Traffic
My drive to Lausanne takes about 5 hours. I usually look forward to the Swiss part of the drive: the roads curve and climb just enough to keep things interesting, and the surrounding landscape – green meadows dotted with sloping roof cottages , with snow-covered peaks in the distance – gives an pleasing backdrop.
Football, Butter and War
Every six weeks or so I visit the neighbourhood saloon for my customary haircut. The owner, a cheerful middle-aged man, runs the show with half a dozen ladies, and like most barbers he has the knack of clicking his tongue faster than his scissors. He was at it again last Saturday, speaking on topics ranging from a Costa Rican invasion of our town, his grandmother’s attachment to butter, and the U.S. plan to invade Iran.
“Three thousand Costa Ricans will be in our town in June, you know?” he said, with a mixture of incredulity and excitement.
Ours is a small town – a village if you like, but that may not amuse my German neighbours – with a population of a few thousand. I could hardly imagine how three thousand Central American football fans could fit in, unless each family hosted one. When I expressed this, he replied that the team would stay at the local hotels, while the fans spread out in the neighbouring towns. He seemed to hope for better business during those weeks. My mind instantly focussed on what they meant most: fodder for my camera.
A little later he bid goodbye to an elderly woman – “Einen schönen Tag, Frau Willinger!” – and turning to me he said: “That lady, she sells Asparagus – do you like Asparagus?”
“I don’t.”
“I like them very much. In olden days, this vegetable was mainly for Kings and you know – people higher up in society. So people who wish to feel they are higher up eat it now-a-days!” He laughed out loud, and continued: “My grandparents had little chance of getting it, especially during and after the war….” He paused, as if trying to bring back a forgotten memory. “…They had little to eat those days, after the war. Even butter was not available – people had to eat plain bread. So when things became better they tried to make up for what they had lost – my grandmother would put a huge slice of butter ” – he indicated an inch between his fingers – ” over my bread when I was a boy, and I would hate it….. but she only wanted to give us more of what she had too little.”
There was a bit of silence, and I noticed him peering into a newspaper the lady nearby was reading. The headline facing us read (in German) “This man speaks the way Hitler did” : it was about the Iranian president Ahmadinejad and his proclamations to wipe Israel off the map.
“The U.S will do it again – they will attack Iran next” he said, shaking his head.
“It seems likely, ” I replied. By coincidence, I had just been reading an article in The New Yorker on this subject; I pointed to the magazine lying in front. “An article in that magazine gives a lot of evidence in that direction.”
“Oil prices are already high. What will happen if there is another war? We need oil for our heating, you know. ”
I was struck by his pragmatism on this occasion. Usually, he would start off on a philosophical note and bring in a good deal of history into his arguments; this time, he seemed focussed on the bottom line.
“Perhaps you could increase the price of a haircut.”
He laughed. “If that becomes necessary, I will do it! I hope you will still keep coming.”
“Surely.” I replied. “Your shop is the closest to home.”
After I paid, he waved a goodbye: “Until next time!”
Yes, more stories will have to wait until next time.
Evening
Sailors
Reflection
Walking
Wood and Water
The last few months, shuttling between home in Germany and Wife’s home in Switzerland, have brought in a heightened sense of awareness of spaces around me. At Lausanne, the beautiful lake Geneva is just a few minutes walk from Wife’s apartment. In the beginning it was a refreshing novelty; now-a-days, during weekends spent in my sleepy town in Germany, I miss the lake so much that I’ve begun to think of a nearby water body as a necessity for good living.
If Wife has a Lake nearby, I have the Woods. As winter has receded, I’ve ventured more often into the woods, traversing different paths leading to the largish pond at its centre. Mostly devoid of the dense undergrowth seen during warmer times of the year, the woods seem transparent and less mysterious. I’ve spotted deer more often these days than during any walk in summer.
It takes about fifteen minutes to get to the pond, and the first view of shiny ripples through the foliage always brings a smile on the face and a lightness to the heart.
On sunny days, one can spend hours looking at crisscrossing patterns weaved by sunlight striking tiny waves on the surface. Occassionally a duck takes flight flapping its wings furiously, only to circle the pond once and return, in a smooth glide, to the same spot.
The natural beauty of the place makes me wonder why more people do not come here. The only ones I see are the occasional joggers, the solitary man fishing, or someone walking his dog along the shore.
On my last visit to the pond a couple of weeks back, I saw a group of teenagers picnicing nearby. As I crossed them, I heard some shouts from behind : “Hallo, Hallo !!” “Ein Photo !!” I turned around, raised my camera and motioned them to get together. The fell into a line; I focussed my lens and clicked.
Soon the others who were further away began to walk towards this group, asking for more photos. “Zu Spät!” I said smiling, and waving them goodbye I continued walking. A little ahead, at the edge of the woods, the setting sun revealed itself through sharp silhouttes of the last row of trees.
Wood and water – I hope I’m never too far from them, wherever I live.
Snapshots from a Weekend
The Kingdom of Nek Chand
On Saturday I visited an art exhibition titled Le Royaume de Nek Chand – The Kingdom of Nek Chand.
This Indian, whom I had never heard of until I came upon the museum’s website, has been called the world’s greatest living artist. Intrigued, I began to read the history behind the man and his work.
History
Nek Chand came to Chandigarh in the nineteen fiftees, around the time Le Corbusier was architecting his initial plans for the city. After his work during the day as a Road Inspector, Nek Chand would ride on his bicycle each evening to a nearby forest area he had cleared, where he would work on building life-size sculptures using stones and refuse material collected from the city: broken crockery, rusty coins, used bottle caps, broken electrical plugs, bangles, bicycle parts and other material the city had discarded was put to use by Nek Chand through construction techniques he had learned while building roads. Thus, working in secrecy in a hidden patch of jungle measuring 2500 square metres, he slowly created what he later called “The Kingdom of Gods and Goddesses” – a garden of his imagination, filled with sculpted figures of men, women, birds and animals blending in harmony with surrounding nature.
Nek Chand’s well-hidden secret came out in 1975, when authorities planning to extend the city’s boundaries stumbled upon this treasure in the jungle. The sensational news of the discovery spread quickly through the city. Although built illegally, the government took the stance of nationalizing the area – called “Rock Garden” thenceforth – and appointed Nek Chand its “Creator-Director”. He was allotted some staff to maintain and continue development of the garden, a task Nek Chand could finally devote his full time to. In 1984, the President of India awarded him the Padma Shri for his contribution to art.
Today the Rock Garden attracts around 3000 visitors each day. It is the second most visited site in India next only to the Taj Mahal.
As I read the summary in the exhibition’s press-release, I was amazed and elated. Here was a man who worked on his passion in near isolation for over fifteen years, without a thought on getting his work understood or recognized. And the exhibition of his collection was presently in Lausanne, overlapping with my short trip! I took out my map of Lausanne and located the gallery hosting the exhibition.
Exhibition
Collection de l’Art Brut, the museum for “Art Brut” – Outsider Art – is a large sloped roof cottage that stands in contrast to the straight-lined commercial buildings that surround it.Through the translucent window at the entrance, there emerged outlines of a man in between a pair of ducks – obviously from the Rock Garden. I stepped inside and found myself in a short, wide room with stacks of books on one side and small post-cards on the other. Opposite the bookshelf was the reception desk, where a young, bearded man welcomed visitors with a smile. Is there a guided tour? I enquired. No, he replied, there is no guided tour; you need to find your own inspiration. I smiled at the manner he put it; I had done my homework, and had found sufficient inspiration already.
The size of the collection was a disappointment – there were only a few dozen assorted sculptures arranged in a hall – but it gave a first-hand impression of what I had read earlier. Two aspects struck instantly: the simplicity behind each creation, and the strange effect of symmetry conveyed by the array of similar figures placed in juxtaposition. If a small sample could have this effect, how would the real environment be?
A large screen in a corner was showing a documentary on Nek Chand and his garden. A simple-looking old man directed some workers as they bent some rods into the shape of a head and arms. A group of girls asked him about the inspiration behind his creation. Tourists wandered around, chatting merrily. As I watched these images, there grew a longing to visit India.
Artistic Purpose
Back home, I browsed through the book I purchased before leaving: Nek Chand’s Outsider Art, co-authored by Lucienne Peiry and Philippe Lespinasse. In the first half of the book Lucienne, the director of Collection de l’Art Brut, sketches a biography of Nek Chand, and later delves into the work and its significance. She also compares and contrasts Le Corbusier’s Chandigarh – built on the principle of orthogonality – and Nek Chand’s Rock Garden – espousing the curvilinear. But when she explores the reasons behind Nek Chand’s pursuit, she disappoints.
Early in the book, a quote from Nek Chand explains his view on his artwork:
“I regarded myself neither as an artist nor as a craftsman. I myself was completely insignificant. I had no idea about anything, except for the fact that I was devoting my time to a task I was passionate about. I worked to the limits of my strength. […] It all came from my heart and my imagination. My intention was to build a kingdom for gods and goddesses. It is a gift from God. [This garden] is more than an offering to God.”
Religious inspiration in art is not an Eastern concept, but the nature of the artist to consider oneself insignificant in the larger scheme of things is more common in the East. So it is easy to understand and accept Nek Chand’s ideal of insignificance and his dedication towards God. The religious motive explains, sufficiently, all what the artist set out to create.
But Lucienne is not satisfied with this answer; she needs to place Nek Chand within the framework of Western theory of art. To this end, she invokes Claude Levi-Strauss’s concept of bricolage in his study of pensee sauvage – the Savage Mind.
[Levi Strauss] rejected the idea that bricolage is nothing but instinctual, uncontrolled creativity and regarded it as an artistic method in its own right, as one of the many expressions of the intellect. Nek Chand corresponds closely to the figure of the bricoleur in the sense Levi-Strauss gives the term.
It is Levi-Strauss’s contention that the fundamental characteristic of mythic thought, and likewise of bricolage, is that “it builds up structured sets […] by using remains and debris of events: in French des bribes et des morceaux, in English ‘odds and ends,’ fossilled evidence of the history of an individual or society.
The shards and bottle caps, the fragments of crockery, and the old bicycle handlebars – which Nek Chand uses like “heterogeneous objects of which [a] treasure is composed” – correspond precisely to the “remains of events” to which the anthropologist refers.
[…]
Sifting through the garbage dumps and building sites of Chandigarh, Nek Chand recuperated waste products and built rejects as a reaction against the blandishments of consumption, the ownership of goods, and overproduction, in protest (though perhaps without fully being aware of what he was doing) against the onset of consumerism.
Nek Chand was militating against the dominance of the economy, of technocrats, of the profit motive.
Placed next to the image of Nek Chand and his simple intentions, this theory that he was “militating against the dominance of the economy, of technocrats, of the profit motive” seems difficult to digest. The author, unfortunately, does not probe Nek Chand on his reaction to such theories.
This desire to attribute some reason behind every human enterprise brings to mind the scenes from Forrest Gump where Forrest one day breaks out into a run for “no particular reason”:
“That day, for no particular reason, I decided to go for a little run. So I ran to the end of the road. And when I got there, I thought maybe I’d run to the end of town. And when I got there, I thought maybe I’d just run across Greenbow County. And I figured, since I run this far, maybe I’d just run across the great state of Alabama. And that’s what I did. I ran clear across Alabama. For no particular reason I just kept on going. I ran clear to the ocean. And when I got there, I figured, since I’d gone this far, I might as well turn around, just keep on going. When I got to another ocean, I figured, since I’d gone this far, I might as well just turn back, keep right on going.”
On his fourth run across the U.S, a group of reporters surround Forrest with questions about his motive:
“Sir, why are you running? Are you doing this for world peace? Are you doing this for women’s right? Or for the environment? Or for animals? Or for nuclear arms?”
Forrest doesn’t understand it.
“They just couldn’t believe that somebody would do all that running for no particular reason.”
Is it simplicity of mind that makes one do things for no particular reason (or for a simple enough reason like devotion to God)? Must our responses to today’s complex world be necessarily complex, or have complex underpinnings? Why can’t we accept that pure art is possible, that art for art’s sake is not always a reactive stance or a declaration of artistic independence, but can arise out of the simple desire to create?
Critics need a theory; creators don’t. More books will be written on Nek Chand and his art, but what remains in mind is not the analysis but that simple image of a man sitting by his hut in a forest clearing, mixing cement, mortar and odds-and-ends discarded by civilization, creating one after another, year after year, hundreds of figures of men, women, monkeys, ducks, horses, soldiers – giving shape to elements of his imagination like no one else had done before.
Parmanu 