Youth shows special talent
By Priti Verma
HARPARTAP is a “special” child. Special he is for his parents, like any progeny, he is again “special” as he suffers from a disorder which slows down the learning process. Why did this happen when he was born a normal child? His mother, Mrs Raminder Dhillon, recalls, “He was absolutely normal for one year except for frequent cough and cold. One day he became severely ill and had to be hospitalised. There he was administered sedatives. After he came home he stopped talking at all”.

B.N. Goswamy
In quest of a lasting equilibrium

Wedded to music
By Vandana Shukla

DR Saryu Kalekar, a leading representative of Rampur Sadarang tradition of Hindustani music and a disciple of stalwarts like Pt. Bholanath Bhatt and Acharya KCD Brihaspati, lives in Chandigarh. Elder sister of Dr Sulochana Brihaspati and former Vice-Chanceller of Indira Gandhi Kala Sangeet Vishwavidyalaya, the only chartered university of music and fine arts in the country, lives in a government house with her nephew, son of Acharya Brihaspati, Saubhagya Vardhan, who teaches music in a local college.

Narrating her experiences with Indira Kala Sangeet University, Saryu says, “Though a university was raised by the royal family of Kheragarh to promote music, the government could not provide enough funds for the university to function with a budget of less than Rs 1 crore annually. During my tenure, the teachers and the staff often had to go without salary. It was difficult to attract good teachers. A few talented teachers who did join the university found the remote location very uninspiring for their growth, and preferred giving performances outside. This caused absenteeism. Though a few students came even from abroad, by and large only the local students came, with vocational aspirations. But they too were soon frustrated.

“There was a demand to shift the university to a larger town like Bhopal or Gwalior, but it caused resentment among the local people who had found employment in the university. Another suggestion was to have branches in bigger cities. During my tenure I demanded the university be made a central university so that it could grow. Nothing came of it.”

Despite constraints, she says, her team worked well and earned a good reputation in the studies of folk arts. There are many committed students, but growth in art requires a longer period of learning. In the absence of fellowships and scholarships most students are forced to leave the pursuit of art midway. They take up odd employments. Once the girl students enter matrimony, they compromise with the situation. It is only through government or corporate-sponsored fellowships that art can be promoted, she believes.

Herself wedded to music at an early age, she has combined her “sadhana” with skills in the teaching of music. In “Rampur ki Sadarang Parampara,” a book authored by her, she analyses the uniqueness of this legendary gharana that has produced many a stalwart.

Born in a traditional Maharashtrian family at Allahabad, she has been learning music since she was three. Earlier at home then after joining the Prayag Sangeet Samiti, “The standard of teaching music was very high. Teachers were strict disciplinarians and students were keen to learn,” she reminisces.

Under the strict vigilance of her father, she continued her training in music simultaneously doing her Prabhakar from the samiti and Visharad from Morris College, Lucknow, with her usual formal education.

At home, the four sisters became accompanists for each other during “riyaz” for hours at a stretch. She believes the general atmosphere of cities like Allahabad and Lucknow promoted learning of classical music. Various competitions were held, sponsored by the rich.

She recalls a temple close to their house in Allahabad that conducted annual competitions in different age-groups in “bhakti sangeet.” This encouraged them to memorise numerous “shlokas” from the Gita, Ramayana etc. set to different ragas and raganis. Often all four sisters brought home trophies under different age-groups.

Later, she learnt music under the able guidance of Pt. Bholanath Bhatt who was an encyclopaedia of ragas and raganis and had in his repertoire thousands of rare “bandishes”. He did not encourage Saryu’s pursual of formal studies, but she made use of her education by penning down most of these rare gems along with her sister Sulochana who learnt music from Mushtak Husain Khan in Delhi, and later married Acharya Brihaspati.

With her continuous “sadhana” of classical music, she has also served as a teacher for 18 long years at Chandigarh in different colleges and retired as a Principal.

One of the leading scholars in the fields of applied research work in music, she is also accomplished in the renderings of dhrupad, khayal, thumri, dadra and tappa. An ‘A’ grade artiste of All India Radio and television, now a few students holding scholarship under Ministry of Cultural Affairs take guidance from her in their respective research fields.

With the presence of such a person in town, it is sad we continue to harp on the cultural vacuum. The administration can come forward in making use of such talent by selecting a few students with talent and dedication and providing them scholarships to sustain and encourage a rich tradition that is fast losing ground in an age of mediocrity passed as art. The city of cement and concrete can be made to pulsate with a little vision and effort.

Youth shows special talent
By Priti Verma

HARPARTAP is a “special” child. Special he is for his parents, like any progeny, he is again “special” as he suffers from a disorder which slows down the learning process. Why did this happen when he was born a normal child? His mother, Mrs Raminder Dhillon, recalls, “He was absolutely normal for one year except for frequent cough and cold. One day he became severely ill and had to be hospitalised. There he was administered sedatives. After he came home he stopped talking at all”.

At first his muteness was rendered to certain reasons like his sickness and change of places which brought in the language problem every time (his father Inderjit Dhillon is a Major-General in the Army; this means lots of transfers and travelling). Ultimately, they realised that the boy is not going to speak.

The parents, patience paid off and he again uttered his first word at the age of three-and-a-half years. In the meantime, he had got a younger brother Ajay who was absolutely normal. Harpartap used to try to imitate him. This act of copying would propel the elder one to say something.

At that time his mother was working as a teacher and she taught him at home. By the age of five, Harpartap had learnt to copy the alphabet. While in Roorkee for a year, one of his teachers informed his parents that he needed special attention and motivation. The search for a special school began.

Finally, Harpartap and his mother went to Delhi in 1985 and he was admitted to Air Force Golden Jubilee Institute. This was a “special school” which provided specially designed instruction to rehabilitate the individual in the areas of self-help, academic, personal and vocational abilities. The school helped him tremendously, so much so that he picked up Hindi “matras” in two months. He turned out to be a bright student with no behavioural problems.

This institute taught functional academics with a lot of stress on vocational activities. Here he was able to operate the photocopier and printing press. It was around this time that his interest in painting was noticed. He already seemed to possess a strong colour sense. He took part in painting competitions and made greeting cards which were sold at Santushti in Delhi.

Seeing his interest in painting, he was admitted to Triveni Kala Sangam, Delhi, at the age of 19. The instructors giving him absolute freedom of expression taught him to use oils. The Dhillons came to Chandigarh in ‘97. Now for the past one year he is taking classes at Bama Art Academy, Panchkula. He likes to work with water colours and oils. To do figurative work is difficult for him, so he concentrates more on the abstract.

He paints whatever catches his fancy, but nature inspires him greatly. There is a maturity in his works which defies his inherent problem. The colours he has used are bright and cheerful conforming exactly to the theme he has chosen.

There is a series on hands in grey and black. Besides, he has done a few pieces on Ganesha which are his own interpretation of this god. Along with these, he has painted birds and landscapes.

Harpartap now comes across as a normal young boy of 24. The labour of his parents has paid off, and the reason in the opinion of his mother is, “We had to travel extensively. This gave him the kind of exposure which was necessary for him to develop and evolve. His younger brother encouraged him to do many things like cycling and scooter-driving”. Now he can ride a two-wheeler comfortably, likes to play basketball and is fond of pets.

Harpartap has been painting for quite sometime now. He has done sufficient work to hold an exhibition and launch his career. Government Museum and Art Gallery Chandigarh, is the venue where he has put up his first solo show from December 17.

B.N. Goswamy
In quest of a lasting equilibrium

“Art is only a substitute while beauty of life is still deficient. I will disappear in proportion, as life gains in equilibrium.”

THESE brooding words belong to one of the most uncompromising, most inwardly-turned, among the artists of this century, Piet Mondrian. And I speak of him because I believe that for those countless among us who still stand puzzled in front of abstract works of art, and view them with suspicion, trying to understand a figure like him, and the manner in which art and life become intertwined, might be of some profit. Mondrian died some 50 years ago, a Dutch expatriate in New York, but he continues to remain a central figure of the art of our times in many ways.

Born in 1872 in Holland, and coming from a family of strict Calvinists, Mondrian began his artistic career like many others, making copies of works in museums, doing scientific drawings, painting the beautiful Dutch countryside from time to time. There were encounters with other religions, among them Theosophy, which we in India seem to know something of; there was an inner restlessness, a quest for first principles, as it were.

Slowly, he grew more and more interested in painting isolated houses, small segments of woods, which had a lonely, mysterious quality. For a while, Mondrian took an interest in the Cubism of Picasso and Braque, and painted the now famous series of trees in which he went on eliminating detail upon detail, in successive works.

But something still eluded him. His search, as he said later, was for a certain equilibrium, durable and clear at the same time. Complete abstraction, he came to feel, was the answer, the removal of all reference to objective reality in work. Recognisable elements began to disappear from his work, a rhythmic orchestration of lines and colours emerging slowly as the aim.

Continuing constantly to reduce, to whittle things down, he arrived at lines which eventually consisted simply of horizontals and verticals, and the colours began to be restricted to the three primaries: red, yellow and blue, relieved only by black and white, or a touch of grey. A new clarity began to emerge. Relationships between the different elements within the works themselves had come to be unchanging, permanent.

Then came the First World War. Mondrian had been living in Paris for a while, and had returned to Holland just before the war broke out. The destruction that he saw in the years that followed, whole streets being wiped out, things disappearing right before one’s eyes affected him deeply.

The impermanence of material things, their fragility, seemed somehow to drive him inwards, convincing him further that at least in the area of art one should be looking for a durable equilibrium. “Today, pure beauty is not only a necessity for us,” he wrote, “it is the only means.... because things are essentially opposed to us and external matter is hostile.”

These years saw Mondrian turn almost reclusive, sustained only by the few friendships or associations that he had formed. But his reputation had steadily grown, and his studio was becoming, for intellectuals and artists all over the world, a place to visit, like a pilgrim centre.

Ben Nicholson, the celebrated English painter who came to see him, wrote of his visit with emotion:” ...the thing I remember most is the feeling of light in his room, and the pauses and silences during and after he’d been talking. The feeling in his studio must have been not unlike the feeling in one of those hermits’ caves where lions used to go to have thorns taken out of their paws....”

With years, came the rise to power in Europe of the Nazis. Mondrian was living in Paris again, but felt threatened, for yet another war was in the offing, and the Nazis had already singled his work out for condemnation, including it in their infamous exhibition of “Degenerate Art”. A witch-hunt was on, and the agenda of the “thought police” that was now ruling was to demonstrate to a compliant public the “pernicious intent of modern art”.

Mondrian went off to London in 1939 as the war broke out, but there was little peace for him there, too. All he could manage to do was to paint two pictures in two years, and during this time his little studio in Hampstead was nearly bombed out in the nightly air attacks.

His nerves severely tested by all this, Mondrian decided to leave for the haven that the USA then was, in September 1940, taking with him a stack of unfinished works. To his signatures on one of the paintings finished by him during this period, “Composition in Red and Blue”, he added poignantly the hyphenated dates: “1939-41”. The work was rectilinear and severe, like always, part of Mondrian’s unending, “mystical pursuit of the absolute” in art.

The power of colours

Undoubtedly, most people living here have seen, at some point of time or the other, those intense, bright yellows and reds and blues that Le Corbusier used so uncompromisingly in his buildings. But I wonder how many are able to relate them to the European background of Mondrian’s times from which he came on the one hand, and to those daring, burning yellows and reds that one finds in Indian paintings of the past on the other. This is a theme in itself.

But let me only cite here from what Schoenmaker, one of the influential thinkers on the subject, wrote: “Yellow is the movement of the ray... Blue is the contrasting colour to yellow ...As a colour, blue is the firmament, it is line, horizontality ...Yellow radiates, blue recedes, red floats.”