Sometimes, even the darkness insists on speaking
A Kenyan folktale tells the story of a Sultan’s wife who wasted away in the palace and a peasant’s wife who was plump and strong. The Sultan interrogated the peasant – what was he feeding his wife? The peasant replied, “Meat of the tongue”. But no fancy-shmancy meat of the tongue that the Sultan ordered...
A revolutionary artist. How the British burnt his shocking images from the 1943 Bengal Famine. And how we can finally see them today.
SOMETHING OF the thrill of reading the Pepys diaries is awakened at the new Chittaprosad retrospective at the Delhi Art Gallery. It is an enormous show with much to see and much historical frisson to invoke. First, several stunningly produced books, including a collection of his political portraits and a selection of the artist’s letters...
Bosedk, which way is Punjab?
IT IS unfortunate that the Gurgaon- based artist duo Thukral and Tagra are at this moment best known for their copyright intervention with the Delhi Belly song Bhaag DK Bose. Returning from a long trip abroad, the pair were outraged to see the song popping up in search engines instead of their Bosedk, a phrase...
Nailing heaven and earth together
SOMETHING ABOUT Shuvaprasanna has always been a democratising force. This is Shuva at age 9. He had been sketching his father’s patients and was considered very accomplished. When he heard that Kliment Voroshilov, the president of erstwhile USSR, was visiting Kolkata, he decided he must sketch him. So he set off at a brisk...
Jangarh, Mayank and Gond art
ON 2 JULY 2001, on the Japanese island of Honshu, Jangarh Singh Shyam hanged himself from the ceiling fan in his room. He had been living at the Mithila Museum on an arts residency. He was 37. Two worlds mourned Jangarh — artists and central India’s Gond community. The rest of us barely noticed the...
Manjunath Kamath
THERE ARE urban legends about people who fall in love with inanimate objects, like buildings and cars. You may not be the lunatic who wanted to marry the Eiffel tower but Manjunath Kamath knows about your secret relationship with objects. Kamath’s art is attracted to everyday and mythic objects like a magnet tugs iron...
Touch-tone love
For all that we complain about people talking on cellphones in public places, there is a seductive unfinishedness about one-sided monologues. To the voyeur, the banal becomes elevated and not just because of your desire to join the dots. It is this secret failing of ours that Abhinandita Mathur’s Telephone Pyaar feeds. Twenty-eight-year-old Mathur’s audio...
Two Diary Products
Prashant Miranda paints with rainwater, ganga jal, beer and icy trickles from Canadian taps. He paints all the time. His watercolour journals began as a way of remembering. Slowly he allowed his curious friends at National Institute of Design to peek in. The 32-year-old moved and became an artist in Canada’s first stop-motion animation series....
Lords and Ladies of the Dance
Used to the electronic, portable possession of music, we return to the awe of primitive people only when we see real people open their mouths and sing. It is this awe for universal but still mysterious abilities like singing or dancing that once powered talent shows in early, unsophisticated television. New television in India and...
Amaar aaguney legechhey aagun – aami oshustho
From the best session in Jaipur, the best reflection of my life as it is now, gripped in adolescent self-pity Too Much I’m sick Too many joints in my music box Too much black beer in my golden tap Too many pennies in my pockets Too many pockets in my broke-down-pants My fire is on...
Mad Men and Magazine love
I am trying to taper down my Mad Men reading. The moment I finished watching season 2, I went berserk reading every scrap of intelligent writing on the show. To switch from one addiction to another I have started reading Mark Bittman and Gael Greene. Both feed my delusions. One, that I some day will...
girls, girls, girls
Wedding Night I am watching Buffy all over again after a few years’ gap and not amazed but definitely thrilled at how well it still holds up. Still funny, still spooky, still relevant. It’s good to hear that Joss Whedon has a new show coming up. It stars Eliza Duchu who played Faith. I have...
