An Indecisive Indian

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