Rediscovery of India

The last time Paresh Maity went to Jodhpur, he was the guest of Maharaja Gaj Singh at the neo-classical Umaid Bhawan, which presides over...

The last time Paresh Maity went to Jodhpur, he was the guest of Maharaja Gaj Singh at the neo-classical Umaid Bhawan, which presides over Jodhpur8217;s skyline like one standoffish royal who likes to left alone. When he went on his 25th visit to the town earlier this month, for which he cut short his ICCR-sponsored trip to Paris, he spent two days at a Gandhian ashram in a village called Gagari, where people still live in clusters of dhanis, stone-slab enclosures with conical thatched roofs that otherwise house goats and sheep in the farms of the chaudhuris.

To Gagari and neighbouring Tigari, where silicosis, TB and opium conspire together to ensure that most men die before they turn 40, Maity had come with a group of artists inspired by the much-acclaimed art teacher and painter, Dhiraj Choudhury, and the Voluntary Health Association of India VHAI. Their objective was to re-discover an India they never get to see at corporate camps, despite the hefty incentives Rs 70-80,000 is said to be the minimum take-home and all-expenses-paid stays at five-star hotels.

And it wasn8217;t just an academic exercise. Each artist participating in the camp was to donate one work and 50 per cent of their earnings from the other paintings inspired by the trip to a VHAI programme that takes health-care to the doorsteps of 16 of the country8217;s most backward villages. But no one was complaining. 8220;The city has taken over our lives,8221; said M. K. Puri, who did a water-colour overnight, six months after he had last felt inspired to go near a canvas. 8220;There8217;s no inspiration left in the city. At the same time we have lost touch with our rural roots,8221; continued the man better-known in the Capital8217;s art circuit as Secretary, Delhi Blue Pottery Trust.

Puri was sketching furiously as we talked to the villagers about their cycle of opium, tuberculosis and debt. Tigari, in fact, was in a celebratory mood that day, for one of its young men was returning home with his new bride. As the men of the village gathered in the gram sabha hall to toast the occasion with a couple of grams of opium each, and the local health worker took us to meet the silicosis widows8217; at some villages in the district these widows outnumber married women, Sudeep Roy was busy climbing to the top of a rocky outcrop where the newly-wed couple was to go and pay their respects to the local deity. That was one view he wouldn8217;t ever get from the Hyatt Regency rooftop, where at a recent exhibition his paintings sold for Rs 20,000 upwards. 8220;It took me back to my village in northern West Bengal,8221; he gushed, in between complaining about his mobile phone8217;s global roaming facility letting him down.

As he said this, Dhiraj Choudhury surveyed him with avuncular pride. Then the teacher rested his sketchbook to explain his idea, inspired by Bhabesh Sanyal8217;s attack on the art world8217;s obsession with 8220;Coca-Cola, McDonald8217;s and Madhuri Dixit,8221; and first tested out last month at Shivpuri in Madhya Pradesh with the likes of Jagdish Chander, Kallicharan Gupta, Kavita Nayar and Niren Sengupta. The sentences came in one torrent of feeling: 8220;Art for art8217;s sake is not my cup of tea. I keep asking myself, What does freedom mean for the common Indian8217;.8221;

As he said this, a common Indian offered us a choice of opium diluted in water or ground to a deadly paste. Declining the offer would mean offending a tradition that is centuries old. As we took the liquid offering and disposed of it surreptitiously, Choudhury continued: 8220;Our idea is to go to real human beings. Unless you meet real people, how can you express their feelings?8221;

The theme was taken up by Usha Biswas, the painter who had come with her illustrator husband Pulok whose sketches populated the Children8217;s Book Trust publications we have grown up with. 8220;We are reviving our old ties,8221; she said. To which, Choudhury added: 8220;Science has given us motion, but taken away emotion. We are too busy to be in touch with reality8221;.