanth, Badal Sarkar, Mohan Maharshi and Kavalam Narayana Panicker in their well known theater prodcutions, as a designer. Besides, he designed the book covers for ‘Indian Literature,’ an inclusive journal of Indian Literature, which became quite influential during 1990s under the editorial direction of the poet, K.Satchidanandan who later became the Secretary of the Sahitya Akademy (National Academy of Literature). With Satchidanandan, Madhu initiated one of the alternative journals tiled, 'Pacchakkuthira' in which Madhu played the role as an art designer. He designed sets for several plays at the National School of Drama and designed posters of Sahita Akademy (National Academy of Literature). All these designs and illustrations could be considered as classical works now.

I remember Madhu telling me once in 90s’ that he was not an artist, but a film maker. Art had given him so much of pain at that point. I could understand him because he was one of those young people who had given their youthful days completely for art. What they got in return was disillusionment and a suicide. Madhu has always been interested in photography. This interested slowly turned into the moving images. Then he did a series of movies, cutting himself away from the mainstream art world. Now his works titled, ‘History is a Silent Film’, ‘Maayabazar’, ‘Self Portrait’, ‘Razor, Blood and Other Stories’ are all over the world. They all have featured in the international film festivals. Today Madhu calls himself 'an artist who paints, draws and films as he breaths'. Film is an extension of my art and my art is an extension of my films, says Madhu. He believes that all those experiences of being a Radical member and an agitated/agitating artist have contributed to his maturity. "Today, I am deeply involved in Buddhist literature and art. I am led by the compassion and philosophy of Buddhism. I look at this philosophy as an alternative practice. Through this I attempt to reach out to a language, which could reflect the wisdom and vision of the East. I am in a journey and it gives me a lot of energy to do my films and art," says Madhu.

‘Bioscope’ (2009) is his first feature film. This film deals with the life of a man who falls in love with a movie projector. The story happens in the first decade of the 20th century, almost the same time when cinema came to India. A young man gets a film projector from a French film projectionist who was leaving Pondicherry for France. The young man brings the projector to his village. He gets so involved with the projector and he shows movies to the villagers. In the meanwhile, his ailing wife develops complications. People believe that it is because of the projector that things go wrong in the family. The film speaks of the history of film itself, the arrival modernism and the conflict of it with conventions and superstitions. The film talks of a landscape changed by the arrival of moving images.

This was the best film of 2009 for which Madhu received award from the President of India in 2010. In the meanwhile, the film went to the international film festival circuit, heaping awards and accolades from many countries. Currently Madhu is working on his second feature film, ‘Karuna’ (Compassion- The Return of Buddha) based on a long poem written by Kumaran Asan, which is based on a Buddhist story. National Award winning actor Mammooty plays the lead role in this movie.

Madhu washes his hands at Triveni and while showing me a few books on Buddhism, including one by Aswaghosha (an out of print book, which he could cajole out from a bookshop in Karol Bagh after much persuasion) and one by Anand Koomaraswamy. Motilal Banarasi Lal Books- They publish history and academic books. They publish coffee table academic books too, a lot illustrated with beautiful picture; India beckoning types. “Those books are clean as people handle it quite often. Books on Buddhism are pushed into the back racks where dust romances with parchment. Look at my hands, full of dust,” Madhu tells me.

I flip through the books. A sudden urge to read them all engulfs me and I know I cannot do that in one go. I want to buy the copies for me too. Madhu agrees to go with me to the store again on the same day. But I keep it for another day and we have the famous kebabs and not so famous parathas from Triveni’s Restaurant. I notice a notice board hung there. It says. ‘No Smoking and No Meeting Here- Entry Restricted’. I smile because this is the place where people meet up. Between the dirty canteen of Lalit Kala Akademy (by the way this ‘dirty’ canteen was the only place the artists and critics could afford once. I mean, the migrant artists and critics) and the busy Bengali Market’s Nathus and Bengali Sweets, Triveni’s Restaurant is quite attractive and it is very arty too. And people do come here for ‘Meeting’.

I am not a photographer. However, at times I carry my camera with me. I love men and I like to take their pictures and I like them taking my pictures too. That does not mean that I don’t like women. But I don’t like to take their pictures. Nor do I want them to take my pictures. I don’t want to leave too many forensic evidences behind. Also I believe that memories are the best albums, especially when it comes to preserving sensations, and words are the best colors, tones and textures that could relate the picturesque moments, as if these words were secret codes, which could be cracked only by those partners who have tried their private moments of alchemy.

Connaught Place is ravishing. Versa drops us at the inner circle. We walk and talk. And for the first time, we talk less than in our other meetings. Connaught Place has different stories to tell different people. I look for a different story. I find this road getting dug up and I remember myself going to the same lane a few months back and the digging up was still on. Even if we go after fifteen years, some part of Connaught Place must be getting dug up. Delhi is a permanently unfinished city; as the arty people say, it is a project in process.

I see a hug wine and beer sign board and click a few pictures and get clicked too. Then I catch a glimpse of this authentic Chinese Restaurant. Madhu says that it ‘was’ the ‘authentic’ Chinese Restaurant.

We have abundant pot holes and falling walls.

Here wealth and filth live together. This photo is very suggestive because the vaults of banks will always remain closed for those people who collect garbage.

A rusting sign board offers you everything with communication.

The hinder sides have another story to tell.

At the N Bloc, our own Banksy has left something for imagination.

The city authorities always ask others inform them of the missing people. People keep missing in a city.

A bit of window shopping.

A caged Natraja. This is when Madhu remembers Stella Kramrisch, the art historian. She witnessed the Natraja sculpture for the first time and wrote: As if a huge butterfly was captured inside a huge hall covered with stain glass windows, and fluttering its wings frantically. “If you read these lines, you will love art history. I don’t think many have read it,” says Madhu.

Here you can change your money.

A meadow of magazines.

Life goes on as in Victor Hugo’s novels.

A spry paint compressor machine left alone.

Just do it. Do what? Shop.

Multi-cultural Delhi.

If you are an artist, you would remember QBA. During the market boom, this bar and restaurant was a permanent party joint after exhibition openings.

Spittoon in the liminal spaces.

Madhu looks at the wares of a peddler.

Headless attractions.

Trees in CP.

And Me.

(picture by KMM)

Finally, we come back to Mandi House. Once we reach the Mandi House circle, we could see young children practicing Taekwando at the lawns. “The moment I touch this circle, I feel like home coming,” Madhu says. I cannot have another feeling about it.

(All pictures by JohnyML)

Rohita Writes to Her Dad on a Rainy Day: A Story

(Photo courtesy: Sunil Raj)

After those days of scorching heat, it is very good to see the sky getting filled up with dark clouds. I wistfully wait for those moments when the dark and heavy clouds open their small windows and let the water drops fall on earth. Water drops are like babies, they jump, fall, get up and again fall. They fall all over the roof tops, on trees, plants and grass. They don’t spare anything. They chase the squirrels away to their tree holes. They send the birds to hide inside their nests.


We, the children love rain a lot. We all want to play in the muddy pool made by the incessant rains. We want to run over the grass fields that are wet with heavy water drops. What a sensation it is; cool water drops touching our soles. I giggle whenever rain drops touch me. I just want to get wet when it rains.


But what to do? You know, how mummies and daddies behave..as if they never had a childhood! The moment the kids jump out of the home to play in rain, the mommies and daddies would scream. “Hey, get in..you will catch cold.”


Oh, that’s what they tell kids. Actually, children don’t catch cold or anything if they play under rain. I always think about those small kids at the traffic junctions. They sell flowers, toys and some towels. Sometimes they beg too. I feel so bad about them. I ask myself why their parents don’t take care of them the way my parents take care of me. One day I asked my mom about this. She told me that they were poor and homeless. They had to work for their lives. Somehow I felt a lot of anger inside me. I decided to ask god about this. I did ask him about it that evening. But he was silent. Photographs don’t talk, I know. But I am sure that one day, when I see him in my dreams I will ask him about this. He is my friend.


Let me come back to my dear rain. One day she came. Yes, I think rain is a girl child; bubbly and cheerful. I have never seen a sad rain. Rains cannot be sad. But in cinema they show sad rains. I don’t like them. I have seen my mom and dad watching sad movies and sad rains and sad songs with a lot of interest. I don’t know what these grown up people think about themselves. They are really crazy people.


One day, finally it rained. It was a Sunday. Mom was in kitchen. Yesterday evening I had received a call from my dad. He told me he was on the way to border where some fight was on between India and Pakistan. I don’t even know why two countries fight. The other day I saw lot of children playing in a park in Pakistan. They were just like us and the park where they played also looked exactly like the park in front of our house. I don’t but then why these grown up people fight. I hate fighting. I hate wars. And I hate anything that put children into trouble.


But what to do? My dad is an army officer and he need to fight for his country. And they all say that we should be loyal to our country and fighting for our country is the best sacrifice one can make in his or her life. But I don’t want to become a woman-soldier when I grow up. I want to become a writer and I can write the stories of children and how they feel about wars and fights. I want to tell these grown up people that we feel a lot bad when they fight. We feel frightened too. You know, we are frightened like anything. And whenever you see us sleeping, don’t think that we are sleeping peacefully. No, we are not sleeping in peace. We are sleeping because we want to get rid of our fear when you fight. We, children escape from fear through sleep. We don’t have any other way.


When the rain drops were beckoning me with their trotting sounds and music, I asked permission from my mom to venture out and play in rain. She allowed me only if I took my umbrella along. I was itching to get out of home and walk in the rain and get wet. But this small compromise was worth making. So I took out my blue umbrella and went out to play.


I went to Anusha’s home. Standing outside the gate I called out for her. She came and looked at me through the door grill. I asked her to come out and walk with me. But she looked sad. Without saying anything, she went inside. I could make out that her parents did not allow her to come out and play under rain. Then I went to Sambhu’s house. Then to Martha’s. They all refused to come with me. So I decided to walk alone and play with the rain drops and puddles.


In our housing complex there is a long boulevard with tall trees on either side of it. Though I am familiar with all the plants, shrubs and weeds there, when they stand fresh washed with rain water, they look different. They look so happy that they look different too. Sad people are sad in the same way. But happy people look so different when they are happy. Plants, flowers, birds, monkeys, squirrels and all must be looking different now because they are happy.


While walking along the path with no one around and with the buzzing sound of rain falling on my umbrella and the general hissing noise that the rain drops and wind make together , suddenly something flitted across my face. Startled I jumped back. A small noise of fear escaped between my lips. I was really frightened. Who could it be? I wondered and looked around. I could not see anyone in the vicinity. Then I noticed one maina bird walking furiously on the earth. Then something flitted across my face again.


This time I saw it. It was another maina bird. It flitted across me again and again, and the other bird made some shrieking noises as if it were trying to chase me away. Briskly I walked ahead and turned back to see what these birds were up to.
They were flying around with their small wings now weakened by water and dirt. They flew between trees, ledges and fences. I wondered why there were doing so. I stood there and watched them working on something so diligently but frantically. Soon I saw that!


The birds were going in and around a bush and they were almost giving some instructions to the bush! They moved back and forth. As I approached, shrieking fiercely they retreated from the bush. They hopped back and looked at me intently. With soft footsteps I went near the bush. I could not see anything. So I walked around and tried to see what was going on inside the bush. I bend down and craned my neck towards it. There I saw a small maina chick sitting and shivering.


Its small little body was all wet. With water pushing the feathers from around its head and neck, it looked like a bald child. Its yellow beak was sharp. It gave me a side glance. And it was full of fear. I could sense how it might have been feeling then. The bird was shivering. It was impossible for me to push my hands inside and rescue the chick from there. So I decide to wait there and watch if some cat or monkey by and attack it.


The other two birds (now I could make out that they were the parents of this chick) looked at me watchfully. Once they felt that I did not mean any harm, they became calm. Their shrieking subsided. Now it was reduced to some noises that almost sounded like instructions to the little chick. I felt like calling out my mom. But then I thought like standing there alone and watching the mother and father birds taking care of their little one.


My mother might be thinking about me know. She must be also worrying about me. But then, she knew me as a child who wanted to wander alone in the park, when I did not play with other kids. She knew my love for birds and animals. So she might be imaging about me sitting somewhere under a tree and watching rain and she must be smiling also.


I was so engrossed with the activities of those birds that I did not know how many hours passed by then. The birds were like commanders and were exhorting and cheering their kid continuously. I looked at the eyes of the chick. It was now calm. The wild fear had disappeared from its eyes. In its place now I could see some kind of calmness and sense of relief.


Rain had already stopped and I did not know it had stopped long back as I was too involved with the birds. Sun came out and shone brightly over the trees, plants and grass. Other birds started chirping again. The hissing sound had given way to the normal noises of birds. Squirrels came out of their holes and started running here and there.


Then the chick hopped out of the bush. The parents flew around it. And the mother bird jumped from one shrub to the other while the father bird watched out for cats and monkeys. The mother hopped towards a stump where sunlight was falling directly. The chick followed what its mother did. It hopped, once, twice and on the third attempt it could land on the stump where it sat for a long time.


Slowly, I could see its feathers coming back to shape as the water evaporated from its body. Soon it transformed into a beautiful maina chick. I thought it was smiling. Its eyes did not show any fear. Father was still watching out for unseen dangers and mother disappeared from the scene for a while. Soon it came back. The father and mother shrieked something between each other. Then they started again showing their kids something.


Once the chick’s attention was completely on the mother, it flew from the ledge to a lower branch. The chick followed the action. From there it flew towards the next branch. The chick followed what the mother did. All these while, father bird stood guard on the earth. Finally, the chick reached the tree where its nest was perched.
I felt like jumping and screaming with joy. I did not do it though I made a happy clucking sound with my tongue.


Once again the mother disappeared. Now the chick was opening its beak wide and making a very sharp noise. The father sat a branch below and looked up as if he was taunting him for being too naughty. The chick kept its mouth opened and turned its neck around.


Soon the mother came back to the scene. This time she had something in her beak. She sat safely on a branch opposite to where the chick was sitting. Leaning her body completely forwards, with her feet tightly holding around the branch, pushed her beak loaded with some eatables into the mouth of the chick.


I felt the rain of joy pouring inside me. I did not know how to express it.
But dad, suddenly I remembered you. What are you doing now? Have you reached the border safely? Are you going to fight with somebody? Come back Dad, I want to be with you. Please come back. I don’t want you to fight with anyone. I want you.
I am writing all these down because I know you would like to read my diary when you come back. Yes, Dad, I will not forget all what you have told me. I am a good girl, Dad.


Oh...this Mom....she is calling me Dad..Before she comes in to find out what I am writing, let me rush. I don’t want to see her crying when she reads my diary. Love you, Dad. Bye.

Deewar and Vinay Lal: History of a Film and a Historian Par Excellence

(Book cover of Deewar by Vinay Lal, Harper Collins India)

‘Mere paas maa hai’ (I have mother with me) – a dialogue delivered by the dimple cheeked Shashi Kapoor in a movie titled, ‘Deewar’, even after thirty five years of its release in 1975 still reverberates in the minds of people. This dialogue, often used, misused and abused in different grave and comical situations, is a semiological referent that takes the listener of it to the turbulent years of 1970s and80s, the two decades, which could be called the decades of transition as far as modern Indian history is concerned. Today, ‘Deewar’ has achieved a cultic status. Vinay Lal, one of the most interesting contemporary cultural historians, in his latest book titled ‘Deewar- The Footpath, the City and the Angry Young Man’ published by Harper Collins India, analyses how Deewar and its narrative structure left an indelible mark on the Indian political, cultural and sociological psyche.


Written by Salim-Javed (Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar) and directed by Yash Chopra, Deewar (The Wall) was released on 24th January 1975. In no time it catapulted the young hero of the movie, Amitabh Bacchan into undisputable stardom. A lanky young man with brooding eyes and detached nature Amitabh Bacchan was best suitable for the character Vijay Verma, who brushed with the wrong side of law, only to redeem the lost dignity of his mother. As most of the Indian film goers know, the plot of Deewar was familiar and it resonated the moral, ethical, familial, political and gender conflicts of Indian puranas and epics like Mahabharata and Ramayana. And above all it brought the mother/woman as the centre of this conflict when the brothers brought for moral, ethical and social supremacy.


Ananda Babu is a righteous labour union leader who worked in a coal mine and led strikes against the management to achieve the demands of the workers for better wages and working conditions. His family consisting of wife Sumitra Devi and young sons, Vijay and Ravi, is abducted to blackmail Ananda Babu and to coerce him to sign a deal that divests the labourers of their rights. Caught between familial love and duty, and professional loyalty and allegiance, Ananda Babu finally signs the papers and becomes a turncoat before the eyes of his fellow workers. Abused, insulted and injured Ananda Babu goes into deep silence and unable to withstand the prick of conscience, he leaves his family behind and abdicates himself to the unknown.


Young Vijay Verma is caught by the people in the village and they brand his left hand with a tattoo, ‘Mera baap chor hai’ (My father is a thief). Ostracised by the society, the mother and sons leave the village and go to Bombay, the city where one could find a life, success and dignity. Mother works in a construction site, Vijay starts off as a shoe-shine boy and Ravi is send to school. They live under a bridge where the milling migrants spend their sub-human lives, hoping for a miracle, which would one day turn their lives into gold. Vijay, permanently scarred by the inscription on his skin and soul, becomes a dockyard worker and then a henchman of a mafia don, Davar. Soon he becomes a rich smuggler. In the meanwhile, the educated and law abiding Ravi becomes a police inspector. Vijay buys the same skyscraper as a gift for his mother, which she helped to build as a labourer. But she refuses to take that gift as she and Ravi come to know that Vijay plays with ill-begotten money. Typical to a Bollywood movie, Ravi is now ready to take the smugglers and dons and his duty to state asks him to hunt down his brother who had sacrificed his life for educating him. At the same time, as the mafia gangs are hell bent on doing away with inspector Ravi, Vijay reveals to them that Ravi is his brother. Vijay asks Ravi to get transferred to some other station but he refuses to do so. Mother falls ill and now Vijay, the atheist asks Lord Shiva to rescue her. Finally, the brothers meet under the bridge where they spent their struggling days as migrant boys. Vijay tells him that he has palatial houses, cars and bank balance. What have you got to claim as yours? Ravi looks up to the heavens and says, Mere pass maa hai. In the following scenes, Ravi shoots Vijay down and a dying Vijay lies on the lap of his mother and tells her that ever since he left them, he never could get proper sleep. Today he is on her lap and he wanted her to put him to sleep.


Vinay Lal approaches the film as a repository of semiotic treasures. In the initial chapters he contextualises the film taking the socio-political history of India as a point of departure. Citing the impending political Emergency imposed by the then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, and the growing urbanization, mass migration and the utter disillusionment of the young people about their future as the markers of the film, Vinay Lal tells the readers that Deewar is perhaps the first film in Indian screen that deals with urbanization and migration as a theme in itself. Bringing the establishment of characters, actors and stars, besides establishing the psychology and sociology of stardom, Lal points out how the temporal setting of the film was ripe enough to launch an angry young man who is existential in nature rather than political. The angry young man’s private fears explode into the public realm and as Barthes says it moves from puntum to the stadium and achieves the status of a myth. Amitabh Bacchan was all the more suitable for the bill and his looks and demeanour helped him to become the first super-reigning super star. Whatever he does in the film seems to be detached but passionate; he does not do it for his well being, but for the dignity of his family. Unlike the happy-go-lucky young men of today, he was not revelling on his achievement. Only once in the whole movie, he makes claims of his achievements but that too is to save his brother’s life. And this detachment was romantic therefore appealing for the millions of young men and women of the day.


Vinay Lal focuses on the themes of signature, identity, language and mother in his study. Signature, he considers as a social bonding that makes the retractor a culprit. Signature/branding gives the signed and the branded a voice and at once it takes away the voice. Ananda Babu signs the document that would go against the rights of the workers and he is rendered speechless after that. In a sense, Vijay also loses his right of speech once he is branded by the villagers. However, this act of branding works on his psyche as a trigger to develop a speech that goes against the norms of the accepted laws of the state. While the father loses his speech, the son gains it. Vinay Lal views it as a the exit and entry into a symbolic/linguistic order that distinguishes the man from the animal.


Collating signature with identity, Vinay Lal further speaks of the scene where Ravi demands a signature from Vijay. Here Ravi demands it on behalf of the state. If Vijay signs the papers, he divests his chosen rights of being a free individual, and he refuses to surrender to the demand. Instead, he asks Ravi to get the signatures of all those people who had tortured their father and mother and left them homeless and rudderless in their early life. Also Vinay Lal narrates the role of mother who handles the conflicts simultaneously operating from either side of the state and emotional state. He identifies the mother as a supreme example of mythical mother, who eventually becomes a pawn in the games between males.


Vinay Lal analyses the film scene by scene in an interesting manner and never falls into the trap of reading it along Freudian lines, which could have made the study a predictable one. As an insightful historian, he explains the music, colours, tones, textures and linguistic flare used in making up the body of the film. Lal approaches the movie thematically as well as texturally. His textual analysis of the film makes the reader wanting for more; but this book runs into two hundred pages ends up with certain comparisons with Hollywood flicks that had treated the same theme but in dissimilar ways. Vinay Lal mouths of words of Davar who opines on the shoe-shine boy, Vijay, yeh lambi race ka khoda hai (A race horse that could run for long time) and underlines the fact that Deewar could run in the race courses of our cultural scenario for many years to come.

Applied Fiction: Fiction Applied- A Must See Show

Soren Pors and Aparna Rao met at the Interactive Design Institute Ivrea, Italy in 2002. It was electro-mechanics at first sight. In 2004, they started working together. And ‘Applied Fiction’ is the result of their combined creative efforts and now it is in the form of a solo show at the Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi.

They are known as Pors and Rao. It could be Rao and Pors, for hardcore feminists. Seen from whichever angle, this duo excels many other duos in the contemporary art scene thanks to their sheer understanding of form, fiction and mechanics. Consider all those conceptual, experimental and interactive works happening around, most of them fail to function thanks to the heavy loads of intellectualism placed on those tender motors. When you see Applied Fiction, you will forget all those burdens and you smile because you connect with the works in different levels; physically, intellectually and above all emotionally.

(Applied Fiction, installation view at Vadehra)

As an art critic, I don’t have any qualification to understand mechanics. But I can differentiate between mechanics applied for the sake of mechanics and mechanics applied for creating a fiction. Applied Fiction is mechanics applied to all those fictions that we have come across during our life time, especially during our childhood. When childhood experiences are converted into a art with a heightened sensibility and sensitivity, that becomes capable enough to transcend the spiritual level of the human beings, if not the basic physical pleasures.

Applied Fiction, as I understand is all about applied fiction. Is there any problem in that? Here material and mechanics are brought into a single unit so that the artists could speak to the audience through them. We grow up listening to various stories, reading several of them and seeing various types of mechanics developing around us. We are at once attached and detached to such mechanics and stories. When they are brought together, that particular moment of unity becomes a moment of revelation. Pors and Rao help us as viewers to understand the simple dynamics of the world of fiction and mechanics through images, objects, words and puns.

(Decoy)

‘Decoy’ reminds you of the Vodafone zoo zoos. It is a rounded object with two hands and a pipette-like head. There are no hagiographic suggestions to make us think that it represents a cartoonish human form. Despite this no-emphasis on human form, when it moves as you cross the sensor, you feel a lot of love for that object. The very animation of the object makes it quite humane and a sort of love that we feel for children fills in our mind and in the process we become children. And with no verbal suggestions, we start playing with it thereby turning the work into a really interactive object.

(Pygmies)

This interactive quality is visible in all the other works in this solo at Vadehra. Take ‘Pygmies’ for example. There are eight rectangle and square frames on the wall that remind you of Malevich and Mondrian for no reason. But you forget all your art history the moment you move and accidentally stamp on the floor. The small black metal appendages with two white dots on them to suggest a face placed along the four sides of all these rectangles and squares just jump down as they hear the noise. Then they slowly come up as if to ogle at you. Then the play starts; you stamp on the floor, they hide behind the frames, then they come up and you play again. You almost forget that you are playing with a mechanical object.

(Drifter)

Look at ‘Drifter’. This is a universal form of human body. Using simple lines you can make a man like this. In India such forms are once used to connote a ‘sahib’, which means a white ruler because white rulers used to wear hats. So it is a fiction for an Indian; if Soren does not know it, Arpana knows. As she knows it, both of them know it. Now we have this man, this sahib standing upside down and moving on his head, but he never falls down. Does that mean that the colonial imports and inputs are still around though they are inverted and drifted like this? I am reading too much into it but it gives me a lot of pleasure to see and read the Drifter like this.

(Sun Shadow)

Sun Shadow is another work that makes you smile. You feel so much love, sympathy and affection for that sun, who is otherwise fierce and eye-piercing. Here you see a clumsily made shadow of a sun fallen on the floor. The moment you come around it, it attempts to climb on the wall. It at once connotes the movement of the sun’s shadow/ movement of light from wall to floor and floor to wall and our childhood feeling for light and its movements. In fact there is a stronger inversion of logic in this pun-filled work. Sun does not cast its own shadow. However, when we see the Sun Shadow at Vadehra we think about sun’s shadow without questioning it even for a moment. The sun becomes an animated character, almost helpless and cute. The artists create a new linguistic structure in order to topple the existing ones; application of fiction over the logical realities.

(Teddy Universe)

‘Teddy Universe’ works on the basic concepts and images that the words evoke. Teddy is teddy bear and universe is universe. And when you look up, hanging from the ceiling is an enlarged black Teddy with small little pores all over his body. From inside this teddy form is lit up and you suddenly tend to see the teddy as sky and a constellation in itself. You think about various constellations and think of the bear forms in it. Pors and Rao tell us that it is important go back to that state of mind that a child carries when he lies on the lap of his mother and wistfully looks at the darkening sky at night and at his mother’s face lit up by the lamp.

(Split Knife)

Split Knife is rather a less attractive work in the whole show as we have seen similar works elsewhere. One end of a knife comes out of one pedestal and the other end goes in and the movement continues. This is an illusion created out of simple mechanics and the feeling of continuity of an object as we see two edges of it moving in a synchronized fashion, is something that the artists invest their energies on. Though it did not appeal me too much, as it is a part of the whole, one could still see this work with same wonderment.

Applied Fiction is about linguistics and fiction. It also speaks of fictitious linguistics and linguistic fiction. This says, it is not this, this is not it. But it is what it is and this is what this is. This this-ness of this and non-this-ness of this make this project interesting and appealing. And above all the works take you to a plane that all art aspire to take you; to pure bliss, Ananada.

Archiving Against All Odds: A Case study

Brain cells that store memories die, decay or collapse. Hard drives that store digital memories ‘crash’. Remembering and retrieving are the remedies to regain memories and hard drive storages. We no longer remember the phone numbers of our closest friends. External memories carry them for us. Memory/brain used to be an archive. Albums and scrap books used to do the same. Libraries carried vast amount of memories. But a library could be unpacked and re-installed elsewhere if it is not burnt down. Today, archive is dead and is reincarnated in the forms of digital storages. Archiving used to be a strategy to deflect the State’s wrath on citizens. Archiving used to be a way of the State to remember its own past.

(North Malabar Thiyya Marriage Videos and Pictures, a project by Janaki Abraham)

Today, archive is a part of our collective nostalgia. When curators attempt to showcase the idea of archives through the works of art, artists attempt to make new archives for re-living the idea of archives. For Marcel Proust, T.S.Eliot, Baudelaire and Walter Benjamin, archiving was a political act from the micro levels. For them archiving was not the production of a spectacle. Instead they collected their memories in codes. Encryption was necessity and strategy. But today artists in India, when asked to think about archiving, produce spectacles. Archiving has become a forced act; a collective act and a funded act. But anything that evokes certain nostalgic moments is to be appreciated. It could be the foot wears collected from different countries, it could be the digitizing a personal collection of catalogues or even it could be a make-shift spectacular library.

(A display from Janaki Abraham's project)

However, in such projects, the presence of contemporary ‘artists’ become more important than the actual idea behind curating. Janaki Abraham, who has extensively archived the VHS tapes of the marriage videos of a particular caste group in Northern Kerala, Abul Azad who has extensively photographed the artists, musicians and social activists in India, Ram Rahman who has registered the pivotal movements and moments of a ‘secular’ post-modern India are no longer seen in such archival projects. Instead, we see artists by fluke presenting their works. A documentary maker like Amar Kanwar is treated as an archiving artist. Raqs Media Collective, which actually is a research organization, is forced to make a ‘work of art’ than presenting its own archiving activities.

(Amar Kanwar- a Visual Artist by default)

(Archived by Market Success- Researchers turned artists- Raqs Media Collective)

When a curator thinks of doing a spectacular show, it happens. Abhishek Hazra, whose projects are often incoherent for those non-enlightened people like me, has done one project with the archives of a major Kolkatan Library. I remember it has something to do with the writings of the scientist Jagishchandra Bose and in a project where he could have been fit into, does not even consider him. Some curators force the artists into the concept and one could see the results in such shows.

(A still from History is a Silent Film by K.M.Madhusudhanan)

Against this context I would like to see one particular installation of Shankar Natarajan done in a show at BMB Gallery, Mumbai. This is installation of made of more than thousand photographs taken by the artist himself. A post graduate in art criticism and a self-trained photographer, Shankar Natarajan turned his creative energies towards documenting artists’ works for their shows. By 2006, with the art market boom, Shankar became one of the most sought after photographer in Mumbai who specialized in taking the photographs of the art works both in and out of display. Galleries started commissioning him to travel with the artists and shows all over the world to do the documentation.

(Shankar Natarajan's project at Gallery BMB, Mumbai)

When Shankar was invited to participate in show at the BMB Gallery, he decided to open up his archives from his hard disk. These thousand photographs show the works of most of the Indian contemporary artists and interestingly thanks to the proliferation of information technology and cataloguing most of the images are familiar to the diligent art viewers. However, when the photographer, claims these images as ‘his’ works, they assume the character of archival materials. According to the artist, it is a kind of revoking the memories; memories of a time and fervent activities of artist during this time. This work is also a way of externalizing a personal memory by negotiating images between their status as the result of visual registrations and as the residual of such registrations.

(Another view of Shankar Natarajan's project)

Shankar himself disputes the uniqueness of the component images in his installations because of these images are seen elsewhere in other formats. However, once conceptually mediated as an installation on a gallery wall, these memories/images achieve a sort of uniqueness, which is capable enough to debate the core issue of memory, artificial memory, storage devices, copyright and above all the personal attachment to the product and the waste/sub-product. Interestingly, in Shankar’s project, residual images play a pivotal role as he himself accepts that the number of pictures that made their way into the installation is many times less than the number of pictures that remain in his computer/hard disk.

(Installation view of Shankar Natarajan's Work)

The archival intensity of this installation becomes intense as the artist/critic/photographer/documenter/archivist himself feels that there these photographs together creates a different meaning by registering the peculiar qualities/aesthetic productions of a given time. “At a very basic level , by displaying over a 1000 photos I shifted the focus from individual images of artworks used by indivudals and institutions for a specific purpose to something like an overview of what was produced in a particular period : 2006-2010,” Shankar says.

(shankar Natarajan)

Unfortunately, the curators who devote their time to debate the issues of archiving go behind the usual suspects. I wonder how Amar Kanwar is treated as an artist and K.M.Madhusudhanan who has extensively worked with the history of photography and theatre (History is a Silent Film and Maya Bazar) is not. Ten years of research seems to have gone waste when it comes to curatorial practice.

Yes, all these while I was talking about ‘Against All Odds’ curated by Arshiya Lokhandwala at the Lalit Kala Akademy, New Delhi. This show has a sub-title: A Contemporary Response to the Historiography of Archiving, Collecting and Museums in India.’ I could not see anything about historiography in this show. Nor could I see anything on Museum debate.