A Musical Instrument Carrying the Politics of Bamboo

(Yet to be named Bamboo musical instrument created by Jayachandran Kadampanad)

Folk singer, actor and the Director of Folk Life Academy, Trivandrum, Jayachandran Kadampanad is quite elated about his new invention; a composite musical instrument made completely out of bamboo and leather. For many years Jayachandran has been experimenting with sonic properties of bamboo from different parts of India. Traditionally bamboo is used in/for making various types of flutes or similar musical instruments and it has been an integral ingredient in both folk and classical music. However, using bamboo exclusively for making a composite musical instrument is a new experiment which has found its process and shape in the imagination of Jayachandran.

(Jayachandran Kadampanad)

Of late Kerala has been witnessing the birth of so many folklore musical group, each vying to find its sonic and visual space in the vast array of musical traditions in Kerala. Late Kalabhavan Mani’s efforts to popularize folklore and folk songs were hugely successful because of his unbeatable energy and talent. His performances and the ability to set the folksongs both traditionally collected and newly composed within the popular and contemporary digitally orchestrated musical genre had found patronage more than he himself had expected and had opened up reality shows in the television channels in Malayalam carving out special segments for folk songs and performances. Taking the popular and populist cue many music groups came up not only to preserve the folk music traditions but also to use the genre as a vehicle to convey revolutionary ideas within a conventionally rigid society like Kerala. Presence of Dalit voices in literature, theatre, films and music during the last two decades was unavoidable and the folk music groups became an integral part of the subaltern socio-political and cultural discourse in Kerala, perhaps becoming strong with the music of Jassy Gift (2004).

(Young percussionist Bipin Kumar playing the new instrument)

This genre of music has by all means thwarted the hegemony of the erstwhile popular folk music set by the upper caste modernist poets and musicians and the inter-state and intra-state musical influence, especially of the street music, death music, protest music generated in states like Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu has considerably changed the complexion of Kerala’s folk music scenario brining more and more young people from the lower middle class and the working class background to form local bands and street side groups to innovate contemporary folk music and preserve the already existing ones. Vayali music troupe that uses bamboo as their main expression is one such folk music group with a higher amount market savvy sophistication. The folk singers of the Manaveeyam Veedhi in Trivandrum are another set of new age folk singers who use bamboo based music as well.

Jayachandran belongs to this tradition but often chooses to move as a solo performer within his band that has been using both the contemporary instruments as well as musical instruments made out of bamboo. But his extensive travels within in India and sojourn in places like Wyanad where one find an abundance of folklore and folk music have helped him to articulate a different kind approach in his music that involves various traditions including Kerala folk music, protest music and Bengal Baul songs and Rabindra Sangeet. While musicians like T M Krishna collapse the boundaries between the classical and the folk, rather challenge the classical cannons of music and take it to street, seashores and market places, we understand that the traditional approach to music is considerably pushed back by the new crop of musicians in the country, especially in Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

Jayachandran’s composite musical instrument is yet to be named. As it has bamboo components that functions as drums of various shapes, sizes and traditions, rattles, bells and symbols, it is difficult to name it offhandedly, says Jayachandran. According to him this yet to be named instrument has a politics to talk about; it is the politics of bamboo. Jayachandran underlines that there was a strong tradition of using bamboo for various purposes, including making huts, houses, daily utensils, furniture and storages, besides musical instrument. With the arrival of metal and plastic mediums the use of bamboo has gone down and it has deprived the workers in the bamboo sector of their livelihood. Though there are corporations and agencies to market their products and protect the bamboo workers, the workers’ conditions is pathetic as they are not able to find new markets, incorporate new needs through design innovations, enhancing their craft abilities through added learning for the contemporary times and in enhancing their own living circumstances.

The politics of this composite musical instrument made out of bamboo runs in various directions. Jayachandran cites the two flood situations that ravaged Kerala in 2018 and 2019. Immediately after the floods everyone speaks of sustainable development and new architectural methods. Also they discuss a lot about deforestation and the need for protecting our forests. There are debates on how to prevent landslides. Each time, they find the solution in cultivating bamboos in the slopes in order to strengthen the soil layers and control the piping effect. Especially in the eastern countries bamboo is given a prime place in the sustainable development models. It is high time that Kerala too batting for its bamboo traditions. Jayachandran says that the motivation for this innovative musical instrument was the floods and the aftermath. Though he has been putting bamboo instruments together in his band for long, this is the first time that he has created a ‘full’ instrument. As the instrument is unconventional in nature, the grammar of its playing is not yet in place. That means a lot of innovation and experimentation from the musician who uses it. According to Jayachandran, a good percussionist could come up with wonders in this instrument. Also he is confident that the yet to be instrument could be played by more than one person at a time with a lot of coordination and practice. The instrument was formally inaugurated in September 2019 in Green Field Stadium in Trivandrum during the Onam celebrations. A young percussionist, Bipin Kumar played it and Jayachandran feels that he could climb great heights with this bamboo instrument.

--JohnyML

A Controversial Mural in its Fading Phase: Sreelal’s Mural on Kanakakkunnu Boundary Wall

(from Travancore History Mural by Sreelal in Trivandrum)

Sreelal, a Trivandrum based artist would have been hailed as the Nandalal Bose of Trivandrum had he delved a bit deeper into Travancore’s history or rather if he had checked the alternative histories that were available very much in Thiruvananthapuram in the year 2016 when he executed his ambitious mural, the History of Travancore on the 400 feet long boundary wall of the historical Kanakakkunnu Palace, as a part of the ‘Arteria’, a public art project initiated by the Kerala Tourism Department and curated by Dr.Ajitkumar G.

(Sreelal, artist)

When opened for public viewing formally (though people were curiously watching the development of the mural) the artist received more brickbats than bouquets for the concerned viewers and art enthusiasts had found certain glaring omissions in the episodic visual narratives on the wall. It was dubbed as a mural that served the purpose of the erstwhile Travancore royal family than interpreting the history of Travancore through a visual critique. It was a missed opportunity for Sreelal though I find today the prematurely fading mural attractive in many ways.

The Nandalal Bose reference does not come by fluke. In 1938 Nandalal Bose aka Master Moshai was asked by Mahatma Gandhi to make a series of panels illustrating the greatness of the rural life of India. Gandhiji was a strong proponent of the virtues of rural life though Ambedkar had pitch fight against such a romantic view for the latter had found city life more helping the Dalits to shed their caste marks and inhibitions, and live a life of near anonymity but saved from the daily disgrace of caste-ist slurs and inhuman treatments by the upper caste people. Though Ambedkar’s views did not prevail due to the larger and deeper influence of Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru had seen the truth in Ambedkar’s views despite the fact that he could not do much towards realizing Ambedkar’s dreams regarding a casteless society, due to the electoral politics and the gradual depletion of the Congress Party into the pits of upper caste Hindu ideology.

Nandalal Bose shared Gandhiji’s romantic idea about the rural India and its legendary virtues; as the seat of goodness and camaraderie, which was contrary to the facts. Bose took up the cue given by Gandhiji and made a series of pictures that lauded the imagined rural life of India. We could say that they were the tableaus of Indian rural life. Life film stills, they were frozen narratives, a moment caught in time and space, as imagined by a visionary artist. Haripura panels did capture the virtues of India’s rural space but it also hid the atrocities meted out to the depressed class people under the caste system. Everything was fine with the rural life, one would think upon seeing those images, which was the aim of Gandhiji; the perpetuation of his Swaraj dream where the autonomous villages functioned smoothly by accepting the caste hierarchies as god given structure but without the vileness of the oppressive caste system that was in practice.

I do not think Nandalal Bose was ever criticized for not presenting the darker side of rural life because it was being thought as blasphemous to take on two godheads of the time, Gandhiji and Nandalal Bose. In retrospect we could forward this critique though nothing much would happen to change the legacy or the suspension or nullifying of the series, which anyone attempts to do so would end up in self-annihilation and denial of a cultural past with its own drawbacks. Sreelal, however should have been much perceptive when he was given a chance to deal with the history of Travancore and the glaring absence of the Renaissance leaders such as Mahatma Ayyankali, Sree Narayana Guru, Thycatt Ayyavu, Chattambi Swami and so on. By denying them pictorial space, Sreelal was almost committing an artistic hara-kiri at least in terms of the hugeness of the public work that was given him to execute. A second chance never comes and even if it comes it comes too late.

Sreelal’s mural is impressive. He captures the history of Travancore from Veluthampi Dalava, a 18^th century royal leader of Travancore who fought off the British East India Company as well as various rebellions from within the Travancore state, to Swati Thirunal and Sree Chithirathirunal Balarama Varma one of the last kings who lived through the 20^th century. In the episode, Sreelal brings out how Travancore progressed in various fronts including literature, art, music, warfare, education and devotion and so on. The narrative however stays closer to the court history and the ordinary people appear as laborers within the states who did mostly menial jobs including farm labor. The Nair community is portrayed as warriors. Through certain tonal variations Sreelal shows the difference in complexion therefore the difference in social class and caste. There are the arrival of trains, motor cars, schools and theatre. We could also see Raja Ravi Varma in his studio. Unfortunately, when he depicts the school in Travancore, he conveniently forgets the legendary episode of Ayyankali and Panchami at the Venganoor school where Ayyankali took the Dalit girl for education and the denial of which had changed the course of history of Travancore history then and much later. So are the absence of Sree Narayana Guru and Chattambi Swami, both social and community reformers. Interestingly we could see Gandhiji doing satyagraha (1924) during the Vaikom Satyagraha that had demanded the public road around the temple for the use of all other castes including the Dalits.

The mural is now undergoing various stages of decay and collapse. This mural was not supposed to be a permanent one however, the preservation of it would have helped people in understanding both the present and the absent. While I would hold the artist responsible for the absences, I would appreciate the artist for doing a very agile and strong narrative by picking and choosing certain memorable moments from the history of Travancore. The social hierarchies are narrated adequately but he emancipatory acts are not vivified in lines and colors. Sreelal has a distinct visual style and he has employed it quite boldly and freely in this mural. We cannot stop its gradual decay, it seems. However, I hope Sreelal would be all the more conscious if he gets a large commission like this in future and he should invest time in studying the mainstream and alternative histories of the place before executing the work.

-JohnyML

Art of Becoming an Artist and the Traps in its Path: Reading Jerry Saltz

(Jerry Saltz as Dali, New York Magazine cover)

When the American Art Critic Jerry Saltz’ quirky article ‘How to be an Artist’ in the New York magazine’s Vulture column will soon be a full-fledged book the quasi seriousness of the self-proclaimed ‘untrained’ art critic may become canonical in its own fashion helping a lot determined and impressionable people to become artists according to the rule book. However, I do not think following any number of formulas or self-help tips make anyone an artist though there are artists who are absolutely not out of the academies earning their positions as artists through sheer persistence and devotion. They do gather such pearls of wisdom from many avenues and employ them in their creative careers. As Saltz himself forewarns one should be ready to face failure and self-delusional in order to make a career in art without any formal training.

Saltz wouldn’t be the first one to write a self-help book; there are many in the bookstalls, libraries and art material shops, above all in the institutions that give crash courses in art that give modern as well as traditional wisdom in art making. Today you have Youtube videos, Instagram accounts, Whatsapp groups and social media pages that help and guide the people by virtually initiating them into the world of art. The difference, the possible difference between such portals of guidance and the one that is going to be out from Jerry Saltz’ publishers, Riverhead is this that the latter does not promise anything but hope. No guarantees and assurances. The virtual portals and tuitions do make guarantees and often the failure of which wouldn’t end up in litigation because of the lack of severity and persistence that the learners themselves are aware of through the course of learning.

(Jerry Saltz, the art critic)

‘How to be an Artist’ would be a fun reading because as I said before there is no assurance from the author’s side to make anyone an artist. The article that had appeared in his column in New York magazine in November 2018 had the same title (How to be an Artist) and Saltz had put down 33 points that would help someone enter the art scene with an intention to learn art, then practice it, see it, develop a visual sensibility and affinity towards art history and finally behave like an artist. Saltz starts his article with some sense of fun and soon it turns the author a bit meditative and as he goes further into digging the possible areas of concern, he becomes all the more serious. He ends the last section with a fair warning: Those who want to be an artist, ready to be poor, at least for some time.

Before Saltz, Mathew Collings of Britain had published ‘Art Crazy Nation’ (2001), a book that dealt with the British Art Scene since the Young British Movement. His first book ‘Blimey’ (1997) also had the same quirkiness. American-Mexican contemporary artist and critic, Pablo Helguera in 2007 published a book titled ‘The Helguera Manual of Contemporary Art Style’ – the essential guide for artists, curators and critics. This book too gives tips for all those new initiates to survive in the contemporary art scene in New York primarily and also elsewhere. For detailed read please refer to two of my articles written in 2008 and 2015 respectively (http://johnyml.blogspot.com/2008/10/manual-for-surviving-in-contemporary.html , http://johnyml.blogspot.com/2015/12/manual-for-surviving-in-contemporary.html).

(British Art Critic Mathew Collings)

 Market or no market, art is always fascinating for the people who are creative. Though there are not many people in our country who go out on the weekends to visit a gallery or a museum. There is enough money for doing shopping and owning cars, homes and latest gadgets but generally people are averse in spending money on art unless it is made too irresistible in terms of monetary benefit which was the reason why many investors came to play in the art market in India which in turn had given this illusion of everlasting windfall of richness. Today even artists in India speak about leaving the scene and looking for other openings in order to eke out a living. A few senior artists in their public speeches have categorically expressed their dismay in being in the art scene because it is not paying. According to them, they don’t feel the moral right or courage to advice any youngster turn to art as a career option.

(Artist and Critic Pablo Helguera)

In India whether you believe it or not art is still not a career option. Those who want to be fulltime artists need to take a long look into their future both in terms of being artists and citizens with decent lives. Still it is so heartening to see that there are many who come to study art in the academies and want to be fulltime artists. They are driven by a strange passion even when they know that there is no such existence possible in the given financial conditions, to be a fulltime artist. Those who could and would follow the advice of Jerry Saltz could end up in utter disillusionment though he is not talking about the Indian art scene or Indian market conditions. He is speaking about the people who could come into art because they could by means of money and leisure. What in India we need is an inter-disciplinary approach regarding the life and enduring practice of the artists. Their training could be useful for the new age which is technology rich yet needs traditional skills.

(Book by Pablo Helguera)

 I am not suggesting that the art education should become supplementary or vocational training towards technology and industry. But there are many sophisticated fields beyond advertising agencies, which is seen as first mainstay for the skillful artists. There are many young artists now go into film animation, computer aided graphics, creative directors for films and similar fields and so on. Though there would be killing schedules the financial freedom gained by the young artists help them to become artists of their own liking and imagination. But the only problem is that they themselves should set up new parameters for being artists. The romantic notion of an artist, a fulltime artist who is an eternally tortured soul should go and in its place a new artist concept should come up. This needs fundamental change in teaching art and art history in the art academies; the very basic approach towards art education should change. The art students should be opened to more advanced fields of art employment and conceptual thinking. Otherwise, reading the book of Saltz could give them wrong notions about being an artist even if he does not intend it so.

n  JohnyML

A Calligrapher who wakes up at 3 am to ‘WRITE’ Poetry: Narayana Bhattathiri

(Calligraphy Artist Narayana Bhattathiri -pic source net) 

Ask me to define ‘calligraphy,’ I would say it is the art of eternity or rather the art that captures eternity in a visual form. ‘Calligraphy’ means ‘beautiful writing’; a thing of beauty is a joy forever, says John Keats the British poet. ‘Forever’ has got a special meaning to this poetic utterance which could be easily connected to the art of calligraphy. In Malayalam, a letter, an alphabetic notation, is called ‘Aksharam’ which means something that endures. ‘Ksharam’ indicates the mortality of anything. The one that refuses to die and decay is Aksharam, the letter. Once written, it is etched forever in the memory of the human beings. Written words have got more impact and credibility than the spoken word. It was a transference of credibility from the spoken to written for the former had been the initial way of communication amongst the human beings. When the letters were found out, they were not really letters but stamps that ‘stamped’ a meaning through a pictorial intonation. That’s why noted calligrapher Narayana Bhattathiri says that as a calligrapher he does not write a ‘picture’ but visualize a sound, an action embedded in that sound. And Bhattathiri’s works have proved him right.

(work by Bhattathiri)

There is a perennial itch for the writer who attempts an article on Bhattathiri to qualify him as ‘Malayali’ calligrapher. Then the question surges forward: Is calligraphy, the art form limited by its linguistic base? The answer is negative. The linguistic base of calligraphy, Bhattathiri could easily say, is just a starting point. Once the word or words are written beautifully, they lose their connotative values and assume visual values. That’s why we could enjoy Arabic or Persian or Urdu or Chinese calligraphy. Had we been reading what was written in them, we wouldn’t have reached anywhere. It is as futile as looking for a definite meaning in abstract paintings or patterns. True that abstract paintings and patters could contain certain esoteric values then so is the case with calligraphy. According to Bhattathiri, calligraphy could evoke something beyond its visual quality; it could take the viewer to a different rhythm, a different feel and a different journey though it is purely virtual and mostly undefinable. The sheer abstraction is what makes Bhattathiri going with his passion; an artist who does not attempt other visual expression and found a niche in the world of visual art through pure calligraphy.

Bhattathiri gets up at three o clock early in the morning. And definitely there is a question, when does he go to bed? At 9.30 or 10.00 at night says Bhattathiri and the lazy ones could feel some relief. Bhattathiri’s early sojourn into the waking day is not for anything else but to draw a couple of calligraphy and post in his facebook page. It has become a ritual, a beautiful ritual which cannot be set aside for the sake of some good early morning dreams (which might come true if you persist to see them, they say). And what does Bhattathiri write? He likes poems. As creative person who spent his formative years in the Fine Arts College in early 1980s, Bhattathiri got acquainted with the modernist poets and the anarchic creative personalities who often were expressing themselves either through poems or through films. Theatre movement, political struggles and visual arts were also the pick of the days. Bhattathiri got hooked to poems and films and when he started doing calligraphy poems came to him like water to fishes. He seems to have a special liking for the poems of Balachandran Chullikkadu, a poet who had influenced many a youth through his poems loaded with existential angst and sense of alienation and the dejection for the failed revolutions. In most of his works we could see him doing Chullikkadu’s lines into calligraphic expressions.

With a special fascination for writing something beautifully in note books, black boards and stray pieces of papers, Bhattathiri started his unchartered creative journey and it was the Fine Arts College in Trivandrum that helped him anchor himself in the art of calligraphy. It may be partially true because he did learn a few techniques to do abstract art because that was what strongly recommended by the teachers of the college in those days for they had hailed from the illustrious Madras School of Art where the doyen of the so called Neo-Tantric Art Movement had perfected his modern art through a genre or a series of paintings called ‘Words and Symbols’ in which he had predominantly used palm leaf scripts and old scriptures done elsewhere. Panicker too was not intending to make sense out of the words though he liked the pictorial value of letters that could turn into intentional as well as unintentional symbols that could make a narrative sense of for many a viewer/reader. Bhattathiri excelled in such paintings and he was still writing as a personal labor of love and then it happened.

A call from the then famous Kala Kaumudi weekly, a place for creative people led by the illustrious editor S.Jayachandran Nair, came for Bhattathiri. The weekly was a meeting point of all the stalwarts in Kerala’s creative field and the comparatively young lot of them were showing the signs of going beyond the normative journalism and had been adequately fueled by the editor himself. Getting a chance to be between the two covers of Kala Kaumudi for any good or bad reason was a thing of pride. There was a famous column for literary criticism titled ‘Sahity Varafalam’ (means ‘Weekly Horoscope of Literature) written by a much revered and feared literary critic, Prof.M.Krishnan Nair. He minced no words in shattering the morale of the writers if they were not up to him mark, a parameter set by himself by reading and commenting the world class literature. Writers waited even for his condemnatory comments and that was a way to be featured in Kala Kaumudi!

The call was to start doing some calligraphy titles for the literary pieces that came for publishing in the Kala Kaumudi weekly. Bhattathiri grabbed the chance and started working on the titles and graphics only to learn that it was easier said than done. The incentive was getting featured as a creative team member in the famous magazine but the negative side was the deadlines and the last moment arrivals of the literary works. Bhattathiri confesses that the titles that had taken to the heights of fame and adulation in fact were written in short notice even without knowing the content of the piece. The title was given and he had to make out the sense of the writing through that single title. And most of the times his intuition worked! And it did vibe well with the imagination of the readers as well as the writers. Bhattathiri, along with Namboothiri in the department of illustration became two Titans to be tipped into the pages of history. Sooner than later more opportunities came for Bhattathiri from the lucrative field of movies. But Bhattathiri did not choose the invitations randomly; he kept his class and statndard apart and high. So he worked with the doyens of art house movies and could make certain titles remembered forever for the sheer sense of calligraphy.

Bhattathiri gets a lot of invitations to exhibit in group shows but he is reluctant to be a part of all kinds of shows. In 1992, one of his friends and a researcher on cartoons, Sundar helped him to put up his calligraphy works, the works that were already famous and etched in the minds of the people as magazine titles, and it got a good traction among the art loving public. Bhattathiri remembers how school children telling him about certain letters in Malayalam made complete sense to them when they saw them in calligraphy than in normal writing. Also they suggested that some of the letters could have been left half way so that they could imagine the rest. His facebook posts have not earned him domestic friends but also friends from overseas who have helped him to travel and show abroad. In South Korea, Bhattathiri’s works have a permanent space in a calligraphy museum. Besides, in China his calligraphic works have been made permanent through transferring them on granite slab; a rare recognition after none other than the handwriting of Rabindranath Tagore that also has found its way there.

(Narayana Bhattathiri giving a workshop on calligraphy to the young enthusiasts) 

A workaholic and introvert (a deadly combination commonly seen in many a creative person) Bhattathiri is ready to shed that demeanor if he is invited for giving calligraphy workshops. He says that he could see new ways of writing among the new people that could inspire him to do different works. A calligrapher is expected to create his own ‘font’ especially in the days of digital writing. Bhattathiri says that he is averse to make his own calligraphy because as a language Malayalam has more intricate letter types than English, though he has helped in styling certain Malayalam fonts. He also points out the fact that whenever calligraphy is taught it is always in English, especially in the fine arts colleges. In schools there is hardly any initiative to teach calligraphy. Malayalam calligraphy is as beautiful as the Arabic or Persian or Chinese Calligraphy, yes, when it is seen done by Bhattathiri, who has recently exhibited his series on the cult novel, ‘the Legend of Khasakk’ (Khasakkinte Ithihasam) by late O.V.Vijayan on the occasion of the it’s fiftieth anniversary. There may be many calligraphers in Kerala but Bhattathiri is the pioneer in the field and someone who has earned it a respectable position amongst other creative activities.

n  JohnyML

Mind the Gap between Hearing and Listening

(Ignorance, a sculptural installation by Kauser Jahan)

The work is titled ‘Ignorance’. It would have been a simple expression, very student like, had it not been explained in a certain way by the artist herself. Artist, Kauser Jahan is a post graduate student in the fine arts faculty at the Jamia Millia Islamia in Delhi. The work ‘Ignorance’, a pair of ears chained together and fitted on wooden planks, is exhibited in a neighborhood project in the Jamia area which has earned its own notoriety for being a Muslim ghetto; the Muslims live there don’t prefer it to be a ghetto but the political developments in the country has made it into one; the notorious shootout case, the Batla House Shoot out case, has now been made into a Bollywood movie with John Abraham in the lead.

I chanced upon this work of art in a report appeared in the Hindustan Times, a national English daily and Kauser Jahan explains this work saying that ‘hearing and listening are two different things’. Jahan further said that whether it was climate change or atrocities against the minorities the human beings chose to be ignorant about it. This ignorance could come from selective amnesia as put by the socio-linguist, G.N.Devi or it could come from the middle class apathy. People choose to ignore many things because they don’t impact their lives adversely; even if they see atrocious things in the smart phones or in the television screens, they find their safety and comfort in the glassy distance provided by the screens. Accidents always happen to other till it happen to us; immigrants are people who have been evicted from their rightful lands by forces that do not affect us; a land in confinement and the larger seclusion of people from the world could be overlooked because we still live in the illusion of living in a free space. We fail to acknowledge the fact that the space of freedom is rapidly depleting and shrinking. We choose to be ignorant.

(Kauser Jahan)

A pair of human ears tied together is not a great metaphor until it is seen in context. We are reminded of the catastrophic statement made by George Orwell in his book, 1984, ‘Ignorance is Strength’. Ignorance gives us some kind of insulation from the happenings in the world. A modernist poet in Kerala said, ‘Light is sorrow, Darkness is comforting’. Knowledge causes pain, oblivion is a refuge. Of course it is a refuge for the people who are pushed into atrocities and unbearable pains. They could overcome the trauma of occurrences by sleeping or by going mad. Each moment of memory is like creating a memorial for the pains that have been endured. But for the people who are put up safely away from calamities, negligence, ignorance and oblivion are a thing of irresponsibility. Jahan in her work seems to pinpoint this issue and we need to hark upon the visual comment made by this artist. She says, hearing is one thing and listening is another. We choose to hear everything and listen nothing. Hearing by one ear and letting it out through the other is a common saying to show the blissful ignorance of the people in general. But Jahan forcefully ties the two acts by one chain. Those who hear should listen too, she seems to say. Rather it is high time that we all listened to the things around.

In the discourse of the Black people and the dispossessed, it is said that ignorance is a strategy by the powerful people through which they annihilate the physical as well as spiritual existence or presence of the other. It is like we share our secrets in the presence of our house slaves and drivers. We expect them to be blind and deaf and definitely mute. This makes them invisible. There is an elephant in the room but we don’t see it, why? Because we are not looking at it or looking for it. It is like overlooking the obvious and pretending that it is not a big deal. We live in absolute cacophony created by news channels and social media. This sonic environment demands intelligent discernment; to separate truth from the dominant falsehood in all kinds of narratives. Hearing has to be attached to listening to make this discerning possible and viable. Our political discourse today needs careful listening than generic hearing and obeying. The work of art in this sense gives out a powerful message. However, Kauser Jahan needs more sophistication in articulating such sensitive issues visually, especially when she attempts a sculptural installation. For the time being the sculpture makes the impact because the times are pregnant with poignant meanings and a sensitive mind would eke out the adequate meaning chaffing out the unnecessary verbal embellishments that could come around it. Till then we need to bridge the gap between hearing and listening.

n  JohnyML

Gloomy Sunday: When Overground Turns Under Ground in the Days of Authoritarianism

(All Pictures are stills from Gloomy Sunday movie 1999)

A mainstream film could be made into an underground movie, if its audience decides so. After almost twenty years of its release ‘Gloomy Sunday’, a Hungary-Germany co-production directed by Rolf Schubel based on a novel written by Nick Barkow who based the theme of his novel on the life of Rezso Seress, a musician in the interim period of two world wars who had been shot to notoriety with his piano composition ‘Gloomy Sunday’ which as the urban legends go had triggered a series of suicides both in Hungary, Europe and the United States of America. Billie Holiday’s version of it in her melancholy filled syrupy blues voice was banned from the radio stations including the BBC for a long time especially because it meddled with the mindset of the people in the countries that had gone into the war. The film as infectious as the song itself has however got a different story to tell that makes it a potential underground movie liable to be watched by all the democrats in any country that has been currently ushered into the days of unapologetic fascistic governance.

India fits the bill as she has just been introduced to the garden of restrictions, suppressions and undeclared censorship on words and deeds. The current right wing dispensation at the center has proved undoubtedly that it could lock up a state and its people for any number of days, if months need be and use military force to maintain ‘peace’ and ‘normalcy’ until the will of the people are broken completely. While autocrats dream the dreams of everlasting dominance history works in the opposite direction. It in the most unexpected moments would prop up a messiah like leader or leaders who would be ready to either unify a country in the name of democracy or break it up in to independent federal states with dignified affiliation with an administrative center that would perhaps look after the larger economy, military, information and technology. One day, if history wouldn’t fail us decentralization would become a reality where even the right wing political forces could exist without its ugly fangs. Till then we have to watch a movie in the underground.

‘Gloomy Sunday’, it is said was not a creation of the spirit of self-annihilation. Surely it was the result of a broken heart; the tune as well as the lyrics says so. Learned people say that ‘Gloomy Sunday’ was the expression of Seres’ personal melancholy but those who would like to connect it with the general history of the time see its affiliations with the post first world war depression. The economic depression had caused the collapse of many a personal nerve. People had gone mad then and the post second world war depression had made Camus to say that suicide was the biggest philosophical problem of the 20^th century. The whole of existential thoughts had been birthed by the WW II. When the economies fail it is quite natural that people commit suicide. In India farmer commit suicide; instead of clutching to a vinyl record of the Gloomy Sunday, they drink from the pesticide cans and bid adieu to the world. When more and more youngsters are pushed out of their jobs and their future looks bleak despite the chest thumping nationalism makes its inroads at the border areas working overtime to send back coffins to villages, it is quite natural for the left over population to contemplate on suicide than to ruminate on the virtues of living. In those days it is imperative that we see ‘Gloomy Sunday’ the movie in all the possible interfaces so that we could discern why we live on and if commit suicide, why we do so.

‘Gloomy Sunday’ is a tragic story; of three people Laszlo, Ilona and Andras. For the Indians who think more about daily moralities than the freedom that one could eke out from relationships might find the movie a bit irritating and offensive because in this narrative Ilona, the beautiful Hungarian waitress at Laszlo’s restaurant ‘Szabo’ at once falls in love with Laszlo himself and Andras, the new pianist whom they recruit in the restaurant. She sleeps with both the men and they don’t find it odd to be in that strangely alluring relationship. On Ilona’s birthday Andras writes ‘Gloomy Sunday’ for her as the birthday gift. There is a young German businessman, Hans Wieck, a regular at the Szabo and a friend of Laszlo who also falls in love with Ilona but rejected by her at the first instance itself. With the Nazis taking over Hungary, Wieck comes back to Budapest as a Nazi Colonel who is in charge of sending the Jews to the concentration camps. He takes bribes from the affluent Jews and sends them to the other ‘free’ countries. On a fateful day, Wieck demands Andras to play ‘Gloomy Sunday’ and Ilona sings to the piano. Taking Wieck’s revolver, Andras, once the song is rendered fully shoots himself. Later Wieck assures Laszlo’s free passage upon Ilona’s submission to his sexual demands, which she obliges for the sake of Laszlo. But the Nazi Wieck proves himself to be an Aryan German by doing nothing to save Laszlo. Ilona becomes pregnant and we do not know whether the child is of Laszlo or Andras or Wieck. She lives on to die on another day.

Now about why the film becomes an underground variety in present day India. Though the film could be watched as a love story that ends up in tragedy (what is there in a love story if it is not a tragedy!) the real story is how the presence of Fascism changes human relationships; how it creeps into our daily lives and how treachery and deception becomes a common thing. It tells us how an unassuming businessman could turn into a military man who could ruthlessly fleece people for their personal freedom. It could also tell us how the power that are capable to overlook love and place revenge in its place. It also tells us how during the days Fascism how women are turned into mere puppets in the hands of militarized men. Gloomy Sunday is a metaphor of love but it is a cruel metaphor of authoritarianism as well. The underlying subtext is what makes the movie of underground variety. It is so interesting and ironic to notice that in the whole movie that deals with the war time Hungary there is only one shot is fired; that shot is not fired to kill someone else but Andras, the musician himself. It is the subtle representation of dispossession of human beings during the days of Fascism without emphasizing on the pathos though the music that one of the protagonists writes is melancholic. Andras shoots to fame when he writes a captivating piece of music but he is pushed to depression when he comes to know that the music is used by people as an inspiration or background for their final moments. ‘Gloomy Sunday’ is the song of impending ‘unnatural’ death in everybody’s life; any time the knocking could be heard at your doorstep. Watching this movie would empower you so watch it.

-          JohnyML

Janmashtami Celebrations at the Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai: Hitting a New Low in Visual Culture

(Inside Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai)

If I could believe my eyes and invest my faith in technology aided communication like an email, then I should say that the cultural discourse in India has hit a new low with the advent of the right wing thoughts within the cultural establishments. With Members of Parliament extolling pseudo-science as the ultimate scientific innovations of India for the global countries to emulate, citing mythology as non-verifiable proof but adamantly asserted dictum which should not be disputed and also with some from the same fold wanting to rename many an establishment including the highest educational establishments in India in the name of the head of the present administrative dispensation, and also with the citizens being segregated based on their intelligence quotient (ironically, the ones who have it a lot go lower in the rungs and the ones who despise it and turn sycophants go higher up in the social ranking) one could just imagine that things are not going to be as expected in the previous years.

Mumbai’s prestigious cultural museum namely Bhau Daji Lad Museum has sent out an invitation, which apparently looks harmless but is loaded with political suggestions and directions that the country has already taken. If someone is not heeding to the hints then they should take a good notice of it and behave or simply vanish from the cultural scene. Had it been in the yester years none would have noticed it at all: the illustrious and also rebellious and cutting edge museum celebrating ‘Krishna Ashtami’ or alternatively called Janma Ashtami, the birthday celebrations of the mythological character, Lord Krishna. There had been many exhibitions titled, Yoga, Kriya, Karma, Ardhanareeswara, Laya, Siva-Shakti, Spiritual Meanderings and so on. None took offence or objection to any of those titles. Maximum response of the intelligent was a meaningful smile. In Delhi, I have had so many reasons to keep smiling all these years. But with the new exhibition coming from one of the cutting edge museums in the country, the smile on my face and on the other faces must be a bit wry and contorted; one could see how the tides are changing and the cheering of celebrations turning into a war cry which would instill fear in the minds of the intellectuals who are now the most ‘unwanted’ creatures in the new India under the new government.

(Facade of Bhau Daji Lad Museum)

Bhau Daji Lad museum is not doing anything other than showcasing the Pahari miniatures that depict Krishan story, from its good repertoire. There is nothing wrong when it falls on the same day of Krishnanshtami. But what makes it eerie and ironic is the museum going out and out and telling the world that it is celebrating Lord Krishna’s birth with an interesting exhibition. Nowhere in the world today do we see museums doing shows that really celebrate religion or religious art. Even if they do, it is always done in an academic context or in the context of a survey of religious artefacts and icons. There is always a space for problematizing and vivifying the iconography and epistemology of images. There is always a space for understanding the myth in a non-religious context. Even the Biblical art today has turn to an academic field of research and study, and of course aesthetical enjoyment, nor really about the transcendental understanding or meditation that the people are expected to have while standing before them.

What Bhau Daji Lad museum gives is a new context where the Pahari Miniatures which have been hitherto an academic as well as aesthetical field of enquiry, or an interesting interface to probe the lineage of artisanal traditions in India (as done by Dr.B.N.Goswami) could turn into an interface for an extremely different aesthetical discourse, laden with religious meanings and loaded with religio-political intentions. Interestingly Bhau Daji Lad Museum was in the eye of the storm because the land mafia had made some encroachments while alleging that it was the museum that had made the encroachments. The cultural leaders in Mumbai stood with the Bhau Daji Lad Museum administration and even the rightwing government of the state had relented and let the museum function without much problem. Today the scenario is different. With an absolute majority in both in the state assembly and in the parliament, the writing on the wall is very clear; the government just does not want any ‘rebellious art’ to be featured. Anything and everything that should take place within the Indian museums should be something related to the so called Indian tradition, preferably the Hindu tradition. The Museum authorities have toed the line.

(Historical remain in the Bhau Daji Lad museum campus)

Bhau Daji Lad museum is the latest wicket that has fallen and the bowling is in the body line nature and there are no many good batsmen left on the crease. The National Gallery of Modern Art (D, B and M) have already made alterations in programing according to the present government and its ideology. Artists who are featured in these museums, even if they are not for the present government, their art could be interpreted as something that works ‘for’ the government’s ideology in the long run. We could call such art ‘harmless’ art. And it shows that the future of Indian art is going to be replete with a lot of abstract art works and religiously or spiritually inclined works. We have to wait and see how our art fairs are going to respond to such turn of the winds. The mainstream galleries have already started putting up harmless exhibitions and many a small gallery has downed the shutters. Even if they come back, it is not so complicated to think that their shows would have something to do with either dominant religion or with abstraction that pushes the works towards the so called spirituality.

Government of India is on the way to clear the cultural atmosphere of this country of the smoke that has been created by the secular art and also by the pluralistic traditions of India. With the country’s patronage also plays the same game of the government we cannot expect that there could a different patronage coming out in support and if they do they would be clamped sooner than later as we have seen in the case of the Infosys Foundation. So folks, here we are. Fasten your seatbelts and we are about to take off to a sky path where only conformists could feel all comfort. Be ready with your paper bags; you may retch at any time out of that bad feeling of having eaten that rotten sandwich.

n  JohnyML