The need for revival

It was once the old canteen area. Roofed with bamboo sticks and plastic sheets, they say it can come down anytime. The eucalyptus tree shadowing it bends an inch every month. It is humbly seen as ‘The waste lab’- a filthy place infested with mosquitoes with the undying smell coming from the vats carrying the concentrated pulp. A tub was overloaded with waste papers and cartridges and another with rotten banana shoots soaked in water. It was indeed a refuge for anything that was supposedly considered ‘waste.’ And a haven for anyone who is interested in moulding out something from just anything.

Paper- making workshop was once active many years back before it became defunct and it was only in the month of January this year that a weeklong paper making workshop was conducted by Anupam Chakraborty, a paper maker from Kolkata. Clay work has also been going on here for two years and the place was revived by the students as there was no space in the campus where the workshop could be conducted. During the paper-making workshop, students learnt the very basics of paper-making and were introduced to techniques of stenciling, water marks and layering. Paper is made from materials like cotton rags, jute bags, denim, onion peel, banana shoots and fibrous plants like carrot. The pulp is made in the blender called ‘Hollander beater’ after the materials are soaked for one or two days. The pulp is then stored in huge wooden vessels known as vats for few days. The concentrated pulp is taken out through deckle- a tightened sieve and spread on to wet cloth.

Easy it may sound, but it’s a laborious process and consumes a lot of time. Also the paper has to serve its primary function that is whether it is printable or not. Paper made with certain materials does not serve this purpose well but the use of dried leaves and threads for texturing, patchwork and paper cast form POP mould adds to the aesthetics part.

During Ganesh Chaturthi, final year architecture students came up with the concept of ‘Biodegradable Ganesh.’ Heaps of newspapers and used fabrics were collected for the purpose in the campus. It was a step taken in making Ahmedabad a greener place where Ganesh idols are mostly made out of POP and sold in large numbers. Also they would be making certificates for convocation next year. So far they’ve made paper boxes for ‘bhu:sattva,’ a garment company making organic fabrics and visiting cards for several others.

The students are passionately carrying forward their learning by themselves and making a difference by sensitizing other students in the campus. The festivals are celebrated with much vigour than before as newer ideas in keeping the campus clean and green are transforming the way people think.

In a Room of Mirrors

A bunch of girls walk into a popular hair and body saloon in the city. One of the girls is going to celebrate her 16th birthday in a few days, and the purpose of this visit with her friends is-because she wants a new look, a makeover. In the heavily mirrored space of the saloon, the girls are looking at themselves and each other. And looking at them are lot of advertisements of a cosmetic brand the saloon endorses. Models with brown and blonde hairstyles-with dashes of color, impeccable skins, size zero figures and branded clothing stare at them through the mirrors. No matter these posters are stuck away on the walls and the products are displayed in neat order admist them, the mirrors do a smart job of reflecting and placing these aspirational entities in conjunction with the girls- for the girls to see themselves…where they are not yet!

The saloonist walks over and starts explaining the girl what kind of new looks she can experiment. He first criticizes her present look, the condition of her hair, skin and very sweetly scolds her to take good care of it and subtly pointing out the new products she can use- a clear marketing strategy. He points out at the models in the mirrors suggesting whom would she look the best like. Her friends check and pool in their suggestions. And the saloonist sets about at his task of ‘make over’, while the girl gingerly keeps an eye looking into the mirror. Her friends simultaneously are browsing through a film magazine with a fashion coverage of a latest movie ‘Aisha’, wowing at the actresses clothes and figure.

This is definitely not one of the examples, when every day we are prolifically bombarded with images and ideas telling us what to wear (because everyone is wearing it), what to eat (because everyone is eating it), what to do (because everyone is doing it). These advertisers know how to appeal to our senses. They use peer pressure very heavily. "You need to wear these tennis shoes because (add a big name sports star) is wearing them and everyone else is going to wear them. You want to be cool don't you?" You have to have a fast car that can go 120 mph even though the speed limit is set at about half that. We are made to realise what we lack and how we will achieve fulfilment only when use the product. This is the general format all advertisements use.

Also in many Indian cities like Ahmedabad, such body care salons are recent phenomena – an undebated implication on the changing ideas of beauty. Also conspicuous consumption is one explanation for such mechanics of our growing consumer societies, and the massive growth of goods and services acquired mainly for the purpose of displaying income or wealth. In the mind of a conspicuous consumer, such display serves as a means of attaining or maintaining their social status. [1 In a society where there were clear gender demarcations, does the arrival of a unisex saloon indicate changing social order?

To a critical eye, space of the saloon may seem like Guy Debord’s quote in The Society of the Spectacle, “how we have become a society which has moved away from lived reality to consciousness of a represented reality.”

A detailed understanding of which can be gained by perhaps by looking at the two main elements which make up the salon (or that matter any beauty salon) – the images and the mirror.

1. Images:
Evidently there is a politics of the image and the act of image-making. What is taking advantage of the power of the visual and repetition versus the knowledge and the explanations i.e. ‘the words can never do what the sight itself can do.’ [2] Although most of the advertisements in this space do not physically represent the product, they all provide an important iconic representation of both the product and what the product should stand for. [3] The array of images of models and celebrities looking into the camera ‘confidently’ and saying that the product has made her desirable. Also note-the confidence stems from being notionally beautiful. As one looks at these ‘beautiful’ men and women, the self becomes the binary opposite (the non-beautiful). The products and the space of the saloon are what help the consumer strive achieve their perfection.[4] It is interesting to see the use of color red on certain products.
'Whenever a sign is present an ideology is present too'[5] and the ideology in this context is ‘what is beautiful?’ The images which are repeated over and over in the mirrored space of the saloon, to only continue in magazines, hoardings, televisions, etc reinforce this particular notion of beauty -which is non-separable from the male gaze. When the woman as a trophy to be acquired and presented, the visual becomes crucial especially when the female body is one of the most commodified object in our visual dominated society. The metro-sexual man joins the charade of visual presentation.

2. Mirror
The act of seeing is an act of choice and our knowledge systems affect the way we see things. Also we cannot forget how we are so much affected by what we have seen that our knowledge systems are slowly unquestionably being altered. Foucault talks about the mirror as a heterotopia-a place where we see ourselves where we are not.[6] Buddhist monastic practice condemns the use of mirror. There are myths about not using broken mirrors, lest we see distorted and broken images of ourselves. In representations of shringara, the mirror is used as the symbol of beauty, thus desire.

The mirrors in the saloon stare at you, in conjunction with a multitude of aspirational images. For the idea of beauty the place constantly exaggerates about, the mirror becomes the climax- a device of evaluation.

About the Rasika

The Spectator- the ‘rasika’noun
An observer of an event: beholder, bystander, looker-on, observer, onlooker, watcher.
[Latin spectātor, from spectāre, to watch]

Antonyms: participant, player, performer


John Berger opened his well-known BBC television series ‘Ways of Seeing’ by saying “It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world.” His comment points out the powerful position of the spectator, whose act of spectating creates and reinforces our social, political, and even bodily place in the world.

The word Rasika-the spectator, means one who can enjoy the rasas i.e. aesthetics. And aesthesis means a heightening of senses. So it implies that only a ‘good’ rasika will be able to enjoy the rasas well. What is being a rasika? Just as to create an art form involves lot of involvement from the artist. Similarly to be able to ‘enjoy’ an art requires involvement. All art forms always have a spectator in mind which is why enjoying art cannot be a casual act. Viewing an art is setting a conversation in motion-the conversation between the artist and the art, and the art and viewer. Art is the narration of the artists experience to the spectator. But why do we need to encounter art?

Rational man has always wanted to tame. We have tamed our physical environments. Conditioning and rulebooks are considered integral part of the civilized society. Similarly man tries to control his emotional and aesthetic environment. However one cannot control art. But the responses to art can be controlled. The conditioning systems, the Canon, etc play their role in forming these responses. But most of the times they cripple one of the experience one could have got otherwise. From the act of designing a city to some home apparel, human is always the scale. And the human is not just functional and pragmatic but also sensual. Cities designed imagining human as machine, dictating order and control, are not complete though it celebrates man power and dominance. A human scale also measures desires, agonies, anxieties, intimacies, etc. Art is able to responds to man’s this plane of existence. Hence encountering art is an emotional experience. How does one interact with art?

In one of the essay in her book ‘Art Objects’ Jeanette Winterson’s gives a personal narrative about her first encounter with art - how it was a deeply emotional experience. With this experience she draws parallel to the questions raised in her mind about her life, self and art.

When we look at art we are looking at an intense imaginative experience. Our responses are varied. Also the way we look at a work of art is affected by a series of assumptions of art and self. Sometimes these assumptions are obscure- since they mystify and raise art to an unrelateable pedestal. Our unfamiliarity with art is perhaps because many a time the work falls so much out of the comfort zone of our own experiences (of which we have complete knowledge and control of) that in order to keep this comfort intact we deny the other world of the art.

This denial of imaginative experience happens at a much deeper level than our affirmation of the daily world. Everyday, in countless ways we convince ourselves about ‘ourselves’. True art when it happens to us challenges the ‘I’ that we are.’[1]

As Winterson says, engaging with art is like falling in love. Similar to love, letting art affect you demands time and devotion. It is driven by a desire to know and explore, and a risk of complete surrender of your own being- prejudices and feelings, so that this new unfathomable emotion can overtake you and can be experienced to its fullest. Such an engagement reveals to us facets about our own selves which could never be revealed or be repeated by any other experience. Thus we are involved in just a love affair with art alone, but also with ourselves -discovering oneself in the process and what is it that constitutes this ‘I’. It involves the risk of constant learning and re-learning of one’s own self- just like how in love one is discovering a new ‘oneself’ through the eyes of the lover.

'Art is not merely a decoration or entertainment, but a living spirit. An act of art is a celebration of the profound human capacity.' Thus art is an intense act. Hence appreciating art cannot be a casual act, it itself has to be an intense act. However that doesn’t imply that this intensity is a privilege of a minority. It implies that all human have the capacity to ‘receive’ art, one just needs the resolve. Being a spectator is as important as being an artist.

‘Art does not belong to a biological evolutionary pattern. Art is not a little bit of evolution that the twentieth century city dweller can safely do without.’

Clock Towers

It is not until the Raj had arrived that Indian city landscapes began to be marked by these inescapable monumental architectural features which struck at regular intervals to announce the citizens the passage of time. No doubt they were also stylistic elements of the Colonial architecture and symbols of the power of the Raj. Though now we have ceased looking up the clock tower for ‘time’ in this digital and electronic era, since we have our own personal clocks strapped across our wrists, the clock towers loom significantly in the backgrounds as an artefact of a past and a birth of a concept of time. This very idea of time-the linear concept of time, has transcended much beyond its arrival in our context and has now assimilated unquestioned into our systems. And its sublime symbol- the clock towers through its physicality, its history tell us a story its time.

What is this time? And why is this need for the human to track time, from the time immemorial starting from tracking the sun at different times of the day to ancient scientists inventing the sundial to the clocks of today have been developed to keep time with accuracy? Is it to understand and tame the abstraction of our own existences, which is so intertwined with time? And aren’t these questions the birth of sciences, history and philosophy? And also religions-where each are trying to give their answers through their distinct mythologies, doctrines and philosophies.

Right from burning of incense sticks and candles which were, and are, commonly used to measure time in temples and churches; the intelligence of the inventions of various instruments used to measure time has been astounding. The hourglass, waterclocks and later, mechanical clocks used to mark the events of the abbeys and monasteries of the Middle Ages-are just to name few. It is only an urgency to document/understand time and acute observations that gave birth to inventions such the ancient zodiac astronomical calendar to Einstein’s theory of relativity. The clock tower, however, had a functional birth in the Biblical region when the passage of the hours was marked by bells in the abbeys as well as at sea. It is the etymology of the word clock also.

The English word clock probably comes from the Middle Dutch word "klocke" which is in turn derived from the mediaeval Latin word "clocca", which is ultimately derived from Celtic, and is cognate with French, Latin, and German words that mean bell.

Before the middle of the twentieth century, most people did not have watches, and prior to the 18th century even home clocks were rare. The first clocks didn't have faces, but were solely striking clocks, which sounded bells to call the surrounding community to prayer. They were therefore placed in towers so the bells would be audible for a long distance. Clock towers were placed near the centres of towns and were often the tallest structures there. As clock towers became more common, the designers realized that a dial on the outside of the tower would allow the townspeople to read the time whenever they wanted. And it is with the arrival of the Raj this new philosophy and religion of the clock tower came to India.

Colonialism brought with it the concept of linear time. And most of us now are accustomed to living life according to this linear beliefs and patterns of existence. We believe everything has a beginning, middle and an end. But Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism –the dominant religious schools of Indian sub-continent, had little to do with the linear nature of history, the linear concept of time or the linear pattern of life.

The passage of 'linear' time has brought us where we are today. But Hinduism views time from a cosmic perspective to. There exists the divine time of the Gods and the illusionary time of the mortals. Also, it believes the process of creation moves in cycles consisting of the yugas. And since this process is cyclical, it is never ending. Creation begins when God makes his energies active and ends when he withdraws all his energies into a state of inactivity. Time kal is thus a manifestation of God. God is timeless, for time is relative and ceases to exist in the Absolute -as the past, the present and the future coexist simultaneously. The cycle of time, Kalachakra, creates the divisions and movements of life and sustain the worlds in periodic time frames. [3]God also uses time to create the 'illusions' of life and death-which is nothing but a gateway to the next cycle, birth. This is true of the universe itself and parallel to the cyclic patterns in the rhythms of nature. The Rita, Ritu, Chandramasams and the nazhikas-vinayikas are the measurements of time.

This was the philosophical context in which the mechanical clock towers were planted. These power symbols of industrialisation- also were alien to a culture where occupation and knowledge systems were more ghetto based, when the apprentice had to report at his master’s workshop at sunrise and not at ‘Aath bajje’ i.e. when the clock strikes eight. New systems of education, new occupations, etc. dictated the importance of the clock tower. The shifts in language of the clock tower from its colonial origins to being amalgamated in vernacular architecture, as a sign of modernity, are interesting to note. These shifts are not only a case of architectural study, but it is the study of history of colonialism and its assimilation and impact on ideology of the sub-continent.

The clock towers stand in new meanings and new contexts as an artefact of a past and a birth of a concept of time.

The Wedding Album

We look into the interior of the house. The living room occupies the centre stage of the family drama, and spaces like kitchen, entrance, the TV room and the stairs scattered around it. This was the stage set for the ‘Wedding Album’.

An impressive crowd had turned up for the play at Tagore hall on the 10th of September in Ahmadabad with evident anticipation and expectations for Girish Karnad’s recent play. The play began after the organizers ‘We’ foundation welcomed this Mumbai based theatre group, by Lilette Dubey ,which has performed the play in various parts of the country already.
The play begins with the scripting scene of TV soap with attempts to identify what an interesting story can be. The creative head finds ‘the video footage with a self-conscious Vridula explaining herself to a prospective groom in the USA , very boring and unreal affair not suited for a prime time soap. It then flashbacks into a stereotypical snapshot family wedding scene -of Vridula. However as the play progresses, and the complexities and conflicts of each character in the family comes forth-far from any stereotypical. The plot line is simple, but the characters are not.

The actors Lillete and Ira Dubey and Suchitra Pillai have effortlessly slipped into being a middle class South Indian Nadkarny family in a Kanandiga village of Karwar. Particularly the latter, as a cynical wife and overprotective mother. As the father Amit Lal provides comic interludes and also shows a grappling patriarchal system almost reclusive with strong female individuals around. Rohit, and his love life- a hypocrisy existing within the youth, who reverently regard so called modern value system, at the same time don’t discard certain chauvinistic ones.(“I have a Catholic girlfriend”)

However the play received mixed reviews from the Amdavadi audience. Some ardent Karnad fans felt it didn’t meet his previous benchmarks. Some appreciated its multiple layers and attempts at a reflection of contemporary Indian middle class, typical to Karnad. Though the script is rich and strong, the monotony of some dialogues seems a drag. However, it includes some very subtle but effective details like Hema smiling at the letter, Vridula’s escapades at the cyber café, the social activists attacking the cyber café, Ashwin’s spiritual quest in an Indian bride.

The play somberly ends with the absent father watching TV, throwing light on him. (note the placement of the TV and the dramatic effect the light from the TV falling on his face) and the domestic help, who was assumed to have lost her insane daughter shares some revelations, only to conclude with the excitement she experiences when her master’s child relishes her cooking- a condition and complexity of being human.

The City of Desires

‘Do we want to belong to a history which erases plurality?’ This is the question the students, of final year Bachelors of Architecture at CEPT, are attempting to address through their design dissertation- a project with an unusual format and ambitious intentions.
The studio, of five students, had initially begun with each student’s individual area of interest. Pranav is looking at the nomads, their living patterns and their exchange with the regions they travelled, a phenomenon very contrary to the civilized settled city; Abhay at work patterns and meaning of work spaces-which are inevitable industrial spaces; Nalini at the idea of pilgrimage, an opposite to the chaotic city; Vishnu at tribal life and their art forms which add value to their lives, Heena looks at the city as a knowledge source, negating the monopoly of formalized systems of knowledge and Maulik was interested in intelligent waste management, and not look at the waste as a by-product but an inherent part of the city. Though each of these cases were associated with the city, they were contradictory to it, in terms of values. Since these concepts were counterpoints or opposites of the ‘city of recent times’-which was unified, singular and had a dominant value system, the studio collectively questioned the larger idea of the’ Act of city making’. Thus evolved the idea to create a city where pluralities would be allowed to co-exist.
Interestingly, traditional Indian society had always been tolerant about the idea of co-existence of plural community value systems. In Arthashasthra, the diagram of the city included communities whose existence was complimentary to the socially structured urban cities. For instance, the trangenders were a part of the civic structure. A mainstream dominant social value system never existed before. The student study had made visible many suppressed histories of the city. And also make seen the invisible and unseen city.
“Truly a city requires the opposite to be complete. However there is always a tendency to deny or suppress it.”, says professor Chayya, who heads the studio. When the counterpoints o or the opposites are allowed to exist as the city itself will it be the utopia or the ideal city. “Philosophically, the Indians believed that life had many paths, and no one could judge one path from the other as the optimum.” However with today’s economical and social system, the attempt to make our society like the ‘Other’ is immense. There is a desire to belong to the ‘world class’- which believes in a unified and singular state of existence.
The utopian city is thus a plural society where diverse value systems will co-exist. The students will evolve individual architectural interventions-as per their respective areas of investigations, which will on a larger scale come together as the ‘utopian city’ and interact with the city to form meaningful relationships. The nomads will be given infrastructure by the city; the tribal art forms will disseminate in the urban life providing new meanings to either, the process of recycling will imbibe itself as a iconic and integral part of city architecture; the proposed workspace typologies shall be sensitive to various working patterns, knowledge centers will be integral to communities and not be centralized institutions and the idea of pilgrimage-peace and self reflection will be a part of the city itself. Thus are born Utopias.
In Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino describes a curious museum in the city of Fedora. It is filled with many miniature designs of ideal Fedoras. However each time the designs were complete, Fedora had changed. Hence now redundant, they were placed in the museum. The citizens often thronged the museum to feast on these cities of desires.

The City of Desires

‘Do we want to belong to a history which erases plurality?’ This is the question the students, of final year Bachelors of Architecture at CEPT, are attempting to address through their design dissertation- a project with an unusual format and ambitious intentions.
The studio, of five students, had initially begun with each student’s individual area of interest. Pranav is looking at the nomads, their living patterns and their exchange with the regions they travelled, a phenomenon very contrary to the civilized settled city; Abhay at work patterns and meaning of work spaces-which are inevitable industrial spaces; Nalini at the idea of pilgrimage, an opposite to the chaotic city; Vishnu at tribal life and their art forms which add value to their lives, Heena looks at the city as a knowledge source, negating the monopoly of formalized systems of knowledge and Maulik was interested in intelligent waste management, and not look at the waste as a by-product but an inherent part of the city. Though each of these cases were associated with the city, they were contradictory to it, in terms of values. Since these concepts were counterpoints or opposites of the ‘city of recent times’-which was unified, singular and had a dominant value system, the studio collectively questioned the larger idea of the’ Act of city making’. Thus evolved the idea to create a city where pluralities would be allowed to co-exist.
Interestingly, traditional Indian society had always been tolerant about the idea of co-existence of plural community value systems. In Arthashasthra, the diagram of the city included communities whose existence was complimentary to the socially structured urban cities. For instance, the trangenders were a part of the civic structure. A mainstream dominant social value system never existed before. The student study had made visible many suppressed histories of the city. And also make seen the invisible and unseen city.
“Truly a city requires the opposite to be complete. However there is always a tendency to deny or suppress it.”, says professor Chayya, who heads the studio. When the counterpoints o or the opposites are allowed to exist as the city itself will it be the utopia or the ideal city. “Philosophically, the Indians believed that life had many paths, and no one could judge one path from the other as the optimum.” However with today’s economical and social system, the attempt to make our society like the ‘Other’ is immense. There is a desire to belong to the ‘world class’- which believes in a unified and singular state of existence.
The utopian city is thus a plural society where diverse value systems will co-exist. The students will evolve individual architectural interventions-as per their respective areas of investigations, which will on a larger scale come together as the ‘utopian city’ and interact with the city to form meaningful relationships. The nomads will be given infrastructure by the city; the tribal art forms will disseminate in the urban life providing new meanings to either, the process of recycling will imbibe itself as a iconic and integral part of city architecture; the proposed workspace typologies shall be sensitive to various working patterns, knowledge centers will be integral to communities and not be centralized institutions and the idea of pilgrimage-peace and self reflection will be a part of the city itself. Thus are born Utopias.
In Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino describes a curious museum in the city of Fedora. It is filled with many miniature designs of ideal Fedoras. However each time the designs were complete, Fedora had changed. Hence now redundant, they were placed in the museum. The citizens often thronged the museum to feast on these cities of desires.

The Story of a Yakshi

The career of the Didarganj Yakshi is an interesting one. It marks trajectories how overtime an object’s value transfers from an archeological antiquity to a national artistic icon and later to an endangered art treasure-which gets fossilized in the space of a museum. The Yakshi is not merely an aesthetic/art object but also an important national icon.
The Mauryan sculpture adopted the name of the place where it was discovered, Didarganj in 1917. Instituted as a local goddess, the Yakshi was transferred to its ‘ rightful’ home, the Patna museum, after convincing the villagers that a figure holding the chowky can only be a mere attendant. Thus for the officials the immediate battle was not just over meanings-or exhume its past life, but over custody. Henceforth the Yakshi would be available for no other rituals other than of art. Similar has been the history of many ancient art objects, especially idols which easily correspond with those of the Hindu pantheon.
The Yakshi -a freestanding, life size, female figure, six feet eight inches on the pedestal, with one arm missing and the other holding a flying whisk (chowky)flung over the shoulder; engages the viewer on many counts- the intricate style of modeling, the lustrous polish of the Chunar stone body and the not the least of all the voluptuous anatomy. The Yakshi belongs to the pantheon of Indian sculptures providing introductions to the sensual aspect of ancient Indian art. ‘While the images of the meditating Buddha held their ground as the reigning embodiments of Indian spirituality, they (art historians) had been bought face to face with an alternative pantheon of divine and non divine female figures whose charms were overtly and overpoweringly physical’ ,writes Tapati Guha in her book National Claims.
Since the time of its first discovery in 1917, the Yakshi has kept re-appearing not only in museums and exhibitions, but also proliferately in books and albums. In the year of India’s independence, it represented the new nation in the show that Codrington organized in London. It returned to Delhi in 1948 and became a part of the exhibition ‘Masterpieces of India’ at the Government national museum. However the return of the Yakshi with a pockmark chip, after the 1980 tour of the USA and France brewed a huge controversy. Taken as a dent in the national pride the sculpture was designated a special category of ‘rare and endangered’ antique and was given the verdict to never leave its home museum.
Now, cloistered in the Patna museum, as a shadow of its past, it is important to ask for whom the Yakshi exists there? For a small community of scholars and museum officials who have invested it with a unique historical, aesthetics and national value? Or for the masses that thong the spaces of all such museums in India, who remain completely oblivious of the figure’s true art historical worth?

Amdavad likes it short

Short film entries by women filmmakers are the buzz this month with International Woman's Day round the corner. As we gear up for a new year full of promises, more and more women are turning to film making to express age-old concerns and share tales spun from their imagination.

While female directors in Bollywood are far and few in between, India does have a few successful women filmmakers like Mira Nair, Aparna Sen, Gurinder Chadda, Deepa Mehta, Meghna Gulzar and Farhan Khan in the otherwise male dominated film industry. Although making a full-length feature film is an expensive economic and intellectual venture, with the decreased cognitive and financial cost of making a short film today, it has become possible for young students to experiment with film making as a medium. The appeal of this multi-sensorial, multi-media expression tool has seen an unprecedented surge in the number of students opting for film courses or submitting films as assignments. For instance, Alisha Attarwala, a college student from Ahmedabad made a film on the lives of beggars in Ahmedabad. She says, "the beggars were curious about the camera and the novelty factor helped us break the ice with them". But film making projects are now itching their way into school level as well. "I made a short film on the need to educate the girl child as part of a Grade 10 project and found the medium an engaging and meaningful way to interact with under-privileged girl", says Krina Prajapati a student of Mahatma Gandhi International School. She feels that "these small efforts do make a difference at the local level especially when we couple it with long term action."

With more short films being made, there was a need to screen them. A story narrated must be heard! Notably since last year, Ahmedabad is a happening place to be for short filmmakers with the Ahmedabad International Film Festival, Shamiana and Chitra Katha in addition to the well established film clubs of the city offering a wonderful platform to share and screen films. Way to go Amdavad!

Published in the March issue of Shamiana Shorts 2010.

Arts Education Conference

We've all studied art in school and in college. Well almost, that’s if you consider the demographic of the students studying here at CEPT. Between Munnabhai, our in-house Xeroxman who coats pages with ink as we rush from jury to jury, Sameerbhai, our stationary quick fix who manages to stuff many rolls of paper, paints, pens and people in one small space, two art galleries, two theatre spaces, walls painted by students or waiting for such an honor, two resident artist spaces, several workshop spaces and much more, our everyday negotiations in the space in and around CEPT involves artistic and aesthetic exposure and engagement at one level or another. But for many students, and their teachers, arts and academics belong to two ostensibly contradictory poles.

To negotiate the distance between the two, efforts at the local, national and international level are being made. "With the economic crisis, the fear of terror attacks and the growing social unrest as the social gap widens, people are feeling insecure. Art helps you deal with the your insecurities as you have to deal with unfinished products all the time hence arts education is gathering considerable attention", opines Dr. Evelin Hust, Director of Goethe-Institut, which organised the Arts Education Conference (Bangalore) in collaboration with the India Foundation for the Arts. The conference brought together policy makers and practitioners interested in integrated art education for rural and urban students, children and adults living in troubled regions such as Kashmir, museum visitors etc. It also brought to the fore interesting pedagogical practices and projects recommended and implemented in Europe, Karnataka, Chennai, Kerela and other places.

One particularly interesting idea that was communicated through a hands on workshop by Dr. Manfred Schewe is the idea of using Theatre in the classroom to teach other mainstream subjects such as a Language class. Based on the premise that playing helps the learning process, a 2009 research by Wager, Belliveau, Beck and Lea published in 'Scenario', a specialized German magazine for teachers, shows that theatre not only creates a platform for intercultural awareness and exchange but it also could "bridge cultural and linguistic barriers". The benefits of such a pedagogical practice are manifold but let us explore what it means to learn with what the workshop leader called 'drama pedagogy'.

Try to visualize this, you are in a foreign language class. You are standing in a circle and the entire class represents 'one person' and this 'person' is a murder suspect. The teacher is 'in-role' of an inspector and asks you, the collective entity where you were last night, what you were doing, who you were with etc. The moment one player contradicts another, the 'murder suspect' i.e. the entire class, has contradicted itself and is found guilty. Imagine studying the entire time with such activities. Being present in the workshop, I can assure you Dr. Schewe had no issues of discipline, maintaining silence as the others strained to listen attentively, or participation as the non-threatening and playful approach invited even the shy ones to come forward. It gave a rightful space for the 'process' to take center stage as opposed to the 'product' and the exam. And more importantly, it allowed the participants the freedom and the space to fail and learn and fail again before learning some more.

The advent of such practices in formal and informal education is significant. And it will benefit many students. What is heartening is to observe the sudden surge of interest in arts education at the national and the international level. The Second World Conference on Arts Education was organised by UNESCO at Seoul this year amidst several other projects in Germany, Kashmir and other places. This conference is part of a larger movement of consciousness about arts education.

Look who's talking...

As the crowd thronged, tugged and pulled to get a glimpse of Benjamin Zephaniah in the green room at Natarani, we waited with bated breath for a shared moment with him after his recital. His poetry was so inspiring, so playful…so refreshingly different and yet so evocative and intense that meeting him had to be something more significant than – "Hey loved your performance", "Awesome", "Amazing"...

Finally, amidst fifty people squeezed in the small room, I came face to face with him and smiled vainly. I had one shot at striking a meaningful conversation with him. It was not fair!

"Which form of martial arts do you learn?" I quipped.

He jumped with delight. He looked at me half expectantly and said "Wing Tsun, it’s a quaint form of kung fu, not many people have heard of it... (suddenly his eyes twinkled) do you learn martial arts?" My heart skipped a beat, we were learning the same form of martial arts and both of us were passionate about it.

 He insisted we compare how it was being taught to us and suddenly, the space was cleared for us to practice 'siu nim tao' form, 'chi sao', and chain punching. I was gleaming with delight. As we finally started 'talking', with sweat pouring down our foreheads and the crowd gathering around us again, he shared anecdotes and stories about his work, his life and his art. He couldn't hope for a more eager crowd. Finally, almost an hour later, his manager grumbled and requested us to leave so he could wind up and sleep.


What is remarkable about this experience is the lesson it unassumingly taught. It acted as a subtle reminder about the complexity of thinking and approaching the Arts world. Transposing this experience into the learning curve, I realized that the humanness of an artist must not be lost when interviewing him or writing a story about his work. An artist draws inspiration from real life experiences and activities. Zephaniah's art of writing for example, is also influenced by Kung Fu. The balance and the fluidity present in his work are characteristics of both art forms however, it does not imply that it is the only influence. There is more to the lines drawn or written by an artist than meets the eye, and simplistic reasoning cannot even begin to account for it.

As humans, we constantly make connections with the world around us. This ability to relate to things, identify interdisciplinary relationships and gain a holistic picture is essential for any art journalist. A response to a work of art is about having a conversation with that piece of art, the artists and the context in which it is anchored. It is about connecting.

ABOUT ZEPHANIAH

Benjamin Zephaniah is an eclectic Rastafarian writer and dub poet. The Times (2008) listed him in Britain's top 50 post-war writers. He was born and brought up in England in conventional, straight-jacket poetry but it is his Jamaican roots which have brought in a fresh lease of life into poetry. His work breaks linguistic and racial barriers and reflects cross-cultural references. His poetry is 'political, musical, radical, relevant and on TV.'

(Image courtesy: the official website of Zephaniah- http://www.benjaminzephaniah.com)

White Comedy
from "Propa Propaganda"

by Benjamin Zephaniah



I waz whitemailed


By a white witch,


Wid white magic


An white lies,


Branded by a white sheep


I slaved as a whitesmith


Near a white spot


Where I suffered whitewater fever.


Whitelisted as a whiteleg


I waz in de white book


As a master of white art,


It waz like white death.



People called me white jack


Some hailed me as a white wog,


So I joined de white watch


Trained as a white guard


Lived off the white economy.


Caught and beaten by de whiteshirts


I waz condemned to a white mass,


Don't worry,
I shall be writing to de Black House

(republished from his official website)

Eternal Companion

Like the thousands at the India Art Summit, I too was looking for my ‘moment of connection’ amongst those innumerable pieces of art, that kept passing me by, and as I kept passing by them. And when I found it, it hit me, forcing me reconnect with my own cultural self and its connection with themythologically revered Indian Cow.The work was titled, ‘Eternal Companion’ and the Singapore based artist was P.Gnana.

The simplicity of the work hit me the most, and left me marvelingat the seemingly deep bond the artist seem to share with Cows. As an Indian, my mind traversed the holy associations with the Cow, and their symbolic value. But ‘Eternal Companion’ was an interesting depiction of these holy cows and their connection and life on Earth as companions to Humans.

The paintings by themselves were rich with bold colourls, but were juxtaposed with the bony outline of the Cows, their melancholic eyes, that reflected the miles of misery on the Earth. The Cows and the human figures were depicted entwined in an embrace that left me wondering how natural this relationship seemed, and how far we have left it behind in real terms. Gnana, to my mind was attempting a perfect balance and an eternal bond between the two in an attempt to capture what seemed like an eternal moment of connection amidst unending misery of life on earth.

Analysis of a Painting by Caravaggio: Judith beheading Holofernes

Indian mythologies have always seen stories with similar moral told in varied manner; be it the Naagdaman by Shri Krishna, the death of King Harinyakashyap by Narsimha or the killing of Ravana by Lord Ram- all explaining the victory of truth over evil. It is all the more captivating to see a heroic character deceiving his enemy by tactful methods like Lord Krishna in Mahabharata or Lord Vishnu in the incarnation of Mohini misleading the Danavas during the Samundra Manthan.

Interestingly a similar connection is seen in a Baroque style painting of Caravaggio called Judith beheading Holofernes. The very comely and rich widow Judith, had put off her mourning clothes, dressed herself in the finest garments and entered the enemy camp in order to rescue her people. The Assyrian army, led by Holofernes, stood in arms before the city of Bethulia. The Jews had lost heart, were on the point of giving up, and yet this woman set out on her own to seduce the enemy. After her bloody deed, the enemy soldiers fled in panic; Israel was saved and Judith returned triumphantly from the libertine’s tent. This characteristic of Judith is similar to that of the Mohini as she distracted the Asuras took the Amrita, and distributed it among the Devas, who drank it.

Caravaggio has painted the precise moment in which Holofernes is beheaded. His eyes have yet not grown dim in death, but are staring out of his head, full of mortal fear, and his mouth is wrenched open in a scream. The victim is still alive, his head only half – severed from his body. Caravaggio sought to capture the moment of shock and horror. The King Harinyakashyap got killed by yet another incarnation of Lord Vishnu called the Narsinhma wherein the Lord used his nails to kill him as the King would not be killed by weapons. It was a slow death, with prolonged pain, open eyes filled with horror prominently seen on the countenance. In Caravaggio’s painting, Judith’s features betray neither triumph nor passion, but determination and disgust. She lays the defenceless man without using force, keeping as great a distance as possible between her victim and herself unlike the Narsimha who puts him on his thighs (neither on earth or sky and kills him.

Swords, daggers and knives may be seen in almost all Caravaggio’s paintings. Like blood and decapitation, they constitute a kind of sadistic approach in his work. The paintings of Caravaggio expressed a natural vision. Nor does this demure heroine appear in a magnificent Baroque gown, but in the best clothes of the woman of the people. In doing so, he suppressed neither the furrows nor lines on a face nor the wrinkle produced by a life of toil on the hands of an old woman. It was just “too natural “as said by an artist namely Annibale Carracci could say about his contemporary’s painting of Judith. Figures, accentuated by artificial, almost subterranean lighting effects, standing out against a dark, nocturnal background became a characteristic of his work.

house as home: revisiting the place and space

Memories always play with human emotions. They make you introspect as well as retrospect resulting into a chaos of feelings. Memories have a strong connection with something unique which remains forever.Childhood memories leave an impact that lingers for a lifetime. Though the child is able to reciprocate to a less number of incidents, the clarity of those incidents gets manifested in him very deeply; subconsciously transforming his nature of thoughts and actions.

My childhood nostalgia mainly includes the memories at ‘Avdhut’ – my home at Sector 22 in Gandhinagar. This corner plot is a ground plus two structure lined by many red and white colored champa trees at the entrance. My house comprises of a living area facing an open garden, a dining area, a kitchen attached with wash and two bedrooms on the ground floor whereas three bedrooms on the first floor. Through a spiral iron staircase on the first floor, we enter the second floor having three multi level terraces and a huge circular water tank.

Born in a well knitted Gujarati family, I reside with my grandfather, parents and a younger brother since last two and a half decades. I am emotionally attached to all; the place, people and the objects .They have transformed a brick – concrete structure into a livable place and nurtured it into a lovable environment.

This compells me to think that what is it that makes your house different from others? Why is it that by sleeping only on a certain pillow you get a sound sleep? Why is it mandatory to spend some time near that window of your room? And the list is endless..Sometimes we never question our habits which are developed by many of these unobserved elements. A similar intimacy is experienced by me towards specific elements and spaces in my house.

My first and the most favorite of the element is the swing or the hichka (as said in Gujarati) in the open garden to which I am addicted. It is the only element in our entire house which has not changed in the last twenty six years. Never did I realize when it became such an inevitable part of my life. Me and my younger brother are so attached to it that it is mandatory to spend at least an hour with it dis cussing our most confidential and personal conversations. While writing about this special member, I realize that how a seemingly passive element plays an extremely active role in our social structure ; hence making me a secret aesthete for the same.

The second element reminds me of my school days, winter mornings and my grand mom. It was a Parijaat tree in the front of my house which sheds the memories of my late grandmother. It’s special because I precisely recall my grand mom ordering me to get the Parijaat flowers for her morning prayers. Amidst the winter mornings, the joy of pushing the tree and the subsequent pouring of the white and orange flowers on me is still immeasurable. The low height elevated platform on which the grill rested became my seating place. After that, the entire process of choosing the best of the flowers and putting them in a specific order in the steel thaali was brain taxing. For me this entire process was a prayer in itself because there was a sense of complete involvement, sincerity and devotion that was inculcated by me. I now realize that the

Parijaat tree not only had an aesthetic appeal but also a functional value.

The third space that binds me is the Puja room in our house located at the mezzanine level. Though I am not its regular visitor, I feel satisfied by its mere presence.The huge pictures and the idols of God Goddesses emanate vibrancy. When the sun rays disembark on the huge picture of Om, the entire room gets filled up with the repertoire of the yellow color. Spiritually too the vibrations in the room are profound. The intangible space inside the Puja room and its soothing expe rience makes the room special.

The fourth element is the terrace area of my house. This space has become special to me only in the recent times since I have had many Bharatnatyam dance practices on it. During the dance rehearsals, I am able to see the “dhaja” of the Jain Derasar temple that is located at the distance of one kilometer from my house.

I feel God watching over my dance whenever I look at its saffron color. Somehow, I am always able to concentrate on the dhaja inspite of the complicated actions and immense mobility. Hence, I feel an interesting juxtaposition of the physical horizontal plane and the unseen space.

What intrigues me is how the solidarity of an element, (in case of the Parijaat tree /Hichka) or a space, (Pujaroom/ terrace) gets transformed into an emotion. The familiarity of these elements encourages me to feel deeply for my house. I cherish the connections with these spaces, treasure the conversations with the intangible and value the feeling that it belongs to me. Most importantly, it unfolds the intricacies of the emotion those appeal me and make me say – that’s my ‘home’.

Friend

I never had friends in my life. I only had guides.Never was I loved by them, nor did I make any extra efforts for the same. It was kind of mutual. So I am completely unaware of what ‘missing friends ‘is all about… Or in the first place, is it necessary to feel so? It’s so difficult to write about the people to whom you are not close to ; all the more difficult when you know that person is unaware of the fact that you are writing for them and very disheartening when you realize that their physical presence is nowhere to be hugged, kissed or touched. I often wonder whether God ever heard of a something called a ‘close’ friend – Did he ever experience the unlimited gossips, frequent get together’s and baseless group studies! It’s good that he did not waste his time after that .He surely must be too busy in ticking in front of his favorite names which He needed soon. He needed ‘Binu’ soon enough!

Life was complex earlier – understanding the concepts of integration, differentiation and atomic tables but it is much simpler now – one has to know only oneself. But, it’s strange as there was a sense of satisfaction even in those complexities unlike a feeling of restlessness in this simplicity. Somehow, I have managed or will get accustomed to enjoy this simplicity as well. Now coming back to ‘friends’, in my school days I used to hang out with some weird bunch of people namely Ankita Thaker , Binal Pandit and Pooja Jethwani who knew a little more about me (Heta Vyas) than my role number. Out of the three, Pooja was somewhat close to me. I was indifferent to Binal and used to hate Ankita; or even more than hate.After my plus two in the year of 2003, I and Ankita got admission in an Architecture college at Rajkot and Vidyanagar respectively; Binal went to an Engineering college at Ahmedabad, and Pooja made through a dental college at Jaipur. I was too excited of my new world of unknown people, lots of friends and interesting boys! I was sure of not ‘missing’ them.

I was enjoying everything to the core – my new city, my college, my hostel. In the midst of all this, I realized that the frequency of my remembering that weird bunch also increased day after day. I just smiled when their faces crossed my mind. Free messages scheme accelerated the process of sharing between me and Binu. (That’s the nickname of Binal).Anki a.k.a Ankita also managed to remain in touch; I still hated her but could not ignore her. Days went by and the sharing between me and Binu increased, the gossips with Pooja varied and the fights of ‘You don’t understand’ between me and Anki got transformed into discussions of ‘I understand’. Things went pretty well for all of us; sharing each others pain and gain making a huge roller coaster ride whenever we met. In 2007, all four of us somehow managed to spent time with each other at Binu’s place, making my first unofficial visit to Ahmedabad during my final submissions. It was definitely worth it! Yes, I missed them on my way to Rajkot.

But in the month of September in the same year, things din’t seem well for Binu. She experienced some kind of frequent joint pain but just could not figure out it’s actual reason. She was quite OK in spite of her aching body and her pale face which said a different story altogether. This story took a different turn on May 27, 2010, at arnd 11 am when one of my classmate Prachi Oza called me from Pune. I had my final exam but somehow managed to pick up her call. ‘Did u get the news?’, she asked. ‘What news’ was my reaction.‘Binal passed away yesterday ‘was her reply. Did I mention it was Ankita’s birthday?

After two and a half years, when is it alone I ask myself has anything changed between ‘us’. Yes, there is a change. The way I feel for my friends. I mentioned earlier I never had friends; I had guides – the best of guides whom I also loved.It’s true that never was I loved by them because I was always valued by them - the most ; love just fell into place. I never had to make any efforts because they always understood my needs and worries and they still understand. And that’s why I really don’t know what ‘missing’ is all about because they are always there… guiding me, loving me and supporting me.

I m lost in the thoughts.. I am about to cry when I am interrupted by a blink of light ‘Meeting at 7, Binu’s place ‘, text from Anki … Binu’s place is the leading chain of restaurants of India ; probably a return gift for our guiding angel!

Notes from the Bansari

It was the opening of an exhibition of an internationally prominent and senior Indian artist at a popular gallery in our city. The artist had displayed his recent cubism inspired, female figures. In the pristine white gallery space there were small circles of many known faces of the city, busy discussing the paintings on display and also each other. A high profile event it being, the organisers had set up a seven-star hotel’s stall to serve samosas and chaa. To add more colour to the grandiose of event in the court flanking the gallery, a ravanhatta and bansari were being played by two men-attired to be from rajasthan. This is the first time I met Jagdish Bhai, playing melodious tunes from the bansari. And inside outside-on display was an ironical comparison.

Both Jagdish bhai and the artist were almost of the same age, late 60s. The artist was inside the gallery, being well hailed at; while Jagdish Bhai played away in the corner of the court outside. The artist just had had a discussion with me on the pains of an artist to produce art and how irresponsibly the media represented both the art and the artist, while irrespective of the questions I asked, Jagdish bhai had begun a spontaneous conversation about the maya of this sansar. There were turns to congratulate the artist or to be introduced to him, while Jagdish bhai was easily passed by- reduced as a background score for the whole high profile event. But why I remembered Jagdish Bhai for a long time, even after that event, was the warmth, comfort and content his tunes played. So enthralled were a bunch of us by his music, we expressed him our joy, to which he smiled and replied, “Main uski den se ek kalakar hu!” (I am an artist because of his blessings) And so curious was I, that I had decided to meet him again.

The next time I met Jagdish bhai at his house in Gulbai Tekra-where the community of Solankis from Sarala in Marwar have settled around 150 years back. Jagdish Solanki born and brought up here showed no trappings of modernity of the city which surrounded him. Interestingly he was a government driver before he gave up his job for the love of the flute 40 years back. “I began learning practising folk songs from our Rajasthan and a few filmi songs.” He now plays at bhajans and functions. Sometimes he goes to Delhi and Mumbai to play. Also for the Jain monks at their utarans i.e. the temporary stops on their pilgrimage routes. His father and grandfather were dari-makers. “There wasn’t a fixed occupation. We were nomads who decided to settle.” He shared a dramatic story of how the Solankis decided to move away from Rajasthan to escape the tyrannical rule a feudal king before he had begun talking about the workings of the world-displaying highly philosophical and liberal views.

Of his seven children only his elder son has inherited his love of playing the flute. Two of his other sons are sculptors and artists who make traditional murals on the walls. Recently one of his son who was approached by a UK based organisation for some work in London, was denied help to go abroad, for reasons of being an illiterate. Then the family collectively decided to educate the grandchildren. However he wants them to be kalakars. What about clichéd desires engineering or medicine? Amused, they laughed a no.

“..it is like the fish and the bird. You remove the fish from the water to live in air, it will die. So will the bird die in the water. Each can survive only in their worlds. One cannot live in the world of the other.” Jagdish Bhai told me in one our meetings. Were these thoughts a consolation or the cause of the existence?

Jagdish Bhai is just one of the many stories of people who are anonymous folk artists, lost in economic and caste crutches. What would be art in stories of such ironies? An artist in his x by y studio, moulding with paints and clay with great effort an abstract meaning into reality versus the man who engages with a musical object like a bansari creating something as abstract as music –everyday everywhere. The artist who reveres the art on a pedestal, only to viewed and touched by a select few versus the notes of the bansariwala constantly modulating and being familiar to the streets around Gulbai Tekra. One was displayed in the ‘privileged’ space of a gallery versus while the other person’s notes were played, forgotten outside the gallery.

A home away home!

Perhaps since my parents migrated away from ’their’ home as a young couple to make their lives, they are always nostalgic. They are nostalgic about their childhood, their culture, their festivals (ulsavams), even their language-malayalam. This nostalgia has been surviving 35 years though they have accepted Mumbai as a second home. The padams(fields) and the ancestral home have been left behind only physically.

The acquisition of an ‘own’ space in Mumbai was a long journey for them. Beginning with humble earnings, it took them some years before they bought their first house after living in staff quarters of the company my dad worked. Aesthetically this place never satisfied them owing to comparisons with their home in Kerala. There was no open space. We had to share space and rooms with each other. It was not even comfortable as the previous quarters which were considerably huge and in the middle of a forested area-it was much closer to their idea of a home. But now they owned this place. Mom began her process of conversion of space. (a little bit of Kerala in Mumbai)She added a balcony garden, a little fish tank, and some openable grills with flower creepers to our two BHK flat.(elaborate) Dad’s collection of wooden masks, Karnatic music cassettes and mom’s Krishna and Ganesh idols soon occupied the walls and shelves of our new house in neat organised displays. It became customary for them henceforth to carry a part of Kerela- a lamp, a brass vessel, a mask- back after our annual vacation there. That was our idea of vacation- visiting home.

We as children were to speak in Malayalam compulsorily. A habit which still continues. The language forms one of the biggest connections with their home. And this was their only bridge to their belonging, which they insisted we inherited. And perhaps of all the rules set for our childhood, this was the only one we never resisted. This extended to the dictatorship of Malayalam television and movies in our home.

The only explosion that existed in this Mumbai Keralite home was the room shared by me and my sister. School books, novels, pop-magazines, paintings, posters, some interesting discards occupied a clusterish and revolutionary existence only in our room. The room was a confusion, a mixture and exploration. Both me and my sister, had inherited the tradition of carrying back a piece of the place on a travel, thus our travels started contributing to the décor of the house-not without resistance or debate most of the time. And sometimes blantant disapproval at the nature of the souvenir.

An important character in our home is the telephone. The telephone forms the only tangible form of communication for my parents with their kith and kin. Investing in telephones has always been my dad’s obsession. Each room has a telephone connection, inspite of being a small and accessible home.

Often I have wondered while growing up, if this nostalgia was triggered by the anxiety of alienation they faced in a city with a very different culture. However their eclectic set of friends negate this idea. Also their tolerance of our multi-cultural value system. This city was definitely a new home-where they got opportunities to fulfil their dreams. Along with adapting a 800sq ft apartment into a home filled with archives of their memories of their home, the new city was accepted and loved for its own reasons. However the eternal nostalgia of what they left, lies etched in their lives and on the surfaces our home.

Of Marriages and Profits

I love our Big Fat Indian weddings. The colourful mandaps and the phera-chori, the mehendi and the mithai, the glittering bridal nathni and the bridegroom’s sehra, the kanyadaan and the bidaai – all of these are exciting yet intimate moments shared between family and friends.

Does the rest of India also love it? Perhaps it does, both in real and reel life. The two-decade long obsession and popularity with the elaborate Indian wedding is easily apparent in Bollywood movies and satellite television, attracting audiences by the millions. The import of this is not lost on the image-makers branding Wedding as a luxury product to be consumed in vast proportions.

One often sees advertisements using the backdrop of the Indian Wedding against which to position their products. From sarees, jewellery, suit materials to bank insurances, from lifestyle accessories to food items – Indian weddings have them all.

Take the advertisement for Met Life Insurance against the backdrop of an Indian wedding. The bride-groom and his family members dance to a song about a life insurance that secures his family’s future. A plethora of advertising in India today, uses the Indian wedding as a metaphor of permanence and security. It is interesting that the Indian wedding that has brought home the language of banking and insurance! So life insurance has become kind of ‘cool conversation’ and a much needed vibrancy has entered its discourse. India after all is the least insured country in the whole world!

Let’s do a flashback scenario in a stereotypical context where a young couple is shown nodding to the formalities of the insurance policy. It is almost impossible to get anyone on a rational platform today, leave alone explain benefits! We live after all in an image driven society! Today, many related products with or without any matrimonial implication ride on the Indian wedding as a backdrop. The question is not whether these ads are successful or not, but how marriage as a sign helps connect people to products and brands.

Other products like the fairness cream – e.g Vicco turmeric or the Raymond suitings too have explored the wedding themes. For example the jingles of “banno teri ankhiyan” that were played in the oldest Vicco ads were an anthem in those days and all one could remember were around twenty women applying haldi to the bride. Also, the Titan ad showing a young girl playing the piano for her sister was designed along similar lines. More than the brands, the jingles, the context, the gaze, the expressions have not been forgotten.

A recent survey shows that there is an increase in the new age ‘live in’ relationships. Well, our advertising certainly seems to be replaying the good old stable institution of marriage. One wonders if marriage has become as much of a ‘product’ as are the brands themselves. Either way, the brands are laughing all the way to the bank! Marriage anyone?

Waterless boating?

The earthy colored complex of Sarkhej Roza at Ahmedabad generally covered by a people like photographers, architecture students or historians, will now be seen overflowing with ‘aam admi’. They will admire the beauty of the monument sitting in bright colored boats, relishing sev puris and Pani Puris at the laari walas. This imperial necropolis is soon to undergo a face lift .So where is the problem? Well, the facelift will be seen in the form of boating activities in Ahmedsar Lake; the dry water body of Sarkhej Roza complex.

Covering a huge area of 50,000 sq.mts, Ahmedsar Lake or this water body requires a minimum of two crore gallons of water to be filled. This has not been available over last few years because of the insufficient rainfall. In spite of being aware of the present condition of the lake which houses nothing but plastic waste, the authorities of Sarkhej Roza seem quite convinced by their decision. Also, the boom in the real estate market has suddenly sprouted to a rash of high rise apartments and offices in the vicinity of the lake resulting in blockage of adjoining water catchment areas. Ironically, amongst these buildings stands one of the biggest media houses of Gujarat which is publicizing the ‘heritage’ of Sarkhej Roza!

Earlier the water of the lake was so clean that it was used for waju by the worshippers. Today, the lake is in a deteriorated state. “It is the work of AUDA (Ahmedabad Urban Development Authority) and AMC (Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation) to take care of the plastic wastes”, informs Mr. Qadri, member of Sarkhej Roza Committee when asked about the planned boating activities in the lake. The boating activities will definitely increase the visitors to the monument but success cannot be evaluated only through quantity. “Does large number of people flocking to a place make it successful; yes at some level it does. But one also needs to understand what it does to that place. What kind of urbanity are we talking about here?” exclaimed Aniket Bhagwat; city based Landscape Architect when asked about his opinion about the new ‘development’ of Ahmedsar Lake.

In addition to this, some of the part of the lake would also get converted into a wetland. “Inspite of nothing being done for the lake, there are a lot of migratory birds migrating to the lake every year. We would not want to destroy that. We have been trying to get into discussions with expert as to how we can develop this into a wetland,” informed Bhavna Ramrakhiani, a city based social activist when asked about the upliftment.

So one is still skeptical as to how these distinct activities will simultaneously work together. It seems that boating is the only easy option left with the authorities to develop the water body.

Looking at the present scenario of the lake, even Ganj Baksh Khattu, Sufi Saint to which Sarkhej Roza monument is dedicated, resting in his mausoleum would laugh at the Sultans of Gujarat who had built a pleasure palace on the lake bank to enjoy the summers.

To be a Rat or a Pied Piper is the question: On ‘The art of collecting’ at the 2011 India Art Summit, New Delhi

The Speaker’s Forum at the ‘India Art Summit, 2011’, in the stately Pragati Maidan, flagged off the event with a conglomeration of artists, curators, writers as well as critics who discussed and deliberated upon the nodal issues in art and art practices. Art collection was a significant topic in the forum and was led by Mr. Anupam Poddar , leading members of the Devi Art Foundation and Mr. Swapan Seth, managing partner, and directors, Henry S Clark.

Swapan, a passionate art collector, began by establishing an interesting juxtaposition between two types of collectors namely rat and pied pipers. “Rats breed on buzz while the pied pipers buy instinctively and are courageous. Rats follow blindly while the pied pipers buy ideas and acumen,” he said. Swapan himself has rarely bought his works from the galleries. “I acquire 99% of my collection online.” He believes in experimenting with his collections and has included young artists like Pushkar Thakore, Atul Dodiya, Natraj Sharma, Abhishek Hazra, Nita Dubey, and Aisha Shutoy in his collections. Notable amongst these is the work of Suchita Gherot titled as 1000 tears, in which the artist had collected a solution similar to tears and filled in 1000 bottles labeling a different expression to each bottle. Apart from installations, Swapan has an interesting collection of Iconic photographs of Madonna, Hussain etc. “I love collecting photographs with iconic moments,”! A self-proclaimed techno geek, he is in awe of the creative possibilities of the “I – Pad” technology.

Anupam Poddar followed, with collections of his mother, Lekha Poddar’s work and presented his own too. According to him, “Good collection is based on many factors like courage, the work, mediums and the idea explore,” However, despite his intent to buy the works of unknown artists, ironically, his range of artists collection included the big artists like Subodh Gupta, Anita Dubey, Sudarshan Shetty Rashid Rana , Sonia Khurawa, Susanta Mandal, Ganga devi Bhatt to name a few. Along with the gigantic installations of a dinosaur by Susarshan Shetty, there was also a unique collection of textiles and videos, as were many paintings and installations by various other artists seen in the offices at Devi Art Foundation, Gurgaon. Interestingly, both the presenters also displayed a collection of the works of Pakistani artists. “The work happening in Pakistan at this level is remarkable,” insisted Anupam, while answering one of the questions from the audience.

So is there an ‘art’ in collecting? Well, there is, obviously a strong artistic impulse, when one chooses to collect, since one has to be courageous enough to believe in the artist especially when the artist is young and a new entrant in the art world. One has to be receptive enough to new ideas and be prepared for some of them to not work at the end of the day. So the question that was left behind for the art collectors was, does it pay to be a rat or a pied piper? Well, the truth is the rats are the ones who rule the Art Market but somehow the pied pipers too, do manage to get their share, in a win-win situation for all. Long live the Arts and the Art collectors!