The village as universe

Art Heritage - N Delhi, 1995

The roots of my sculpture can be traced to Premgadh, a small village in Rajkot district, where I was born on October 15, 1961 and grew up in a peasant joint family. Even as I indulged in adolescent pranks, I paid attention to my studies, and entered my youth in the selfsame village. The affection of my brothers and sisters, and my father's cheerful temperament, courageous truthfulness and sincerity took me a long way in my career as an artist. I feel overwhelmed with gratitude when I see all those factors in my upbringing so beautifully integrated in my life. The people of that village, which the State Transport buses touch only twice or thrice a day, and where the link with the city is only to make purchases for small scale occupations, are devoted to God. They have blind faith in religion. Completely dependent on nature for their agriculture, they have been reduced to poverty for several generations, and nurse their jealousies and hatreds.

Poorly educated, their girls study up to the School Leaving Certificate, and if they do well, they are sent for the Primary Teacher's Course, and get employed as teachers. And with that the responsibility of their parents ends. Except in certain areas, there has not been much improvement in education. In the present technological age, it is said that the world is becoming smaller day by day, but these people still hesitate to accept this fact, and wedding celebrations are competitions in extravagance. New ideas and attitudes have not yet found acceptance. Children are not raised in the modern way. If they can grow naturally like trees in the forest, well and good. If not, like stifled undergrowth, they are left to their fate. Hence, a boy, after receiving a little education, may take to farming or seek employment in the saree-printing industry in the city of Jetpur, an unhealthy place, riven by social imbalances and tensions.

People have an inner fear of elders and of arrogant and corrupt government officials. Basic facilities like electricity, water and kuchcha roads are a recent blessing. Nobody is satisfied with any of the government's activities. It is believed that to feed one person all that the government does is to rob another. Common sayings convey that feeling.

But even in that atmosphere of backwardness and disillusionment, there are redeeming features. There is the unshaken faith in God, and every festival is celebrated with characteristic fervour. The sixteen sanskaras are given the highest priority, and through these, right from birth to death, popular beliefs remain intact. Among the social customs are marriage celebrations, the ritual of 'returning home', havans, fairs, the offering of oblations to one's ancestors, devotional songs, religious congregations, social exchanges based on the concept of justice and equality, and other village festivities that take place at regular intervals.

People wholeheartedly participate in all of these. Women find release through the songs and tears that come to them very naturally. That is why, even after their strenuous work in the fields, they get together in the night and entertain the village with their garba dances, bhajans, lavanis, abhangs, chhappers, chabkhas, folk songs, wedding songs, dhols, dhuns and so on. Women have kept up whatever remains of the heritage of embroidery and knitting used for the traditional decoration of animals, on the costumes of children, young women and men, and for decorating the home.

Poor though they may be, they maintain their ancient mud-houses in good condition with old-time decorations like Kutch murals and wood carvings. I spent my childhood in this lovely, warm atmosphere, and in the course of my mischievous pranks, I experienced the touch of wet clay. Directly and indirectly, I imbibed folk influences. My home, too, at that time was like a primary school, generating folk traditions and sanskaras.

I devoted myself over a period of five years to making clay toys of various kinds and carving idols in limestone which was easily available. I was attracted by our neighbour, Mulji, the carpenter, a famous wood-carver whose delicate craftsmanship is still remembered. I was almost like an assistant to him. Every morning, after a hurried meal, I would rush to his work-shop and start sharpening his tools with my tiny hands. He would ask me to work on wooden scraps with small tools. I would give those blocks shapes of my choice, and he would encourage me with kind words of praise. He said that if my father would leave me in his charge, he would make me a good wood-craftsman. But my father was keen that I should study.

In our home, my mother and sisters drew lovely designs with thread on cloth, which fascinated me. People came from neighbouring villages and towns to have those designs done by my mother, and she would teach them various types of embroidery with different types of thread. I would pick up waste material and create my own designs. My heart would dance with joy when the auspicious days of doing rangoli with coloured powder drew close.

My eldest brother was skilled at decorating farm inplements and house¬hold articles, and reinforcing cane baskets with strings, with artistic knots and tassels. He would give an equally colourful touch to the strings of bells for the oxen.

My father composed bhajans and dohas, and wrote plays that were staged, and I was involved in similar activities. Till his last moment he had a great desire to see me make a mark in the field of art and thereby bring glory to Premgadh. The progress and prosperity of our village was all that mattered to him. His last wish on his death-bed was. "Let my art be of some use to the village and it poor people." For him, that village was the whole world, and he believed that wherever you may be, if you remember your native village, it is as good as offering prayers to God. Such words with their fragrance have been ingrained in my mind forever. This village upbringing has given me the strength to confront life's problems. In the village, if someone falls ill in the middle of the night, he will be tended by his worst enemy who, for the time, will forget an ancient grudge. Rarely does one find such sentiments among urban people.

What deep sympathy there is there for animals and birds. Morning and evening I would hear the calls of pigeons, crows, mainas, sparrows, parrots and peacocks. If birds picked grain at the threshold, people got the satisfaction of feeding brahmins. In summer, pots are hung outside every home to slake the thirst of birds. Birds flying across the sky made me think of airplanes. Vultures, hawks and kites, circling endlessly without flapping their wings gave me the feeling of their having reached God. Even now I dream of flying in the sky. Thus, birds, animals, trees and plants have become essential parts of my life.

One distressing but interesting feature of village life was the family feud, which, in a way, served as a catalyst. Sport competitions between villages were like the Olympics on a small scale. Between villages, there were competitions in health as well as in dance forms such as the raas and the garba. The village that won earned honour, and its people were in demand for marriage.

Old people, as they recalled time past, played a role in shaping my view of the world. Tales of truthfulness, adventure and fortitude inspired me. Travelling drama troupes were popular and highly respected. We also enjoyed performance by visiting Bhavai groups, the narration of abyans, snake charmers, wrestlers and the hypnotic performance of magicians and small circuses. A visit by puppeteers to our village automatically meant a show at our house the very next day.

When I was in the sixth, standard I started doing memory-drawings of the things I observed on small sheets of paper, highly polished with candle-wax, and colours prepared by myself. These drawings became an obsession with me in course of time. My artistic talent soon became apparent to the village folk who would call upon me to decorate the village square at annual festivals. It also became my responsibility to decorate schools, dharamshalas, village streets, platforms, panchayat premises and houses with slogans and pictures, and pandals for the Navratri celebrations. As for the drama troupes, I attended to everything from the stage of the costumes of the actors and their make-up.

I had started reading in newspapers and magazine about well-known Gujarati artists such as Somalal Shah, Rasiklal Parikh, Kanu Shah, Kanu Nayak, Natu Parikh, Jyoti Bhatt, and Ravishankar Raval. Bendre was also one of my favourites. After passing the tenth standard, it was open to me to become a primary school teacher. I took two years training at Morvi where I came in touch with famous literacy figures, and met professional artists from outside my own small world.

During my second and final year of the Primary Teachers' Course, I appeared for the elementary and intermediate art examinations, and got more involved in art. I was doing title-drawings for some magazines at that time, and these came to be highly appreciated. A young business man from my village. Ardeshbhai Mohanbhai, took notice of them. He introduced me to Raghav Kaneria, who advised me to take art training in Baroda. Finally, in 1983 I got admitted in the Faculty of Fine Arts, took up sculpture, and was proud to be part of Kaneria's intimate circle.

The wonderful world of art opened up before me. While many students conversed in English and mingled freely with one another. I kept aloof and devoted all my time to work. The atmosphere in the Faculty was encouraging and stimulating. One could work in the studios any hour of the day or night. I made full use of the well-stocked library and the Department of History. Kaneria inspired hope and provided encouragement. But some teachers who found me depicting only rural subjects advised me to forget the village and think about something new. I could not accept their advice and did only what I felt like doing. Their attitude hardened. Kaneria advised me to do what I was capable of doing without bothering about the opinions of others. This remark opened the doors of my mind, and confirmed for me my choice of medium which was wood-carving.

In 1990, after my M.A. degree, I accepted the post of temporary teacher in the Department of Sculpture, and in the three years that followed I came to be regarded as a successful, bright and hard working teacher. In 1993 I joined as Lecturer at the C. N. Art College in Ahmedabad. which, despite its limitations, has great scope for development, and I utilised the tremendous energy I had acquired in Baroda towards this end. In this too I have had the full support of Kaneria.

I am often amazed by the fact that in almost every work the village has been my constant theme. How has wood become my favourite medium? Kaneria had once said to me: "Art is not created by thinking extraordinary thoughts. It emerges naturally out of the work you do."

I felt most comfortable with the medium of wood, and began to think in terms of long and somewhat broad blocks. I created works in which one incident would merge into another, forming a continous whole and bringing a vague concept into clearer focus. That resulted in elongated figures. I enjoyed linking those figures with other objects. That made my work stylised at times. Realising the dangers involved, I started working in terracotta and stone. Wood and stone appeal in different ways, and their values, too, are different, as in the experience of carving them.

You can get stone in any size you want, but because of its texture, fibres and colour, wood offers me more pleasure than any other medium. I also came to know the pleasure of working in metal in the metal-casting workshop of a foreign artist, who liked my work and prodded me into exploring that medium further. Personally, I do not enjoy working in metal, but it provided me with an alternative. With wood, I had to follow the vertically of wood, but in metal I got the chance of spreading out horizontally. Taking into account the 'boldness" of wood, I have tried in my compositions to depict landscape, but I have also attempted to include figures (from my compositions in wood) and give them an independent existence in metal. While workmanship in wood and metal is certainly different my main objective is the same. I also find that stone and metal have different characteristics from the point of view of form and construction. I like the delicacy of metal, and enjoy exploiting it to the ultimate extent. This is not possible in wood. Because of this, there are variations in my work.

Being a peasant's son, and belonging to the class of people who do physical labour, I am particularly attracted by physical energy, shapely physique, agile and brisk movements of lean bodies, which are the subjects of my works.

My outlook in art is clear. I like doing strenous work, and seeing it done. I cannot appreciate works which an artist has created by taking short-cuts. Also, I detest works which are not durable. The wood-carving process takes weeks, even months, and the subject I have in mind energes in a strinkingly harmonious manner, and my reverberations get full expression.

I am affected in many ways by ancient Buddist and Hindu art, particularly the Sanchi stupa and the Buddhist tales curved on its gates. How vividly the artists have given a glimpse of their times. They have a freshness about them, and the surface of the stone has been brought to life so that incidents from times past stand almost palpitatingly before one. The sculptures at Borobudur in Indonesia and Angkor Vat in Cambodia appeal to me because of their well-planned sequences and content.

These are like supplements to the sculptures at Sanchi. I like the Ellora sculptures because of their sweeping movements. It is also extraordinaty how the sculptors have taken certain liberties and given free rein to their imagination.

I am a lover of the modern and ancient arts of India and of the West. But I have little liking for the art which is created by completely severing all links with the past, and attempting to bring into vogue absolutely new trends for innovation's sake. I like less the situation in which creation itself becomes like a laboratory experiment and feelings and emotions are reduced to insignificance.