Misty mountains

There is something magical about mist. It veils all the ugliness our beautiful hill stations are left with by insensitive hordes of tourists. The mist seems to forgive them all by covering up the act.
Had it not been for an assignment to shoot mountains in mist, I wouldn’t have taken the trouble. The back breaking and leg aching drive through Kalka Pinjore stretch is like mandatory purgatory before you are allowed entry into the heaven. Though, once you cross the ordeal, heaven sure awaits you.
Kasauli is at its most pristine when enwrapped in mist. Like a newly delivered baby all wrapped up in white, clean, soft sheets. A walk to upper mall in eerie silence of the woods, punctuations of a crow’s cowing, distant, faint notes of mountain flute, dew drops hung at the tip of pine needles, things making magical appearance and disappearance out of the mist…like mystery of life and death…so much packed within a few hours to transport you onto another world. Just a thin veil between what could be viewed as ugly and exhilarating.

And then a cool drizzle, breeze like whirl of a darwesh! I don’t mind getting drenched. I like to walk in rain. You smell the peculiar flavour of mist, if only you can discern it. A sudden appearance of the Sun and the inevitable rainbow!
Why is the world so ravishing!

Of death and dreams

Of death and dreams

Meanings are revealed in cusp, in transition. It was as usual a lonely evening walk. Roads were deserted, it was unusually late for evening walkers. Last shadows of the sun had disappeared. And the mind was thoughtless. From that zero, that nothingness, something sprouted. “What if I die at this very moment?”
I felt a strange sense of calm, at this finality, at this thought that came so effortlessly, without any sense of joy or loss. A peaceful surrender to life! And mind came alive. Yes, I won’t have any regrets, no complains to life, to death. I was floating in the fluid of life, its essence. I did not know how and when I reached home. Almost, in a trance.
When is the right time to die? When is the time when we realize all our dreams and aspirations? What prepares us for death? We do not know. We do know death as a liberator, the only end to the journey of life. Yet, so many misgivings for life, hence, for death.

The world is a gift shop

The world is not Archies gallery where you get things packaged for friends and loved ones, you have to pick threads and materials to create those unique gifts that only you can create. And, they need not be standardized. They remain beautiful in their rawness, in their incompleteness. How lucky we were, those of us, who didn’t have to buy friends with gifts, we just made friends, without ever requiring the stamp of material gifts. We gave time to build trust and love. The standardized teddy bear love, the standardized friendship band friends, the standardized heart shaped balloons, chocolates and what not, the standardized greeting card relations, from parents to lovers , to children, are all so easily available in stock. Well scripted for you to save time. This world of standardized relations is so cute, and so vulnerable. You begin to say sorry the way the rest of the world is doing. You begin to express love the way the rest of the world does. If you deviate, you are dropped out of the club.
Market forces may be creating a deluge, we can be smart enough to keep human relationships out of branding. These gift shop love gifts are like an hour glass model that makes the sand fill the glass in two minutes. They turn love and relationships into a cute model, a metaphor for our times. We begin to live in a world of models, model of an hour glass, model of vintage car, bullet motorcycle, model friend- model love, custom jewelry ( real jewels are for wife, mind you, this is just a shop for friends, dates and lovers) relationships without certificate, the kamchalau things for time pass relationships. The two minute business that leaves impression for an hour. And then, life steps out of a gift shop!

Akira Kurosawa

Although Rashomon was not part of his great works( released in 1950 that brought him on international scene) shown on Zee Studio, on Sundays, few images of outstanding cinema stuck to mind. The black and white films of the maestro were like classic poetry on celluloid, interspersed with mellowed notes of shakuhachi flute. The notes and images spread as softly as mist, lingering, enveloping, touching, as delicately as dew.
The bizarre violent roughness of Seven Samurai, or, delicate tale of ambiguous love of the Red Beard, or, the thriller like suspense of High and Low, for each genre, the director had a different pace and craft. No wonder, he is credited with evolving a new idiom of Japanese cinema.
For High and Low, he uses just one colour in a single scene. The strange gathering and angles used in High and Low to show mob mentality is unparalleled.
Though, the film was adapted in Hindi, it could not go beyond a thriller. It failed to touch the metaphysical aspects Kurosawa leads to, towards the end , with the suggestion of sheer visuals.
The confidence and brilliance of his cinema is awe inspiring, with moral ambiguity of its characters and humanism, almost feminine in treatment. Despite a huge cultural distance between India and Japan, in the cluttered babble of our own language cinema, visual power of Kurosawa’s films convey the truth eloquently and forcibly.
In one of the scenes, a samurai hung upside down from a tree top with a rope on the last lag of his life cries like a wounded fowl. The sun is about to rise, trees and branches appear like ghost arms. While the town with its men and warriors sleep, it is a non- descript fragile, desolate woman who dares to ease the rope to release him. Both have transcended fear, she in her desolation, he, in his brush with death. The scene is like a slice of canvas, devoid of colour, filled with amazing mix of light and shade.
In the final scene of High and Low, when the murderer and the victim face each other in a jail, their images are reflected in the image of the other. Weaving a suggestion, that the tormented lives in the tormentor and vice versa.
Kurosawa’s study of the Samurai tradition is unique, with all possible shades of humanism.

art and ashtray

Art and ashtray

Irrespective of which strata we came from, Indians used, consumed, ate, wore, and fought their wars with the accompaniment of art. From pre historic sarota( beetlenut cutter) to surahi, to medieval spears and swords, were embellished with soft delicate art. The precision of offensive and the precision of brush went hand in hand. The scale and scope of art still touches our lives. Though, the focus has shifted to finance. Art make news only in pages dedicated to finance.

So, it is exciting for the Indian artists and art lovers to see art investors mushrooming all around. Indian art has returned home glorified through Sotheby’s and Christies. The way Yoga took a detour, through American land to make its presence felt on the home turf. When F N Souza’s work goes for $ 2.8 million at Christie’s, art collectors gasp.

The moot question remains unanswered, how much of it goes to the artist? Since market forces control price and trend in art, and since investment in art shows better returns than many blue chip companies, entrepreneurs of varied shades are thinking of expanding business into art. Like it or not, in their euphoria, some gallery owners in Delhi have started printing art on every conceivable consumer item, from match boxes, coasters to ash trays. It is good to popularize art!
Only, the manner of production and sale of art by some of the houses will put Chinese assembly lines to shame! Artists are hired on contract, the gallery owner dictates public tastes, he knows what sells. So, the artist has to produce a required number of works on required themes, with required compositions within stipulated time. The works are guaranteed to be sold. The artist is taken on promotional tours and all that. The gallery decides the price tag and the artist sells. This way, artists can afford better life styles. It is a win- win situation.
When artists absorbed changing patterns of their times, sought newer ways of expressions, newer experiments came into fore. Artists and art acquired a higher pedestal by the new methods and techniques evolved to express complexity of life and mind. Orphism, cubism, Dadaism, surrealism, and many more experiments and experiences came into being when artists threw new challenges on the canvas to seek newer horizons of visual expressions.
Their contribution to the art made them great, immortal and their life style- flamboyant and expensive. Dali and Picasso are the best examples of popularizing art by their unique perspectives on canvas and on life. Their art was an expression of amazing thought currents, unabashed and uncompromised. Other subsidiaries that turned art into a movement; galleries, investors, auction houses, insurers, framers, restorers and critics came later.
Are we reversing the order to write the success story of Indian art? That’s our claim to innovation. After the group of Progressive Artists, who are now rocking and shocking Sotheby’s and Christie’s, where are the artists who give a new eye, a new vision to the masses to see the world with? Where are those volatile thinkers? Where are the path breaking metaphors and idioms? Where are our Dalis and Picassos, Cezannes and Pollocks?
Where are the celebrated critics, with their penetrating, scathing observations who made or mar an artist? Great art flourishes with collective
growth in consciousness. Is life too simplified for us to inspire great art?
Or, art is another casualty of compromise!