A River in the Mind

A river I imagine flows within.

A stream tumultuous a stream chaste

In twists and turns it ventures forth                     

Times relaxed times in haste        

A forlorn visage of quivering silver

Bare its soul to the gazing star.

And shadows among wizardly woods

Dark secrets whisper.

A dancing damsel’s lyrical rupture                       

Overflowing the cup of life

A lilting tune in obscure lines                                     

Drowning down all wanton strife

                                                                                                

A river I imagine flows within.

Chanting a hymn profound

An ablution for the soul

The river is inward bound.

No art Wasted

Upcoming sculptor-painter Narayan Sinha creates beauty out of waste material and gives 'recycling' a new meaning. 
Old fashioned iron lock and keys, window and balcony grills - such abandoned household items or automobile scraps. Give them to Narayan Sinha, an upcoming sculpture-painter from Nalhati, a far flung hamlet in Bengal's Birbhum district, and he will turn them into objet-de-art. You can call it a metamorphosis or an evolution of a unique kind where quirky stuffs attain the stature of the exquisite.

A time when going green is the watchword, Sinha's work using recycled products, is all the more relevant. His use of metals like copper and brass which are becoming obsolete in the country also marks his contribution in upholding the cultural heritage. He has used a cart wheel as a chandelier, old window frames for the back rest of furniture. And in his recent interior designing project of transforming an old house into an art boutique named EKRU in Kolkata, he has used materials like cement, gravel, vegetable dye and cloth as raw material.

Creation is what has come best to Sinha since childhood. The journey started with clay modelling during school vacations. But staying at Nalhati he often faced the problem of obtaining clay, the primary raw material. His father was a dealer of automobile parts; so he often toyed with these parts and his imagination used to take flight. The result was new forms made from the unused tools and machines. After his graduation Sinha became a full time sculptor. In order to fine-tune his art he learnt anatomy, clay and charcoal painting from art students of Visva Bharati, Santiniketan. Sinha's work came into limelight with his first exhibition in 2000 at Bajaj Bhavan, Mumbai. Afterwards, there was no looking back. An array of exhibitions including the ones at Nehru Centre, Worli and Jahangir Art Gallery in Mumbai and Birla Academy of Fine Arts in Kolkata, followed. The exhibition at Birla Academy had some of his unique masks made of junk and a new trend was set.

Sinha's subjects are intrinsically traditional and Indian in essence. "I can't work on abstract forms as I can't relate to him. My subjects are emotional responses and I try to reach a Higher Being through sculpture. My other aspiration is to promote Indian art and artists. I have assistants at my workshops who were school dropouts. I gave them the necessary training and they are now artists working with me," he says.

Sinha's sculptures have already adorned Kolkata's sprawling and historic Raj Bhavan (Governor's House) and Writers' Buildings (State government headquarters).

Accolades and recognitions are not new to Sinha as his successful exhibitions in New York, Paris and many other countries have got rave reviews. Four years of research and practice and Sinha now has to his credit as many as 35 different forms of Goddess Durga made from trivia. His exhibition of the forms named 'Debi' was a huge success in Kolkata and has received invitations from the other parts of India and also rest of the world.

Sinha narrates a saga of fusion between craftsmanship and sculpture through his art. "My objective was to endow a contemporary look to the traditional forms and figures," he says. It calls for rigorous research and long hours for each of his creation which varies from three to four days to 3 months. "I spend long hours, sometimes 14 to 18 hours a day, to give shapes to my creations. Collecting and sourcing the unusual stuff was another painstaking and time consuming affair. I have gathered material from different parts of the country like Rajasthan, Gujarat, south India and so on which in turn has added diverse tinge of ethnicity to the end products" tells Sinha.

He has developed these sculptures at his large workshop at Nalhati with his students and team members. Some of these structures are as tall as 9.6 ft to 10 ft. There are some paintings of him as well on the walls to create an overall ambience.

Sinha insists on uniqueness. Not one of his work would find a repetition. It's like a boutique product. He also carefully studies different forms of traditional architecture in different parts of the country and tries to reflect them in his creations.

Sinha is versatile too. His jewellery in brass, pearl and semi precious stones which are available in different boutiques in Kolkata, Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Pune feature in the well-known fashion show circuit. Handmade jewellery and knick-knacks designed by him have graced Tina Ambani's Harmony Shows and are also used by fashion designer Sabyasachi Mukherjee in his shows.

An Indian at heart, Sinha incubates the dream of representing Indian ethnicity in the global arena through his creations. He further aspires to reach art to the grassroots people. "Art has always been confined to the rich and aristocrats whereas music has transcended all barriers. I as an artist dream of bridging the social gaps through art which is possible just by reviving some everyday commodity like that of a kohl-container which has immense artistic nuances in it," he says.

Art for Change

Art as an agent of change 
Folk art forms have been with rural communities for centuries but now artists have been encouraged to develop them into new forms to ensure commercial success and empowerment, finds Baishali Mukherjee 

Moyna Chitrakar, a patua artist, specialises in scroll painting Photos: TWF

RESIDING in a faraway village in Nadia of West Bengal, nobody knew Golam Fakir as an artist six years ago. Belonging to a marginalised community and without formal education, Golam used to carry dead bodies from the police station to the morgue. His is a fascinating story of transformation - from a non-entity despised by many in the neighbourhood, to a celebrity singer Baul geet, a form of Bengal's folk song, in a span of six years.

He has performed all over India and has travelled to UK, Switzerland, France, Tunisia, Scotland and China. His income has gone up from around Rs 200 a month to Rs 30,000 now.

Golam narrates his experience through this journey in his own fashion, "I never thought of anything beyond my two meals few years back, and now I've the opportunity to travel across the globe and perform on stage with great musicians and performers, and represent my country in front of the global audience. It fills my heart when people appreciate and applaud Baul music," he says.

Moyna Chitrakar is a patua (from patachitra) artist who specialises in scroll painting of Bengal. Her story too reflects how women have been empowered through exposition of their art. Moyna and her husband Malekh used to earn about Rs 1,000 a month six years ago. Today, her family earns many times over. She has travelled with her paintings and other diversified products to different parts of India attending fairs and festivals. She even went to China to attend an industrial fair in Shenzhen. With her money she has also constructed a two-storey house in her village where tourists can stay. Moyna is a confident woman today and says, "We can concentrate on our work now as we don't need to worry about our next meal anymore."

Crafting this change since 2004 is banglanatak dot com, a social development organisation in Kolkata. Elucidating the process of change, Amitabha Bhattacharya, director, says, "Culture is a great enabler. It fosters social inclusion. Oral and performing art traditions are an asset for developing rural enterprise." New markets are created and new brands can be developed to promote traditional performing and visual arts and crafts, he points out. "Heritage becomes a means of livelihood and empowerment. The motto is 'To preserve art, let the artists survive'," he adds.

For Amitabha Bhattacharya, director, banglanatak.com, culture is an enabler

The ministry of culture, West Bengal, supported the initiative between 2005 and 2009. In December, 2009, the European Union provided support to the project named Ethno Magic Going Global (EGG) to take ethno art to the global arena. The project has created a tremendous impact, leading to socio economic development of the beneficiaries and their communities. With identity being changed from "daily unskilled labour" to "artist", they are now coming forward to participate even in the development process.

Revitalising and reviving these heritage skills as means of livelihood necessitates mobilising changes in mindset and attitudes as the folk artists become 'cultural service providers'. A comprehensive training and capacity building programmes was undertaken after the formation of a Self Help Group to help innovate new ways of rendering the traditional art forms. The aim was to establish a guru- shishya parampara- where skilled craftsmen pass on their knowledge to the practising artists.

Winds of change have now started blowing elsewhere too. Recently, LNG Petronet, one of the fastest growing companies in the Indian energy sector, has come up with the documentation of Swang- a popular form of folk theatre in rural Haryana and Punjab and an integral part of their rich cultural heritage. It aims at introducing the form among the connoisseurs to facilitate its preservation and promotion. However, awareness about this form of performing art is low among the urban youth or even among the modern theatre groups. According to Kishan Kumar, a theatre activist of Rohtak, Haryana, the government organizes Swang to raise money from the public for repair or construction of schools or roads. Its popularity may be gauged by the fact that around rupees two to three lakh was raised from a single performance of Swang in Haryana. "If made into compact and short productions, Swang can prove to be a popular entertainment form," feels Kamal Tewari, chairperson of Sangeet Natak Akademi in Chandigarh.

Singer Golam Fakir’s income has risen from Rs 200 to Rs 30,000 per month

Taking the cultural revival a step further, banglanatak dot com has also taken the initiative to incubate and enliven the age old art forms of Bihar from becoming moribund. Apart from the Madhubani painting no other folk form of Bihar is well-known today. Efforts are on to rejuvenate the feisty cultural inventory of Bihar that includes folk songs like Sohar, Nirgun, Kajri, and Byaas, dance like Jhijia, dramas like Ramleela, Nautanki etc, tribal dance like Santhali dance and crafts like sujni (embroidered quilts) and sikki (grass weaving). More than a thousand individuals with knowledge about these art forms have been identified under a project.

Apart from art forms, the scope for developing ethno-cultural tourism offering authentic experience of indigenous life is also being explored. From places like Gorbhanga, a village located in Nadia district that houses a band of Baul artists, Pingla, home to around 300 patuas in West Midnapore district and Jangal Mahal in Bengal, to Tinsukia in Assam and also Goa, are being developed as community led ethno-tourism destinations by exploring the traditional artistic skills of local population as primary resources. The important impact of developing tourism in these places will be restoration of peace in the disturbed areas of Bengal and Assam through inclusive growth of the aboriginal people of those areas.

In today's world of intolerance and unrest culture can prove to be a potential tool for establishing universal peace and brotherhood. For as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once said "Hatred is something peculiar. You will always find it strongest and most violent where there is the lowest degree of culture." — TWF

Blame Game

When I look back at first year of the ‘age of Poribartan’, like all other educated middle class Bengali people I shudder to apprehend what holds for us in future. In fact this is the first time I am thinking of leaving Bengal more so because of Mohor, my 8 years old daughter. But the thought invariably makes me sad as I love to stay here. And this love is an inherent love of a Bengali for Bengal. It is this love that made me think what it would mean to be way from here. And I realized it would mean a completely different life altogether that starts with adapting the tongue to completely different experience (gastronomic way) and movements (lexicon way). It is not that Bengalis living elsewhere don’t enjoy life, but surely at the cost of missing the intricacies and delicacies typical of the state.  I, for one, am sure, am not prepared for these compromises. Perturbed with the thought I started to think why this had to happen? Why cannot Ms Banerjee be what we all expected her to be? Then it occurred to me – “is anyone in our lives the way we want them to be?” The answer to that, much to our consternation, is a big NO. This deduction made me ponder even further and I started thinking, “is it so that we don’t deserve to be gratified?  Is it that the collective decay of the clan which once dominated the country’s intelligentsia, rendering it moribund?” The mildewed existence that we have brought upon us through ages of mindless vertical growth, self absorption and escapism has perhaps started to boomerang.  It’s strange that we keep up with the unjust ways of people, society and the Dervish dance of the devil called power which has manifested its hideous tendrils in every institution at the micro level and shout out guts out when we see it at the macro one! Is not the macro a manifestation of the micro? And are we not expecting doves from the eggs laid by crows? Blame game can be the smartest and easiest way to stay unaffected, but when the ship sinks no one is spared.

I remember a line from a song by kabir Suman which says- kathar pahar holo (a mountain has been created out of mere words) - and vouch for the same. Orators are ubiquitous here but few are the ones who act. And when it comes for acting on the words which we so ceremoniously proclaim, what a misery it proves to be- such pain! such botheration! Then starts the ‘smarter than thou’ game of ducking and peeping. What a macabre farce our deeds might appear if portrayed in front of us- have we thought of it ever? How ridiculous we would appear to our own selves? It’s a shame that the person who took the simple human initiative to take an accident victim to hospital was given a heroic stature!! Can’t we see the degeneration in us that is reflected in such an effort? That he was lauded because others were playing the obnoxious game of ducking and peeping? Why has the youth, protesting the eve teasing of his sister, to die at broad day light? Doesn’t it reveal the extent to which our morality has been reduced to rubble? How many of us would be prepared to leave our white collared jobs to take up the rugged road of politics in India? Isn’t graffiti (especially in the much hyped virtual wall) more safe and attractive, the likes and mindless appreciations more tempting? That way we can be popular and get aye-sayers galore and what a boost that is to our little ego.

The tolerance we expect from our leaders is hardly shown by us even in the most of simple situations. The way a driver is heckled by others in the same seat if the car takes a little longer to get started at a signal shows our tolerance level, quite disturbingly so. The more powerful is the seat the less is the level of tolerance. Surrounded by sycophants we feel secured of our power and the moment a ‘no’ is uttered our world starts to crumble. The rebel among the tamed ones appears as a great threat and we wield ourselves to make us sure of his doom but remain oblivious of our own face off that results with such an exercise. The inconsistency of character the duel personality, the colossal practise of preaching without practicing, if we think of it, will appear appalling to our own distressed selves. Power makes Demigods out of us and we want absolute supremacy over all earthly beings. This leads towards the indomitable urge to grab and control without sparing a thought about whether we need, can handle or deserve it. The very act of grabbing is so insidiously addictive that in our pursuit we end up acquiring things we have no clue about. The result of this inane act is reflected in the thriving business of the Babas and Mata Jis who take the opportunity of our abject situation and mint money. 

It’s interesting and sad at the same time that we still look back at our past, as we have no options to do otherwise, to find our role models, especially when it comes to moral character. Is it not a hint enough to the mockery of our existence? Before asking the king or the queen about his/her clothes let’s make sure that we are draped properly or at least have covered ourselves enough. Otherwise the covert Sir Epicure Mammon in us will make us look ludicrous perhaps even more than the king or the queen.