A skein of trains made but waiting to get unchained

My books related with railways and art 

(A skein of trains made but waiting to get unchained)

If you can call someone who has written only coffee table books with contracted graphics based on pictures of all kinds from within the railway purlieus, art works and events, I am one. My fifth book shall be launched soon, hopefully. But before that, a look at my last book on art and railways.

                                  Available from Secretary/ICF on secygmicf@gmail.com
                                  disclaimer: I have no royalty of financial interest in sale

Let me, however, present a brief outline of my work in bringing visual art to the drab industrial premises of Integral Coach Factory. This was an experimentation somewhat in the fashion of similar ventures carried out in Bangalore earlier; first at the railways station and later in the Rail Wheel Factory. Eventually, the experiment turned out to be a movement of sorts and some artists felt that a new genre had been created. Well, that judgement is for the more scholarly to make; for me it was gratification all the way but it would  not have been successful without the wholehearted support of the art community of Chennai. 

I have been a lucky author. Four books to my name, in spite of a lack of writing talent and more than that, without having made any great creative effort. This so, because the beauty of the earlier  books, which I am told were indeed beautiful, stemmed almost entirely from the pictures of the artworks,  complemented by some admirable graphics. If I am now attempting to write my fifth to showcase some recent artworks and document another experiment in art, it is nothing more than more of the same, a definite been there, done that.  Déjà vu.

Wasn’t it going to be easy!  A piece of cake! Or so I thought. Because it was so easy, it became so difficult. I had the motivation. I had the time. And above all, I had the artworks, murals and sculptures, all beckoning me. But the comfort of familiarity soon vanished and I found that it was quite an effort this time to build a chronicle around the love of art among railway men and the inspiration Indian Railways (IR) offer to artists.

I always took recourse to the hackneyed declaration that IR had always been an accidental engine for generation of art, reflecting the unique heritage and multi-cultural ethos of our country. I have gained comfort in the fact that  I was instrumental in starting the art movement, Safar, in the year 2011. I have tried to continue this effort wherever I have been since then. That part, therefore, came naturally to me at Integral Coach Factory (ICF), Chennai and it helped that the team here rolled up in this endeavour with great zeal. So while there was no procrastination and uncertainty in gearing up to festooning and furbishing the ICF spaces, chronicling the experience, however, was proving to be painful. Should I clarify that my love for art, or my obsession with art, as some like to term it, is not an exercise in self-aggrandizement; since I can neither sketch nor paint, I can easily excuse people who think so. But more than that, as a student of science, and worse, later engineering, I have always found myself deficient in appreciating some fine things of life, like art. So I can quite shamelessly say that all this is indeed a means to extract some vicarious pleasure out of the visual treasures created by others. I attribute my attempts at writing books on my experiences with art and railways to a wistful desire for getting rid of this deficiency.  At the same time, even the sense that one was instrumental in creation of extraordinary from the mundane is very stimulating, very heady. That is another reason I pursue this madness. 

Since the job of putting together this book was proving to be more difficult than I thought, in spite of the solid bedrock which was afforded to me in the form of all the fantastic artworks, I decided to change course. I cut down on my own laboured thoughts and contrived prose and concentrated almost entirely on my interaction with the participating artists. We spoke at length and I put their thoughts in my interpretation and exposition, hopefully with some good results but that only time will tell. 

I have no shame in accepting that the book I am writing at present is, once again, nothing but a replication. But since the artworks I choose to showcase are, to my mind, quite esoteric and eclectic, albeit within the confines of my attempts at uniting art with railways, I would think that this book would make a good read.

While going through the last  book, my brother-in-law, Umesh Gaur, an art lover and collector of great standing, commented that the book was more in the fashion of a catalogue. He added that since many artworks covered in this book, as also the previous two, deserved more, I should move beyond simple reportage to a book accommodating scholarly critique and more learned reviews in addition to an organized curation. Well, unfortunately I was too far gone with this one already and did not have the stamina to change course. So I took the easy route of continuing with more of the same this time but I promised to him that I would wrap up this book writing business with a book compiled in the fashion that he advised me about. Only time will tell whether I succeed but the intention is sure there.

Not a piece of cake! I started with the pretension of trying to make it off beat vis-à-vis my earlier books but that was something I could not see myself achieving so I soon gave up on that. Having compiled all that had been done in the field of creative and public art at ICF since the last book was launched, I left it to the graphic designer to breathe some fresh air in to this compendium, so this one could also masquerade as a book. 

to be launched by month end

Umesh also told me something which made me feel rather good. He was the first to mention that me, my colleagues and the participating artists have, perhaps accidently, given birth to a genre of art. Well, that’s saying a lot, isn’t it? Given that IR itself had always been an accidental engine for generation of art, reflecting the unique heritage and multi-cultural ethos of our country, it is not that surprising. So art lovers and, indeed, railway lovers, please take this book as another documentation of this emerging genre and wish me success with the next more challenging one. 

As for the artists, who knows if they would indeed be the avant la letter of the genre we tried to create unknowingly. I have made great friends with art community of Chennai. Their artistic energy and emotional intensity has helped us at ICF in collecting such a wealth of art. I am greatly indebted to them. 

Needless to add, but all the same, the secretariat of GM/ICF and the officers and staff of the Chennai Rail Museum have been extremely enthusiastic and supportive in bringing out this book. I salute their esprit de corps. I have to make special mention of Sri Raghupathi, the PS in GM's office, whose support in taking the books to completion has been indefatigable.