Culture as a celebration of love

Here was a celebration and a sharing of love, based on the devotional songs of medieval mystics: Rabia al Basri, Kabir, Mirabai, Paltudas and many lesser known bhakti singers of this country. This collaboration between the veteran Gandhian and artist and Shubha, the celebrated singer, didn’t happen in a day or a month. As interviews with them suggest, it grew over some years — out of a sharing of ideas and a common commitment to retrieve traditions.

They chose the bhakti tradition which still lives in the subconscious core of our being — drawing from this earth and from the everyday professions and idioms of the weaver and the potter. They selected songs that appeal to both the spirit and the senses.

They retrieved traditions which are essentially syncretic, crossing boundaries and social taboos, reaching out to the heart of every human being. Out of this they created a fusion that is new and old, earthy and sublime, of man and universe in harmony.

Hakubhai is one of those rare beings who lives by his Gandhian ideals, a lifestyle that is almost austere. He sees the world with the pristine eyes of a child — delighting in images pared down to their essence and soaked in the vibrancy of colours that are elemental: crimson red, yellow, blue, white.

You might describe his art as naive but it contains wisdom within. It is much harder to find fault with simplicity in an image than with over abundance! Against a red background stands a man, holding up a chaddar to shield himself — it is nothing more than a yard of khadi taken off the loom, so finely woven that four sparrows are picking out single threads.

This stark image is all there is — in contrast, a foil to the rich alliteration of jhini jhini bini chadariya… Kabir refers to his humble profession to sing of the fine threads weaving the rich texture of life.

But there is another detail in this one picture, bringing in a personal note: swinging freely in the air like a kite is the spindle. This reminds the artist of Gandhi’s entreaty: ‘Everywhere you go, take the takli with you… Spinning will bring you to self reliance.’ Inspired, Hakubhai carries his takli and spins his pictures.

These pictures are inspired equally from Hakubhai’s enthusiasm about the potter’s creations. His images are pure form, looking much like one another. Is ghat antar baag bagicha, is the metaphor used by Kabir. The whole world, the seven seas and the garden of life is contained within the pot, within you.

The head is invariably archetypal, ambiguous in identity: it could be man or woman, sudra or brahmin, Hindu or Muslim. The faces are mute, silent, open to experience.

On that magical evening when Shubha Mudgal began to sing, these figures seemed to respond with their heads attuned, their arms rising and their hands unfurling like flowers… Sound and image echoed and resonated, responding to each other. Over the 16 years since we met, Shubha’s voice has deepened in intensity. A quality of abstraction is inherent to both song and image, denying the finite aspects.

This corresponds to that subtle aspect of nirguna: where God is regarded to be without form or shape; where the entire world is permeated with divine presence. This belief is of course common to many mystical traditions, including the bauls and the sufis.

Among the verses, Shubha chose a rendering by Madan Gopal from Rabia’a al Basri, a woman and the very earliest of sufi saints. The refrain, ‘Bas tu hi mur sain’, is matched by Hakubhai’s rendering of Rabia stretching her four arms—to aspire to the mountains and the skies and the intense blue of the oceans—in an all-embracing pantheism.

By the poets, God can be called by many different names: Sain and Sahib, Jogi and Piya. But the emphasis here is not on the divine but on mortals, relating to their quest and aspirations in life.

This was the essence conveyed — resulting in the sharing of love, in a fusion that was both of the senses and the spirit.

The writer is a cultural historian