Time Travels

Water Water talks about the present water situation in the area and the listening or recording of different stories about water, narrated by the indigenous people of Bastar.

When requested to narrate his story on water and weaving, Sukhman, a weaver, took nearly half a day to start, busy as he was, stretching, brushing and starching the soot for the weaving. 8216;8216;Like the light of the sun,8217;8217; he would say, pointing to each stretched thread; we8217;ve known Sukhman for many years and were prepared to wait. The story he narrated is about the warp and weft tana-bana, which criss-cross each other and symbolise the unity of opposites. Tana-bana, according to his story, is a principle on which the world is woven: Water is the life source and tana-bana, the breath of life.

When we reached singer Sukdai Gurumai8217;s place, we found she had gone to the market to get some food for us. It took us four hours to record a five-minute story of Aama-bihav and Tarai-bihav Marriage of the mango tree and the pond from Lachmi Jagar, an oral epic. The story talks of how the ripened fruit and the water from a newly-dug pond can be consumed by people only after they are ritually married off in the presence of the inhabitants of the area.

By periodically travelling, living and interacting with these colleagues, their families and other artists from different disciplines in Kondagaon where we are located at different times of the year, I experienced the peculiarities, differences and similarities in Adivasi communities and the non-Adivasi population in a broader sense.

But to understand the nuances, one needs to focus. During these moments I get to see how they relate to their immediate environment.

In the beginning, I used to get very conscious of the time gone by and very anxious of the time left to do things, especially when we got engaged in collaborative artworks. People, including my colleagues8217; approach to work the time factor, made me uncomfortable and vulnerable.

Since I was interested in knowing their culture, I had to gradually understand and accept the limitations of my own social and cultural perspectives. I also had to develop a vision to free myself from my conditioning regarding 8216;time8217;, and a way of working by being a participant in their world, which was not just about the Adivasi art world.

The Adivasis work throughout the year, but they take time off to celebrate birth, marriage, death, harvest and seasons. This pattern is a way of life8212;and arts are very much a part of it.

This, to an extent, helped me understand their perceptions of life and time. Times they are living in and a sense of their own histories. Since our work process encourages communication, I realised that 8216;beginning to listen8217; is the beginning of the process of communication. And those who are interested in restructuring power in more egalitarian ways consciously like to work towards these values.

Water Water will be screened at Altaf8217;s solo show at Talwar Art Gallery, New York, from November 19 to December 21