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There are five virtues: accuracy, literacy, a strong hand, industriousness, and the perfect writing instruments. — the calligrapher, Mir-Ali Khoravi This is not a piece about calligraphy per se — even though the instruments of writing are involved —, but I am tempted all the same to begin by citing a delightful passage on Japanese calligraphy. In that art, it says, "The line flows down from the top of the page to the bottom like water. It can be a violent mountain creek with many rapid curves and strokes, or a gently meandering stream through a wide valley. It can be a roaring waterfall crushing anything in its path, or a still lake embracing the warm rays of lazy sun, settling down."
And then, it goes on to speak of the different scripts that calligraphers of old used to use; the mature ‘clerical script’ or ‘small seal script’ where strokes are premeditated and seem to be designed; the wild ‘cursive script’ or ‘uneasy and illusively careless’. If one moves on to calligraphy in other cultures like the Islamic, one is, of course, on more familiar ground, for there one knows the dazzling range of scripts by their names: the Kufic, the Thulth, the Maghribi, the Naskh, the Muhaqqaq, the Riqa’h, and, naturally, the Nastaliq and the Shikasteh. It is a whole world in itself: sacred on the one hand, and ‘epicurean’ on the other; precise, demanding, capable of moving the heart. As great calligraphers used to maintain: it teaches you how to lay down the principles by which you live your life. In the Indic world — barring the Tibetan — one does not see much evidence of calligraphy having attained the height that it did in so many other cultures. But occasionally one comes upon something — like I did in Jaipur once, in a private collection — that takes you by surprise: a whole manuscript in Sanskrit, written in Devanagari but each letter formed as if it was in imitation of Kufic, the oldest and the most ‘sacred’ among Islamic scripts.
I chanced the other day upon a slim volume which I found of absorbing interest. Titled Timeless Art, it consisted exclusively of images that had sprung out of a calligrapher’s qalam. The work was by Paramaeswar Raju — presumably a Telugu artist — who has been creating, for years it seems, simple iconic figures with singular fluency, using pens that a calligrapher would. The ‘figures’, if they can be called that, were of familiar characters or situations that populate our texts and our myths and, through them, our minds. The Ramayana and the Krishna legend seem to have been his favourites to draw upon, the choice being dictated as much by his personal inclination, perhaps, as by the practical consideration of easy recognisability: who, he must have decided, does not know Hanumana or Krishna, and who would not be able to spot and discern iconic scenes from those texts: Rama, Sita and Lakshmana walking barefoot in their exile years, for instance; Surasa, the demoness, about to swallow Hanumana as he flies towards Lanka; Sita undergoing the fire ordeal; Yashoda seated with little Krishna in her lap, gazing at his face with wondering eyes; Krishna standing under a tree playing upon his flute, or his beloved cows crowding around him in the pasture; and so on? With the briefest of means, gentle twists and turns of his skilled pens — now broad-nibbed, now thin, now emphatic, now barely touching the paper — and an extremely limited range of colours for keeping it all simple, Parameswara Raju conjures up sights for our eyes that are already prepared by what we might have seen in paintings, or in calendar prints. When, in one image, a loop turning back upon itself with a small diamond form topping it, and an attached curving flame-like stroke rising skywards, instantly Hanumana comes to mind: seated with back erect, head slightly inclined for looking upwards at Rama, long tail rising upwards, defying gravity. When, in another extremely sophisticated and simple work, we see a broad curve topped by a sphere with little floral dots joined to it inclining gently downwards, and at a very slight distance a diamond shape, topped by a conical shape, we know that it is Yashoda gazing fondly at the face of little Krishna in her lap that we are looking at. All one needs is recollection and a reference to our own repertoire of images. Simple, crisp strokes create a whole image. In his work, the diamond shape is Raju’s sign — not symbol — for a male head, much as a sphere is for a female head; an undulating curve lying almost flat on the ground is someone paying obeisance in dandawata manner; a conical shape topping a diamond is the peacock feather — mor mukuta — which Krishna always wears. One gets used to it so quickly.
This is the way it proceeds in this little volume. Not everything comes off, of course, and some things, or ideas, appear forced. But at its best, the work is compelling, filled with imagination and obvious skills. Raju, who we read has been working as a graphic artist for corporations, is evidently steeped in the Indian tradition and knows his characters and their situations well. And he knows how to connect with his audience. Like he did with me when, in a note on his work featuring Krishna and his cows, he suddenly brought up the names by which Krishna used to address the cows by their names. Names like Dhavali, Hamsi, Chandani, Mukta, for those with fair ‘complexions’, for instance; Aruni, Kumkuma for those who were red; Shyamala, Dhumala and Yamuna for black ones; and Pita, Pingala or Haritaka for those that were yellow. My mind leapt up, recalling the moving scene in Girish Karnad and B.V. Karanth’s wonderful film, Go-dhuli, in which as the cows, heartlessly sold, are being led to the slaughter-house, a character starts shouting for them from a distance, calling them by names like these as if asking them to turn back. And they do.
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Certainly the Art of
Writing is the most miraculous of all things man has devised. —
Thomas Carlyle
