'Art & soul: Some splendid views of ports

Close to two weeks back, I was at Daman — former Portuguese possession on the west coast of India and now, together with Diu, a Union Territory — and what had taken me there was a symposium on the port towns of Gujarat. I had little title to be there for I am no expert on port towns and know precious little about that maritime region. But apparently an old friendship and a book that I had written long back on Painting in Kutch worked in my favour. So, there I was: attending an intensive three-day event, morning to evening, listening to learned papers and mixing with scholars, who had virtually dedicated their lives to the theme. They had come from everywhere, some 30 of them: the United States and England and Portugal and, nearer home, from Mumbai, Pune, Coimbatore and Delhi, apart, of course, from various parts and institutions of Gujarat. In what must sound now like a crash course on Port Towns, I wandered through the ruins of Kot Lakhpat, peered at the remains of the first Parsi establishment at Sanjan, tracked the growth of Khambhat as a mercantile centre, listened to the travellers’ accounts of the 16th and 17 centuries, puzzled over the phenomena of climate change, reflected on the myriad aspects of the port city of Surat, even entered the dangerous world of piracy at one time.

All in learned company, of course. My role in it? A brief presentation of the manner in which the painters of the past saw and rendered the sea in their work. All this against a very varied background in which one could hear at times the clash of arms in the far distance, pick up the din of the market place, feel the cooling hand of breeze as dhows and other craft sailed the seas, sense the skilled but ruthless games that colonial powers used to play as they, eyes lit with avarice, set off for these parts. But there were no clashes here, no conflicts at this symposium: only scholarship. Like a sutradhara of old, Hasmukh Shah, founder of the Darshak Itihas Nidhi, held it all together.

Apart from listening, however, there was much to see at the symposium. There was a luminous presentation on the theme — one gigantic screen with three impeccably calibrated projectors throwing on it one glittering series of images after another in rapid succession — by the distinguished architect, Karan Grover, whose efforts had won for the restored capital town of Champaner a Unesco Heritage City award. Gujarat and the sea came alive through this presentation, not only visually, but also in the mind, for it provoked one into thinking about the future of cities. And then, of course, there was this exhibition on the port towns of Gujarat that had been put together with admirable effort by Sara Keller.

There, along the walls of the small exhibition hall, located in an elegant basement, were all kinds of images and documents, everything neatly organised, focussing sharply upon the sea ports of Gujarat: alike in Kutch and in the Saurashtra area. Names that may be largely unfamiliar to most of us in the north — Mundra, Ghogha, Jakhau, Nargol, Mandvi and the like — were as much there as Dwarka, Porbandar, Veraval, Bharuch, and Khambhat, apart, of course, from the all too familiar Surat.

Advertisement A View of the city of Surat. By a Dutch artist. 17th century National Library of the Netherlands

For securing copies of nearly all the engravings and paintings and photographs on view, Sara had assiduously scoured collections in Europe: from institutions as diverse as the British Library, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the National Maritime Museum all in London, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the National Archives in the Hague, the Bibliotheque Nationale in France and the Arquivo Nacional of Lisbon.

And there, they were all together, peering down from the walls and looking up at the visitors from showcases in the exhibition hall: a view of the Sacred Town and Temple of Dwarka by William Purser, the Siege of Diu by the Arabians, the town of Khambhat seen from the top of the Jama Masjid by Henry Cousens, a stunning painting of the harbour of Surat dated 1670 by an anonymous artist, and so on. But mingling with these also were some Mughal paintings of the Akbarnama: the entry of the emperor Akbar into Surat, the death of Sultan Bahadur in a sea-battle in front of Diu, and so on. What was especially arresting for me — for I had not seen them before — were a few original documents like hundis written out by Surat merchants, sale deeds in Modi script recording land authenticated by established authority of the times and witnessed by a host of people, a stamped and sealed ‘Licence’ issued by the ruler of Kutch permitting a vessel named ‘Ganjo Moobarak’ to sail under the flag of that state. Whether one could read these documents or not, it was easy to sense the breath of history upon them. It was as if those times were speaking in their own, distinctive voices.

A view of the Port of Surat. By an Indian artist; ca. 1670. The Khalili Collection

As I say this, am I, I wonder, simply listing the objects of which the exhibition was made? Perhaps I am. But the show had led me to think too, as I contrasted in my own mind radically different ways of seeing and rendering. There was, for instance, this View of the Port of Surat from the Khalili collection, dating back to ca. 1675 by some unknown Indian artist.

It was a plan, far more neatly laid out than the city might have been: everything in place, from one gate of the town to another, walled enclosure, and flowing close to it the great river on which some dhows, again neatly arranged, are sailing but visible only when you turn the leaf around.

An abstraction, in other words: something inwardly seen. On the other hand, there was this well-known ca. 1590 painting of a European, a Portuguese gentleman, perhaps, walking with a strident step, dressed in tunic and breeches, with a hat placed at a cocky angle on the head, and carrying a sword the tip of which rests on the ground. In the background, far in the distance, appears a segment of a town. All sharply observed, but seen from the outside. Strictly from the outside, as the eye sees them, I find all of this very absorbing.