An Indecisive Indian

Creativity is contagious.  So pass it on. (lines stolen from Einstein)   I may not be a painter with a brush or a sculptor with chisel in hand, but I do know how to carry an idea—carefully, faithfully—across the distance from thought to reality. Fresh from our successful foray into the unlikely marriage of Art and Industry, a journey that first took root back in 2011 at Bangalore station, I find myself once again standing on the edge of a new adventure. Am I ready to push the envelope? Without a doubt. Today, I helm the Integral Coach Factory (ICF) in Chennai—the crown jewel of Indian Railways’ train-building might. This isn’t just a factory; it’s a throbbing citadel of steel and strength. A workforce five times the size of Rail Wheel Factory, Bangalore, which was my last port of call and where I experimented with Art in an indistrial setting for the first time. A yearly output of over 2,500 train carriages—making it, arguably, one of the most prolific in the...

      (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.   ...

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. Aag...

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 ...

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 ...