Going before the fall

It was all a matter of pride, I tell myself. But it really was not, when you think about it. I make a habit of it, having done it at various memorable occasions during my long life time. I am talking about my relationship with stairs. It has never been happy. I have a fairly serious issue with vertigo and have never been able to handle stairs or bridges (I have no idea what the connection is there) very well, going into a cold panic or a nicely deep freeze when confronted with either without warning. When I drive over a bridge, I focus on the car in front of me, or the far end of the narrow strip as I can see it, and steer blindly almost towards it. Where stairs are concerned – well, the bond has always been rather more tenuous.

Many years ago, when I was a mere child, I would be picked up from school by my parents. When the end of the day bell rang, I would be the last one to come downstairs, walking cautiously, one hand holding tightly on to the banister. It was a family joke, but got rather more serious as I grew up. It wasn’t only a matter of my heels growing too – I graduated fast from flat sneakers and school shoes to perilous spiky sandals that needed a course in ballet to navigate with. But they always allowed me to keep my toes on the ground; no platforms for me. And then there were bicycles – I have not yet managed to ride one, mainly (according to me) because it meant I had to take my feet off the ground and look down from what seemed like a tremendous height. The doctors diagnosed vertigo. I thanked them politely and stayed off platform heels and bicycles.

So when it came to walking down stairs, I allied myself to the side of caution. I took it easy, no matter how loud the horn was being sounded in the car waiting for my downstairs, and told myself it was always better to be dignified than end up in a battered heap at the bottom. I have, of course, done that too on various occasions. The result has rarely been pretty, with vari-shaped bruises punctuating me regularly and unaesthetically in different portions of my nicely rounded anatomy. Perhaps my most spectacular feat of this kind was the time I was hopping happily down some shallow stairs at a friend’s house; I was wearing warm booties with soft soles and slid neatly off the carpeted step to rise up in the air and land rather hard on my behind, not losing a drop from the two loaded plates of food that I was carrying. It was a little painful to sit for about a week after that, and the balancing act is still spoken of with some awed admiration in those circles.

But the other day was rather more fun to watch, I would think. I was in town on some small errands that had to be done before it was too late, and stopped at one of my favourite stores to wait for Father, who would meet me there later. Walking up the three steps into the shop, something happened. I am not sure why and how and all that, but I found myself very suddenly scrabbling for a foot and hand hold, neither of which was on call. I landed very hard on my left knee and felt a very odd kind of movement in my ankle and foot. The gentleman who was trying to walk out of the store was perhaps more startled than I was, while the security guard rushed to haul me back to my feet. There was no feeling for a moment and then, as my friends at the shop gathered, the pain flooded over my mind. They all twittered and scuttled around looking for ice, for a chair, for some kind of relief, while I stood there looking down at my foot, two toes already swelling fast, the foot itself red, my scarlet jeans marked with a patch of pale dust.

That day, as my foot and ankle swelled and darkened and the toe closely resembled an overcooked sausage, I sat with Father in a swanky restaurant having lunch, my toes wrapped in a napkin full of crushed ice while the waiters hovered making soothing noises as they served up delightful food. The story is still in progress – I am confined to my home with a bandaged foot, strained and bruised and painfully limited in movement. I am not sure what hurts most: my dignity at such an ungraceful descent, the fact that I cannot wear heels for a while, or the lack of clothes to match the ever-changing colourscape that is my left foot.

What rubbish!

(Like I often say, sometimes something I write for the paper makes sense online too. Hence this one...)

He uses garbage to create art, to make a statement about life and society in a show called Trash. Artist Vivan Sundaram explains his aesthetic...

In a dimly lit room in the gallery is an array of what seems to be rusty iron cots, their beds sagging, dark with the grime and wear of the years. A closer looks reveals these to be rough frames with the ‘mattress’ made of shoe soles that have indeed seen better days. A light directed on one from above casts intriguing shadows. Vivan Sundaram walks around, examining the soles, adjusting the overhead lamp. Twelve-Bed Ward is one his works on display in Trash, a show that has evolved from his consuming passion: garbage.

Why beds? According to Sundaram, it is a kind of metaphor exploring the relationship between waste and the waste picker, life and the man who “walks morning to evening and then comes to rest – in some sense this is where it could be real or symbolic, as the day starts again for these people.” The space itself, as large as is available to him, or more concentratedly small, is “a place for recuperation, or a night shelter”. It could server as a “stand in for a hospital ward, or a jail, or even concentration camps – the soles of shoes, shoes stacked up”, images that evoke the death camps of the Nazi regime.

Sundaram is almost obsessed with rubbish. In fact, other people’s rejects have fascinated him since 1997 and Trash itself continues with a theme that he worked on with Great Indian Bazaar (1997) and living.it.out.in.delhi (2005). For these he worked with Delhi-based NGO Chintan, involved with attaining the rights of this largely unorganised workforce. His creativity was concentrated on creating a city from the piles of garbage that he painstakingly sorted through; the resultant panorama, on a scale that changed as the work grew, he had photographed to make one large cityscape. Today that work is at the root of others – Sundaram continues to think about the social implications and consequences of social consumption.

For Trash, he conceived the show across two galleries – it is a constraint of space, he says frankly – and in that itself there was a “difference and yet a continuity. The works have a certain mood; Twelve-Bed Ward and the video in Chemould, and the works in Project 88 that are digital photographs combined to make “a different register of visuality.” He selected his pieces in “a curatorial kind of way. It was about a content relationship, the space in each gallery – I was able to articulate it.” Each of his three mediums – photographs, video and installation – has been “positioned in relationship to the other. The thematics have different registers.” Sundaram is pleased with the fact that “private galleries today agree to build whole rooms and walls to create the desired environment”. And as the space changes, so does the show – “in Mumbai, because it is two spaces, it has fullness and completeness. When it is shown in Delhi, it will have what was not seen there earlier and when it moves to New York or Chicago, according to the space available, it will change again.”

Why garbage? The world today is looking at the resuse of waste, of material that can be given new function, perhaps even an aesthetic that is not the obvious representation it could have. As Sundaram explains, “In art, at one level, it obviously foregrounds the subject matter; then it moves into the domain of the visual, the aesthetic.” For the viewer, “questions are raised about the relationship of the work to the waste picker and the audience. It becomes a discussion, and brings to notice things that we like to complain about and look the other way from.” From that point of view, the use of trash in art does arouse some new “awareness of the unorganised sector and raises the question of ecology, the quality of air and health and environment.” And today, the artist believes, “increasing numbers are trying to engage with this vast complex issue of what we live in and what constitutes the urban.”

Trash will move out of the country, too, scheduled to be shown at the Biennale in Sydney next month and at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo later on.

Trash, Chemould Prescott Road and Project 88, Mumbai, till May 17

In the name of art

Over the past few weeks I have been seeing a lot of very strange configurations of objects that is called ‘art’. It varies from fossilised lumps of dough to old shoe soles to video clips strung together, but all if it has had some kind of deeper meaning that, very often, has escaped me completely, never mind that the artist has actually shown me around personally and explained the exhibit to me in simple terms that would clarify things for even a two year old with a rather tenuous grasp of all things grown up. In this, I have managed to learn more about human behaviour and mental make-ups than about the art itself, both being more or less subject to whimsicality and mood, perhaps even time of day and lunch menu.

One of the most fascinating and yet perhaps most meaningless was a show called Fluxus, at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Mumbai. My city is a place full of contradiction and dynamism, eccentricity and even madness, but this surpassed all, overtaking anything that Mumbai and its inhabitants could possibly dream up in the name of creative expression. For me, it was a delight, something that amused me and delighted me with its insanity, making less sense than it wanted to, but a lot more than it could have if I had seen it with any preconceived notions of what it should be. It seemed to be a motley collection of arbitrary objects placed randomly for maximum effect. Like I said earlier, a few dried out lumps of dough set into a frame was art; a piano with objects tied to it with rope was art; and a smile made of a slice of watermelon (plaster or plastic, I hope) was art. It was engaging, flirty, fun and each piece winked at me as if the artist who had created it knew that it was all a huge big joke. It made sense, in a world where everyone took themselves and their work a little too seriously….

Soon after, I went to a show that was all about installations. The artist was a well known painter who had not painted in many years – an affliction that affected the next person I went to interview as well, I found. She had lost her partner some years previous to this show and it seemed to colour her work. The videos playing on different screens in the various rooms of the gallery were gloomy as a whole, somehow sad and depressed, crying quietly rather than shouting exuberantly with joy. Even though the music was hardly dark and grieving, the mood was – Pink Floyd, Abba, Bob Dylan: reality bit me rather harder than I wanted it to that morning. And, when I talked to her, the artist spoke of remembering, the past, times gone by, all that good stuff but with a grey pall over it that affected me in the telling, the writing and then the reading of my own article.

This past weekend I went to see another artist, one with a beaming smile and an endless articulateness. He talked a great deal, seemed to know what he wanted to convey through his work and found some meaning in his own world that he was trying to tell the rest of those around him through video, photographs, models and, strangely enough, shoe soles. There was opportunity for a great number of puns and somehow I seem to find them as he spoke, working through his sentences and his art to see what he was trying to do and say. It made sense from some perspective that I was standing at, but it also made me wonder what happened to the good old-fashioned ways of expressing yourself with a certain simplicity that in a manner that always has more meaning than convoluted, cross-references sentences (like this one, for instance). But it was all fun, soles, souls and all.

Now I await the next exhibition. Some day I hope I will see conventional art again, something that can be seen, felt and remembered with no confusion of space, time and objects to force me to push it right out of my mind.

Ring in the new

It was Tamil New Year yesterday and we did all that we remembered we should to bring in the new period and gently send away the old. For me, it was a time when things needed to be cleaned, from fans to memory banks, with the old and fairly useless being ruthlessly eliminated to make room for what I hope will be new, improved, fresh and happy. The last year, whether measured in the conventional January 1st time-frame or the more ‘Indian’ version that slides according to the phases of the moon or however it may be calculated by whichever community is calculating it.

But life feels fresh and new for now. It could be that the fans have been wiped free of the accumulated dust, it could be that Small Cat has had a bath and been given a new collar. It could be the fact that both Father and I wore new clothes yesterday or that the fridge is nicely restocked with interesting stuff to eat. It could also be that I finished all the laundry instead of needing to wait for another day to run another wash. Who knows. All I know that is that it all seems to be gearing up to take off from a starting block that I have not known before. And I hope that it is a good one, a fair race, a happy ending.

Perhaps the best part of any celebration is the food that announces it. For us, it was about payasam and paanagam, neermor and hot, spicy veggies that went well with fresh toast and homemade mayonnaise – so who said Tamil New Year had to be conventional? New Age cuisine also makes it all happen, you know! Somewhere along the way, even in the traditional cooking, there was a sense of adventure, a dash of something that may not have been deemed acceptable by the pundits who set the menu so many aeons ago. In the payasam there was a dash of nutmeg; in the paanagam there was a pinch of clove powder and in the neermor, an added sprinkle of jeera powder that may not have been in the list of conventional ingredients. But it worked, never mind that I sort of forgot the lemon squeeze into the jaggery water, the whipped curd was thicker than it should familiarly have been and the rice pudding was thicker and less sweet than was the norm.

But isn’t that the best part about celebrating? To take a festival and make it your own, something that is special to your family and circumstances, be it new clothes in the form of pajamas or a T-shirt, a puja in the shape of a direct communication with a parent now in a different plane of existence and a prayer in the words of perhaps one of the Simpsons – praise the Lord and pass the pudding.

Found and lost

I was chatting with Father while pottering about the kitchen this morning and suddenly remarked about everything that had come and gone in my life. While friends are almost entirely replaceable, people you consider family rarely are – well, the people I consider part of my world and therefore mine in emotional fact. There are some who peek in, woffle wishy-washily about staying or not and then either leave or are ejected/rejected without much ado; they are just passing ships, nothing too important. But the others, those that do stay, those who are welcomed into the fold, linger for much longer, until it is time for them to leave too.

Of course, parents don’t count in this. Whether you like them or not, you almost always love them and they create a huge, gaping, unfillable hole that, every now and then, hurts with unbelievable, unbearable, incomprehensible pain. And then, suddenly, you remember the laughter, the sunshine, the good rather than the bad and you smile again, even though that little niggle of hurt never ever goes away.

Then there are people you never knew you cared so much about. One of these I have written about before – an old family friend who lived in Delhi. I had met him many years before I actually moved to that city, but only as a sort of old-schoolfriend-acquaintance of my father and his brothers. But then, after we met again as real people in a city where I was still an alien and he was willing to ‘adopt’ me, we became friends. We went to parties together, to openings, to plays, to charity sales and dance recitals, polo games and leisurely dinners. And he beamed happily al the while, when he introduced me to his friends, when someone paid me a compliment, when someone teased him about his new ‘girlfriend’. He was like a father once removed. And now he is removed from my world.

My godmother was a wonderful person. She was a woman who liked the finer things in life, who sort-of-introduced me to beauty-care face masks and romance novels, rich food and kitchy décor, bitchy gossip and minor entrepreneurship. She was a close friend of both my parents and treated me with the same casual affection as she gave her own young relations. Being a very large lady, she occupied rather more space in my physical world than my mother ever did, and gave bigger, warmer and more breath-taking (literally) hugs, without the angst and involvement a maternal relationship would have. And she is now in another world, one where life is all one big dish of delicious biryani.

Another elderly gentleman was a public curmudgeon, but a teddy bear at heart – at least, with me. He had known me since before I was born, in a manner of speaking, and kept up the contact with my family, though at a distance, for a very long time. Then, as he got older and edged towards being retired, and my life got busier and more absorbed into everyday work and life requirements, we drifted away, apart, to different worlds, not just physically, but intellectually. When I saw him last, it was many years after he had retired from his long-term position and was acting consultant for a well known firm in another city. We were the visitors then, Father and I; we had just lost my mother and perhaps we looked him up because we both wanted some kind of reassurance that some things were still where we wanted them to be, even as others had left us adrift. He was old, fading, fragile. But still curmudgeonly, still hyper-critical, still as fond of me as ever. He wanted us to take him to our home, so we could give him the kind of life he wanted, the kind of support and care and perhaps family that he missed. I refused, knowing it could not happen. And I never saw him again.

He passed away not too long ago at over 80 years old, still grouchy, still determinedly independent, still stubborn and mumbling bad-temperedly at his doctors, we are sure.

Horn OK please...no!

Today has been declared No Honking Day in Mumbai. I think it is a great idea, as an idea, since there is way too much noise in the city that could very easily be cut out. In fact, wherever I drive, I find myself being tailed at least once during the journey by an irritatingly peevish horn – whoever is behind me has no reason to sound off, except for the very existence of a horn that he or she can sound off. And it is extremely annoying to hear that persistent beep beep that goes relentlessly on and on, especially since there is nowhere that the person behind you can go, since there is wall to wall traffic on all four sides of your little car and you yourself are stuck in one place on the road wondering where else you can be that is infinitely better than where you are now. And you do, I admit ruefully, get tempted to horn as peevishly and persistently as the person behind you has been doing. Perhaps the only fitting response that I have ever seen being given to this kind of pestering has been from a taxi driver, who suggested (with the appropriate accompanying gestures, of course) that the person behind become the person in front by clambering over the cab, because that was the only conceivable way to get there.

But, more seriously, the small world that is Mumbai has just woken up to the fact that there is something known as ‘noise pollution’, a something that can be as lethal and as difficult to manage on both personal and societal levels as other more obvious and acknowledged forms of pollution in the environment. And it was a great drive this morning. Everyone was more alert, wary, watchful of the traffic patterns rather than blindly plunging into the stream without looking around, confident of the repellent power of the car horn rather than the skill of manipulating the vehicle. There was a sense of a leisurely morning calmly making its way to a more stressful work day, even as vehicles jostled with each other for precedence on the already crowded streets. And most of it was done silently, only the roar of an occasional exhaust and the growl of a stalled truck engine making enough noise to force passage through.

For this city, it is nothing short of a miracle. Consider Mumbai’s roads and you know that it is a situation of being an olio rather than a disciplined state of affairs. There will be trucks pushing cars out of the way, cow-carts plodding stoically down the middle of the lane that a Mercedes wants to cruise along, motorbikes zooming in and out of every possible crevice in the jam-packed melee and people, always people, wandering into and out of traffic with the élan and insouciance of surety that death will not come as their end, not today. This is why it is not easy to drive in this city without honking madly at every step…or turn of the wheel. The one time my horn failed in the middle of late afternoon traffic in Mumbai was nightmarish. I was almost in tears with every jerk of the brakes and frustrating smash of the horn button, to no avail. It seemed an impossibly task to get from here to there without the noise that blared me through…but today proved me different.

As we wove through the streets and their miscellaneous occupants, my driver remarked on the silence as often as I did. It was indeed remarkably silent this morning, with only the very sporadic beep or honk to punctuate the astonishing quiet. I hope this encourages people to stop using that gadget as much as they do when they drive through the city and beyond. Even that pest who always seems to be behind me….

The courage to be

A friend and I were talking about being brave. For us both, it was about having the courage to be yourself, to face yourself in the mirror and say “This is me, warts and all and I am ok with it.” It is also about knowing what you can do and having the strength to do it, never mind what people around you say and do. And it is about facing what you are in other people’s eyes and minds and being okay with it…or not…as long as you know what you are about. It also about giving answers to questions that make you uncomfortable, about being able to give rather than take, and the knowledge that you have the power to hurt and therefore you will not.

I once met someone who didn’t have any of that, not in the brief time I knew him. He seemed to be honest and straightforward, with a mind that wanted to absorb, to explore, to know. He read books that ran the gamut from food to photography, but somehow never got curious enough to peek into the wide and wonderful world of fiction…or else never admitted that he did. He was always asking questions, often with the wonder of a child, filing away the answers in a mind that seemed almost a library catalogue of information. And he seemed to revel in minutae, expanding on every second of the life he lived rather than seeing the bigger picture of his life in the context of the world he lived in.

But, for all his virtues, he had a startlingly closed mind. He did not see himself as others saw him, not people he interacted with, not me, whom he said he considered a friend. He would not communicate unless forced to, and even as he spoke to me and many others about so much, he said so little. An art in itself, I know, since I often practice it myself. Where I spread my feelers wide and say a little about a lot, he said a lot about very little, going vertical, in the Internet portal sense of the word, rather than horizontal. As someone to know, it was about the most irritating and frustrating experience I could think of.

This man had great charm, a sweet smile and much that was endearing in his personality. He also had a frightening arrogance, a dismissal of what did not seem relevant or important to him, never mind that it could hurt and even damage those he came across on whatever level. That, perhaps, was my least endearing memory of him. Even as he wandered through his own life, he rarely saw how he may have bumped into other’s, causing a certain kind of impact that was damaging and unforgivable.

He did that in my life too. He came into it suddenly and left even more suddenly, without warning or announcement. He left me and those who form my own mesh of my world bewildered, wondering what had happened and why. Even as I struggled to understand why anyone would go out of their way to cause harm to me, I felt a certain relief that I could continue travelling my own journey without too much lasting impact. Analysis of myself showed me that the effect he had had was not a lasting one, no damage that could not be quickly repaired had been caused. If I had allowed myself to be less wary, less unguarded, less accepting, the story may have been different. It took a day or two to know that, but I did.

And the reason was simple. I knew what I was about. After all, I had the courage to look into myself and see what I had done. And I knew that he would never be able to do the same…not while looking into a mirror, not while looking at himself, not while looking into my eyes, where he will see nothing but the question he will never be able to answer honestly and satisfactorily: Why?