Handicraft is not simply decoration; to artist-weaver Priya Ravish Mehra it is also part of the art of life. Out of nothingness, a thread is woven. A cloth’s lifetime is prolonged by the art of rafoogiri, or darning; an art that itself remains invisible. Weaving thus lends itself easily into poetry and metaphors: of Kabir’s devotion woven into a cloth, of poetry woven out of silence, and of healing and repair.
Between the conception and the creation indeed: a shadow. But, between the lines, and beyond the lines, and below those lines, this simple note left by Eliot: life is very long. Besides the spotlight, the words and the delivery, this is perhaps what transpired from BN Goswamy’s Ramkinkar Baij Memorial Lecture: a deep, sensual, intimate relation with the very long story of life, and of all its creations. When centuries-old artworks return, to greet and celebrate the legacy of the most influential sculptor of an era, one voice is needed: the historian, forerunner in astonishment, mediating through the thousands of our past, opening a few doors to the attentive audience.
Last Sunday, I had the honour to participate in the first Kaapi LILA. A very special meeting among friends, conceived by LILA Foundation. I really thought of carrying a parachute: it was certain that we would fly high… We were invited to gather in the (temporary) studio of a Dutch artist who would tell us about her current project, still in progress – a multidimensional artistic work based on Delhi. And this was the occasion, for me, to reunite with my friends, the marvellous people that make LILA.
“ ‘Why can’t you be a dutiful son like Rama?’ – here is one common reference to mythology in everyday life that many, many Indians have heard in their childhood.” Paula Richman, acclaimed specialist of the Indian epics, joined LILA once again for a Special Lecture, searching, this time, for the contemporary insights ancient narratives can offer us. “Epics touch us, but too often they do in the form of two extremes: either we want to follow them literally, or we deny them altogether since they are ‘from another time’.” The tension is inherent from the very nature of epics: those stories narrate the lives of archetypes, ideal kings, ideal queens, etc., setting the bar high, indicating the path to an ideal life… but epics also contain very concrete and easily applicable messages, lessons that can help any individual in the small and big questions of life – millennia ago, just as today. Paula Richman’s presentation highlighted a few of these.
What I have to say can be honest only in clay.” Resonances were palpable on this last evening of the PRISM Lecture Series 2014, initiated in last August with another practice of touch: puppetry, with Eddin Khoo. Acclaimed and prolific ceramic artist Kristine Michael opened the doors of her own tradition of continuity. Continuity, and immediacy. “With clay, one has to start again each time. Even the fire we use is a unique event. Each time both predictable and unpredictable.” And from immediacy, back to time, and history: “Ceramic is also connecting us to the past. It allows you to touch pieces made 5000 years ago!” added Kristine.
Through the designs of ceramic, the environment and cultures of humanity come together . The works of Kristine testify to this matrix of inspirations.
The poetry reading and conversation evening Echoes of Silence was held on Thursday 18 December at 6.30 pm at the FSI hall, South Asian University, Delhi. The programme sought to retrieve lost and painful memories to give shape to the echoes of silences teeming all around us. As the world continues to struggle to make sense of the extent of inhumanity at Peshawar, Echoes of Silence affirmed the role of poetry and art to bridge our polarised world. The evening brought together two eminent writers: Tamil poet in exile R Cheran (Sri Lanka) and English novelist Vikram Kapur (India). Both of them have been working closely with ethnic and religious confrontations in their respective spaces, using at times their creative works to articulate the hushed voices. The conversation that followed the readings was chaired by Kavita Sharma, President of the South Asian University. She opened the evening with one minute of silence for the victims of Peshawar.
“Health culture is not just medical culture. It is larger, wider. Looking at health culture, it is understanding that health has always been the primary centre and concern of civilisations.” Disciplinary fields, spaces and times were transcended on December 11th, as community health practitioner and Professor Ritu Priya Mehrotra argued for ‘Health Culture as Continuity’. “This is how we moved along, growing, properly, a sense of health care. Communities evolved, developing technologies to complement the environment, in support of the basic health requirements. Then only, power structures and social stratification happened.” In this long process, phases of biological plateaus permitted further developments: “slowly, a biology-culture balance is arrived at. The community benefits from a low endemicity… till new disturbances arrive: revolutions, invasions.”
The sculpture becomes. Here is one idea, one paradox that resonated through Gulmohar Hall, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, on the evening of December 4th, as sculptor KS Radhakrishnan invited a large and diverse audience through the journey of four decades of works. A hypnotising journey, when Radhakrishnan, screening through hundreds of artefacts, builds almost inadvertently on all that sculpture, and more specifically bronze, can tell us about creation, art, culture, politics and governance. “The sculpture becomes!” – the wave of inspiration started in 1974, and it grew and disseminated to reach shores all over India and across the world. “I get all this energy simply by doing, by making sculptures. Energy is generated this way, as a flow. It is like a wave: by losing, it gains. It brings us to the next wave.”
This was not supposed to be your habitual lecture. It could not have been. Daya Bai is much, so much more than a discourse. She is, to say the least, a model. A life, a lifestyle, a series of life decisions with as many confident no-returns as necessary. As many checkpoints left by life to verify that the force of her character is still there, firmly grounded and ready to face all the resistances, the fights, the abuses and the aggressions that our world produces when established orders are questioned. Here she was – tiny body, frail pitch. The hypnosis of an evening. A few minutes to recount some of the marking events of a life dedicated to causes – to the realisation of an ideal, in the most simple and practical forms, by living, by ‘becoming a local’ in villages of Bihar, of Haryana, of Maharashtra, of West Bengal, and finally of Madhya Pradesh, where she has been living with the Goondi people of the Barul village for nineteen years.
“The boy is with me every morning. In the middle of all the problems of our times, he brings me solace, happiness… and laughter!” Ravikant’s introductory words felt like the gratefulness of two entire generations – all those who woke up with EP Unny’s cartoons over the last four decades. A cardinal cultural figure was with us for the ninth PRISM Lecture of 2014, but yet, just like his Newspaper Boy, a celebrity hiding behind his subtle humour, his respectful wittiness, his shy smile. “I couldn’t write. I could draw,” recalled Unny of his decision to become a cartoonist. “So, tonight, I face an unusual problem… word count!” The comic cartoon takes birth in the USA, in the first half of the past century. “Its purpose? To entertain.” Increasingly a vital ingredient of the newspaper, the cartoon soon enters its economy. “Initially, it was published to promote the paper, to bring audience. The cartoon creates characters – it permits characterisation.” And, through characterisation, an audience takes shape, following the daily remarks of this rather unique commentator. An early recurrent figure is Richard Outcault’s Yellow Kid, parodying high society antics. “With 20,000 cartoons, the Yellow Kid shows this art can become a rewarding career in the US.”