When You Push

When you push
and it does not move;
Then you feel like pushing harder.
When you push harder
and it does move;
Then you feel like pushing more.
When you push more
and it does not move;
Then you feel like pushing harder.

Space, anger, victory, defeat...
all become one.
Push is a hard word
Easier to pull gently than to push softly.

When you push
and it does not move;
Then you feel like pushing harder.
When you pull or hug
and it does not move;
Will you do it (again) softer?
Same thing with small differences
create different journeys for the soul. 

A Short Note on Gulam Mohammed Sheikh's 'Art and Art History'

Art and Art History | Gouache | 30 x 40 cm | 1996 |

Courtesy. Shirish Panchal Collection. 

As a critical post modern miniaturist, Sheikh has been a member of the avant-garde who reinvented the idea of narrative for Contemporary Indian Art. The title of the work reminds one of Binod Behari Mukherjee’s murals, reflecting a continuity of thought around art, its history and its pedagogy. Yet in the hands of Binod Behari’s student this analogy of discipline and landscape becomes restless and radical. There are hints of deep, yet almost untraceable shadows of surrealist iconography that anticipates a dystopia. My eyes can see Beauty enshrined and protected, yet being washed away by storm and inferno. Art and its history are man made, yet the universe weeps when art dies. But it never dies, always survives the storm.

The handling of material is starling. Gouache as medium has defined by its opaque character. Sheik transforms it, challenging gouache to become water colour. These eclectic expectations from medium challenge our notions regarding relationships between the physical and the conceptual.

Steps on the pavement

That evening he walked out of the jail gates...

And it was moments before sunset

As he kept walking

Steps on the pavement

He almost felt it was home

Walking down the path

By now deserted

Steps on the pavement 

Big dark city on a winter night

'Akele Hum Akele Tum' playing through a stranger window

Somehow brought back memories

Of radios and winter nights

Life lay scattered like unplanned lanes leading to various no-wheres 

Fourteen years in prison makes one forget a lot

That chilling murder he could never forget

But they made him work in the 'mess' for fourteen years

Food was the last thing on his mind

By now hunger had become a distant dream 

Steps on the pavement 

She was not at home

The posters was still up on her wall

But there were cobwebs in the balcony

A sleeping neighborhood

At the end you are just alone

Steps on the pavement

A car rushing past

Life disappearing in the rear view mirror

As he kept walking

He almost felt it was home

Claws on the pavement

The feel of dogs behind him

The quietness and silence felt like death

Some of them

Many of them

Remembering the posters was still up on her wall

He kept on walking

But he forgot that there were cobwebs in the balcony

Steps on the pavement

Pretending not to run

The roads parted

Like they did in those filthy school books.

Like it had fourteen years ago

One path seemed lightened

The other was dark

He chose the light this time

Untimely salvation is worse than sin

The road ended under a a dead banyan tree

And an old blind dog

The steps on the pavement stopped

The steely silence of a winter night 

The claws on the pavement had stopped

'Akele Hum Akele Tum' floating from a distant radio

Still as a monk, the blind dog sat

He stood still as his life flashed by

And then that deafening bark from the monk

All the dogs attacked

A silence that only death can carry

Blood on the pavement 

A car rushing past

Life disappearing in the rear view mirror

The golden coast of Malabar

The Golden Coast of Malabar | Story told in words by Rahul Bhattacharya, re told visually by Samudra Kajal Saikia | Order your copy at kankhowa@gmail.com.

One happy day when I was a young little boy, someone told me, that the coast of Malabar is very beautiful and neat.

One day I went and I saw, that the sea was blue, the trees were green and along with the golden sand, the coast of Malabar was special indeed.

One happy day in Malabar, I was lying on the sand. When an ant came and bit me here, bit me there and went.

Then came another ant, slowly there came many more ants; they bit me here, bit me there, they really bite me everywhere.

On that beautiful day in the coast of Malabar, as I was dying in pain, I heard a small voice talk to me and call me by my name. 

“I am sorry Mr. Donkey” I heard him say. “These are all young ants and they shall learn their lessons one day.”

He climbed my nose and proceeded to say, “Please do not attack our small little hole, our queen begs to be forgiven, or so I am told.”

Then he turned to the young little ants. “I warn you again you little young ants”, he crackled as he spoke, “If you go on biting, the humans will fill our holes”.

That strange morning on the beautiful Malabar sand, I could not help praising the crackling old ant.

If indeed he had not come by, I would have really filled the nearest ant hole before saying goodbye.

A small story I saw...

***

It was a hot summer evening everywhere near my house, and as I lay beside the pickles mother had left for sunning, I saw a colony of red ants. Like in all ant colonies, a board at the entrance read 

“tiredness is a word outside the Dictionary of Ants”.

Now, like all words, Mr. Tiredness hates not being printed in all the dictionaries, and ever since I can remember, and I can remember a lot of things, Mr. Tiredness was trying his best to be a word in the Dictionary of Ants. 

Every time he saw an ant colony, he would camp nearby and hope to be introduced to the Dictionary. As I looked through the blades of grass, I saw a pale blue man who looked like he was doing nothing.

He was setting up his tent about 5 meters away from the ant hole. Did I forget to tell you that he was very small indeed? Nearly 6 centimeters tall, he was about the size of a cockroach. Imagine it very wobbly and walking upright.

He looked much tiered; and he was complaining “how much I hate to work……even if a lot of it means doing simply nothing”. He lay there hoping for a quick introduction to the Dictionary of Ants.

***

 The little ant Alina had never felt like this before. She was actually looking for a place to sit. Till now she had been busy walking with the ant army, ready to attack a sticky yellow toffee which I had spit out a few minutes before.

Taking a turn away from the line she was walking in, she spotted a shade under a blade of glass and sat there.  She started staring at the sky and sometimes at her mates busily walking by.

Slowly but surely Ruchi, Jason, Rumana, and Jeet joined her. Many other ants had started wanting to sit down. Slowly but surely all of them started yawning. Jason even started dreaming about sleep

 “Wait….. Wait don’t do that”…. my mind screamed, but before I could do anything, the gardener aimed his water pipe right  at the ant hill, the water drops started helplessly landing and hoping to escape a bite.

 

As the waters drops started landing on the ant hill, Jeet jumped up, “these Pants are horrible”…… “They always come between us and our lives”. Jeet started rubbing his chin in anger. Oh yes! He nearly rubbed his chin right in.

Rumana always shouts when she is angry. “Stop wetting us” She burst out a shout, her brain began to heat up with every drop of cold water that fell. I wanted about to stop the maali, so started just thinking what to yell.

I was surprised to see the line of ants still carrying on, unaffected by the gentle spray….only our angry ant friends seemed disturbed………only our tiered young ants seemed disturbed.

 By now Alina had picked up a ball of mud and flung it at the nearest water drop. She started screaming “Pants are merciless” …… Jason stood up... “We need to revolt”.  Then I saw Anpu joining the group.

 Stamping her feet on the ground, Anpu started to give a great speech and asking all the ants to bite the gardener. Stamping their feet on the ground all the 6 ants started singing “Bite the gardener, Bite that Pant”.  

 By then our angry ant friends were sitting around and trying to imagine a good way to bite us Pants. They were yawning and yawning planning a bite. They dreamed and dreamed for a bite.

Through the corner of my eyes I caught a small movement. Mr. Tiredness had stopped had just started doing something. He hates cold water just like your pet; as soon as his tent started leaking, he busily packed up his bags and withered away.

It was strange to see Alina get up and join the line of ants. Soon Ruchi got up. Soon all of them had joined the line and had all started walking in a row. Marching with the beat that only the ants are supposed to know.

I heard Mr. Tiredness had gone to buy a waterproof tent and will be back very soon, so the next time you are bitten by an ant do not forget to look. You will surely spot a pale blue man who looks like a balloon.

***

Everywhere I went

Everywhere I went, she used to come after me.

Everywhere she went, he used to run after her.

Everywhere I was they used to be there too.

Somewhere I went, she came somewhere with me.

Somewhere she went, he went running somewhere.

Somewhere I went, they were somewhere too.

To a cold place I went, she came to a cold place with me.

To a cold place she went, he ran to a cold place with her.

To a cold place I went, they were in a cold place too.

To see a sunrise I went, she came to see the sunrise too.

To see a sunrise she went, he ran to see the sunrise too.

To see a sunrise I went, they saw the sunrise too.

Everywhere I went, she used to come after me.

Everywhere she went, he used to run after her.

Everywhere I was they used to be there too.

Then one day on a trip I went.

That one trip I wanted to go alone.

 I was really afraid that they would be there too.

To a place called Nowhere I went, she came Nowhere with me.

Nowhere she went, so he went running Nowhere.

To a place called Nowhere I went, and they were Nowhere with me.

two rhymes and a verse

I

There is no eye in the sky
Even in The Catcher in the Rye
No fly in my chai
Just heat in her sigh

II

Dogs sleeping under the sun
There is sun for everyone
Some stay in shade 
And don't have fun

                          *********** 


I


He did not know the story to tell
Just flashbacks from a florescent media 
Delicate inconsistencies
The universe is our post modern God

They call it lust

The heat was inviting, so was her touch
Drawn by his weakness he snuggled into her
But her heart was beating fast
And her skin was on fire
He felt a desire rising
They call it lust
He gave into the demon
But it was not the lust that opened the gates
That four letter word was 'lost'.
If he broke fidelity and kept loyalty
would that heal his soulmate?
His cock was throbbing hard
And she was throbbing with lust
Twisting her nipples
He stroked her cunt
Her moans brought out his hunger more
Un able to control her lust
She took his cock in her mouth
He just made her feel that way
He fucked her mouth like the God of lust
With every stroke he felt the loss
of being pushed aside by his partner
She was leaking like a bitch
He was on top fucking her hard
Through her many many orgasms
He forgot his lust
His heart troubled by its ignorance
He was still throbbing hard when she could take it no more
He felt the blush of relief
He could take it no more too
Collapsed into a deep deep sleep
Thankful for staying intact.

A tribute to Parvez

 Speaking about baroda archive as a treasury or graveyard

So you are not here any more....

We did not speak for about a year before you went. It does feel that we were giving each other space. You wanting to see me settling down and finding a deeper direction, extremely uncomfortable with the multiple directions that my work was talking...I too wanted you to settle in more.  For me you are the best art historian of our generation, but i did not like you giving up chess, poetry, drawing and so much more. 

you could have been doing your Phd from the most elite university possible, but you chose to do it from Kala Bhavan and teach there; it made me proud. The history department really needs your energy and excellence...perhaps more than that your commitment to pedagogy.  

Living in Shantinketan, cycling to work rushing to complete your Phd, making books for Nandanmela...what a beautiful life you had. Why did you loose connection with your self.  Why did it take you so much time to realize how ill you were, why none of us knew?

You were possibly the only one who combined the field research and rigor of old art history with the criticality of the New...you were the only one with the commitment to be equally deep in both and yet balance it.  

Art history is a dying discipline they say...like a loosing team on the dying moments of a football match, you knew that we can never win it now, but still fighting hard for a draw...it is as if you were running with the ball all alone aiming to shoot...and then you tripped and fell...hurt yourself so hard that you had to leave the field. What is our tribute to you will show in how we plan the match now on.

All for the ale

rangoli from last diwali

There I stood at the bathroom door,
with a precious sanitary napkin on the floor.

All lines were down that day,
that is what the voice on the telephone said.

Giving up and coming back again,
nothing to loose and all to gain.

Realizing how much you wanted to fly,
I declared this was no place to die.

There are hearts to share and seas to sail,
Beautiful fights and drinking some ale.

This is how we could be

Some days will be light;
you fly by me,
i fly by you,
This is how we could be...

Somedays will be heavy;
you carry me,
i carry you,
This is how we could be...

Somedays will just be;
i make your tea,
you make my smile,
This is how we could be

My Bed of Roses - Catalog essay for Balbir Krishan’s Exhibition

“Beauty and love pass, I know... Oh, there's sadness, too. I suppose all great happiness is a little sad. Beauty means the scent of roses and then the death of roses-.”

                                                                                 ― F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise

My Bed of Roses maps Balbir Krishan’s artistic journey since 2010. This exhibition showcases some precious fragments from his prior body of work, and offers glimpses towards the direction the artist is taking in the future. Balbir is one of the few voices from within contemporary art that dwells on the male body; universalising it, personalizing it...painting a form that contains both the grim realities and exalted fantasies of masculinity...a meeting place for utopia and dystopia. 

When one looks at Balbir Krishan's human forms, there is a certain Michelangelesque understanding of the body and celebration of masculinity. Yet, when one looks closer,his edgy masculine forms are laced with the delicate serenity that one sees in the paintings of Ajanta and the miniatures of Kangra. This fusion of sensibilities brings a tension to his art that suggests the point when the erotic-the personal and the political meet. As one looks at the works and puts them in a timeline, it becomes visible that the sculpted masculine body is carrying signs of fragmentation, scarring and delicacy.   

The turn of the century has witnessed a radicalization or inversion of the power equation in the dominant discourse of representation.  Eroticized exhibition is not restricted to the female body anymore, but the male body too has made its appearance in this arena, where the male character, in a narrative, not only engenders narcissistic identification, but also becomes an erotic spectacle and a fetishized object. 

Balbir Krishan is known for an erotic and confrontational depiction of homoerotica. His works are attractive and yet deeply provocative. In recent times, intolerance towards homoerotica and any challenge to mainstream sexuality has grown in the country. His 2011-12 exhibition‘Out Here and Now’ was vandalised by members of what may have been the political or religious right. Yet his works have managed to find an increasingly large audience. His use of a language, which is close to mediatic realism, adds to the sensual attraction of his works, taking them into a zone between the commodity and the inconsumable.

The artist stands in the zone between craft and concept. At one point he imagines a painting completely and then trans-creates it on paper or canvas, and at that point it feels that the medium is almost incidental, just a mode to capture the concept. At another level the artist's choice of medium is very conscious and particular. He works on found paper, often pages from art catalogues, brings out his forms through erasing and then renders them with a ball point pen. This approach is carried out in his canvases too. Found erotic imagery from the internet is collaged onto a canvas, forms that we see are but remnants of painted oversurface, finished with fine skill.

As a self-trained artist sometimes one becomes very conscious about his skill; there is an urge to declare one's ability to paint, to conjure up forms, of being able to re-present. Balbir has developed his own language where he builds his forms through erasure and drawing. Technique for him is not only a mode of representation but also a mode of physical engagement and meditation. There is a deep engagement with physical labour that goes behind every work; hours of erasing, over painting and fine drawing in its own way speak of the deep physicality of sexuality- both as sexual and as cultural experiences.

The Woman Inside: The Fable of Shiva, Mohini and Harihar

Thematically, Balbir has largely been interpreted from the prism of masculinity and fantasy, yet it is hard to ignore larger social narratives that run though his works. His 2011-12 series ‘Out Here and Now’ is not just an artistic and personal coming out of the closet, it also carries it an urge to fissure contemporary Indian social narratives about erotica and manifestation of sexuality. However, his journey is not just about disjuncture and rethinking/ reimagining his encounter with masculinity, it is also about weaving this rethinking/ reimagining with the larger universe of his cultural existence.  This larger universe consists of personal relationships with history, culture, ecology...even melancholia. In his works one can see a reclaiming of mythology, development and loneliness woven into a deeply personal fantasy.

This connection between the personal and the universal brings Balbir’s work into a relationship with the tension between utopia and dystopia that informs our contemporaneity. His paintings create both the moment of pause and the moment of provocation, opening possibilities within each viewer to feel what may be his or her own beatific, but potentially thorny bed of roses.