Journalism of Courage
Replicas of masters and other beautiful specimens of art on hostel walls and in bachelor pads democratise art appreciation
Messy beds,unattended piles of laundry,stray posters of music bands and artistes on the walls,some essential pots and mugs peeping from the clutter expectations from a hostel room or a singletons pad may have these as props. But once in a while,you could be surprised with by an artistic gem. Peeling walls are adorned with replicas of artworks by masters like Van Gogh or Raja Ravi Varma,or one spots a handcrafted masterpiece on the study table.
Mumbai-based media professional Anuradha Bose livened up her hostel room in a top journalism college in Chennai last year by making sure what she loved was up on the walls. We would print out photographs of bands that we liked,and put them up. A tech savvy friend was awesome at photoshopping,and he would make illustrations or cartoons of bands and so on for me that would also go up on the wall, Bose says.
As people like Bose invariably show,expressing ones appreciation for an art form neednt be stifled by finances. If you admire it,you will find an economical way to have it within your eye-shot. As standard XII student Pallavi Ram from Delhi would tell you,basking in the glow of Starry Starry Night ,My brother is an admirer of Van Gogh,so he got a printout of this famous painting and framed it. Once,we even cut out a picture of Bharatmata by M F Hussain when it appeared in one of the newspapers and put it up on the wall, recounts Ram. She even gets black and white prints of Madhubani,fills colours into them and gets them printed onto colourful paper. I even do my own art work,a bit of Warli painting for my bulletin board, she laughs.
Media professional Karthik Ahuja is an avid lover of classical Indian music. Not a surprise then,that a caricature of the Late Pandit Bhimsen Joshi,picked up at last years Baaja Gaaja festival,rules in his little cabin-fever-inducing space in Pune. Waiting to be put up are also a couple of oil paintings that I picked at a beach in Port Elizabeth,a place full of chaps selling you paintings on the sidewalk. I’ve also been thinking of printing some of the photographs I’ve taken over time,and putting those on the wall, Ahuja says. In true filmy style,he had also sent a poster of Kashmir ki Kali to his retro-films loving parents on their wedding anniversary,hoping it would crawl up their wall.
