This, that, and all between.
If you don’t know Lado Bai, you won’t know how maternal love can transform art. Lado churns the very earth and its souls with her visuals. Simplistic to a tee, yet stunningly profound, her art and the Bhil form are nothing short of poetry in visuals. Designing these kinds of indigenous art projects satiate me to the core. Salutes to the master artist Lado Bai.
<Remembering Mohan Upreti on his death anniversary> I have never tasted ‘Bedu’, the fruit, but for some inexplicable reason its taste lingers in my mouth. I have even dreamt of it during climbing or trekking season, I can’t think of a single evening in the tent high up in the Himalayas when a bad/good day would NOT have ended with two fabled Kumaoni folk lyrics. One was बेडू पाको बारामासा and the other was जिला नैनीताल, अल्मोड़ा, पिथोरगढ़ की बचपन की .. Tucked in our sleeping bags these lyrics, coming from Pahari friends, would warm up the cold dripping tents. The fruit has stayed with me long after I first heard of it from Mohan Upreti at the Parvatiya Kala Kendra, Delhi. He is credited with setting to tune the lyrics of this romantic and fabled verse and making it legendary and so popular that this song is played as first and the last number in traditional Kumaoni festivals. I have also wondered if there is any fruit, any, which would grow all twelve months. Mohan Upreti, was one among the finest theatre directors, playwrights and music composers. Why I have not tasted or eaten Bedu, despite my hundreds of visits to Kumaon is because the fruit is never there when I am, i.e. Sept to December.
Cheers Comrade.
When time and elements sculpt or fashion what man has neglected and discarded the results are sheer beauty of raw art. Other than nature only poets find beauty in crumbling surroundings. This piece of art, a monument in itself, is on an easy stretch just as after Shahmat Ganj area of old Bareilly. Troops of monkeys rule this stretch creating trouble for shopkeepers and residents who, strangely, depend on large printed posters of langurs to keep monkeys at bay. The large stub of dried tree-trunk (right bottom) holding the brick wall together is a piece of art in itself. Despite vehicular pollution Bareilly skies are stunning blue.
<Bareilly Blues, March 2025>
Dali should have stayed back for Valentine’s
Salvador Dali’s ‘Argillet Collection’ show, at the Habitat Centre Delhi, would have been an ideal venue for a Valentine’s Date but sigh, now you have missed it. Dali was a Spanish surrealist artist known for his bizarre images.
It was an eye-popping collection of over 200 of his original sketches, etchings and watercolour paintings which included some very fine pieces bordering erotic art with human bodies squirting or sprouting flowers from their heads and thighs; eyeballs dancing in squiggles and strokes and body parts interacting animatedly with the world around them. ‘Stare for longer than a minute and these disconnected shapes begin to form new connections and meanings in the mind’s eye.’
This was the first time that a large body of Dali’s original works were exhibited in India, though two of his works are in the collection of Victoria Memorial, Calcutta. Here are two works (one is a section or detail) from the Delhi show. Sadly, lighting at the Visual Art Gallery was very poor. The show was still being mounted/dismounted.
A Letter Opener, Letter Knife or a Paper Knife was a fairly common device found on almost every office table during the 1940s. It used to be a straightforward blunt blade of metal to cut-open sealed and gummed envelopes. I found this one among a punching machine, a pin cushion, a stapler, a bloating roller pad, a few glass paperweights, a pen holder and various other table items in my dad’s office after he died. This was really fancy for those times. The obverse and the inverse sides of the promotional paper knife, was probably used as a give-away for cycle buyers by Perryson Cycle & Parts company in India. It is pretty much ‘usable’ even today though the mermaid-like fluke (the tail) of the knife is missing, possibly broken, in ‘handling’. With her high cheekbones and curls, this shapely-Greek-goddess-like-sensation must have been a handful for both the secretary and the boss. I don’t think these guys were missing anything in those days. “Dad, this is going to the museum of memories.”
Ankahi. Unsaid. 
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