|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
But, as I proceeded, I could see CK becoming completely absorbed in what I was saying. He was listening to every word, looking keenly at each slide I was showing: absorbing and, as it turned out, thinking all the time. I could see excitement building up in him, for clearly some ideas that went well beyond painting, were forming in his head. When I finished, he came over and greeted me with great warmth and enthusiasm, telling me how ‘useful’, apart from engaging, he found the lecture to be. I was a bit surprised by the choice of the word ‘useful’, and asked him. He told me of his own take on the material I had presented. But of that only after I explain the context of Kutch painting here, for without that nothing will come across. Kutch — that ‘cardamom-like island in the west’, as it is referred to in the Mahabharata — is, as a region, isolated, shielded. Like a kachhapa — a tortoise, in Sanskrit —, the word from which its name is perhaps derived, it straddles both land and sea. And, as I said at the beginning of the book I wrote on it, both descriptions are particularly apt.
As a turtle, seemingly ageless, and well protected on its back, it is slow of movement, but remarkable of persistence. As a ‘cardamom-like’ place, it is dry and uneven on the outside, but filled with great fragrance within. The history of the region goes back a long time, but the history of painting in it is hard to trace any further back than the 18th century. That is the point at which an extraordinary figure entered the scene: Ram Singh, locally remembered as a ‘Malam’, meaning the ‘Navigator’. At a very young age, this intrepid adventurer was rescued by a Dutch ship after being shipwrecked during a voyage to the African coast and landed in Europe. Endowed with remarkable natural talent for using his hands, Ram Singh stayed on in Europe for 18 years, becoming an expert in tile-work, architecture, glass-blowing, enamelling, clock-making, gun-casting, and stone-carving. He was not much more than 30 years of age when he decided to return to India, and it was with the ruler of Kutch, Rao Lakhpatji (ruled 1741-1760) that he found both employment and unusual appreciation. What he did for Rao and for the crafts of Kutch is history in that land. He set up factories, began to train apprentices in different ‘European crafts’, and built his masterpiece, the great ‘Aina Mahal’ — Hall of Mirrors – inside the Rao’s palace. This Mahal he filled with all kinds of things, from celestial globes and Venetian mirrors to ‘pictures most curious’, including cartoons by Hogarth, portraits of Austrian royalty, and views of European cities. Nothing is properly recorded, but almost certainly these objects came back with him when he returned from Europe to Kutch. Of the greatest interest, from the point of view of painting, are, however, the prints — essentially engravings — of European city views that he seems to have brought with him as he returned. For Rao, more importantly for his painters — the group of ‘kamangars’ in royal service — these prints must have looked completely baffling: a different kind of space, receding planes, a strong and persistent use of linear perspective, the ‘vanishing point’; also, those wild and irregular clouds that stay suspended in billowy forms, small figures in European costumes strolling about in`A0groups of two’s and three’s in city squares, odd-looking doors and windows and balconies, and — passing strange — the countless fine crisscross lines, the hatchings, that belonged to these engravings. But, intrigued, and almost certainly encouraged by Rao, the painters — till then used only to painting portraits perhaps — began to make exact copies of these prints: the San Marco Piazza of Venice, the Scotch Square in Vienna, the Pall Mall in London, and the like. Sometimes three or four copies of the same print were made, evidently by different painters who were trying their hands, each according to his own understanding and skill. This is interesting enough, but what it led to is truly exciting. For, after doing some of this, and having learnt some lessons, the Kutch painters turned to look at their own environment, and produced a body of work — true ‘landscapes’`A0—`A0which, in the context of Indian painting, is almost without a parallel. Mind made up, a painter would turn out views of Bhuj, the capital city, seen from various angles; another sat down to render the town of Anjar from four different vantage points in four different paintings; yet another looked at the stark landscape of his land and painted it with deep feeling, as if breathing the clear desert air, caressing with his eyes those dunes and slopes. Views of palaces seen from above, sea ports with raging waves of water, shrines atop little hills, sunlight filtering dramatically through clouds, colonnades receding as far as the eye can see: these are the sights that greet one’s eyes as one looks at the painting of Kutch. But this is a long
story, and I do not wish to go on with it. Except, of course, to
return to C.K. Prahalad. This is the essence of India, CK said to me
(obviously referring to the paintings), and of the Indian mind:
curiosity, throwing yourself open to different experiences, the will
to learn, the capacity to absorb, and, above all, the imagination to
be able to create something wholly new, wholly different. Something in
the endeavours of the Kutch painters corresponded to what his own
thinking on India was. At the beginning of my lecture, I had no idea
of what a business guru, and a proud Indian, who stood tall among his
contemporaries in the west, would be making of what I was going to
say. At the end, I knew.
|
|||
|
|
|||
WHEN
news came in recently of the sudden passing away of C.K. Prahalad —
for most, a visionary thinker and business guru, for me also a
wonderful friend — , my mind was thrown back to the very first time
we met. It was in San Diego, years ago. I was lecturing at the Museum
of Art there and he, busy man, was in the audience, having been
persuaded by common friends to come. I was speaking on ‘Painting in
Kutch’, something that very few people know about still, for that
little corner of India has never figured in books on Indian art.
