The Chandigarh Canvas

The Geometry of Perception

Chandigarh, with its rectangles, squares and circles imposes a geometric vision to the inner dreams of local painters, says Nirupama Dutt

There are cities and cities. And each city has its own unique architecture. There are cross-and-circle town plans, cityscapes of domes and arches or slope-roofed hill towns. And then there are colours. Pink is the colour of the traditionally designed buildings of Jaipur, the roofs of old Shimla town were green and red and yellow sandstone structures went into the building of Jaisalmer.
Come to Le Corbusier's Chandigarh with its rectangles, squares and circles connected by straight roads interesting at right angles. The dominant colours are grey of concrete and burnished red of brick. Such is the architectural legacy of a painter born to this city. The inner visions and dreams of the artist constantly meet a given geometrical vision which seems to push away even the gentle contours of the Shivalik hills. The scale of this city is described as ``monumental and daunting''.
How can an artist living here not be influenced by the precisely measured 1,200 by 800 meters dimensions of a sector, space organized in frames, all facades controlled by sharp angles? So geometric patterns and organized interiors peep out of the work of painters here.
From among the works, the canvases of the Chandigarh artists can be picked out by their characteristic geometrical patterns. Ishwar Dayal, a city artist who teaches in Government College of Art, remarks: ``Most images of artists who have grown up in this city are in frames. Inside the window and outside it is the dominant theme. And looking at the rows of paintings, the truth of this observation meets the eye time and again.
The window symbol is used repeatedly and in Ishwar's own work in shades of aqua green, chrome and deep blue, the theme is woven through the sights inside the window and outside. The rectangular frame of the window is to be found in the paintings of Malkit Singh, Prakash and many others. Shattered seas of dreams and flying fish surround the theme man and woman in limbo in the beautifully painted canvas by S Raj Kumar. Geometric shapes are juxtaposed against flowing contours of the human body.
The broken steel frame of the aquarium strikes the eye as do many triangular bits of broken glass. These symbols of the city shapes seem to be piercing a languid and lazy dream.
Sensuality characterizes the female figures by Satwant Singh and in his painting of white looking out of yellows and reds in the background woman is at her most erotic, riding a rooster. Even this very open image is not shorn of patterns of interiors in the background.
And geometrical lines are well delineated in a canvas by Viren Tanwar in which the human body is invisible but underclothes parade boldly in a pattern of diagonal stripes and a double frame, understating the rectangular space provided by the canvas. Raj K Jain has often explored the subtle shadings and textures that emerge from the play of light on brick.
Thus the artists re-work the visual world bequeathed to the city artists by Corbusier.

The Indian Brush

An end of the century art review by Nirupama Dutt

The dancing girl fetched out of the excavations of the Idus Valley civilization, the frescoes in the Ajanta caves, the temples of the South and tribal artists scattered in different places tell that the story of Indian art is as old as the Indian civilization. But it is this century which ends in a day which has given a distinct character to the Indian brush. It is the modern artist who comes centre stage with a vision born of the encounter of the east witgh the West to what Steven Connor said was ``Discovery or rediscovery of those real intensities of experience which had for long been concealed or distorted by false structures of under-standing’’.
The turn of the century sees the rise of the Bengal School which ironically was born under the guidance of E.B. Havell, Principal, Government School of Art, Calcutta. This was the time of the celebrated Abanindranath Tagore and Nand Lal Bose. Rejecting the British influences, they struggles to evolve a synbthesis of the Asian techniques to arrive at the Indian idiom. Commenting on the early work by Abanindranath, wrote Benode Behari Mukherjee, ``He has indeed, effected a fusion of western and oriental techniques to evolve a new style of painting’’. But it is the painter-poet Rabindranath Tagore who is recognised as first of the Indian moderns and it was he who said, ``Art is the response of man’s creative soul to the call of the real’’. The real can also be taken as one opposed to the rich and romantic paintings by Raja Ravi Varma of the princely state of Travancore in Kerala.
Interestingly, in an international volume 20th century Art, the only Indian artist to get a place is Rabindranath who the nation knows better as the poet. International prices for his work have always been higher than others and not just because they are a part of national treasure. Trying to place him in the right context Satyasri Unkil says, ``Rabindranath was an auto-didactic artist. Yet the nonformality of being self taught was a boon rather than a hindrance for his art is figurative, but he uses effects which are usually out of bounds for formally trained artists’’. It is a unique vision which marks for the painter-poet a special place in art.
The other artist who made a remarkable impact on modern Indian art and many contemporary artists still consider it flattering to count as one of the influences on them is Amrita Sher-Gil who arrived on the Indian art scene in the mid-1930s. Born of Indo-Hungarian parentage, Amrita combined a European education and an intense Indian experience. In a seven-year creative span, she painted Indian life and ensured for herself a place for all times with one room in the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi specially reserved for her paintings. Her beauty, individuality and freedom went into making the Amrita Sher-Gil legend and she is one of the most cherished icons of the century. In a critique on her work, art historian Geeta Kapur writes, ``Her art language involved the use of indigenous resource in the context of her nascent sympathy of the modernizing nation; she hoped to use it as a critical reflex against her personal narcissism’’.
However, it is Maqbool Fida Husain of the progressive group who makes the most significant impact in modern art in post-Independence India and gives to the artist a stature that was not known before. Whatever be the reservations about Husain’s idiosyncracies which have included going barefoot to a prestigious club and making news, having a post-menopause romance with film star Madhuri Dixit or painting Indira Gandhi as Durga, his importance in popularizing modern art in a combination of a felicity with line and great showmanship cannot be denied starting at a cinema hoarding artist, Husain remains the most in artist at the age of 84 when the century ends paving the way for many a new stroke for the Indian brush.

Good God, Ganesha

Ganesha's image is more popular than that of Krishna


What Ganpatyas were to Ganesha, artists in modern times are to the elephant-headed deity as the trend of painting everyone's favourite God acquires epidemic proportions, reports Nirupama Dutt
Come September and the predominant motif meeting the eye is that of Lord Ganesha. In the Capital, 15 artists painted Ganesha for a show at the Little Theatre Gallery held in the first two weeks of the month. And the many moods of the Vinayaka were portrayed by Dehra Dun-based artist D N. Mishra for a show at the Le Meridien Hotel. If there be one Hindu deity who has captured the national imagination in an unparalleled manner literally from the Indian Ocean to the Kashmir highland; from Brahmaputra to Mumbai island – it is none other than the cuddly, happy Ganesha.
The elephant-headed, potbellied, happy-go-lucky deity seems to have upstaged far greater deities of Hindu mythology as far as pure popularity goes. In these, our modern times, this God was the centre of a miracle which sent Hindus allover the world into a tizzy, for their favourite devta had accepted to be spoon-fed with milk by them. Idols of Ganesha in temples and homes were reported to have accepted milk offered to them.
Not that other deities have not been in the news but it has taken much more than a fe3sw spoons of milk to do so. It took the infamous Rath Yatra and finally the demolition of the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya to bring into focus the mighty Ram, the most popular of all the incarnations of Vishnu. Not so with the friendly neighbourhood Ganesha. He is not the God of kings or priests. No great temples have been built for him either. He belongs in all simplicity to everyone. W J Wilkins in his book, Hindu Mythology, says: ``The Deo eats, sleeps, marries, and lives the life of an ordinary mortal; and though he is regarded as a fool in worldly matters, he is worshipped as a God. On special occasions, his actions and movements are most carefully watched, as they are transient manifestations of the divine will, and are regarded as prophetic. Thus on a particular night of the year, should he remain in peaceful sleep, national repose is predicted; should his slumbers or his waking moments be disturbed, national calamities are expected. If he starts wildly from his seat, seize a sword, or make any warlike movement, war may be looked for.''
Goodness, Gracious, Ganesha! Given such a reputation, it is little wonder that all want this deity to be happy riding his vehicle of a rat, gorging on laddoos and drinking rivers of milk. The deity is pan-Indian with special pockets, of course, where he sends his devotees into rapture. Just recall the frenzy Ganpati Bappa Morea causes in Maharashtra. One of the most popular astrologers of our times, Bejan Daruwala is a self-confessed Ganesha devotee. He will no predict without adding the famous phrase of his, `Ganesha willing'. Lord Ganesha's blessings are sought before starting any venture from a journey to a new job, from a business enterprise to marriage.
So it is really not very surprising that he should also be the most popular image to figure in calendars sold on pavements and pricey works of art hanging in posh galleries. He also forms part of the popular Puja show, which has a re-run next spring at the Smithsonian in the US, along with his parents, Shiva and Parvati.
Many people recognize the works of F N Souza, the patron saint of the progressive group, by his paintings of Christ. But just go to Dhoomi Mal Art Gallery in New Delhi and there are a number of works by Souza in which he has painted the ganpati. Says Mona Mehta, whomanages the gallery: ``We always have buyers for Ganesha. Last year, the Indian Farmers and Fertilisers Corporation bought eight Ganesha paintings from us. They even brought out a calendar on the deity.''

Maqbool Fida Husain too has painted Ganesha and this is one time when he has not run into any trouble. For, here is a deity who, according to one legend, was made of the herbal scrub that parvati, wife of Lord Shiva, peeled off her body during a bath.
Jogen Chowdhury is yet another artist who humanized ganesha, taking away the embellishments and ornaments. In some works, he even presents the deity as emaciated.
Anupam Sud makes a broad social statement in painting the immersion of the idols of Ganesha in a work titled my God, your God. It is the surprised look on the face of one idol and surrender on part of the other with the human faces completely earnest which add to the power of the work.
Thus it is the dictate of the market which seems to decide the theme an artist must adopt. So next time one walks into a gallery and finds that all the 40 works on display by a young artist feature Ganesha, there's no need to buy the mumbo-jumbo: ``This form interests me so. There are so many possibilities in it… The simple truth is that this is what sells or may sell. And no harm done. But, perhaps, Ganesha has been repeated all too often in contemporary art not just because there is a market for it but also because buyers will not haggle over the price of the Hindu God of Prudence, Policy and Prosperity. Not only do people believe in keeping an image of Ganesha in the home but it is also believed by some that it is auspicious to keep as many as 108 reproductions at home. So artists have a valid reason for painting him over and again.

Interestingly, the Puranas have a few legends testifying to his miraculous powers. Perhaps, it is the corpulence and tragic-comic tale of his birth and how he got the elephant head on his human body that make him most endearing. And then girth has its uses, otherwise why would the image of the Laughing Buddha be so popular?
Many are the names with which this deity is addressed in the Mudgala Purana. Some of the names used most often for him are Vinayaka (remover of Obstacles), Vighneshwara (Lord of Obstacles), Siddhidata ( Bestower of Obstacles), Vighneshwara (Lord of Obstacles), Siddhidata (Bestower of Success) and Ganpati (Leader of Ganas). Yuvraj Krishnan who has written a book on the deity, Ganesa: Unravelling An Enigma, holds that here is a deity whose public relations were handled most effectively by the Ganpatyas, worshippers of Ganpati, as well as the Aryans, who admitted Ganesha to the fold of the Brahmanical gods, to be able to win over the local population.
Delhi-based painter Narendra Pal Singh, who recently made two dozen versions of Ganesha, says: `` enjoyed every moment of it but I related his form to modern life.'' Art critic Vinod Bhardwaj, who has written a dictionary of contemporary Indian art in Hindi, says: ``Jogen (Chowdhury) is perhaps one of the few artists who has given a new dimension to the Ganesha form. Much of the rest is kitsch.'' But then there are takers aplenty for kitsch.
Playing Second Flute
One legend has it that Ganesha was supposed to be an incarnation of Lord Krishna. The Brahmavaivarta Purana says that Parvati performed the worship of Vishnu on the banks of the Ganga and as a reward she got a boon that she would have a son who would be the incarnation of Krishna. Interestingly, however, Krishna plays second flute to Ganesha as far as the sheer volume of work by contemporary artists goes. .
Of course, Krishna has been a popular image with modern artists. Jamini Roy painted him as a deity in veneration. Husain dwelt on his babyhood with Yashodha as mother. Manjit Bawa brought forth his playful aspects with a difference. His painting of young Krishna with a banana in hand instead of butter was one which excited the imagination of the viewers. More recently, he merges the Blue God with Ranjha, the folk hero of Punjab. But Krishna's image has not kept pace with that of Ganesha. This even when Krishna is the most interesting incarnation of Vishnu with valour, courage and a beautiful Radhika thrown in. In folk art, Ganesha is part of religious ritual and thus retains an original flavour which contemporary art has not been able to replicate. To the folk and tribal artist, the elephant-god is the lord of the forest who, if he so wills, can destroy the standing crops. So he is worshipped and more so at the time of harvest.

Dreamscapes

The book on Shuvaprasanna goes far beyond art for the coffee table, says Nirupama dutt

A Book about an artist is the most in thing these days. The past few years have seen quite a few brought out glossy and well bound. Well, a share of contemporary Indian art for the coffee table. But let some of them not just be condemned to decorate the coffee table as men and women (why just women dear T.S.Eliot?) come and go talking of Michaelangelo open some of these books what opens is a world far beyond pretty pictures and the trappings of a 21st century boudoir. One of these is a book on a Calcutta artist who belongs to the generation of the Seventies and it is called: SHUVAPRASANNA-Vision: Reality and Beyond. Published by Art Indus, it speaks to us of our times with a vision which has the power to look before and after. This essentially made so by the subject who makes the book.
The response to Shuvaprasanna's work is not always one of adulation. An invite to his recent show inh the Capital had an art critic moaning, ``Oh! Please, not more crows.'' Yet he remains one of the foremost painters of his generation being as old as the Independence of the country. To know why these crows one must got to the very beautiful and pointed foreword by Samik Bandyopadhyay to the book. He described Shuvaprasanna as a product of the Seventies as they were lived and experienced in Calcutta and goes on to say: ``What Shuvaprasanna gathers from the post-seventies wasteland is the sense of a crumbling space with an accumulation of signs of decay and exhaustion, and signs of a difficult life emerging out of a cityscape left in shambles.''

A little onto the making of Shuvaprasanna, who is often referred to as the artist with whom the Nobel Guenter Grass stays in Calcutta, was a child prodigy in times when child prodigies were not so common nor either their pushy parents as of today. In a rather simple and unpretentious account of his life and art, the author of the book, Chitropala Mukherjee, takes us to the beginnings. Born to a conservative professional Bhatpara family, he liked to sketch his father's patients when hardly four. This led to his painting portraits of politicians and ambassadors. The family was quite proud to have him photographed with President Rajendra Prasad, USSR president Voroshilov or the American ambassador to India in late Fifties. But when it came to take up art as a vocation, father frowned. Shuvaprasanna had his way and a patch-up was to come about later. He graduated from the Indian College of Art a d Draughtsman ship in 1969.
Chitropala writes thus of the times which shaped Shuvaprasanna: ``Pete Seeger strummed his guitar and sang,
Where have all the flowers gone? To rapt audiences in the Park Cireus Maidanin Caleutta, a popular site of political rallies. Allen Ginsberg was well settled in Calcutta smoking pot and writing poetry. There was energy commitment, fire and idealism. Politics was still respected and taken seriously. Poets, painters, writers, art critics and creative minds met in euphemistically named coffee houses (New York Soda Fountain!) and talked fast and furious over cups and cups of tea…''
When Shuvaprasanna started his Lament series in 1970/71, these were described as grim. As grim as Mrinal Sen's film Calcutta 71 was and Sen chose a canvas from these series for his film. From lament to the Crows and to his recent un-iconic icons, Shuvaprasanna has kept his individuality without allowing himself to be labeled. This journey of images through dream and reality has evolved in different ways and Bandyopadhyay says: ``He has retained what may be described as his mastery over the dreamscaping of the flotsam and jetsam of a sloppily developing and meandering city, its feverish culture, and its terrifying poverty; the dreamscape holding together the disparates and sharp contradictions in an uneasy tension, and raising super-ambient icons.

Paramjit Singh's Invented Landscapes

Nature’s strokes

The landscapes by the artist reaffirm his painterly prowess and a rare feel for the textures of nature, writes Nirupama Dutt

The colour of the earth is a yellow-gold. Auburn shadows fall on frail trees that elegantly sway with the breeze. Patches of dark green make the suggestion of a wild forest. The sky is filled with clouds and looks dark and promising. In this painting, titled Monsoon Light, Paramjit Singh, the master of stroke, captures a rare moment of a sunshine shower that probably would not last beyond half an hour. But that quaint twinkling when the clouds ad sunrays challenge one another to a game of hide and seek is captured beautifully in rapid brush strokes. It is landscape at it its purest form. No human presence intrudes but, of course, for the viewer who stands gasping at the spectacle of nature recreated by a fine and practiced brush.

Singh is famous for the magical quality of his landscapes. His works reaffirm his painterly prowess and the ease with which he is able to translate nature into oil on canvas. He is a landscape artist with a difference, for—but for his student days—he does not go to a spot and paint it at a given time. His landscapes are the result of a long communion with nature. He has absorbed nature deeply ad when he faces the empty canvas, the conscious and the subconscious combine in creating these ecstatic landscapes of the mind. Talking of his works, Singh says: ``These are invented landscapes no doubt but the feel of nature is real.’’

The love for nature took root in his mind when he was a young boy. Singh, who grew up in a large joint family in Amritsar, in the 1940s, recalls: ``My father was a religious person. My childhood was enriched by the stories he would tell me. I remember when he told me stories from the life of Guru Nanak, I would imagine a landscape. This so because Nanak was a traveler and the anecdotes from his life included rivers, rocks, mountains and the sky. Also, as children, we were mostly outdoors as there were no televisions and computers to trap us at home.’’ Bathing at the tube-well in the fields as a young boy or cycling long distances as a student of Khalsa School, Amritsar, was among his main joys. This passion for outdoors continued when he joined the Delhi Polytechinc School of Arts in 1953. ``It was a beautiful un-crowded Delhi and we would cycle on the ridge or walk through the wilds which were later tamed into the Buddha Jayanti Gardens. The ruins and old monuments were another attraction,’’ says the painter.

The environment at the art school was very charged ad the faculty included famed artists like B.C. Sanyal, Biren De, Sailoz Mukherjee, Dhan Raj Bhagat and Jaya Appaswamy. His college-mates included Suraj Ghai, R K Dhawan, Eric Bowin and, of course, Arpita Singh, who was to become his muse and later his partner in life. ``It was the right guidance and the right climate which we found as students and this helped us to pick up the right nuances which were to bloom later. We were indeed well-bitten by the art bug,’’ says Singh, It is here that the world of art opened up before this Amritsar lad who was among the first crop of painters of Independent India. Like most artists of the time, he too was deeply influenced by the French Impressionists and in his case the influence went into shaping his early works.

Singh did figurative work and was acknowledged as a fine portrait painter in his early days. But when he set o to become a professional painter, it was nature that inspired him the most. ``Art has to become a part of you. And truly with me are the rivers, the fields, the rocks and the skies. I have never ceased to enjoy the mysteries and marvels of nature,’’ says the artist.

Primarily he is a colourist but in the early days, he painted some still life juxtaposed with elements of nature or rocks looming over the landscapes, Gradually, however, the sheer pleasure of colour and brush-work took over. Commenting on his work, fellow artist and a former colleague at Jamia Milia, A Ramachandran, says, ``It is natural that in the art arena of today’s cerebral circus, Singh’s paintings do not receive the attention they deserve because they are pure works of art. Rising above the thin dividing line between realism and abstraction, Singh transforms his picture-space into an animated painting-space with an abundance of brushstrokes which have become his signature.’’

Singh has been witness to the Capital’s art scene since the 1950s and he takes the changes in his stride. ``One does miss the good old days but then the interest in art has grown and the number of galleries and shows is phenomenal. In the early days, we ever missed a show and these days it is impossible to see everything!’’ he points out.

On his marriage to Arpita, one of the country’s leading painters, he says that it has been held together by art. ``We have appreciated each other’s work and even offered critical appraisal when required,’’ he says. Interestingly, a couple of years ago an art gallery invited couples to create one work. The painting by the Singhs showed a couple on a bench in a garden and an aeroplane flying across the sky. Singh says, ``The aeroplane, the couple and the bench were Arpita’s, I provided only the sky and the patch of green.’’ Well, the patch of green is certainly his forte and he knows how to make it work, by the lake, along the river, in the waves or in the monsoon light.

The Inimmitable Gogi Saroj Pal

Paint like a Woman

Gogi Saroj Pal creates a new visual vocabulary in her bold and sensitive portrayals, writes Nirupama Dutt

What do women like to paint? The instant association is that of a well brought-up young lady painting blooms and landscapes in the Victorian age. Closer home it is that of young ladies painting a deity on an earthen pot or a floral spray on fabric. Ancient Indian texts of the Eighth to the Twelfth Century have references of young women painting portraits of one another for matrimonial purposes; with the advent of photography came the Zenana Studios.

The Twentieth century saw the short but brilliant spell of Amrita Sher-Gil, who was schooled in art in Paris and is remembered for her paintings of people. After her death in 1941, came a long lull till there was an upsurge of women artists in the 1970s.

The path for the pioneers is never easy. ``Write like a man,’’ said Kamla Das, one of the pioneers of Indian poetry in English, and she stuck her tongue firmly in her cheek and wrote a poem on the theme. Gender stereotypes provoked Mahesh Dattani to pro to produce the play. Dance Like A Man.

In the field of visual arts, Gogi Saroj Pal made a virtue of not just painting like a woman but also painting women. ``I have never felt apologetic for making woman the main focus of my work. I am rather proud of being a woman and trying to unravel through my work what makes a woman, how much of a woman is conditioned and how much natural.’’

Refreshing indeed in a scenario where women painters feel afraid of being labeled as mere painters of women. It has been a long journey for Gogi, struggling not just to establish herself as an artist but also to achieve perfection of her own imagery.

In Gogi’s earlier works, one finds etchings of the sad-faced brooding feminine profile, the single woman nursing a child or a woman lying motionless, like in her series: The story and the story teller.

The viewer is struck by a delicate sensitivity even when the conviction is firm. But it is the growth of her work and the rare spontaneity that she achieves in a brilliant iconography of women which give her a place as one of the most remarkable woman painters in the country today.

While still in school, Gogi, who comes from a family of revolutionaries and her father, was arrested for making a bomb, made up her mind to be an artist. How come she did not opt to be a writer given the literary environment at home? ``I was always a great individualist and wanted to do things my own way. I preferred being the first artist in the family,’’ says Gogi. One only has to see Gogi’s paintings to understand the determination of this rather frail, young girl.

``I always had in me persistence. I would do things my way even if it meant enduring hardships,’’ she says. And so she did in her long years studying art and then practicing it, staying in the midst of the crowd and clutter of the walled city of Delhi or working in the Lalit Kala Akademi studios at Garhi. Gogi was among the first to do installations in Delhi. ``Now installations are much in vogue. But the words was not known in the early 1980s and we called the work assemblage’’ Gogi recalls.

This assemblage paved the way for Swayamvaram. This widely-travelled installation earned her a place in Oxford History of Modern Art along with masters like Raja Ravi Varma ad Rabindranath Tagore as well as the celebrated London-based artist Anish Kapoor.

Deep study, research and meditation and also a questioning mind, which gave a hard time to her art teachers, pay a role in the selection of her themes. Take, for instance her series, Aag ka Dariya, inspired by the Jigar Moradabadi couplet: ``Yeh Ishq Nahin Aasan bas Itna Samajh Leeje; Ik Aag Ka Dariya Hai Aur Doob Ke Jaana Hai. (Love is not easy; it’s like an ocean of fire and one has to drown in it.)’’ She shows a woman crossing a turbulent river with a little girl in her arms on a paper boat.

This journey is a contrast to the journey I which Vasudev saves baby boy Krishna whereas the baby girl Rajni is killed. ``This was my way of saying that women have to bear the responsibility of saving their daughters and the paper boat symbolizes childhood and dreams,’’ explains Gogi.

Inspired by the miniature painting of Bride’s Toilet, in one of her series, Gogi makes her Nayika use products like Ganga soap or Kesh Nikhar oil, having a dig at the market forces that promote stereotypes. ``The market decides what a woman must use, eat or even how she should look like. It was in reaction to the Barbie Doll that I made the Big-B dolls of Painted canvas,’’ says Gogi.

The Big B dolls have been a hit. Her latest series of painting have the woman embroidering Phulkari motifs o her body. These motifs are scattered in the backdrop too. All this is done with an accomplished flourish. The woman Gogi paints is rooted and yet has wings. Not a mean achievement this.

Painter Sohan Qadri

On form and the formless

Nirupama Dutt

From Chachoki village on the outskirts of Phagwara to Copenhagen was the long journey for artist Sohan Qadri, a person who refused to he dated whether in aesthetics or metaphysics. Journeying through the world of dots, lines, colour and form, his search was for the beyond. This was the theme of hislecture given at CRRID in Chandigarh on Tuesday evening.

A Qadri lecture is quite an event and so was this one titled `Aesthetics and Metaphysics'. For one Qadri invites a motely crowd of artists, writers, scholars, spiritualists and eccentrics. His old Doaba friends were there and so were younger artists. It began with a rather poor showing of a Jalandhar Doordarshan telefilm on him. But a film made very coherently by Harjit Singh brought forth a Qadri not obscure but alive and throbbing as he painted or spoke about his creative process or roamed by fields of sunflowers in his colourful kurtas. And Qadri himself was communicable in Punjabi.

To do him credit in his presentation, he was lucid and brief beginning with the primeval hunger of the human species and the invention of the sharp-edged exe going on to the sexual needs, then the yearning for self-expression and finally the ultimate in creativity which transcends into the metaphysical experience.

The question session which followed had more spiritualists rather than artists active in asking questions and sharing their own ethereal experiences making the whole affair an exercise in sky-walking. One of the more earthly persons tried to come back to the topic of the lecture which was the relationship of aesthetics to metaphysics. But that was not to be and he was scolded for being materialistic by the listeners Naturally, what is `Anand' when the ultimate goal is `Parmanand'?

The lecture over, the presidential remarks came from the poet and bureaucrat, Manmohan Singh, who said that he had got the invitation late or he would have written and brought along a poem on Qadri. He compensated with a two-liner, ``Qadri's life is a dance of dots. He is the darling of tiny tots''. One does not know about the tiny tots but the elders could not resist him and artist Balvinder caricatured him through the lecture with his receding hairline, fuzzy hair and the witch doctor look

Qadri's trip to the country this time was to attend the sexology conference in Delhi. ``The doctors were there to talk of their experiences with guinea pigs but I was there as a guinea pig.'' He promises to reveal it all in the next meeting. Until then it is metaphysically yours.