Frames, Frescoes, Freedom: An Art Odyssey in the American North East

 

I am no painter with a brush nor sculptor with chisel in hand—just a humble novice in the cathedral of good art. Yet I do know how to cradle an idea, to carry it faithfully across the distance from thought to reality.

It began, long ago, with the iron muse of my profession. In thirty-five years as an Indian Railways officer, the moment that etched itself deepest was not a groundbreaking project or a grand inauguration, but a quiet evening between Hindupur and Bangalore. There I sat, coffee in one hand, cigarette in the other, in the lookout glass of an inspection saloon—watching the world unfurl behind a racing train. The view was not a postcard, but a restless theatre: fields and dust, surging crowds and silent stretches, laughter, struggle, and stillness, all in one reel of light and shadow.

I sat there bewitched, bewildered, almost chastened. What was I doing, gulping down this living poetry with my eyes… and doing nothing about it? Art, after all, must imitate life—and here life was, thundering at more than 100 kilometres an hour, begging to be told.

From that epiphany was born a movement to lace railway spaces with art—murals, sculptures, galleries—breathing beauty into steel and stone. I joined forces with my colleague, the ever-creative Lily Pandeya, to breathe beauty into stations and rail premises—through lively art camps, striking murals, evocative sculptures, and even the opening of a full-fledged gallery. Our journey, painted in hues of passion and persistence, now lives on in our coffee-table book Art and Railways: A Bangalore Saga.

That was years ago. After a parched artistic spell in Germany—a land generous with inspiration yet strangely stingy with canvases—I returned to familiar shores. My landing spot? The Rail Wheel Factory (RWF) in Bangalore: a relentless realm of clanging steel and hissing furnaces, as artless as a blank wall under a flickering tube light.

Another journey was calling. Clad in a fireproof suit, a workman stood like an astronaut on a perilous spacewalk. Before him, a brutally red-hot wheel blazed like a miniature sun. In his hand, a torch-like tool; on his face, the calm of one who has stared into fire before. The air shimmered with unbearable heat, beaten back only by the furious roar of an industrial fan. This, they told me, was “sprue washing”—a phrase as mysterious as the act itself.

Soon, my mind was a kaleidoscope: sparks arcing like meteors, steel singing under hammers, shadows dancing in molten light. The workers here were extraordinary—my lens could barely keep up. Pictures spoke where words stumbled.

Fresh from our first marriage of Art and Railways—then Art and a Railway Factory—I stood on the threshold of a greater challenge: the Integral Coach Factory (ICF) in Chennai, crown jewel of Indian Railways. Five times the workforce of RWF. Over 2,500 coaches a year. A living citadel of steel and skill.

The great team of ICF designed and built the Train 18/Vande Bharat Express. That is well known. But trains also have romance. Wheels had their quiet magic, but building trains? That was a symphony—precision, power, and pride in perfect tempo. Why repeat an earlier triumph when I could create a duple—familiar in form, fresh in soul?

ICF hummed with electricity. The clang of metal rang sharper, the rhythm of work more purposeful. Faces glowed with pride and anticipation. Was this a factory in an art gallery—or an art gallery in a factory?

I chronicled these experiments in three more books and many blogs (the books and two select blogs referenced at the end), inviting readers to see what we had begun—and to hold their breath, for the real spectacle was still ahead.

Now retired in Lucknow, I try to keep that flame alive, promoting the visual arts through camps and exhibitions, even if the resources I once had are gone. The curtain has fallen on the factory floor, but the stage of imagination remains lit. This blog, however, is not about the past. It is about a remarkable art odyssey during my recent visit to North America.

It began at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art in Washington, D.C.—a century-old jewel-box of beauty, history, and scholarship. Founded in 1923 as the Smithsonian’s first dedicated art museum, it was the vision of Charles Lang Freer, who believed the arts of Asia and the West should speak to each other. Its serene, marbled corridors create the kind of hush where you instinctively slow your step, as though noise might bruise the air.

I was drawn first to Body Transformed: Contemporary South Asian Photographs and Prints—an arc both intimate in detail and expansive in scope. This was no static parade of pretty images; it was an inquiry into how the human body becomes a stage for politics, memory, myth, and change. Vivek Vilasini played with perception and identity through sly juxtapositions; Pushpamala N.’s staged self-portraits echoed cinema stills and colonial studios; Ram Rahman blended documentary grit with poetic nuance; Jyoti Bhatt distilled rural life into vivid symbols; Jitesh Kallat offered deeply personal visual narratives; Krishna Reddy’s viscosity prints turned plates into textured landscapes; Chitra Ganesh reimagined mythologies through a vibrant feminist lens.

This was no random encounter. The collection came from my sister and brother-in-law, Dr. Sunanda and Dr. Umesh Gaur, among the world’s most reputed collectors of Indian contemporary art and they're indeed one of the reasons  of my interest in art. To see works from their collection gracing the Smithsonian was both a personal joy and a vindication of their lifelong passion.

Another wing revealed Delighting Krishna: Paintings of the Child God. Here, the divine as a mischievous boy danced across centuries—blue skin glowing under gold leaf, lotus eyes curving into a smile half-innocent, half-cosmic. These were not just paintings; they were acts of love suspended in time, drawn from Nathdwara temple in India. Some glimpses here:

Outside, Washington baked in relentless July heat. Inside, art cooled the spirit.

From Washington, we went to New Jersey, where the Gaurs’ own gallery became my private sanctuary. This time, I met Jyotindra Manshankar Bhatt through his work alone—but it felt like a handshake. A pioneer of modern printmaking and a gifted photographer, Bhatt saw the extraordinary in the utterly ordinary. From mirror-work walls to tribal tattoos, he documented folk traditions with both ethnographic care and modernist daring. His prints danced with peacocks, fish, hands, sacred motifs—symbols both dreamlike and real. His photographs whispered: a woman in mid-laughter, a door half-ajar, a shadow more eloquent than its subject. A quiet rebel, he framed the ordinary from angles so unexpected they seemed—once seen—inevitable.  A few windows into the journey:

From there, Providence called. Our son had graduated here during the strange, disembodied days of Covid, and we had missed the moment. Now we arrived—not to cheering crowds but to a city alive with art. Providence wears its creativity on its walls: vast murals on brick facades, playful street art in alleys, underpasses turned into kaleidoscopes. Each mural declared something: identity, struggle, memory, joy, disgust. Moments, caught and framed:

The Rhode Island School of Design’s museum was the crown jewel. RISD is not just an art school—it’s a forge for bold voices in contemporary art and design. The museum reflects that duality: a temple to classics and a laboratory for the avant-garde. Ancient Chinese sculptures stood in quiet dignity; nearby, Renaissance portraits radiated refinement. A turn of the corner brought large-scale modern paintings bursting with abstraction, digital installations pulsing with light, and experimental works that asked not just “what is art?” but “where does art end and life begin?” A sampler from the tapestry:

Glass cases held intricate Japanese ceramics, Central Asian textiles, European silverwork. Modern sculptures in steel and resin stood beside gilded antiques. The centuries gathered here not to compete but to converse—each work leaning towards the next as if in dialogue.

Walking out into the Providence evening, I felt the same sensation I’d first known years ago on an Indian train: art is everywhere, if you’re willing to look—on the walls of a museum, in a back-alley mural, in a village photograph, in the curve of a pot or the toil of a worker finishing a cast wheel. It is all the same urge—to catch life before it slips away.

Who could have thought that a brief family visit to the US would unspool into such a rich pilgrimage through the world of art? And in the quiet after each encounter, I felt again that truth I’d first glimpsed in the glass of a railway saloon: art is simply life—caught, stilled, and made to speak forever.

Nevertheless, the Bard once spoke through Dromio of Syracuse in The Comedy of Errors that, "...for they say every why hath a wherefore", and he has also taught us through Polonius in Hamlet that, “Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t”.

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Blog by the author referenced here:

https://anindecisiveindian.blogspot.com/2016/03/railways-and-art-wheels-within.html

https://anindecisiveindian.blogspot.com/2016/10/creativityis-contagious.html

Books on Art and Railways by the author

1. Art & Railways, a Bangalore saga (co-authored with his colleague Lily Pandeya)

India ISBN:978-81-928759-0-3

2.Reinventing the Wheel another Bangalore Saga      India ISBN 978-93-5267-168-7

3.A Skein of Trains     India ISBN 978-93-5288-141-3

4.Trains Unchained, the continuing saga of art and railways, the SAFAR.

India ISBN 978-93-5321-185-1