Remonstration for emergency

New terms like Art boom and then Recession both came to me from the media for the first time...while I was doing my undergraduate and post graduate course in Fine Art. Much like other big issues like Mumbai bomb blasts and terrorist activities in other cities.

Media publishes statements of those accused, political changes in America, Taliban and its grip over Pakistan, Godhara, Ramjanmabhumi, Malegaon blasts, court judgments on these happenings and various political stances of politicians on these.... These current affairs build up a large part of our communication structure between our family and friends.

I was raised in a middle class, Brahmin, Maharashtrian family with very strong affiliations to ‘traditional' and ‘cultural' roots. It was always a matter of choosing between ones family morals and modern thoughts. My education in fine art, Indian and western histories of art, critical enquiries related to practice itself, histories of different art movements changed my whole childhood perspective of looking at my surroundings.

But my family upbringing also gave me certain other distinctive kinds of exposure which I have been negotiating with within my practice now. I visited Anandwan (ashram in Chandrapur, Maharashtra ) many times, which also gave me a chance to meet *Baba Amte during the last Anandamela. Baba's unique mix of pragmatic action and philosophical aspirations showed me to dream of a better world while creating it. Even the many challenges he faced are worth sharing - for they never stopped him from trying new things, taking risks, and persisting against great adversity. Even at the age of ninety-two, despite his health problems, Baba Amte was dreaming up peace missions to Pakistan. He was not an unreachable ideal or a religious saint, but was always identified with common people. His life also includes the untold tales of those that society has often rejected -people with leprosy, dalits, the disabled and indigenous tribal people.

Baba Amte inspired me to imagine a better world, and see ourselves as part of the solution. This inspiration also helps me to find a common humanity that binds us together, instead of all the things that divide us. To get stimulated from him was very natural. There, I understood that there are more accurate ways of activism.

Then again, recently revered Shankaracharya of karvir pitha visited my home and family in Chandrapur. My remonstration against the orthodox behavior of these cults troubled me and my family a lot...

I like to walk in the crowded places, old cities, markets, fairs etc. They hold different faces each with different stories, full of essences of life. As a student of fine arts there is definite change in me. There are newer, different ways of looking at the things. Not exactly like a philosopher nor like a scientist but there are certain enquiries within me.

I have observed that wherever people encountered fear, it would work inside human mind to build communities holding religious, political and social groups together as a sect, party etc.

I have also observed that we, as people, here, in our country, are actually a wave, moved by some other force. We call this force a crowd or a mob. Revolution, change, progress, or any big enquires are not here as yet. These forces are yet to arrive within us. Especially when the crowds are illiterate and are held with blind faith, these forces of revolution and progress are a noxious waste.

"Vistarnari kshitije" 2008, an exhibition curated by Dr. Sudhir Patwardhan, that travelled to various venues in Maharashtra, holds a very prominent position in my  mind for a contemporary practitioner.  I visited the show at Nagpur and discussed various issues from politics to aesthetics etc with him. As an Indian artist, I have looked at Indian contemporaries like Atul Dodia, Bhupen Khakkar, T.V.Santosh, Gulam Sheikh, and Sudhir Patwardhan who have sprouted from the strengths of their local contexts  and have been able to address the poetics and politics of their locale to an international viewership.

My work currently is dealing with some of these contexts that I have enumerated above. The fact that we blindly follow some things without understanding deeply, in the name of religion or boundaries of country.  Or we follow ideologies of political parties, which essentially results in some selected people's lust for power. We know everything but no revolution or movement works within us... or if it happens somewhere, we never seem to get success towards its aim.

The routine ways of protest for the common man, (like band, rasta roko, rallies with religious chariots or black/colourful flags defining hate, anger , ideology of religion or party) become important metaphors for my work . I try to think about these from the perspectives of the common man. I am reflecting on our attitudes towards the ways of protest (and forgotten events) that could be employed to make important changes in the way we think. That's where my practice has been able to provide me a reason to work.

Forgetting the past is a gift or curse to mankind. Beyond politics it becomes a philosophical question to me. Current issues that we consume through media trigger enquiries within me. I become more and more aware of political processes that initiate and instigate the common man. We may just have remained ignorant bystanders, but for the realities that media projects in front of us. Further, the media also produces dispassionate observers, with its constant influx of uninhibited flash of events.

At this point, as an artist, I am making images that are able to germinate thoughts within a curious observer. I am not taking the position of a radical social worker or an activist at this point. Rather, I am working to generate a miniscule amount of thought, a doubt in the onlooker's mind, which may or may not be replete with various kinds of prejudiced opinions about society. My work at this point is to locate the people who, like me, are ready to step a little aside and renew their ways of looking and thinking. Painting, or work, cannot be a form of escape from reality, it does not beautify the world, making it acceptable for visual consumption; rather it beautifully reveals the harshness and cruelty of our own existence.

I have been choosing water color on paper as a medium for my painterly work. I feel we can hold the accidents of our living here in this medium on a large format; one can actually deal with the medium in the same way. Moments of control and moments of consent are both possible in watercolours.

I become a little conscious with the use of images in my work from different sources. What I am concerned with here is combination of two or more images that have existed separately before but are now combined to form a new meaning, a visual intersection not foreseen by travelling the obvious route. There is also, I suspect a form of envy at play here, a longing for the simpler, more emotional processes ; images I am sourcing for my work now mainly come from newspapers, magazines, and television channels as much as some times from my personal photography. Work, for me, thus becomes an attempt of fusing both history and metaphors in to a spectacle, both present and visionary. Imagery created through selection, isolation, framing, juxtaposition, foregrounding and so on which unlock the rest of its narrative flow of imagination. Among all the sources I pick an image with a potential which can be easily read at many levels. I am trying to use a format which accommodates content towards narration.

I am also keen to explore continuous narration where I can construct not only a story but a situation of another kind. I have been involved with the languages of theatre and performance since last five years. Apart from conducting performance and theatre oriented workshops, I have been writing and performing mono acts.

I am also enclosing a clipping of a work in the form of a public enquiry that I conducted in various parts of Hyderabad. For the want of a better categorisation, I am unable produce a nomenclature to the kind of video that I have been making currently. To summarise it shortly, I have interviewed people on the streets of Hyderabad from various social backgrounds regarding their happiness quotient in their day today lives. I am in the process of editing the work and building it further.

I am yet negotiating with the frames within which I could make a statement or define my  concerns further. At this point, I am in a fertile process of exploring those areas and taking them further.

* Baba Aamte was an activist known for his ashram for leprosy infected people in Chandrapur . In 1980, he initiated the Bharat Jodo Andolan, refused Padma Vibhushan, and Padma Bhushan . Through his life,one can clearly observe the work beyond the definitions of revolution and activism.

Some of his quotations that have inspired me:  "I don't want to be a leader. I want to be one who goes around with a little oil can and offer help when I see a breakdown."

" We cannot carry the struggle of life with the voice of reason alone. Enduring reason of love must come to our struggle in the life (which requires a tender heart & tough mind.) -  Baba Aamte.

Now there are three ashrams one is in Aanandwan (chandrapur), Hemalkasa(Gadhchiroli),and one  in Somnath.