Is This the Future?

If I had a Worst Enemy, I8217;d make him gallery-hop without a break. What makes you 8212; 26 and rich 8212; run around with a mouthful o...

If I had a Worst Enemy, I8217;d make him gallery-hop without a break. What makes you 8212; 26 and rich 8212; run around with a mouthful of tin-tacks, assisting in shows like the Picasso exhibit as Rajeev Lochan8217;s sidekick or curating Sharan Apparao8217;s Vamp 038; Villain?
It8217;s all my mother8217;s fault! She loves art and dragged me around to galleries and museums all the time. We8217;re a family from Lahore that settled in Delhi and I was lucky enough to travel lots, be exposed to things.

So you8217;re making a life out of it?
Well, I did five years of Art History at the Faculty of Fine Arts at MS University, Baroda and then I did a course in London, worked at the Tate a bit.

Art History? Maybe two-and-a-half people want to do that.
Actually, it was five. In my class, anyway. Most students there want to do stuff like graphics, get a future in Commercial Art or Art Communication, that sort of thing. But the nice thing about Baroda is, you have to take all the papers and only then do they tell you what stream you8217;ll be in. I was this Delhi brat, challenging everything they said, and early on in the interviews they told me, 8220;It8217;s Art History for you8221;. We did our own research, had to present papers on everything from Nataraja to Pahari miniatures. Unfortunately, the course stops with the Progressive Artists. Nor could we really interact with the famous local artists.

Didn8217;t you feel like a coconut: brown outside and white inside, with a red dhaga tied around you for the sake of the Nation?
It8217;s true that Art History is presented mostly through the Western perspective. It8217;s also true that there is a clash between modern art that is 8216;Indian8217; in content and spirit and 8216;Western8217; art. Some of us wanted to do our own thing, while others wanted to be part of the world outside. But even there, there8217;s this deficit. The art schools here were teaching the academic style, which was already left behind in the West. By the time we got to their 8216;Modern Art8217; those were already history in their own context. So we8217;re still trying to find something new and definite that8217;s 8220;ours8221;.

You8217;re doing India Habitat Centre walks around the National Museum. What do you speak about?
I love talking about Indian myths and legends, stories from the Vedas and Puranas, the iconic meanings of sculpture. And I just love jewellery.

But the National Museum doesn8217;t have much jewellery!
It is a huge jump, from Harappan beads to the 18th century jewellery of South India. But I try to fill in the blanks with other references.

Honesty and no hi-falutin8217; jargon? That8217;s worth rubies.
We have this amazing past and a very interesting present. If we8217;re going to make it work, we need to get creative and stop being copycats.