WHAT YOU SEE...

...Is what you get; that is painter, artist, sculptor and graphic artist Jatin Das for you. He is an electrifying personality who hates to mince words, which should make him a pain for his publicist (thankfully, he has none) and a dream for journalists. But before his straightforwardness grabs your attention, the most singular aspect of his personality that hits you as a force, is his youthful, abundant energy. He bounces off to keep something, to arrange something else, places seats at the right angle, helps the photographer pick a corner for a photoshoot or opens the door for people to come in. Das is also attentive, courteous, and quick on the uptake. He offers everyone cigarettes. Before starting the interview, he wants everyone to have a cuppa. Not many artists, and certainly not many successful legends, send a drawn map minutes after the conversation. In fact, not many successful Indian people believe in common courtesies such as acknowledging emails. It seems Das and his team operate differently. Where do you work? What is it? Where is it? Who is in charge? He shoots off questions on our first interaction over the phone. He acknowledges answers with a quick “hmph” or a “huh”. And when he does not want an answer he says, “I do not care,” and dismisses both the answer and question with an impatience of a child. We were to encounter more of that visceral honesty and child-like impatience as we met in his Shahpur Jat studio as the conversation progressed at a mind-boggling speed over three languages, and with the artist’s answers beginning with an emphatic ‘no’.

THE ARTIST

The studio where Das works is a small and neat space. Though it is filled with wooden racks, stuffed with files and folders, and a handful of people quietly busy before computers, it contains an air of hushed order. Every folder, box and rack is neatly labelled. There is a temple-like quality to the space—guests are asked to remove their shoes before entering. If you strain your ears, a soft sitar music can be heard with the click-click of the keyboards. When Das does appear for the interview, he is in no hurry to get on. “No, no, no, listen, I do not even know your name. Let us all get to know each other. Unless you wish to finish everything in three minutes flat and make a quick exit. I am not ready as once I go through what I am going to say, I will have to relive it all in my mind. You know what I am saying?” he asks. For Jatin Das, there are no quick fixes or short cuts—if it is an interview, then it is about building a sense of trust before anything else. “Smallest of details matter to me. What I do, I do it with a passion for quality. If I am consuming daalchawal, it should be made with care, with love. I cook with passion. I garden with a passion. If I bathe I think of the rivers. Everything needs fervour and sincerity. For every bit of our life we should be committed and concerned,” he says without taking a breath. “I may not have done much for my children, but I find it most gratifying when I see them today. They, too, have a strong sense of commitment. They have the right set of values and they do not compromise in what they do. I have never compromised in what I have done either,” he says, as an afterthought. But our interview is yet to start—in fact, it will not start for well over an hour in which he will sometimes speaks in a tearing hurry, while often he would break off mid-sentence to review what was said before. But he would do everything with care—because a hurried interaction is not genuine. “When you come to meet me, shed the baggage. About what you know of art and artists. Let us start innocently,” he says. As his mind skips and wanders over what he wants to say he offers more information. “I came to Delhi in 1967 to teach. At that time, Delhi was a hub for artists. With the passage of time, they (colleagues) have all dispersed and some of them have become ‘quickies’ with their quick shows, quick money, quick parties,” says Das. “Lot of young artists tell me, Jatin-da I have to earn my bread and butter. Where do they learn the phrase? Why not talk about daal chawal? They accuse me that I must have thought about the same (bread and butter) when I was young. In my twenties I was much more dangerous because I thought of nothing else than work. Somehow for 54 years one has lived life without compromise. How did I do that?” Perhaps the question lies in the past—a little bit in his family, his teachers, the friends he acquired and people he met. Born to a traditional artistic family in Mayurbhanj (Orissa), Das was exposed to art early on. He grew up amid tribal and folk art, crafts, dance and music. His home is one of the lushest states of the country, dotted with ponds, rivers, groves and hamlets. His mother was an artist and a writer. It was a rich childhood. One that naturally progressed into a richer youth as he moved to Mumbai at the age of 16 to study at the JJ School of Arts. There he met Homi Bhabha (Das refuses to divulge how, as it is ‘not relevant’) and slowly learnt the ‘art of life’—living every second to its fullest. It is his mantra; he cooks, eats, plants a garden with the same fervour as he paints. This fervour lends him an exceptional eye for detail. “From the next time, don’t bring cups on a plastic tray. And put some extra water. Not too much, but a bit more. But very good Gopal,” he says as the tea gets served. He is quicker to heap praise for a job well done and every gentle criticism is accompanied by a pat in the back. Here is an artist not residing in an ivory tower of solitude—obtaining inspiration from the ether. In fact, if one suggests such a thing, Das would be enraged. He is easily provoked, the quintessential angry, youthful senior man. He is enraged by the present state of our country, he is dissatisfied by the youth’s unwillingness to commit to a craft for the sake of learning, he is embittered by the publicity-driven, commerce-driven world of art. “Everybody’s summing up everybody without knowing. Like you! You want an interview done in two minutes, you want a summation in three. An acquaintance of mine said such-and-such person said such-and-such things about you that too without meeting me even once. We have a very narrow vision of what a person, a profession should be. You remark that my studio is clean. How many artists’ studios have you visited? Did you know that Dom (Moraes) was one of the best poets that India ever had?” he asks. His friend, the fabled journalist Dom Moraes’s name, would appear in our interview regularly. It is when he talks of his friend or friends that we get to realise that there is the ivory tower after all. Age and nature has stolen most of his friends from him leaving him rather alone. “I have a handful of friends left,” he admits. His travels with Moraes in Sweden are sweet memories which he misses acutely. He gets up to show us articles and a photo of it. “If I stayed in Bombay I would either stay at Dom’s or Basu-da’s house or flit between both. When I would be at Dom’s, he would read out his poems. He never shared his poetry with the world apart from his few friends. He would tease his wife (Leela Naidu) and tell her, Polly you have no sense of poetry, off you go and sleep. And Dom would write about me the very next day. After all he was a lazy b*****,” Das says softly with a chuckle. The mention of old friends Don Moraes, Basu Bhattacharya, Satyajit Ray and Raghu Rai enter every conversation. He mentions them as people who did not live their lives stuck on a singular, linear path. They were, he tells us, souls who pored themselves in their immediate engagement, however trivial.

THE TECHNIQUE

“I never use the expression that I am doing art. I always say that I am working. I never use words such as creativity or inspiration. They are hackneyed words. In any profession when you work for a certain period of time you have set of concerns, commitments and certain fervour with which you work. These emotions are devoid of the country or society, etc. Of course, certain things leave a mark. Your personal anguish, family, nature of things seep into the work naturally. I work on human predicament and all my work generally are human figures. But they are devoid of embellishments and devoid of time and place. They are not factual. They are not narratives. I can’t explain my work at all. I am not going to and I am not attempting it,” he says when the official interview starts. We begin with India. I make the mistake of asking him whether he finds working in India conducive. In seconds he is inflamed and calls the question ‘quite dangerous’. “Every country is conducive to art. One can create everywhere. I think people who don’t like staying in India and don’t find working here conducive are mediocre and ordinary. India is one of the greatest countries of the world. It is a goldmine. I am not talking about politics, art or cinema, specifically. India is not just a Delhi or a Mumbai. Even if for argument’s sake we say they are the so-called yardsticks to deciding the concept that is India, how do you define these cities? In Delhi and Mumbai there are hundreds of smaller spaces which are distinct and interesting. There are people in Chandni Chowk who have, perhaps, not seen the world outside the walled city. People in Bhindi Bazaar in Mumbai. Every city has hundreds of layers—especially the Asian cities,” he adds. “The western world is finished. They have lost their arts, crafts and culture. They are all prototypes. They have a shared post-colonial, postwar culture and shared paradigms. The fact that India is still chaotic and is in a transitional state, is the best bit about our country. It is a pity that we are not trying to retain its character but adopting western paradigms and prototypes (food, clothing and way of life). We have adopted the British education system—the British taught us to make us into clerks. Real education comes from being rooted to your reality, your home town, your state. Once you know your home then you know or imbibe everything else,” says Das. Here is an artist who likes to dirty his hands. He loves the dusty road. He adores making real life his playground. If indeed the real is his inspiration. His nudes—whether supple lines or rich and textured oil canvases—come from his greatest inspiration; life. Or, if you are talking of Das’s version of it, write them in capitals. What inspires this artist? Everything, he will tell you. Encounters, passions, life, experience and relationships. This exultation of spirit makes his art youthful—giving it a vitality which makes the figures dance before your eyes. He is also an innovative artist. Perhaps a part of this innovation stems from the impatience of the young man he is. He is always trying to find dynamic ways of depicting his emotions. His paintings revolve around the various aspects of relationships (crisis, contact, disclosure, emotional tension). The treatment is often clean, linear and colours are charged with emotions with a brisk brushwork which further add a unique dimension. But all these explanations (and narratives) are just unnecessary words . “Why can’t a painting be accepted as it is? Work never has an agenda,” he protests. “I am not always telling a story. I paint first, then draw the outline. I see something and just feel like translating that onto paper. That’s it. These photographs are manifestations of my concern. I write a bit of free verse occasionally. I listen to a lot of music. I am open, willing and ready to be exposed to anything and any influence which comes my way. When you grow older in such a rich environment, art is not a separate thing that you do when you have the time,” he says. But why is the human body a recurring theme? “There is either a lot of purpose or no purpose at all. I just enjoy painting. I paint because I love to. I enjoy the process allowing the unexpected to enter and govern. That is the beauty of painting, indeed, of life for me. I have been painting human figures for many years. Usually, I like working on a single figure. Now and then, two figures together have periodically emerged unintentionally. Recently, I have become conscious of it as a series. I suppose I have become more and more conscious about human relationships and our predicament. But it is in no way a documentary of anything. I try to capture a mood, an emotion. And the body, the form, the physicality is accidental,” Das avers. “My works are quite unlike other artists. They are usually linear and I sculpt paintings. First, I create the mass, tone, colours and body, and then chisel it with lines. Most artists first draw the lines and then fill it up with colours.” Das usually draws with conte and ink, sometimes in oil and sometimes with acrylic; and he has admitted in a previous interview that he had used water colour every day for 12 years now. He also engraves on metals and occasionally etches. For someone who has exhibited in more than 55 solo exhibitions, he calls them mechanical. “Exhibitions are boring. Painting is a more personal thing. When I am painting it is just about my paper and me. Nothing else matters. I also hate auctions, especially those that sell a painting at a much higher price than what it deserves,” he says. “For a bit, forget about art and fart, I am deeply concerned about issues and these matter to me. The psychological state of the country with bad governance, corruption which has percolated to all layers including art). We have forgotten basic truths. That a plant can only grow in the ground. A potted plant is an anomaly. Due to a lack of space, now we believe that to be the ultimate—but that is and will remain an anomaly,” he says as an after thought.

THE BEGINNING, THE END

Words flow torrentially and freely changing colour and direction in response to his moods—Das is as quickly inflamed as he becomes pensive. Phrases from Bengali, Oriya, Hindi and Sanskrit are used liberally in his conversation. The poetic, rather than the prosaic, is his chosen metier. Winding through the diverse bylanes of his life, he looks more to the future than the past. “A big book on paintings, memoirs and one on poems for Penguin, a book on the pankha collection. I have stalled many things. My daughter keeps calling me up to make my documentary film festival once in every two years. She has a point—I am putting too much on my plate. Nearly 90 per cent of all that I had earned is now into the JD Art and Research Centre and in the art documentary film festival which will happen next year. And see all these brushes and painting items, well, there should be a centre that is dedicated to the tools of art, if I can have my way.” It is not the end of the road for Das as his journey has just begun. “I’m still a child, and still beginning to paint, beginning to live, and rethinking about life and work. I’m looking for people who can take up a few projects. Between the books, the JD Centre for Art, the proposed pankha museum and the dream of the museum dedicated to tools of painting, I am very busy,” he reveals. To make his point, he gets up and picks up an ostrich feather duster used to dust canvases. He displays it with a grin of a child. You look around the room, spot the transparent telephone, a dusty paper ferris-wheel and the black and white photograph of Das caught in the middle of a dance—and you see a pattern. This is not merely a studio, it is a museum dedicated to celebrating life and its little details.