Poona - Shoona
Dear Reader,
As some of you reading this blog might be aware, I was on a 10 day trip to Poona and it was great. Met some not-so-old friends and also got to meet some people whom I didn't really expected to meet, in other words whom I had suspected of having left Poona. Therefore, starting from today, I will blog daily (in 5-6 posts) all the happening from these 10 days, albeit, in reverse chronology, that is to say, I will start from the 'end' of the trip and move backwards towards the 'start'. Enjoy.
As my auto rickshaw slid down from the National Highway 24, I realized the potholes didn't exist anymore; the driver doesn't have to drive the zigzag way to avoid them. A new, though still patchy road had come up. After all there were the local Municipal Corporation elections in Delhi since the 10-12 days I was in Poona. It was the train from Poona I had taken to New Delhi and gotten off at Hazrat Nizzamuddin station (a divulge from the New Delhi Railway Station I usually alight at when coming from Bombay or Poona). I had negotiated the auto fare to Rs 50 as it was 10 in the night already, the normal fare being Rs 40 to my place after all the whining of not being able to get a sawaari from my part of the town. It was in a sudden that I had realized that it was already Nazrat Nizzamuddin( a Muslim dominated area of New Delhi where the railway station is located) and it will be much easier and shorter for me if I alight here since nobody was coming to pick me up from the station. I unchained my luggage quickly and almost ran before the train actually leaves the platform and for some reasons I kept doubting if I had forgotten anything on my seat. I pressed my left pocket to check if the cell phone was there followed by the wallet in the rear right. I even searched my bag to find my camera intact. “All is fine”, I said to myself. I hardly opened anything else to be forgotten as the other bag with food and clothes were not fiddled with during the journey. What else could have been left? But I still had this "Have-I-Picked-Up-Everything-From-The-Seat?" feeling. The lady of the opposite seat was still sleeping... on her upper birth. She had dozed off a little while earlier when I and an aged South Indian gentleman from Delhi had taken our conversation to the next level of political intellectualism. She was bored and was repeatedly yawning and finally surrendered to the upper birth. In our previous conversation, she told me that she was a diploma student from FTII, Poona with some fixed notions about what it means to be creative.
L'histoire de la femme de FTII (FTII Girl's Story)
I entered Jhelum Express connecting Poona to Jammu city passing through New Delhi almost at the last moment (oh! Indian punctuality). As I sat on my seat in the extra Air-Conditioned coach, I leaned backwards to catch some air. My throat was sticky was saliva and dry air. I had almost ran about 2 kilometers with 3 bags on each of my shoulder (on one shoulder there were two, silly). The train refused to leave on time. It was already 10 minutes past it's usual departure time when a fleshy girls with shabby clothes arrived with her "coolie". She ordered him to push the biggest suitcase between the cleavage of the two seats leaving no room to keep my legs anywhere apart from the thin aisle. She paid the coolie and tried to settle down, I protested about her lack of consideration for fellow (?) passenger. "I don't have anyplace to keep my legs, this needs to be adjusted elsewhere", I said. "Ok, if you can help me put this suitcase on the upper birth...?", she said in an interrogating tone and quick wit. The baggage must have been more than 25 KGs but I was left with no choice. I weight only a lil’ more than double the size of that suitcase but I was determined not let her have her way. I picked up the suitcase all by myself, she gave it a hand and after a few sliding here and there we finally put it up. While she sat in front of me, I couldn't stop noticing her, albeit, in contempt. Her dirty trousers were sprinkled with traces of a pen fight and it was undoubtedly clear to me that she was wearing it the fifty first time without visiting the laundry. Her chappals (sleepers for some?) had traces of sand as if coming straight from a mud fight while her hair seemed uncombed for days on end. And most appallingly her stomach seemed perpetually filled with food (she virtually bought one food item or the other from every vendor that I saw on the train) and a little more curve and people will start asking her parents if she had brought shame to her family. And to top it all she was wearing a figure hugging T-Shirt. She started the conversation. I do not recall on what topic but she seemed keen on keeping it up. I confined it to the bare minimal and kept looking outside the common window. I attended a few phone calls and confined myself to the soul book I had - India's Foreign Policy by J.N. Dixit. In return she picked took out Impressionist Art by David Boyle. I shrugged the move thinking I had bought and read (?) the book ages ago (Kudos to the collection at Crosswords). But with that, I also questioned the dependence of creative Indians on Western Renaissance and the absence of cradle of an Indian one. It made me recall some of the lines from a book I had read recently - Amrita Sher-gill's biography by Yahodra Dalmia, where she quotes Amrita's Uncle Ervin Baktay, an Indologist. I reproduce those lines to explain what I was thinking: -
"India somehow forgot her own ancient tradition and cultural values and was convinced that by copying the Western forms she can serve her artistic aims best. The educated and learned Indians lost their own sense for works of Eastern Origin, but they got to know only the most rubbish work of Western art. The worst and most shoddy streams of dull naturalism of the 19th century indurate in India. In case a native artist wished to obtain inspiration from the classical Hindu painting or sculpture he was considered as 'too primitive' and no attention was paid to him. On the other hand, second-rates from the West could carry on in India very well by producing mawkish and insipid portraits and landscapes."
(I clearly see the Indian intellectual dependence for creative ideas on Western Renaissance. This probably is as much a result of the Imperialist British strategy to instill in Indians a sense of inferiority complex about their of culture and tradition but also fact that the entire period of Islamic invasions has parted Indians of its rich history of the bygone time and era. At times these texts and artifacts were purposely hidden or destroyed by the aggressor in order to deprive the natives of the cultural inspiration from their past, which was, on the other hand a major reason for the upsurge of Western Renaissance, the ‘rediscovery’ of ancient text and sculptures.)
The girl and I got an on an ‘unargumentative’ (I know this word doesn’t exist) argument - Time as a factor in creativity. As she was studying cinematography her argument was simple. She said it was almost impossible to put a deadline in film making. "For example", she said "how about you want to shoot the scene in sunshine and it rains that day? And even if you get sun after a while it's logically not possible to shoot and the due to the sun movements the shadows also move. What will you do in such a situation; you have to shift the shoot to another day or date. What if the actor falls ill? The question was ok but her voice could be heard from door to door of the coach and she would keep repeating the same things over and over again. I asked her if that’s the case then how things are compensated as far as money is concerned. I gave her my example, of being a journalist. I told her that we had harsher deadlines to follow and spaces are left open for the content to be filled in at the last moment, so we have to get the story or an interview by hook or by crook. "It's not journalism", she said. "You always have alternative content ready, we can't help it", she argued The starting point of the argument was when she told me that one of their previous batch had taken two extra years to complete the course, the reason - "unavoidable circumstances". I asked her if such a thing would have been permissible had they been studying in a private institute, was it a factor that while it costs almost 25 lakh rupees to educate one student for 3 years at FTII, the students only pay a fraction of it? Had they been in a private institute, would they have taken two extra years while paying the full fee. "No", she said. "But here you can (and you should be able to) do it as this is the place where one has to learn.
I hoped that this is not the attitude the FTIIians take outside the campus, today's market is very competitive. We were not longer living in a Soviet era where lot of money was put in to achieve one goal without any time frame. We are living a capitalist 21st century where deadlines hold the key to your success. She wouldn’t budge from her point that creativity should not be bound by time or money. I tried to explain with an example of book publishing, suppose a publishing house signs a contract with an author for a novel/fiction/non-fiction etc. By the time the deadline nears, the publisher start to advertise the book, now if the author is not able to finish it by the time the enthusiasm decreases hence putting down the sales volume. In turn the publisher will not be able to pay the author the same royalty and in some cases he might even refuse to pay him the same about he/she was actually signed for. The lady went quite for a while, I thought she had received by not (doesn’t really mean I wanted her to accept my view), after 5 minutes there she was starting the argument with the same point. I realized I was barking against the wrong tree, I put a full stop.
A few moments later while I was trying to sleep in vain, she popped up a question.
“WHERE DID YOU BUY THIS BAG FROM???????” I woke is a haste to realize what she was asking.
-“Oh! That’s? From FC Road”.
-“WHERE ON FC ROAD???”
-“You know Horn OK Please Restaurant?”
-“No! I don’t”
-“Ok. It’s just next to Wadeshwar, do you know that???”
-“Ummmm, no, I don’t”
-“Ok, Roopali?”
-“YES!”
-“Very close to that.”
I tried to avoid a conversation but couldn’t stop counting the number of times she stopped the vendors to buy something or the other to eat ( vada paos, bread pakoras, Pepsi, Fruiti, Wanter bottles, Chaowmin, Cutlet, you name it), by the end of the journey she was almost a “regular customer” and the vendors were even willing to give her “Credit facility”. I retired with her to talk to a gentleman from the south but residing in Delhi for the past 35 years. I will continue with his story in tomorrow’s post.
Following is a picture I shot some where in Madhya Pradesh (MP). Only a month back while an acquaintance told me that she was going to MP got me curious about the state, I recalled studying the Sanchi Stupa in my 5th Grade Indian Geography book, and I’m sure there are many things I don’t even know about sitting in this Indian heartland, MP is defiantly on my “To-do List” now.
Today: In the evening today while I was to meet a friend from Poona, I went to see an exhibition of Old Delhi sketches by a Delhi based artist called Vikram Kalra at the India International Centre (I later saw the Pakistani Cricketer turned politicial Imran Khan talking about Musharraf at the ICC's lobby with a bunch of men and women). The more I go to see these kind of exhibitions the more fascinated I get about Old Delhi, it’s Havelis, it’s dirt, the hawkers, the streets. I made a list of sketches I saw of the places I want to see on my next trip to Old Delhi. Tomorrow I’m off to Agra for a day to see the Taj Mahal and Fatehpur Sikri. Will report soon. I shall also post some new pictures from Poona and Delhi on Flickr soon ( You can go there from the menu on your right). Good Night, Bon Nuit… Shabba Kahir.
