Last Days in India

Art Camp in Mysore and Back to the Village

CAVA Students at Art Camp

Bhagya arranged an Art Camp, an Indian phenomenon in which a number of artists are invited to get together for about a week to make work that will then be exhibited and sold to raise money for a cause. As some previous plans had fallen through, Bhagya decided to invite 12 of her CAVA students to participate for a three-day art camp.

We began by piling into two vehicles and driving to a village about an hour from Mysore, to meet with 4 or 5 Sanghas of women that had gathered to meet with us and share their stories. I was curious to see if my experience would be any different in the company of the students, who were in high spirits and primed for the adventure. This time I was familiar with the ritual prayer/song/lamp lighting ceremony, and the gifts of flowers and fruit from the women, a rose and a lemon for each of us, solemnly offered. Also the way I am placed in a position of authority, seated in a chair while the women are on the floor, in neat rows. And the way I am asked to speak to them, greeting them and authenticating the procedures of gathering together. And finally, the amazing feeling of giving, when I am asked to officially hand over gifts from the NGO to the women, in this instance suitcases with accounting ledgers for the sanghas to keep track of their accounts and cricket bats for the school children.

Sanghas gathered

Students listening to the women

Relating a Sangha Story

Women laugh in response to Nanjappa's speech

suitcase and ledger books

giving the suitcase

the women give gifts of roses and lemons to each of us

We were invited into one woman’s home, painted bright green and the few material possessions neatly stacked or rolled into small spaces. We saw the smokeless stove with its ventilating pipe preventing many cases of illness and the new toilet, one of the first in the village.

Smokeless Stove

Wedding Puja Painting

We passed the school and the children swarmed to greet especially me, the foreigner. They were so excited to have guests, my hand was covered by their small ones, eager to touch and to be seen by me. What’s your name, M’am? Your father’s name? Your mother’s name? It was lovely to be among them and see their small eager upturned faces.

prehistoric carvings scattered about the school yard the upraised hand is a symbol for victory

We stopped for lunch at a nearby prosperous farm, owned by a “multi-purpose worker”, which is what men who help administer to the sanghas in their district are called. The farmer had drilled a well and consequently his 7 acres were green and thriving. I asked about seeds and pesticides, and heard that some seeds are heritage, but more and more are hybrids purchased yearly because the “yield is better.” Also that pesticides are regularly used, except on their personal vegetables. While it was hard to get specific information about it and my concerns about the pesticides and hybrid seeds were brushed off, it was very pleasant to sit in the cool shade of the house and eat lunch together.

International Human Upliftment Development Academy Office

On the way back to Mysore, we stopped to see a 2000 year old temple in the village of one the student’s grandmother lived, Sri Lakshmi Kanta Temple Kalale Nanjanjadu. Although the door was locked, the priest let us in. He took water from a stone well inside the temple—the first traditional well I have seen in use here. We all bent over the rim to see into its black recesses. One student thought he recognized a turtle, but it turned out to be a coconut. The priest gave us puja, a ritual lamp fire blessing of the black stoned deity in the far recesses of the dark temple. I felt the power of its blackness and reticence and the magnetism of the circle of fire as the priest waved his lamp and chanted. He then anointed us, pouring spoonfuls of holy oil and fragrant flower blossoms into our cupped hands.

Deity

Deity with puja

Painted deity for festivals

Festival elephant

800 year old temple drum

After the blessing, the students showed me how to scramble up the steep blocks jutting out from an interior wall to walk on the roof of the temple, an utterly thrilling experience for me. They showed me how to throw five stones into a small round stone opening to make a wish.

Bhagya lodged us at the Mysore cancer hospital in cottages for visitors and provided all with ample meals, tea, coffee and all desired supplies. After the inauguration (lamp lighting, sung puja and a ritual signing of a blank canvas), the students lost no time in gathering materials and starting to work. They were hugely productive, finishing four, five and six canvases in two days. Unsettled about what I wanted to do, I settled on gouache portraits.

Nightly Art Camp fire

Feet keeping time to singing

inaugural painting

At night, we gathered around a fire and two of the students sang so beautifully. I only wished I understood Kanada, so I could get the jokes that were clearly flying around.

Singing and Drawing

We were all feeling quite fond of one another by the end of the three days, so the following morning, when Bhagya dropped me off in town for my last walk around before heading back to Bangalore, I was delighted that one of the students, Sunil was able to come with me to the Post Office and help navigate getting postcard stamps which had to be individually hand glued, a sticky, messy process.

Sunil gluing stamps

I said goodbye to the cooks, especially Nagama, who quickly learned to brew my green tea to perfection and always beamed at me whenever I walked into the kitchen to deliver my empty plate after eating one of her excellent meals.

Nagama

I gave a presentation on my work to a very tiny audience at one, Shanti Rd in Bangalore that evening and met the artist Biju Boze, who was really interested in how I was working with underground currents in earlier projects. He told me about the Indian concept, Vatsu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vastu_shastra, which I hope to explore further by returning to India and researching a project that will involve sustainable agriculture and the spiritual relationship of architecture to the land.

Delhi

The north is different, people are physically different, a bit sturdier in general and the clothing tends towards more solid colors. Men wrap their heads in woolen scarves and their clothes are thick to ward off the cold. Many have adopted western garb and there are many western-style clothing stores. I was really pleased to buy a fitted short wool jacket that they tailored to fit me beautifully.

Art Fair

Bhagya, Ajai and Anjali arriving at the fair

Although there was much to see and experience at the Indian Art Fair, my main experiences were with people I met and former students and SAIC grads I was able to see, like Bani Abidi, who had a fantastic new book launch with Raking Leaves, and Sumakshi Singh, whose installation at Religare was a walk-in illuminated manuscript she had painted and folded so that it only worked dimensionally through a video camera lens, which projected the “correct” perspective and included the viewer as part of the image.

Sumakshi Singh's installation at Religare

I was disappointed that I missed Bani’s talk about her book at the British Council, having got the wrong time. But Courtney Ziegler, another former SAIC student who is currently in Delhi and I had a delightful time having tea in a small side street, in a café that probably never had women in it, but tolerated us because clearly we were foreigners. The dim light softened the old cracked tiled walls and cast a golden glow on the rosy brick skin color of the handsome young man who served us. We bought samosas to snack on the way out. Bani invited us to join her and about a dozen friends for dinner afterwards in a nearby restaurant where the waiters seemed to descend by the dozens, heaping yet more food on our plates. Bani’s friends were a humorous and witty bunch. I had to listen carefully to get the good natured teasing that flew around the table.

Dinner with Bani and friends

Another highlight was a studio visit with the Raqs Media Collective, a three person collaborative group that has worked together for 20 years. They described their daily routine to me of meeting over endless cups of tea in their studio and discussing while recording and emailing on their laptops, maintaining an ever growing archive of their thoughts and activities. Particularly interesting to me is their practice of requiring any dissenter to propose an alternative to a plan, thus rendering any negative immediately useful and positive.

Nidhi Khurana and Ruchin Soni

On another night we were at the Sheridan Hotel the reception for Meerha Mukherjee sculptures from the 50’s. After viewing the exhibition, I sat down and started drawing a Sikh man wearing a turban when Nidhi and Ruchin approached me, curious to see what I was drawing. As they were artists and former students of Sumakshi Singh’s, we exchanged information. I had a wonderful studio visit with them as they are both deeply immersed in preparing for a March exhibition in Mumbai.

Sanskritti

Such a beautiful spacious place, the buildings built harmoniously with the land and trees, quiet despite the proximity to MG road’s dense traffic and the Metro. There were only a small handful of other artists in residence, all of them women, most my age or older, three other Americans, two Australians, one Swiss, and one Latvian. Each artist has a private spacious 2 floored apartment for sleeping and working, with balcony and front and back entrance open to the grounds. I frequently saw peacocks on the grounds, as well as many other birds I did not recognize, and monkey families paroled the road into the grounds.

It was slow going for me in the studio. A looming deadline combined with so much stimulation from the fair, meetings and travels through the city presented a big challenge to focus. It wasn’t until my last day that anything started to happen.

Akshay Raj Singh Rathore

Flora and Zephyr

A few days into my stay, a Delhi based artist, Akshay Raj Singh Rathore, began working on a month long “architectural dig”. Two men were engaged in digging a 15 x 10 foot pit, six feet deep, in which Akshay will install his clay modeling of contemporary everyday objects. Akshay and his wife Flora are planning a major farming restoration project, including the distribution of heritage seeds and the planting of indigenous trees in his childhood village. We spent a few afternoons discussing some of India’s severe environmental issues, including monoculture agribusiness, the effects of Monsanto, endemic malnutrition, lack of clean water and the explosion of new construction. Delhi based Khoj Foundation, which is supporting his village project, has been programming a number of workshops for artists, activists and intellectuals who wish to actively engage with India’s environmental challenges.

Sufi Singing at Nazruddin’s Tomb

At the entrance to Nizamuddin's Tomb

Buying Puja Offerings

Ruchin and Nidhi took me to hear the Sufi singing at Nizamuddin Auliya’s Tomb. We drove in dense traffic from the Saket Metro, where they picked me up, for some time in dense traffic, laughing as I practiced the Hindi swear words they taught me. The narrow lanes and white interior alleys of the Temple grounds were lined with vendors and beggars. Right before the entrance to the Tomb, Ruchin bought several plates of flowers and incense as offerings. Only men are allowed to enter into the tomb interior, but many women sat just outside the entrance, reverentially touching the surrounding architecture, where many sacred strands hung as prayer offerings. We waited quite a while for the singing to begin, seated on two facing carpets with an opening between them, where we were were joined by their friends.The singers, a group of around 8 men, were seated facing the tomb. Two played the harmonium, one percussion instrument, and all of them sang. The eldest collected the money offerings from the seated listeners, and also found places to sit for latecomers he seemed to know. He sang also, in a high sweet melodious tone.

Ruchin and Nidhi

Nidhi

The songs were quite long, perhaps 20 minutes or more each, and verses seemed to repeat, with new improvisational flourishes each time. The percussionist played complex rhythms that sped up, climaxed and quieted. Nidhi translated a few of the lyrics for me, which throbbed with longing for ecstatic love for God. I really wished I could have sung with them, carried by the full bodied sound.

Afterwards we drove for a long way looking for an open restaurant and found one near Jain University, which was about to close at 11 pm, where we joked and laughed and ate udipi style dosai.

Sikh Temple

Bunty and me

Courtney and I met at Rajiv Chowk Metro Station to do some shooting. Almost immediately we were befriended by a Sikh gentleman, Bunty, who decided to take us under his wing. We were never sure if he was taking commissions from the shops he took us to, as he never asked us for money. He said his day job is teaching children but they were on holiday that day. He really wanted to take us to his temple and though we were a bit grumpy from bargaining with shopkeepers and I was chafing to get back to the studio, but we relented, and took a bike rickshaw, the three of us adding to the burden of the older gentleman who propelled us forward. We were so glad we did. The Temple is a lovely white marble structure surrounded by greenery. After you check your shoes (for free, which includes shoe shine) and wash your hands and feet you mount the steps to the vast, cool interior. Amplified live prayer music flowed, singing and percussion by three men at the central shrine, or tomb, opulent in gold leaf. Believers streamed into the temple and prostrated themselves before it, making money offerings into several locked coffers. Bunty took us upstairs where readers kept the text alive by volunteering to read aloud the giant sacred texts.

Bunty then led us outside to the courtyard and beautiful pool for ritual bathing and back indoors to a vast cafeteria where people sat in neat rows on the floor eating from metal trays. Bunty explained that everyone ate for free, no matter how rich or poor, that the Sikh belief was that all are equal and that sitting in straight rows best demonstrated equality. We then were led into the cavernous kitchen, where vats of food, dahl and mixed vegetables, were ladled into serving basins. Women sat on dais, on one side patting the dough into round patties for chappati, on the other at the grill where they flipped them effortlessly into huge plastic baskets to be distributed in the cafeteria. The music was constant and lent all their actions a sense of ritual.

Shopping with Swamiprobuddhananda

On my last day at Sanskritti, a Vedanta retreat took place. Feeling really torn between spending some last hours painting, knowing I needed to go back into the city to shop for gifts and wanting to spend time talking to Akshay and his wife Flora about their upcoming project, I decided to forego the retreat. To my great surprise, Swamiji and I had a chance to talk at the end of the day, after the retreat, and were soon laughing heartily together. He was interested in going shopping also, so he and two other monks from his ashram took a bone shaking taxi together into the city. I was quite giddy in his company (how often does one go shopping with a Swamiji?) but he was a clear headed and resourceful shopper, guiding me to the right shops for my purchases.

Jan. 30

Savanarabelagola, Belur and Halebid

Pooja and Grafittee

I spent a long, delightful full day driving and sightseeing to Savanarabelagola, Belur and Halebid with Anande and Naveen, two art students from CAVA in Mysore. One of my favorite moments was stopping from breakfast at a “hotel” as small restaurants are called, chosen by our driver, who dazzled me by promptly inhaling two full breakfasts. The boys and I had delicious potato dosai. I needed to use the loo and was directed to the very back of the hotel, through a vast, dark kitchen crowded with men sitting on the floor preparing foods while giant grinders whirled away on tilted axis. The food and the whites of the men’s eyes glowed, jewel like in the dim, smoky light. I felt quite sure that I was the first western woman to ever walk through that place, and certainly that morning I was the only woman in the place. The men pretended to ignore me, perhaps because I was in the company of three men, and probably I would have been stared at more openly without their companionship.

The students were great company. Naveen, the younger of the two, let Anande talk as he was quite absorbed in shooting hundreds of photographs. Anande, a grad student who grew up in a village 60 kilometers outside of Mysore, knows a great deal about the myths and history of the sites and an extraordinary breadth of understanding about art and culture. I was really interested in hearing about his social projects like working with blind students to make drawings.

We drove returned to Bangalore on the 23^rd to prepare for our trip to Delhi, where, after being interviewed for Bangalore TV about the exhibition, Bhagya and I spent some time at the Gallery of Modern Art. It was really helpful to me to see the post Independence development of Indian contemporary art, shaped by the Tagore family and their desire to shape an art that was free of western influence. Instead, the primacy of Indian religion and myth in their modern art can’t be exaggerated.