An Indecisive Indian

Creativity is contagious.  So pass it on. (lines stolen from Einstein)   I am neither creative nor artistic. But I intend to really pass it on from one place to another. Fresh from our successful experiment with Art in an industrial setting, after this adventure had begun way back in 2011 at Bangalore station, am I ready to push the envelope?   Absolutely. I am now working as the General Manager of Integral Coach Factory (ICF), Chennai, the flagship train builder of Indian Railways. It is a very large factory, with five times the number of employees as compared to Rail Wheel Factory, Bangalore, turning out more than 2000 train carriages a year, arguably one of the busiest in the world. A very strong committed workforce.       Trains have romance. Making wheels has it’s own magic. But building trains? In any case, who wants to replicate, do an identic, even if it’s an encore of your own doing? It’d be great to bring out something like a duple. 

      (this sketch is the best tribute ever paid to me by anyone)   Let me start with a cliché, oft repeated by us. Indian   Railways (IR) has always been an unintended fountainhead of art and culture, reflecting the unique heritage and multi-cultural ethos of our country. Lily Pandeya & I said it in our previous book, ‘Art & Railways, a Bangalore Saga’.   We had started the Art movement, Safar , in the year 2011,   and looking at its success and appeal among Railway men and travelling public alike, chronicled the experiment in this coffee-table book. Later, we parted ways and I landed in Germany for   a stint in the Embassy of India, handling IR’s post-contractual works all over the world.   A relatively stress-free job but it involved extensive travelling. It helped me acquire a new perspective on Art in so many unusual and unlikely settings. A warehouse here, an eatery there, a shrine yonder.   I was back in   Bangalore after three years and o

A Maharashtrian   friend of mine, a balanced level-headed guys not given to prejudices, visited Lucknow for the first time. And as with so many visitors to the city of nawabs, his sights were just too high. And therefore, the disappointment was greater.   He asked me, “Mani bhai, kya rakha hai aapke Lucknow mein. Kuchh bhi aisa nahin mila ki dil khush ho jaaye”. Thankfully, he did not dig into the familiar caricatures. Rickshaw traffic, unmetered autos, ugly tempos, vanishing bus service, no taxis, mockery of traffic lights and generally a city belly-up, even by Indian standards. He did mention, though, that we guys must be extremely callous to turn an imposing Railway station building and vista into the extremely crummy and filthy embarrassment.   I have been asked this question so many times. Aur karte the hum bachaao,   hemaayat,   mudaafeat aur muhaafizat, bare zor shor se . But with time, gradually, I have realized how indefensible our city is. Aage aati thi haal - e -d i

Catch the enthusiasm from these pictures of the Camp first.... Untitled Dr . M S Murthy In this painting, Dr. Murthy has captured the essence of our factory, red hot molten metal, the cyclic   nature of our processes of manufacture by intriguing workmen and a wheel rising from our labour . Titled “Wheel of life”, the Bhavachakra impressions lends it new meaning. A semi-abstract, which juxtaposes the mundane activity of making a wheel with the samsara or cyclic existence or rather, for better understanding by us engineers, the wheel of becoming.   Sleep without fear Shivanand Basavanthappa Mr. Basavanthappa says, “the urge to express the dynamic and intangible perceptions through a tangible media turned   me into an artist. As much as I chose to express, I found myself to be the fundamental medium of expression”.   Taking a leaf out of recent captions on outstation buses in Karnataka, “sleep like a baby”, the artist has a man sleeping on a r

Reinventing the wheel     another Bangalore saga   My coffee-table book, "Reinventing the wheel, another Bangalore saga" is almost complete. As I mentioned earlier in this blog, it chronicles the extraordinary experiment of  creating and promoting Art in the industrial setting of Rail Wheel Factory.   The book cover A painting by Gujjar, the well-known cartoonist and painter   Let me start with our oft repeated a cliché. Indian   Railways (IR) has always been an unintended fountainhead of art and culture, reflecting the   unique heritage and multi-cultural ethos of our country. I and Lily said it in our previous book, “Art & Railways, a Bangalore Saga”.   We had started the Art movement, Safar , in the year 2011,   and looking at its success and appeal among Railway men and travelling public alike, chronicled the experiment this coffee-table book. Later, we parted ways and I landed in Germany for   a stint in the Embassy of India, handling IR’s p