South Asia Daily

I am jaywalkin here...

What I felt when I first came to New York in 1992 is what I felt yesterday again on a current visit—I slipped right in. The city is like a pair of well-worn shoes for me. This might go against all the conventional wisdom of being an outsider to the city that is famously abrasively nonchalant.I have always found it friendly without being familiar. 

I remember before my first visit some pretentious fool, whose name I forget not, offered a piece of unsolicited advice saying, “When in New York do not look anyone in the eye. They will insult you.” I have not heard more nonsense about a city’s essence. 

I have of course worked here for about four years and have been visiting it often enough, although I think not enough. I am considering shifting back if I find interesting work. Yesterday, after reaching Lexington Hotel on Lexington and East 48th I walked around and found some inexplicable exuberance in my strides. The New York sidewalk felt like a treadmill that moved faster the faster I walked. But for my bad right knee I may have ended up running for no reason at all. 

In that frame of my mind, I was reminded of the iconic line from ‘Midnight Cowboy’ (1969) in which Dustin Hoffman famously improvised in the middle of a street as he was about to be hit by a taxi, “I am walkin’ here..I am walkin here.” While crossing outside my hotel I said out aloud “I am jaywalkin here…I am jaywalkin here.” No one noticed. If they did, they did not react. If they reacted, I did not notice because I was busy “walkin.” For the record, I crossed when the light turned green for me.

I cannot explain why I feel as if I slip right in in New York. I do not feel that in Chicago on whose periphery I have now lived for over a decade. Sure, I can walk about in Chicago’s remarkable downtown with great joy but it is not the same as New York. Chicago downtown has the reputation of being friendlier and it probably is. However, New York is strangely addictive. You get high rather quickly without any intoxicant whatsoever. 

There are many great cities in the world but there is something to the city’s vibe that asks, “You call that city! This is city.”

In New York for a bit

New York rocks as always. 

A morning of debilitating ennui

It is a morning of debilitating ennui. I am not quite sure of the cause. Perhaps it is because it is snowing outside. Or may be, because it is snowing inside my mind.

Vinoba Bhave in the time of land acquisition

Vinoba Bhave

 

Vinoba by MC

 

Yesterday was the 36th death anniversary of the remarkable Vinoba Bhave. I am late by a day to herald it but I do so with the republication of a post I wrote about him on March 18, 2015. So here it is:

 

March 18, 2015

 

Vinoba Bhave (September 11,1895-November 15, 1982) is a very prominent presence at the Gandhi Ashram here in Ahmedabad. With the current political ferment in New Delhi over the Narendra Modi government’s land acquisition policy, where farmers’ consent to their lands being acquired is the main bone of contention, Bhave’s life seems fictional.

 

While waiting for the shoot to be set up at the Ashram yesterday for my interview with Dr. Tridip Shurud, a well-known Gandhi and Narsinh Mehta scholar, who also happens to be the director of the Sabarmati Ashram Preservation and Memorial Trust, I began thinking about Bhave.

 

Arguably one of Gandhi’s most consequential followers, Vinoba was an extraordinary figure whose was, in many ways, a uniquely Indian story. He set out for a life as a Himalayan hermit. As part of that quest his first stop was Varanasi in early 1916. Newspapers then there were full of reports about a man called Mohandas Gandhi and his defining speech at the newly founded Benaras Hindu University. He sought a meeting with Gandhi and subsequently met him in June of that year. That changed his life and put him firmly on a lifelong mission to perfect non-violence as a tool for social transformation.

 

His chosen tool of transformation through non-violence was ‘Bhoodan’ (Bhoo meaning land and dan meaning donate) or land gift. The idea was exquisitely simple yet enormously difficult. Using the power of his personal morality, mass public contact and the essential goodness of people’s hearts he would make the landed voluntarily gift tracts of land for the landless millions of Indians. Vinoba believed that along with air and water land too was a natural human right. But he also knew that it was far more difficult to part with than the other two.

 

During a meeting with the disenfranchised and landless people of the village of Pochampalli in Andhra Pradesh he found out that barely 80 acres of land could change their lives. He did not know how to get them the 80 acres. It was then that a local landowner, Ram Chandra Reddy said he could gift 100 acres. That set the stage for what turned out to be a remarkable movement. Starting September 12, 1951 he walked thousands of miles throughout India for 13 years exhorting large landowners to donate pieces of land for the landless across the country.

 

According to Bhave’s official website over 4.1 million acres of land were gifted as part of his Bhoodan movement. The actual land distributed was about 1.2 million acres with over 1.8 million acres being found unfit. The remainder was perhaps never donated. Even if it was just 1.2 million acres of land, it is quite an accomplishment for a frail, barely clad, man to walk the lengths and breadths of the country and getting people to donate something for which massive wars have been fought.

 

At a time when the country is discussing fair ways to acquire land from farmers for infrastructural development, Bhave’s is an exceptional story. To me it is also strikingly cinematic and not in the least because of his unusual presence. It is a great movie waiting to be made.

Who is a scholar?

Modesty, especially carefully calibrated and choreographed, is a prized commodity in Indian culture. Bragging is frowned upon even if it is sometimes a simple statement of fact. Successful people often go to risible lengths to underplay their achievements for fear of being derided or called egotistical. I bring no judgement to this cultural trait other than being occasionally amused by it.

It is in this context that I view a tweet by historian and writer Ramchandra Guha where he refers to himself as a "scholar" and in the process, inevitably, triggers ridicule among his many antagonists on social media. To sample the mocking I read the first few reactions to this particular tweet and was richly rewarded by the extent and, in some cases, creativity of it. Many predictably picked up on "a scholar like myself" and subjected Guha to fairly hilarious putdowns.

Of course, Guha's ridicule is along political/ideological lines because it mostly comes from the right who see him as a flaky liberal. Of course, the descriptions of Guha's reputation degenerates into abusive as you go deeper into it as is the case with most discourse on social media. I am reasonably certain that if someone of the right's share ideological persuasion had described themselves as a scholar, the mockery would not be so intense. In that case the left-liberal would have pounced on the description. There is just a general climate of recrimination that defines our current times.

The definition of scholarship too has become a partisan squabble because, absurdly, there is such a deep divide over what constitutes fact and what attains the sanctity of truth. To put it in scholarly terms, it is all fucked up right now.

That should be it for the day. 

Nehru, Karsh of Ottawa and I

 

Jawaharlal Nehru by Yousuf Karsh, Copyright Karsh of Ottawa, 1956

November 14 feels like a perfect day to remember the great portrait photographer Yousuf  Karsh (1908-2002) because he had a connection with Jawaharlal Nehru, whose 129th birth anniversary it is today. Known as Karsh of Ottawa, the late photographer also has a very tangential connection with me.

As a teenager, I wrote a letter on behalf of my brother Manoj to Karsh in which I wrote among other things, "I want an autograph by hands which have created history on celluloid." Karsh was kind enough to indeed send a portrait of his with his autograph which adorned our drawing room in Ahmedabad in the 1970s.

Karsh is regarded as perhaps the finest portrait photographer for whom the who's who of the world sat with great enthusiasm. Nehru was one of them. The picture above, which I have used with all credit but without express permission from Karsh Estate, is iconic. It was 11 years after India's independence and eight years before his death. In other words, it was right in the thick of Nehru's glory days. Nehru was 67 and had seen extraordinary tumult in his life for decades by this point.

The portrait does not give away much other than a quiet reflection. Nehru seems there but not all there. The fact that he had been through a great deal of national upheaval along with a galaxy of other leaders shows up only slightly in this portrait.

I know these days to say anything even remotely decent about Nehru is an invitation for profane denunciation by a legion of his haters. I see Nehru as a decisive influence on India's future in the less than two decades after its independence. The quality of that influence ought to be open to serious scholarly scrutiny but it must not be open to utterly gratuitous and ignorant name-calling on the basis of modern-day prejudices and biases. All leaders have feet of clay and so did Nehru and any other leader in human history. The important thing is within the natural frailties of human existence how a person performs to their absolute optimum to do good for the larger good. By that yardstick, Nehru's contribution is undeniable though it may perhaps be shorter than what his gushing acolytes claim and but certainly much more than what his knee-jerk antagonists assert.

This post is only about Karsh, Nehru and I in a very limited sense. So please don't get your underwear rise up in frothing rage. It is mostly about a wonderful portrait.

Three random works

Three random works done in the last couple of days. The third one is a version of an interesting painting titled 'Country Haircut' by American painter Milton Avery (1885-1965) on Christie's.

Claude Money

 

Le bassin aux nymphéas by Claude Monet (Above) and my rapid impression of it (below)

 

In the art world, particularly the heavy hitters among the very wealthy buyers, Claude Monet is also known as Claude Money. That is a quarter in jest because the rest is in all seriousness.

The Impressionist patriarch can sell any work at any time. Any Monet work is accompanied with an inordinately long ka-ching sound. So it was no surprise that while watching live online Christie’s auction yesterday of “Impressionist and Modern Art” sale in New York, a 1918 work titled Le bassin aux nymphéas by him sold for $31,812,500. 

As pointed out by the auction house, “The top lot was one of six paintings by Monet in the sale, including Jeune fille dans le jardin de Giverny, which realised $16,062,500, and Effet de neige à Giverny, which drew applause from the saleroom when it was hammered down for $15,500,000 — more than three times its low estimate.”

Monet sold very well even during his own lifetime unlike many of his contemporaries. It would be unfair to attribute his sale only to his genius as a painter because many of his contemporaries had comparable genius. When I think of Monet I am reminded of an iconic verse by the great poet Mirza Ghalib. 

है और भी दुनिया में सुखनवर बहुत अछ्छे
कहते हैं की ग़ालिब का अंदाज़-ए-बयाँ और 

There are many wonderful poets in the world
But it is said Ghalib’s way of expression is unique 

Replace “poets” with painters and Ghalib with Monet and it fits perfectly. 

I frequently try to sharpen my skills by copying or interpreting Monet’s works apart from dozens of others. When I saw this particular work yesterday, it took me hardly any time to get on Fresh App and use pastels to do a rapid impression of the master Impressionist. I then touched it up with some virtual paint.

I can let mine go for just $31.81.

The strange journey of creative impulses

Alang--MC

While watching a short video essay about cinematographer Roger Deakins’ work in ‘Blade Runner 2049’ I found out that some of the scenes in the movies depicting a rusted post-apocalyptic world were partly inspired by the ship-breaking industry in Bhavnagar on the west coast of India.*

The town of Alang near Bhavnagar in Gujarat is now the world’s largest ship-breaking hub, dismantling some 300 giant ships a year which is 50 percent of the global total. By its very nature ship-breaking is a hellish enterprise since it involves cutting through gigantic pieces of steel using gas torches. It is extremely hazardous and like all things hazardous it is also extremely visual. Rusting iron is captivating as a visual and if giant pieces of rusting ships are cut down using gas torches by men without proper safety gear in conditions utterly unforgiving as they are in Alang, then it is a powerful source to paint. 

Hailing from Gujarat, I have known about Alang for a long time. Some day I hope to be able to spend time there with the express purpose of painting. Until that happens, I have chosen to do some preliminary work by watching a remarkabledocumentary about Alang. 

Of the two preliminary pieces here only one on top looks someone portentous. The other one look pretty even though that was no my intention. However, I acknowledge that even within what looks like a post-apocalyptic hellscape, there can be several visually edifying images.

The main purpose for this short post was my fascination with how the creative process works. From a short video essay to a remarkable film to a remarkable documentary to a few telling shots in that documentary to these two paintings and perhaps many more. It is exhilarating. 

* Cue 4.54 for that reference

Migraine and creativity

Woman combing by MC

Woman combing, Pencil sketch by MC

‘Woman combing her hair’ by Polish painter Władysław Ślewiński, 1909

Migraine tends to intensify my creative impulses. If I am painting in the midst of an attack, my pictures become visually more saturated. If I am writing ghazals, they become deeper. If I am writing prose, it becomes sharper. I cannot explain why.

My latest attack began the day before yesterday and is on its way out because of several painkillers. Normally, it lasts four days and more if I control the intake of painkillers. However, with age I can no longer separate my working life from my migraines. 

Yesterday, I chanced upon a chighly accomplished 1909 painting titled ‘Woman combing her hair’ by a Polish painter called Władysław Ślewiński. That prompted me to first sketch it in pencil on paper. That pencil sketch was photographed and transferred to my computer where I painted on it using Fresh App.

I knew my colors would be saturated because of my migraine. As you can see, they indeed are. 
I finished the portrait around 9 p.m. and went to sleep only to be woken up around 2 a.m. with a poem forming in my mind. The migraine was very much swirling around. The poem began, as it usually does, in Hindi/Urdu but I would spare you that version and offer only a couple of verses in English that formed almost simultaneously. 

We all summon our sorrow
We all confect our delight
We all exult in our triumph
We all yield to fright

That should be all for today.