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A quirky look at the average, domestic life of a pre-liberalised IndiaTHE ILLICIT HAPPINESS OF OTHER PEOPLE is set in pre-1991 Madras, when India was not shining and Madras was the name of a 17th century town rather than a modern metropolis. Joseph says in his acknowledgements, “It is where I spent the first 20 years of my life. I am grateful it was not a paradise.” It was rather a place where “all husbands are managers, women are housewives, and all bras are white”. That is Joseph’s Madras—miles and years away from being the metropolis of Chennai that it is today. The main protagonist is Ousep Chacko. Ousep is a journalist by day, and neighbourhood drunk by night. His wife, Mariamma, has a postgraduate degree in economics, nurses fantasies about killing her husband, and regularly talks to the walls. They have two sons—Unni and Thoma. Unni, the elder, is the one whom everyone loves. It seems there is nothing he can not handle, from his classmates to his mother’s delusions, his father’s drunken antics to his brother’s anxieties. A gifted cartoonist, he’s the one person in the novel who isn’t burdened by the mania for academic excellence. Unni is the last person anyone expects would have a great fall, but one day, inexplicably, he does. For the next three years, Unni becomes Ousep’s study and the father’s project of unconquerable will is to figure out why Unni lost his will. Mariamma continues to stretch the family’s money, raises her remaining boy, and, in her spare time, gleefully fantasises about Ousep dying. Meanwhile, younger son Thoma, missing his brother, falls head over heels for the much older girl who befriended them both. Haughty and beautiful, she has her own secrets. The Illicit Happiness of Other People—a smart, wry, and poignant novel—teases you with its mystery, philosophy, and unlikely love story. The Illicit Happiness... is a witty, unforgiving but deeply affectionate look at life in pre-liberalised India. There is none of the acidic contempt that can be found in Joseph’s first novel, Serious Men. It is fun, despite all the unhappiness and angst that riddles it. Joseph’s characters are peculiar. Their stories are told with an empathy that is intelligent enough to note all absurdities without reducing anyone or anything to a caricature. The author has no sympathy for the blinkers that old India clapped on itself, but even as his scathing critique stings painfully, Joseph’s sense of humour makes it impossible for a reader to not grin while reading the novel.
Is Narcopolis Thayil’s antidote after all the decades spent smashed? Yes, it probably isAN ALCOHOLIC and an substance abuser for over two decades, firsttime author and long-time poetcum- musician, Jeet Thayil perhaps found his antidote in writing. It is not surprising that Thayil found his cure in prose and verse after all, as he has the DNA makeup. Jeet Thayil has the fortune of calling Thayil Jacob Sony George, better known as T.J.S. George, an Indian writer, biographer and a Padma Bhushan awardee, his father. However, pedigree can be both a boon and a bane. Legacy can be daunting. And living up to it, a challenge. But legacy could not have been Thayil’s singular challenge—his biggest one lay in one detail; how was he to make his book authentic enough for his readers? Will they not immediately sniff a foreign-educated writer who lived a substantial bit of his life away from the city that he describes with such obvious pleasure. Thayil’s first attempt garnered mixed reviews from Indian reviewers and critics. However, it has been a sweeping success overseas. He is not far from joining the league of Arundhati Roy, Salman Rushdie and Kiran Desai, as his debut novel Narcopolis is next in the race to winning this year’s Man Booker Prize 2012, the winner of which will be declared on October 16, 2012, at London’s Guildhall. So does the Indian author succeed after all? In bits, he does. Thayil creates a melange of characters successfully. However, it is difficult to emotionally connect with most of them. The main protagonist is the city of Bombay—its transition from the old-world Bombay to the newage Mumbai. And living in the city’s underbelly are the so-called dregs of the society—Rashid the opium den owner. Dimple, an eunuch who makes pipes in Rashid’s opium den. Mr Lee, a Chinese refugee who manages to drive a stolen vehicle out of China and into Bombay. Then there is the vast supporting cast of pimps, prostitutes, and criminals who drop in and out. The variety is Thayil’s attempt at “honouring the people I knew in the opium dens, the marginalised, the addicted and deranged, people who are routinely called the lowest of the low; and I wanted to make some record of a world that no longer exists, except within the pages of a book”. The story opens in Rashid’s opium house on Shuklaji Street sometime in the 1970s. We meet the owner himself, his clients, and Dimple. Thayil is no stranger to the written word as he has been an accomplished poet. That strength serves him well as he takes the readers in and out of his characters’ lives, emerging occasionally inside a vivid drug-induced recollection. The story, which begins in the 1970s, jump cuts to a few years. This is where Thayil emerges victorious, while exposing the contrarian nation—one that seems to be in an opium-induced, dream-like state, wrapped up in ideals of simplicity and unaware of the sweeping changes that would strike soon with the economic liberalisation in the 1990s. For Rashid and Dimple change arrives in the form of heroin, a drug that heralds a new world order. Their regular customers switch while their city disintegrates into communal riots and mayhem. The degeneration does not limit itself to the city but drags all the individual players along with it. All things end. The end sadly does come and it is written with empathy. It is well understood through a scene which unfolds in a shiny nightclub, with Rashid’s. The story finally ends at 2004 (incidently also the year when Thayil returned to India). It ends at Shuklaji Street, the same spot it started: with the ‘I’ narrator and a pipe: “All I did was write it down, one word after the other, beginning and ending with the same one, Bombay.” Language is the clear focus of the book which is an highly-intertextual one, containing references to invented texts, stories within stories from a broad mix of genres and repetitions of key phrases and narratives. Layers of reality mingle and swirl so that it’s not always evident what is dream, what is not. Thayil apparently felt that he lost almost 20 years of his life to addiction. But reading Narcopolis, it seems that perhaps that it was not much of a waste after all.
Small and serene, Arusha is a jewel tucked away in Tanzania“But is it safe?” Between my husband and I, we have a truly extended family. Nearly everyone in that rather large and well-meaning Bengali family of ours expressed their dismay when we declared our decision to move to Africa for good. We were bombarded by tales of people they knew of or heard of or read about, who lost a leg, an eye and assorted parts of their bodies in mugging incidents. South Africa was safe, but the east? Despite the naysayers, my husband and I remained unfazed. We invented a game to guess at what point of conversations, the safety question would pop up. Partly, our families are to be blamed for our interest in Africa. They got us the book—the greatest adventure tale ever written in Bengali—that all teenagers, especially the boys, read. The book by novelist Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay called Chander Pahaar (loosely translated as The Mountain of the Moon). It is not just a book. It is a rite of passage that my husband and I went through. Between that and the Enid Blytons, I was frankly torn between what would be more glorious or glamorous—discovering an island cove or a cave filled with diamonds. Thus when the Arusha offer came in, a bit of that child who remained was too thrilled to even care. There were no second guesses. It was a “I do” to Arusha’s call. I knew that the world had changed and that in Arusha there were probably no caves filled with diamonds. But what greeted us, was a rather exotic mix of old world charm and new development, present in a chaos reminiscent of home. There are few direct flights to Arusha, usually it is better to land in the capital of Tanzania, Dar-e-salaam, and then take a car or bus to the city. Arusha does have its own airport, which is rather small and tidy. The city is the fourth-largest in Tanzania, a lovely little spot tucked away within a valley, with more-orless mild weather all year round. Because it is situated in a higher altitude, the region is also drier. Arusha is the capital of northern region of Tanzania also called the Arusha Region. And it is the place to go for those who dream about safaris—the city is close to some of Africa's most famous national parks, including the Serengiti. It is also famous for its touts trying to sell safaris, and vendors trying to sell souvenirs. Though well-meaning, it is better to book the safaris well before you land to ensure safer travel. The town rests on a rather picturesque spot below the Mount Meru on the eastern edge of the Great Rift Valley. Make it a pit stop in Africa, even if you do not plan on staying for long, as it is close to Ngorongoro Crater, Lake Manyara, Olduvai Gorge, Tarangire National Park, and Mount Kilimanjaro. The visit that got us excited was the Arusha National Park which, till 1967, was known as the Ngurdoto Crater National Park. The Arusha National Park is located halfway between Arusha and Moshi towns. It is surrounded by a sweeping band of forests. The breathtaking bit within it, is the Momella Lakes with its flamingoes and hippos. The lakes, because of their varied mineral content, each supports a different type of algae growth which lends it a distinct colour. From the highlands, the lakes divide the park almost equally. In the rainy season (November to December and March to May) it swells into a mighty waterway that floods the entire area. The sweeping plains around Momella lakes are natural grasslands fed by underground streams. Because the water is salty, animals do not use them for drinking. For ornithologists, the lakes are a mustvisit because some 400 species of birds use the wetlands close to the lakes. While there you can also spot the bushbucks, water-bucks and bohor reedbuck. Also within the park is the Ngurdoto crater all of 3km wide and 1,474 metres deep. The crater has rocky cliffs, forest and swamp interspersed by open plain. Though tourists are not allowed on the crater floor, there are plenty of spots from where one can watch the animals. Once, it is belived, the Mount Meru was higher than Kilimanjaro. Meru collapsed sideways, destroying its eastern slope of the volcanic cone. The mountainscape is scenic and spectacular. Use Meru as an high-attitude warm-up before you tackle Mount Kilimanjaro, which is 5,895m high. The Arusha park promotes walking safaris with armed escorts as transitory lions are spotted, but we got to see none. And there is plenty more to see in the towns. Before we became one of the people, my husband and I decided to be tourists for a bit and take in the scenary on a daladala (mini-van taxi) into town to the Central Market (intersection of Market Street and Somali Road) which sells herbs, spices, sandals made from old tyres, colourful kangas, traditional medicines and local produce such as baobab seeds and fresh tamarind, both of which can be sucked like sweets. The markets are open daily between 7am and 6pm. For those who are interested in local crafts there are enough crafts shops at Goliondo Road where Tingatinga paintings, Masai jewellery and batik, are sold. Beautiful, exotic and filled by asili (‘genuine’ in Swahili) people, Arusha is a must-see, especially during the months between January and March, when the wheather is just perfect for a stroll.
IN OUR trade happenstance is the hero. A news here, a glance at the past and suddenly there is a thread of an idea which grows as a story. Two fortuitous event set the path for the present edition; one a mention of an interesting art gallery tucked away in Neb Sarai. The other, a visit to a house where a Jatin Das painting was on display. I confess I knew of Jatin Das, rather than know him. I had always heard that Das treads a tricky path—he condemns what we see as contemporary modern art. Yet for most people he is one of the stronger members of the Indian contemporary art movement. He has been even more vocal in his criticism of the world of computer-generated, tampered, over-painted and photo-transferred art. The volatile verbaliser and artist who likes to work on large-scale murals and welded steel sculptures, what a wonderful figure he would make on the cover. And then there was K.G. Babu, an upcoming artist whose vivid, vibrant and arresting canvases stole our hearts at NIV Art Gallery. Babu and Das are poles apart. The former is slowly getting his due, while the latter has been a shinning star for 55 years. The former barely speaks. The latter is not shy at all. Yet there is that thread of commonality—their joy in creating. They paint because that is what they know best. They create because without it life is meaningless, because pursuit of passion is often that defines us. Like pugilist Mary Kom, who boxes, for her life is meaningless without it. She is our special feature this month. Read about her as Kom bares her soul and talks of her family and passion. In the more prosaic matters, the FDI debate, one that DW visited in February 2012, has resurfaced with anti and pro-FDI schools screaming themselves hoarse over the issue. First the LPG and diesel hike, and now the retail debate, tell us, who stands a chance—the economy or the people? The time is right for such a debate as we celebrate the birth anniversary of the Father of the Nation on October 2, 2012.
DISASTER \\ In September, Pakistan faced one of its worst industrial disasters till date when a garments factory caught fire and was gutted. The death toll rose to 259 leading to the government registering a case of murder against its owner and manager of the Karachi factory—Ali Enterprises, his two sons and managers at three-storey garments factory. On the same day of the Karachi fire, 25 people were also killed in a fire at a shoe factory in Lahore. Pakistan’s interior minister Rehman Malik gave a twist to the country’s worst industrial disasters by calling them an ‘act of terrorism’. The bigger fire started in the garments factory in Karachi’s Baldia town. Evidence suggests that the fire started because of a generator malfunction or short circuiting. The owners, who have obtained preventive bail until 21 September, 2012, also recorded their statements with the police. Till date only 177 of the dead bodies have been identified, including 23 women. Sindh police surgeon, Kamaluddin Sheikh, said around 600 people were in the factory when the fire broke out and many managed to escape with minor injuries or were rescued later.
UNREST \\ A low-budget, crudely-produced film called Innocence Of Muslims, which allegedly portrays Prophet Mohammed as a “fraud”, a “womaniser” and a “child molester” sparked off controversies across the Middle East leading to violence and disruption. The violence began when Islamist protesters climbed the US Embassy walls in the Egyptian capital of Cairo and tore down the American flag from a courtyard pole. Chris Stevens, the US Ambassador to Libya, was killed, along with three other Americans, as violent protesters stormed the consulate in Benghazi. The intensity of the anti-American fervour initially caught US leaders by surprise, but in the past days, the Barack Obama administration has called for calm. It urged foreign governments to protect American interests in their countries. The film, has sparked violent protests in many Muslim countries and the US has responded by deploying additional military forces to increase security in some hotspots. In a televised speech, Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah said America must be held accountable for the film, which was produced in the United States. The US government has condemned the film. Nasrallah called for protests in which the Muslims expressed their “anger”. In Pakistan, police fired tear gas and water cannons at the protesters in Karachi. The protesters threw stones and bricks, prompting the police to beat back the crowd with batons. One protester was killed during the clash, said Ali Ahmar, spokesman for the Shiite Muslim group that organised the rally. Thousands more held peaceful demonstrations against the film in other parts of the country, including the eastern city of Lahore and the north-west city of Dera Ismail Khan. The demonstration in Lahore was organised by Jamaat-ud-Dawa, believed to be a front for a powerful militant group blamed for attacks in the Indian city of Mumbai in 2008 that killed more than 160 people. It has been unclear how much of the violence was spontaneously triggered by the film and how much of it was spurred on by anti-American militants using it as a tool to grow and enrage the crowds. Libya’s interim president Mohammed el-Megarif said the attackers who killed Stevens appeared to have spent months preparing and carefully choosing their date—the anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks. But US ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice said evidence gathered so far indicated it was a spontaneous reaction to the anti-Islam video. In the meanwhile, tension escalated in Libya as the civil war continued unabated, also leading to anti-American sentiments in most parts of the country.
Cuba-born boxing coach Blas Iglesias Fernandez became the first foreign coach to win the Dronacharya Award. He has dedicated 22 years of his life in training Indian boxers and has two-time Olympic medal winner, Sushil Kumar, as one of his students.
SPORTS \\ Tennis star Andy Murray ended Britain's 76-year wait for a male Grand Slam singles champion with an epic victory over Novak Djokovic in the US Open final. Murray, 25, emulated Fred Perry's 1936 achievement, winning 7-6 (12-10) 7-5 2-6 3-6 6-2 in four hours 54 minutes in the Arthur Ashe Stadium. Murray also won an Olympic gold this summer. This is Murray’s first Grand Slam victory after 28 appearances. On the day when the talented duo played against each other, a swirling wind made conditions troublesome. It was Murray who coped better in the first two sets and eventually ended Djokovic’s title defence and 27-match hardcourt winning run at majors. Murray made a devastating start to the decider, breaking in game one and consolidating it with some defensive play of the highest order. The third seed was in dreamland when Djokovic netted a forehand to hand over the double-break, only for a nervous Murray to immediately surrender one of his strikes with a timid backhand.
HIKE \\ The Centre came under heavy flak from all quarters—industrial sectors, political parties, citizens and organisations—over the diesel and LPG price hike which came into being in mid-September. The Union government increased the price of diesel by `5. The new price is `6.2 per litre, including taxes. The price hike immediately affected the transport industry as a whole, and more particularly, Maharashtra was the worst hit. With the increase, the difference in diesel prices between Mumbai and Delhi jumped to `6.5 per litre. The Centre also limited subsidised LPG refill supply to six in a year at the rate of `450. The seventh cylinder will come at a cost of ` 800. The steps led to a slew of protests coming in from almost all states. The BJP and Shiv Sena activists staged demonstrations in Maharastra. Key UPA ally and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee too expressed her unhappiness over the hike and held a series of protests in Kolkata. Key UPA ally DMK described the diesel price hike as ‘very high’ and sought a roll back. BJP leader Yashwant Sinha said the hike will have a cascading effect on prices and will contribute further to inflation. Diesel price hike will indirectly increase the cost of production of goods by 10 to 12 per cent. Wholesale rates of vegetables are likely to shoot up by the end of the month by 25 to 30 per cent. With diesel prices going up, transportation companies are likely to increase their freight rates too.
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 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.
“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.
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.