Visual Arts and I…musings of a rookie curator (part 1)

I started writing the ICF and Train 18 story sometime in January 2019, within a month of my retirement. It all started when many magazines and journals requested me to write a story on making of Train 18 and I did not know where to begin. But, willy-nilly, I wrote some articles which were promptly printed. Many magazines and newspapers carried my interview also and that content was readily available without me needing to stretch too much in sitting down to write ab initio. So far so good. But I soon realized that it was easy to put down the story in an article. It needed more detailing, more space. I, therefore, revived my moribund blog, An Indecisive Indian, and started to write more meaningfully, or so I hoped.

With uncertainties and even gloom engulfing the future of Train 18, my spirits to continue writing the story dampened. I have repeatedly been told by well-wishers that my story was complete in itself and future need not be a part of this story. Well, I have decided to finish the thing off but to begin that, I am first venturing to start writing again on, well,  something totally unconnected with Train 18? I will return to the Train 18 and ICF story very soon but, meanwhile, would this peace be in the nature of a requiem? Possibly. Hopefully not. I do not know. I’ll know when I actually start writing.

Visual art and a ‘stock’ engineer like me? Yes.

In a span of nearly a decade, there have been a multitude of changes in my life’s journey, eventful and immensely exhilarating. It has helped me transition from a dry railway engineer to a plebe visual art curator. And how? 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. I, with some colleagues, had started the art movement, Safar (Support and Appreciation for Art and Railways), in the year 2011, at Bangalore. Looking at its success and appeal among railway men and travelling public alike, I put my heart into its expansion in all railway fields and purlieus. I had been, meanwhile, putting together all my experiments in coffee-table books and I wrote five of them. The beauty of these books lied mainly in the pictures and the graphics of the art work and not so much in the text I wrote. Yet, from a pidgin writer of books on art to a novice curator is not a great caper.

First a disclaimer. I cannot sketch or paint. I am not formally trained to appreciate art. Many of my close friends ask me if this obsession with art is an exercise in self aggrandizement. Far from it. I have understood, over time, creating a work of art is not easy. Giving a form to your mind’s eye is an exacting demand. This is the challenge an artist accepts and goes about his work. Artists often seek and scout for inspiration from their surroundings, which affords them alternate prismatic views, But when an artwork is born, it opens new vistas, a glimpse here and a glimpse there of things which you could never see before, even if they were always present just there! This makes the creation of an artwork so very exciting.

Georges Braque, the famous French painter, once said that art was meant to disturb while science was there to reassure. But would you not need to get disturbed first? After visiting a million galleries and museums, I realized that I must train myself to get disturbed or excited. It wouldn’t happen to an engineer like me otherwise. My journey in the field of Visual Arts, primarily for the last ten years or so, continues and I dare say that although I have covered some ground, I have only skimmed the surface. My explorations, therefore, continue after retirement from active service. In a way, the more exciting part of the journey has just begun.

The poet, Ali Sardar Jafri, covered it well for me:

Naya chashma hai patthar ke shigafon se ubalne ko,

  Zamana  kis  qadar  betaab  hai   karvat  badalne  ko

(A new stream is bursting forth to boil from the stones, the world here is passionately agitated to turn a new leaf.)

The dormant desire to decipher art was present for long but Indian Railways naturally played the big catalyst. Squeezing past the days and whistling through the nights, tunnelling through mountains or gently caressing the plains, stringing together somnolent villages and bustling towns, stitching together sprawling vistas ranging from esoteric to banal, Railways have for long presented imagery waiting to be enhanced and enriched with imagination and inspiration in a variety of ways. Promise of adventure, thrill of discovering unknown places, susurrated tales of the land and its people and compatibility between the archaic man and new-age machine are just some of the thoughts and themes that the mere mention of Railways conjures. The images of trains streaming on ribbons of steel, coursing through the length and breadth of the country, halting momentarily at stations are forged in popular anima. Engineer or no engineer, one just cannot you lie unmoved by the unmatched romance of Indian Railways.

The natural dramaturgy of a train moving through the contours of an Indian terrain truly hit me one hazy, and lazy, evening between Hindupur and Bangalore circa 2009. It was on a routine ‘window trailing inspection’ sitting in an inspection carriage attached to a train. The end wall of such a carriage, commonly known as a saloon, has glass lookouts, affording a very striking view of the track and stations behind a speeding train. A Railway officer sits at this window looking out for whatever he intends to check. I for one would do it frequently for the sheer fun, the ‘feel good’ as you moved through intriguing and overwhelming sceneries and spectacles of the Indian way of life. Sipping a cup of coffee, smoking a cigarette, looking out at the unfolding drama in vast fields, village roads, wayside stations and so on, with the repetitive sound of the train in background, what struck me was not merely the magnificence of the machine or the romance of the moving train but the marvel of the land and wonder of our day to day activities. Not the staid scenes one would see in a western country but fascinating scenes of great excitement. Little joys. Pathos and poignancy. Trite and trivial but at once moving. Desolate here and crowded there. Tender and robust. Struggle, exertion and sloth. Simple yet complex. I had read, many times in some form or the other that locomotives and trains were magnificent, if disturbing creations. Sensational things that became a subject of art in almost every conceivable form, right since their inception some 200 years ago. One can easily understand how a technological marvel, born out of the genius of the human mind, would appeal to the western mind and the subject was sure to inspire great creations. But here I was, sitting bewitched and bemused, witnessing and drinking in something much bigger than this common subject. Possible birth of a fresh genre of Visual Art was staring at me. What was I doing, attesting it, taking  it all in but doing nothing about it? 

Art must imitate life!!

I thought some more. Could one you forget a train journeys as a child? Leave the aisle, a train fenestra always beckoned! The fight for the window seat as the whole world drifted and streamed past your mesmerized eyes. Or even as an adult, the purpose of travelling on IR may well be to get to a certain place but you enjoy each step along the way; the journey became the objective, not the destination. Could one wipe out from one’s memory a snaking train and cautious devise to look back from a compartment door to experience the thrill of seeing a bending and curving skein of railway vehicles? Could one ever fail to recall and revel in the settings of some of the most poignant love stories, nail-biting suspense thrillers, rib-tickling comedies and dulcet melodies, inextricably linked to, trains and railway stations?

Railway stations and trains, indeed! Stations which are lent a sense of universality by the yellow board calling out the name and confirming the identity of a place. A mélange of colours in the sartorial preferences of cross sections of people, the humdrum of the trains and the cacophony of the vendors and recorded announcements by the ubiquitous lady all over India, broken occasionally by the shrill honks of locomotives. The wafting aroma of delectable local treats, and the porters donning the red shirts and brass buckles scurrying about their permanent habitat which they share with the quintessential railway officials like the Train Ticket Examiners and the Station Masters. These unique sights, sounds, colours and flavours at a station reflect the quintessential microcosm of our nation.

Shakespeare says through Antonio in Tempest, “Travellers never did lie though fools at home condemn them”. Yes, the IR travellers witness a fantastical and wondrous spectacle. And I indeed have no qualm in saying say that those who cannot not appreciate these wonders are perhaps blunted by a reality that cannot see beyond their narrow confines and conflicts.

The purpose of writing down all this romanticism and passion is simple; if all this cannot inspire art, whatever would?

One is always disappointed at not exploiting whatever abilities one seemed to have. I would think that most of the ordinary people are. But I am prisoner of my own procrastination and laziness. After all, as someone said “laziness never arrived at the attainment of a good wish”. At any rate, I did start dreaming. And kept dreaming. And occasionally, made a visit to one of the numerous art galleries in Bangalore. These visits were enjoyable in as far as one invariably met smart and comely, though not necessarily affable, collectors, curators and owners, all remarkable ladies. Otherwise, one did see some great pieces of art, or at least what I thought were great pieces of art.

I was soon joined in this day-dreaming by Ms Lily Pandeya, a colleague, a multi-faceted personality in her own right. Soon the concept of Safar emanated from meeting of our minds, and took its baby steps in the form of first Art Camp, naturally, and rather innocently, titled, what else but, Safar.

Conceptualizing art as the culmination of journey that an artist undertakes through varied life experiences, an art camp set against the backdrop of the myriad sights, sounds, flavours and colours of the Railway Station, quintessentially the microcosm of India, seemed like a perfect idea for a truly artistic experience. Confluence of some of the eminent contemporary artists expressing themselves on canvas in the midst of the hustle and bustle of life at a Railway Station promised to be a rare treat. The alluring interface of the world of the artists with that of the travellers, vendors, Railway employees, art enthusiasts and art promoters, or simply the curious passers by, would demystify art and simultaneously dovetail into it the essence of our everyday reality.

What an opportunity! Even as I would enrich myself by interacting with artists, seeking to remove my deficiencies as a stock engineer to appreciate the fine things of life and at the same time, becoming instrumental in giving birth, or at least a new fillip, to new genre of art inspired by railways.

And add to that what the great Pablo Picasso once said, “Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” The humdrum of the life of railway executive was going to be a mechanism to shed all the dust from our souls.

We gathered a team of enthusiastic railway men of Bangalore. We got some fifteen reputed artists of Karnataka bang in the middle of the City railway station painting right there, the first art camp to tremendous response as the experience itself, hitherto, was unparalleled on Indian Railways.

 (Artists painting at Bangalore City station)

We never looked back and following from three more camps at the station, we opened an art gallery at the station, another first for Indian Railways. We also got various artist communities, NGOs and even our own employees expressing themselves through public art, displayed at all railway premises with public interface. It was an artistic delineation of the Indian Railways through paintings, sketches, cartoons and more importantly, murals, sculptures and similar forms of public art. Not all of it remains intact or preserved but, nevertheless, the story has got ingrained in the ethos of the Bangalore railwaymen. I and my colleagues had, perhaps accidently, indeed given birth to a genre of art. 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 was hardly surprising

 Dr. M.S.Murthy, Camp 1

 S.G.Vasudev, Camp 2

Gurudas Shenoy, Camp 3

This unique Indian Railways experience has been written about by so many but the journey we undertook at Bangalore was certainly distinct, albeit somewhat aloof, from the habitual expected lines. Or so we would like to think. Be that as it may, I decided to put all this together in a coffee table book along with Lily, chronicling the experience and documenting the art work. For me, it was a life-changing experience which enhances and enriches my day to day life to this day.

By the way, artists are great people. Talking to them is always a very pleasing pastime. It is very exciting to attempt to peek into the mind of the artists. Not merely by looking at their art works but also by engaging them in discussions about their works. Artists, by and large, are not very articulate or voluble. You have to be patient to decipher what they say, if at all they open up to you. They put their soul in their creation and would obviously prefer that their art work speak for them. In any case, this interaction with artists is a very fulfilling experience for me and one gets ample opportunity for that during an art workshop. For example, talking to Shahed Pasha on this simple, but evocative work, was a delight. Enjoy and talk to him...

Shahed Pasha, Camp 1

(to be continued…)