tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43580082606784344332024-03-05T03:13:13.504-08:00Tushar Bhatt's GujaratWritings and images of contemporary society in Gujarat,its fads,foibles,fears and apprehensions,
frustrations,failures and successes,tales of extra-ordinary achievements by the ordinary, a kaleidoscopic view of LIFE.Tushar Bhatt's Gujarathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06743579072111022001noreply@blogger.comBlogger59125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4358008260678434433.post-16330753460752389352011-04-13T20:18:00.000-07:002011-04-13T20:18:52.312-07:00Mythology of NRI Gujarati writer Madhu Rye--Tushar Bhatt<br />
The noted writer Madhu Rye, a pioneer in the New Gujarati writing,who lives in the U.S.A. personifies the dilemma of Non-Resident Indians. A modern man of letters, with the twentyfive-odd books, Madhu(68) is an author streets ahead of the contemporary Gujarati writers and more in tune with the West. Madhu knows it and has been making home in New Jersey for more than 25 years now.<br />
<br />
The transformation began four decades ago when in 1970 he attended a 2-semester programme in stagecraft techniques at the East West Center at University of Hawaii, Honolulu, USA.It preached minimalist style and Madhu led a movement against the absurdist Gujarati playwriting of that time, for which he is regarded as an alien by Gujarati literati.<br />
Yet, he is perpetually pining for Gujarat,comes home almost every year to soak his inner being with the air of the native land. And, most of his original,creative writing is in Gujarati.<br />
Physically, he loves the comforts and life style of the Yankee land. Mentally, he is at home in the dusty environment of the Desh.Madhu Rye’s homesickness highlighed the common factor among different strata of the first generation NRIs. Educated and aware , like the author or otherwise, all of them are haunted by nostalgia because they grew up in cities,towns and villages of India. Gen Next does not have it.<br />
In Gujarat recently for a month, Madhu Rye deflected questions on why does not he decide to settle down in one place or the other. <br />
Most of us are more generous or sometimes careless when in comes to airing opinions on the affairs of the world, Living in competitive environment of the USA, Madhu still feels financially insecure,and is keen to avoid offending anyone.<br />
Born in Jamkhambhalia, Jamnagar in 1942, he grew up in Kolkata, where his father taught. Renowned Gujarati literary figures in Calcutta such as playwright and novelist Shiv Kumar Joshi and the flamboyant literary figure Chandrakant Bakshi helped him get noticed in Gujarat and Mumbai literary circles where his works promptly won prizes in competitions and state awards thereafter; and his short stories became a fad in the late 1960s.<br />
Moving to Ahmadabad in 1967, he completed his first full-length play, ‘Koipan Ek Phulnu-nu Naam Bolo To’ or `Tell Me the Name of a Flower` . This play used stagecraft to tell a meta-theatrical murder mystery revolving around a young woman caught in her own imaginary myth Radio.<br />
His novel ‘Kimble Ravenswood’ got made into a mini series on the national TV by Ketan Mehta. Rye adapted the same novel into a play in Gujarati ‘Yogesh Patel-nu Vevishal’ and English, ‘Engaging Mr. Patel’). <br />
He got the much-coveted Ranjitram medal for his lifetime achievement in 2000. He has written seven novels, four collections of short stories, eight plays and four collections of one act plays. Based on Madhu Rye’s novel Kimble Ravenswood, director Ashutosh Gowarikar is filming “What’s Your Rashee?’ in Hindi.<br />
Ability to write well is a gift of Nature which has to be nursed meticulously. Good writers not only care for spellings but the exact meaning of the word. Even in that elite league, Madhu who migrated to the USA in 1974, is a tough customer.He writes and rewirtes his copy at least half-a-dozen or more times.<br />
This carefulness has transformed him into an author whose insistence for pristine glory of the langauge is on a par with late Swami Anand. Swami would not agree to publish a book if he found proof-reading less than perfect. It also made him distrust the spoken word, since it cannot be replaced.<br />
Most people become bold when it comes to airing their opinion on the affairs of the world.A stickler for accuracy and meaning of the words, Madhu appears to leads an intellectually miserable existence in the Dollar Land where Gujarati is on the wane.He has become an introvert.<br />
Madhu tries to steer clear of controversies which chase him because he has strong beliefs and opinions. In Surat,he confessed he did not like poetry, especially ghazals and all hell broke lose. It is perhaps the arrogance of a thinking man that leads him to say what he has to say. His detractors are infuriated further when he refuses to enter into a discussion.<br />
Madhu has imbibed Intellectual arrogance of the West.He hides it behind a wooden expression on the face. To a question, who are you,he says he is Madhusudan Vallabhdas Thaker.When told that is name only, he simply says:” I don’t understand your question. Please reply as if I had asked you the same thing.” You feel as frustrated as Rambo might as he tries invain to interrrogate a robot.<br />
How do you discuss the concepts of Brahma ,Brahmanand and Brahmand with him? A smug smile makes him even more enigmatic as if he is whiling away time, waiting for the last train to India.(ENDS)Tushar Bhatt's Gujarathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06743579072111022001noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4358008260678434433.post-26437632715109132872011-03-26T04:55:00.000-07:002011-03-26T05:00:37.689-07:00An Eloquent Tribute To A Silent Man,JitubhaiBy Tushar Bhatt <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
A late evening in February’s closing days, Jitendra T. Desai, Managing Trustee, Navjivan Trust, and a world authority on every word written by Mahatma Gandhi, walked in slowly into the house for our customary occasional dinner of khichdi. If he walked more languidly than normal, nobody noticed. But, we felt alarmed when he could not eat. <br />
In four weeks, on March 21,2011, Jitubhai, as he was known, was gone. A silent type of cancer had taken its toll. Ironically, he was a silent public worker in the true Gandhian tradition. His family, handful of fast friends, a vast number of acquaitances and students were too stunned to believe without cross-checking twice.<br />
Devoting his entire working life of more than 50 years, looking after treasury of writing by Gandhiji, he had never taken a vacation. Yet, every single day, he would leave bed at 4 a m, make a cup of tea and begin work reading, writing or editing huge cache of written words Bapu left behind. His day would end at 10 pm during which he would run Navjivan, teach at Gujarat Vidyapith and participate in dozens of Gandhian activities ranging from Ashram Shala to University. <br />
Yet, he was so unmindful of his own image that his official bio-data available with his family is 10 years out of date. It does not contain his Vice Chancellorship, membership a number of national committees of education, rural development, journalism and public affairs. He wrote nearly 25 books finding time in his overcrowded scheduled. He was born in Navsari in South Gujarat on Novermber 26, 1938. He renovated Gandhiji’s Navjivan Trust, taking it from primitive treadle press to modern printing facility. He was so meticulous that hardly any mistake will escape his hawk’s eye.<br />
In many ways, despite having a famous father, Thakorbhai Desai a long term freedom fighter and staunch follower of Gandhiji and Mr. Morarji Desai, Jitubhai never took any advantage of it. This son never rose on borrowed light. Jitendrabhai preferred the path of anonymity. He was born in Dhan Rashi according to Indian astrology but the wealth of knowledge and goodwill were his only claims to prosperity. He was so careful about public fund that he would not tolerate tiniest of irregularity. This earned him many critics and opponents. <br />
He joine Navjivan Trust on a pittance of salary, refusing an offer from a major English newspaper for an Editiorial Job. He realized early in his life that a man should keep his knowledge ever expanding. He went to the UK for a two year course in printing technology, publishing and management at London college of printing. Among his books are practical volumes useful to printing professional as also on journalism. Still he excelled as a translator and brought into Gujarati many celebrated books including short stories by Leo Tolstoy.<br />
But his creative activities remain a spare time activity only because he had to steer Navjivan on modernization trail. Wayback in 1940, the Mahatma decreed that Navjivan shall be a no profit no loss publication Mandir (Temple). Modernization demanded new investment, new skills and new machinery, building and other infrastructure. All this would make labour demand for better salary. Jitubhai could not ignore Gandhiji’s wish that his writing should be available to the people as low price as possible. Desai managed the tight-rope walking admirably. However, it left behind a plethora of court cases launched by the union. Desai’s equanimity of temper and his reticence helped him come through but it apparently to a toll on his creative side. He could have given Gujarati language many more original writings and authentic translations.<br />
It is to the credit of the man that he wrote 25 books. The last one is a compilation of tributes to his late mother Subhdra, wife Tara and sister Kilbil. The interesting point is Desai’s mother never accepted his choice of Tara who came from Kheda District and was a disciple of saint Mota. Subhdraben lived alone. He had waited for seven long years to tie nupitals after that love affair had begun life from their school days. Yet, the sketch of his mother was without any bitterness or complaint. He and his wife both products of Gujarat Vidyapith kept making efforts all their lives to mend their relations with the mother but in vain. Thakorbhai as a father suffered the most because he could see justice in Jitubhai marrying Tara. Nevertheless, he could not ignore the fact that Subhdraben, an Arya Samajist and a student of Tagore’s Shantiniketan had stood by him through good and bad days of life. He could not ditch her. Yet ,he encouraged his son to leave house, marry Taraben and make his own life. The son and his wife followed his advice. Desai’s sister has some differences of opinion and kept away till the last but even about her, Jitubhai had no hard words.A highly developed sense of seeing the other side in a fair manner is a hallmark of spiritual evolution.<br />
Personal life apart,Desai was neck-deep in journalism education at the Vidyapith and worked ceaselessly since 1982 on giving a rural orientation to the college education. Till he attained retirement age. He also rose to become vice Chancellor of his alma matar Gujarat Vidyapith and served the post for three years. Though he could have continued for another term he chose to step down. During the three years he brought about many changes in the administration of the Vidyapith. He had made a unique proposal for an institute to train Gram Sevak, Talaties, cooperative workers and village level functionaries basic skills of reporting so that a better flow of information could in emanate from the grass roots to the top. Many people think this is one of the major weaknesses of the Indian Planning. But before much could happen to the proposal, Desai retired and the idea was lost in the corridors of power. <br />
Despite being a man whose many dreams had not even been articulated. Desai retained his sweet temple. A turning point came when his wife Taraben was snatched away the cancer 5 years ago, delivering a terrible blow to him. From that day on close friends felt that his desire to live started diminishing. Yet, when the full stop came, it came so unexpectedly that his departure has not yet sunk in the psyche of his acquaintances. Desai’s departure reduces the Gandhian content in the modern consumerist Gujarat. <br />
===================THE ENDTushar Bhatt's Gujarathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06743579072111022001noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4358008260678434433.post-4844540660424079302010-11-27T04:56:00.000-08:002010-11-27T04:56:54.521-08:00LET THE LESSER CHILDREN OF DEVELOPMENT GODS ALSO BLOOM>( The heart-warming story of an innovative educational effort worth<br />
> lending a helping hand)<br />
<br />
<br />
--Reports Tushar Bhatt from Bhekhadia triban village in Gujarat<br />
<br />
<br />
> It perhaps is the irony of our modern development,not only in the<br />
> developing countries,but even in the developed countries throughout<br />
> the length and breadth of the world,some remote pockets of human<br />
> settlement remain deprived of the rudimentary fruits of growth. The<br />
> instruments of normally adequate for most regions are not enough to<br />
> break the stranglehold of backwardness.<br />
> There is no exception, and despite million claims of<br />
> vibrancy,Gujarat too, now turning 50 years of its separate, is not<br />
> free from this syndrome. Remote areas in the State continue to lag<br />
> behind,so far on the hazy horizon that they are hardly noticed from<br />
> the dizzying heights of Gandhinagar. They lack in every aspect of<br />
> infrastrcture—literacy,health care,power,water or road,name any<br />
> catalyst of growth,it is not there in the remote regions. Their<br />
> feeble voice becomes so weak that the ruling deities of democracy in<br />
> the State Capital,so busy loudly congratulating itself on its own<br />
> vibrancy, cannot catch it.<br />
> It is a stark reality that even Gujarat has large pockets of<br />
> penury.There are small settlements,largish villages and bigger remote<br />
> areas of which the babudom guiding political novices does not know of.<br />
> This is not a new phenomenon.It has been known since the days of the<br />
> British Raj that large mountainous tracts of land on the banks of the<br />
> Narmada still lived in another time,ages away from rest of Gujarat.One<br />
> of the numerous names of the Narmada is Rewa and the British called it<br />
> Rewa banks and set up a Rewa Banks Agency.<br />
> It is not just ironical; it tantamount to the down right arrogance to<br />
> put off consideration of seemingly impossible looking situation on the<br />
> back burner for the future generations to handle. In the process,the<br />
> plight of the hapless population in these areas worsen at will.They<br />
> are the children of lesser development Gods.<br />
> It still registers as a shock and surprise to outsiders when they<br />
> learn that as many as a\ lakh acres of land will get irrigation from<br />
> the Narmada.The people of the far-flung Kutch too will have some<br />
> drinking water supply.All this beckons for what the rulers<br />
> euphemistically hail as Swarnim Gujarat. But the neglected children of<br />
> Rewa Kantha will remain deprived of all education.<br />
> IT IS TRAGIC,BUT TRUE.<br />
> Included among these areas of darkness are two tribal talukas, Naswadi<br />
> and Kwant in otherwise industry hub,Vadodara district. It is<br />
> tokenism,but the government itself had certified Kwant as thee most<br />
> backward area economically and the media reported the taluka had been<br />
> named an adopted area for development.But,tokenism still dominate in<br />
> practice. A survey was made to size up educational facilities . A<br />
> scheme launched in the wake of the survey by the Government of India<br />
> had provision for model schools for far-off places. Of six approved<br />
> schools,three each were allotted to the two talukas, Naswadi and<br />
> Kwant.Those in Kwant area were at Mogra,Chaparia and Redi Vasan.Some<br />
> schools were formally inaugrated even.<br />
> But, soon,inexplicably the shifting of the six schools in 2 talukas<br />
> was announced. The two taluka panchayat’s elected representative<br />
> , political and social workers and others,forgetting their internal<br />
> differences and joined hands to fight out the proposal for<br />
> shifting.They went up to the tribal welfare minister to lodge a<br />
> protest. But the complaint fell on deaf ears.The tribal belt lost the<br />
> six schools to Naswasi and Kwant townships and their number came down<br />
> to two schools from the earlier six.<br />
> In short, the hapless villages were back to s square one,having been<br />
> generously sanctioned the schools which then were taken back to the<br />
> taluka town.Urban children benefited at the cost of village<br />
> children.Bureaucratic pen has always been mightier than political<br />
> will.<br />
> Against the backdrop of all this, Shramik Vikas Sansthan, a<br />
> non-government organisation,run under the leadership of Octogenarian<br />
> social worker,Mr.Sanat Mehta, a former MP and a former finance<br />
> minister in Gujarat, set up a centre in the remote Bhekhadia village<br />
> in Kwant taluka,came into being some seven years ago in an endeavour<br />
> to bridge the gap between remote areas and educational facilities.The<br />
> cente,named after Late Mrs Thavliben Rathwa, a tribal worker,was<br />
> locally spearheaded by a tribal leader, Ratan Bhagat.A living<br />
> accommodation to house 40 village children was opened and the children<br />
> were enrolled in the Bhekhadia primary school run by the State<br />
> Government.The Rathwa Samaj,the tribals’agrred to foot the schooling<br />
> and boarding and lodging expenses of the hostelites.The Samaj banked<br />
> on support by member individuals.<br />
> The idea caught on like a wild fire among the tribals and more and<br />
> more guardians were eager to leave their children at the hostel.Indu,<br />
> a tribal young woman, accepted to be their guardian God<br />
> mother.However, the temporary arrangement fell short of<br />
> requirements,especially school rooms. Mr Mehta’s organisation offered<br />
> to bear the cost of two additional school roomswere the Rathwa Samaj<br />
> ready to pick up food bill for a hundred pupils.<br />
> Around this time, manging director of the Gujarat Narmada Valley<br />
> Fertilisers Co(GNFC),Mrs Sudha Achaliya, a senior IAS officer in the<br />
> State,came to Bhekhadia.She got interested in this micro-experiment.<br />
> Not only was a top official a mother’s tender heart throbbed in her.<br />
> She offered that if the Shramik Vikas Sansthan shelled out 25 per cent<br />
> cost for building two halls accommodating a hundred resiential pupils,<br />
> the GNFC would provide the remainder. On June 13,2008, the foundation<br />
> for the halls was laid.The construction was supervised by a young<br />
> tribal worker, Mr Madhu Rathwa.On completion, the halls were<br />
> inaugurated on February 10,2010, by the chairperson of the Khadi and<br />
> Village Industries Commission, Ms Kumudben Joshi.<br />
> One hall with 50 girls and the other with as many boys were opened,but<br />
> soon the accommodation ran short.The number of admission seekers<br />
> touched 150.Said Mr Sanat Mehta:” It was difficult to say No because<br />
> in a radius of as many as 45 km there were no other schools.Of these<br />
> 25 students each had come from only two villages on the Narmada<br />
> banks,Harkhod and Kuda,some 36 km away.From Sanoli,45 km away,six<br />
> pupils had come.<br />
> Currently, 153 students live in the hostels- 46 girls and 107<br />
> boys.Mr.Mehta said the Rathwa clan organisation collected grains as<br />
> donation to provide food.More pupils wish to come,but we just can<br />
> accommodate them. It is a regret that nags me at the age of 86, as<br />
> only a few other things in life did.” His clear voice became heavy<br />
> with sorrow.<br />
> He continued,outlining the dimensions of the problem:” We admit<br />
> children from four talukas.As many as 82 came from Kwant taluka’s 24<br />
> villages.There are 62 coming from villages in Naswadi taluka. Mostly,<br />
> Rathwa tribal clan donated foodgrains,although there are children from<br />
> among Bhil, Dungari Bhil and Nayak clans. Nearly 100 children were in<br />
> 5th,6th , 7th and 8th standards.<br />
> Parents of most children are compelled by poverty and joblessness<br />
> locally to go to distant places in search of manual work. Their low<br />
> wages and perpetual need for extra income result in heavy drop-outs of<br />
> children without completing primary education. Their option is not to<br />
> set foot in a school and go with the parents wherever they go.<br />
> Of the 43 villages in the area,only five km away from a school; the<br />
> rest are between 15 and 43 km away.<br />
> All these logistics mean that two more rooms are need to take the<br />
> number of hostelites from 150 to 200. The programme does not get any<br />
> subsidy or even loan from either the Gujarat or the Union Governments.<br />
> In a sense, tribals themselves bear the economic burden of the<br />
> project. Some well-to-do tribals give personal money,others get<br />
> donations. As he said this the sorrow in his voice lifted and Mr<br />
> Sanat Mehta’s face acquired a glow of pride.<br />
> He said: “ Imagine in the far-flung,remote povery-ridden tribal<br />
> villages , most government schemes had failed despite spending lot of<br />
> money and deplying government machinery. In such a milliue , this<br />
> effort at self-reliance by tribals themselved had borne fruits. As<br />
> many as 150 tribal children will lead a better life.”<br />
> In an open letter to the citizens, Mr Sanat Mehta declared: “ All my life, I have never sought<br />
> anything.But, I feel honoured to put out my hand to seek your mite. I<br />
> am seeking just Rs.10 lakhs from all of you. Please give whatever you<br />
> can,so that at least 200 souls can enlighten their being,so that they<br />
> may have a better chance in tomorrow’s world. I ask you NOT to send<br />
> more than Rs.10,000 per donor so that others too can join us in this<br />
> noble endeavour. I have no doubt you all will respond. At 86 years of<br />
> my life already covered I know I do not have time or energy. Before it<br />
> is sunset for me,I wish to see a smile on happiness on the most<br />
> deprived face of our tomorrow.”<br />
> Education is not the sole programme at Bhekhadia.Tribal women here<br />
> sale masalas worth Rs.20,000 per month.Another 100 women work on<br />
> eight-spindke ambar charkha perfected at Udyog Bharati in<br />
> Gondal,earning more than those who workon a government scheme for 100<br />
> days a year guarantees.Tribal young men are undergoing<br />
> diamond-polishing.<br />
> The Bhekhadia project has been named Aaj ,an abbreviationof Adivasi<br />
> Jan Utthan Samaj. Aaj is a significant name. It serves notice on all<br />
> of us that tribal youth is no longer ready to wait indefinitely for<br />
> the civil society and its government to act.Whatever is needed should<br />
> be doe AAJ (Today), now.The tribals pack their masalas as Aaj masala<br />
> and are prearing to launch a soap, Aaj sabun.<br />
>(ENDS)Tushar Bhatt's Gujarathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06743579072111022001noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4358008260678434433.post-19479119803030259182010-11-27T04:19:00.001-08:002010-11-27T04:36:04.255-08:00Tushar Bhatt's Gujarathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06743579072111022001noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4358008260678434433.post-63706921695134151942010-10-27T04:36:00.000-07:002010-10-27T04:36:54.598-07:00Rohit Mehta; A forgotten Gujarati philosopher of high calibreBy Tushar Bhatt<br />
Rohit Mehta,who died at the age of 86 at Varanasi on March 20,1995,is remembered differently by different people.Some recall his cogently thought and delivered lectures on philosophy.Some talk of him as a man with legendary memory who could quote flawlessly from Sri Aurobindo,Upanishad,Gita as also Marx, a teacher with a vast repertoire and a subtle sense of humour and a prolific writer,and a man of unfailing kindliness.Still some other others think of him as a charismatic personality,donned most of the time in spotlessly white dhoti and yellowish khadi-silk kurta,slightly stocky in build,and wearing a black-framed pair of spectaclesover deep penetrating eyes.He was brilliant,but never flamboyant,solid but never seeking recognition,an original thinker who could easily and without showing any burden mix with the most ordinary.An unusual man who was extra-ordinary in many respects,and yet strove to conceal all this under modesty and non-chalance<br />
Remembered late Prof.P G Mavalankar, former M.P. and a well-read man himself: “Rohitbhai was a five-in-one personality - a thinker,philosopher,interpreter, writer and speaker,clear in thought and precise in language and eloquent in delivery.All these took him to the top.” He was all this,and much more.A many spleandoured man,Rohitbhai as he was universally known was not just a run-of-the-mill freedom-fighter,a socialist-turned-spiritualist.He was in the world class,a thing about which he never had to seek certificates nor to boast.Yet, he was so self-effacing that one would have to hunt for a photograph of his.<br />
How tall was he could be measured from the fact that he was one of the pioneers of the Social-ist Forum within the Congress in the early thirties.He went to prison repeatedly,starting from student days and would have gone far had he stuck to politics.It was Rohitbhai who introduced a then young Morarji Desai to the youths during the freedom struggle.He quit it in 1935,and was never to regret it.<br />
He penned more than 25 books on philosophy,delivered thousands of lectures all over the world and sought to interpret the coming world far ahead of his time to his contemporaries.He was an able interpreter of his friend and philosopher,J.Krishnamurti,of Gita,of Upnishads and Yoga.<br />
Yet,he was no parochial a preaccher.His vision could embrace technology and spell out its im-pact on society and mankind far ahead of his fellow human beings.<br />
What he diagnosed in 1950 in one of his early volumes,The Intuitive Philophy,rings so prophetic after 45 years today,as if it has been foreseen in minute detail by him.He said: “Ever since the industrial revolution of the early 19th century, there have appeared such factors in our society as have led to rapid and revolutionary changes in the socio-economic structure of the world.This tendency towards rapid changes has been considerably intensified by the scientific advance in the course of the last 100 years and more. Large-scale economic production and the breaking down of the barriers of space have been the two most outstanding features of the social and economic revolution which began in the 19th century and which still continues its ownard march.”<br />
“The new means of transport and communications, moving at terrifically increasing speeds,have eliminated distances between countries and have thus brought the peoples of all nations suddenly together.Along with this advance there has been an enormous increase in the scientific and mechanical skill as applied to economic production. This scientific technique is becoming more and more perfect so that there is today production of economic goods on a colossal scale.These goods must be sold and one country is too small an economic unit for the absorption of commodities produced on a mass basis.This factor of large-scale economic production,coupled with the elimination of distances,has tended to break down national barriers. Economic life has become international, for economic trends during the last years have moved in the direction of world unity.”<br />
He perceptively observed: “But this economic currents have been obstructed in their progress by political forces. While the world is becoming one on the economic plane,it is kept divided on the political level.The idea of complete national sovereignty does not leave its hold on the minds of the people.”<br />
He said:” One of the major contradictions of our age is this: the trend towards unity in the eco-nomic sphere and the maintenance of national sovereignty on the political plane. ... This is one of the paradoxes of our civilisation that while we desire,we work for war !”<br />
“Man’s psychological inability or refusal to adjust himself to the requirements of technological revolution has created an immense problem for our human civilisation...We cannot stop the ad-vance of science producing continual changes in the material conditions of life, nor can we stop the activity of the mind which makes every change in the objective conditions too dangerous for the very existence of human civilisation.It may sound strange to say our generation is mentally tired while it has reached new heights of mental development through scientific advance.”<br />
He thought specialisation and over-specialisation was the craze of the modern age,which had enabled us to create a wall between the real problem of life and ourselves,the real problem be-ing the increasing mental tension in the life of the individual.The problem of the individ-ual,according to Rohitbhai, was to discover the fundamental value of life.Today the subjective life of man has been rendered extremely poor while the objective conditions are changing at a terrific pace.Man is trying to cover up his inner poverty by erecting huge mansions for social, political and economic activities.But these activities, instead of providing relief, gradually create greater and greater pyshological tension in the life of the individual.Probably at no time in hu-man history was the gulf between the subjective and objective factors so great as it is to-day.Unless harmony is established anew between these two factors,the human crisis is likely to move towards a deepening horror,the result of which will be complete destruction of our civilisa-tion.We must discover a philosophical approach that would enrich the subjective life of man.” Prophetic words,coming from a man then in his early forties,and that was ages before Alvin Toffler had dreamt of his Future Shock.<br />
Rohitbhai was born on August 3,1908 at Surat in the family of Hasmanram,who used to be a professor in physics at the Elphinstone college,Bombay.The bright child was destine to do un-usual things from the early age. At the age of 18,he led a student strike in the Gujarat college in Ahmedabad against the dictatorial behaviour of its principal F.Shiraz.His two other associates were Jayanti Dalal, writer and Nirubhai Desai,who later became a famous journalist and au-thor.Shiraz had ordered that no student shall participate in any political activity.The strike con-tinued for three months at the end of which the young Rohitbhai was rusticated from the college and the Bombay university, according to Dr Bhaskar Vyas of Baroda. Bteween 1926 and 1934,the young man was sent to jail five times for his activities in the freedom struggle,making him a blue-eyed boy of Mahatma Gandhi. He had already been an avid socialist by then,a core member of the group believing in socialism within the Congress in those days.During the floods in 1927-28,Rohitbhai did a lot of work for the poor.He went to jail during the salt satyagraha too and in 1934,Rohitbhai was handed a two-year term of hard labour,and sent to Ahmednagar.The heat and hard work in breaking stones there led to a terrible illness.He suffered a sun-stroke and then was partly paralysed.The alarmed authorities rushed him to the KEM Hospital in Bombay under the care of Dr Jivraj Mehta, who was to later become the first chief minister of Gujarat.Rohitbhai had refused even to go on parole but the Mahatma intervened. According to Prof Bababhai Patel, a Congress worker,Jamnadas Dwarkadas took J.Krishnamurti to see the ailing Rohitbhai. Krishnamurti kept his hand on the parts of the sick man’s body wherever it was paining.The therapeutic touch is said to have cured Rohitbhai completely.He walked next day, and was discharged from the hospital soon.<br />
Rohitbhai who was in the freedom struggle along with Jaya Prakash Narayan ,was a sort of maverick.He invited Subhaschandra Bose to Gujarat,ignoring Vallabhbhai Patel’s orders.<br />
But the spiritual bent of his mind had already started asserting over his rebelllious political mind. He had begun to realise the “soullessness” of politics and plunged into studying the works of theosophy and Krishnamurti.Leaving “the dunghill of politics”,he took to spiritualism and phi-losophy for life.He explained in 1937 his transformation in a volume called, A new world of the-osophical socialsim,predicting the eventual downfall of the Soviet Union.<br />
In 1941,Rohitbhai went to Adyar in Tamil Nadu to act as recording secretary of the theosophical society,and soon became the international secretary.He explored the ideas propounded by many and yet did not subscribe to any one idea completely.This however was not out of an in-tellectual arrogance but out of modesty.He was to be later given a doctorate in philosophy by the Swiss University at Lugeno.Among the books he wrote were many notable ones such as Yoga-the Art of Integration, The Nameless Experience, From Mind to Super-Mind,The Call of the Upanishads,the Intuitive Philosophy,the Play of the Infinite, the Dialogue with Death,the Be-ing and the becoming, the Eternal Light,the Creative silence,Seek Out the Way,the Search for Freedom,the New World of Socialism, the Science of Meditation,and the Journey with Death.<br />
in 1936,Rohitbhai was married to Shrideviben,a decade younger to him.She used to sing very melodiously.At his lectures,recalls Prof P.G.Mavalankar, Shrideviben would sing bhajans and hymns appropriate to the theme of his talk.”People would appreciate these after listening to Ro-hitbhai since the talk would make them understand the bhajans and hymns and their meaning all the better”, Mavalankar says. Prof.Mavalankar and his wife used to know the Mehta couple well and fondly remember Rohitbhai’s request at his talks (he would call them talks,rather than lectures): “You cannot leave while Shridevi is singing the bhajan. However,you can leave when I am talking.” Hardly anybody would go.<br />
He used to live in Varanasi,when not travelling or lecturing around the world and the country.But he used to come to Ahmedabad for a series of lectures,which would start at 6.30 p m in the lawns of the late Rambhai Amin’s house in Gulbai Tekra,on the Labh Pancham day every year.Prof.Mavalankar remembers having seen around 2,000 people listening to Rohitbhai in rapt attention.When his health started giving in, he used to come every alternate year.<br />
Remembered Mavalankar:” Rohitbhai had good diction,and he would speak neither fast nor slow,quoting with ease from a variety of works.His sense of humour would peep through in sub-tle manner every now and then.He was an optimist and knew the future lay in re-discovering In-dia.This could be done by reviving its great culture which has been showing strands of deca-dence.”<br />
Rohitbhai was a widely travelled man,having lectured at various places in Europe,the U.S.,Africa and Asia.He could talk fluently in English,Hindi and Gujarati.”<br />
Dr Bhaskar Vyas of Baroda, who knew him for more than two decades remembers of an at-tempt by himself and Dr D V Nene at doing a biography of Rohitbhai. He read some chapters Vyas had written and recommended: “Tear them up”. Apparently,to Rohitbhai ideas were more important and lasting than the man who thought them,even if it was Rohit Mehta.<br />
Despite his tall stature in the world of philosophy,Rohitbhai always preferred to remain the shadows,shunning the limelight. In 1993,a greeting card he sent to his friends said:”The mind that is constantly renewing itself never grows old.It is constantly on a voyage of discovery.It never arrives.It moves on towards an endless journey.And the secret of life is found not by one who has arrived,but by one whose journey never ends.”<br />
In January,1994,he had come for the last time to Ahmedabad.Shrivediben’s younger brother,Devendra Oza, a veteran journalist and humour writer,Vanmali Vanko in Guajrati of yesteryear,had lined up an interview for this reporter.Hours before the meeting,Rohitbhai devel-oped fever and the meeting was put off to a future date.That date would now never come.He has moved on to an endless journey of no return.Tushar Bhatt's Gujarathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06743579072111022001noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4358008260678434433.post-33554566121018268762010-10-18T23:44:00.000-07:002010-10-20T22:45:18.123-07:00Rajnikumar Pandya: A Trail-Blazing Author who shows the story instead of tellingTushar Bhatt<br />
More than a quarter-century ago, a banker-turned writer,Rajnikumar Pandya, hit upon an innovation in Gujarati literature—showing the story rather than telling it. Not being either a student or a pundit of literature, the 73-year-old Rajnikumar is diffident—and full of deference too-- while talking about it even today..<br />
This is despite the fact that he has come out with more than 50 books, numerous monographs, biographies,tv serials, books on Hindi filmdom. He commands a huge fan-following and ironically,there is no major award in Gujarati that has not been bagged by the author.The literati may dislike his physical presence but the power of words could not be overlooked.The honours included the award for best rural reporting in all langauges in India,given annually by The Kolkata daily, The Statesman.<br />
All this is sought to be played down by labelling him as a commercial writer because he earns his bread-and-butter by accepting writing assignments.<br />
It is the same story as in the case of advertisement copy writers. Partly, this is owing to an inability among the literati to do what professional writers are doing. Most readers, attracted to a well-done advertisement, are impressed by its pithy,bright and brief copy plus visualisation. This is not everybody’s cup of tea. Jealousy comes in. The successful professionals are sought to be cut to size by calling them commercial. Rajnikumar is a trail-blazer in this area; he is highly organised,able to abide by the brief, can work smoothly with cameramen,singers,composers and even the rich who want to show to the world.Yet, he carefully keeps distinct the two original writing and assignments<br />
To the literati everywhere, a typical man of letters means someone with unkempt hair,unshaven face,eyes red, mind full of ideas but wallet empty. Injustice is the common tag. Those writers who did not photo-fit this image are somehow viewed as intruders in the paradise.<br />
By vocation a man who dealt with numbers at work as a bankman, Rajnikumar does not fit the shoddy image. He belives in meticulously remain a presentable personality.He was convinced in his heart that he was a man of letters, a natural story spinner, no matter what others thought.Launching himself as a columnist in an Ahmedabad daily,hearted penning what journalism called human interest stories.He thought he had arrived.<br />
Around that time, the writing world in the West was also in a turmoil. Novels were being discarded and tv watching was eating into reading time. Newspapers and magazines too were feeling the heat of tv news channels because many marginal readers stopped buying news journals , depending on tv news. New Journalism came into vogue with journalists applying techniques of fiction writing to non-fiction. These included reconstruction of the story not in chronological order but by highlighting the most dramatic scenes by what the film makers call jump-cutting . It involves shifting from one scene to another.In doing this, dialogue of the main players was brought in. How was this done? Simple. By lnterviewing people. <br />
Unaware of this, Rajnikumar began experimenting and the resulting stories ran under the logo,Zabkar,caught the attention of readers from all strata of society. Now, the literary establishment in many Indian languages, including Gujarati,is populated by professors,teachers,linguistic experts ,grammarians and assorted educators whose last contact with ordinary life was when they were jobless.<br />
The establishment was bewildered. It has yet to come to terms with reality because it knew the reality via notions of literature which it passes off as principles.The literati could not credit it that the new comers were being read by a large number of people. <br />
Oscar Wilde it was who put it tersely: Newspapers are not worth reading,but are read by a large body of people. In Gujarati,Rajnikumar showed that newspapers too can have literary writing.<br />
But, the establishment continues to feel bad. Many writers who are popular among people are unpopular in the literati.<br />
Rajnikumar knows he is persona non-grata in the establishment but cannot make out why. The Gujarati literati also does not know because being self-reliant not many read modern world literature. A few innocents seem to assume that the world outside Gujarat was a permissive space to be avoided. Some are so busy writing they have no time to read.<br />
Yet, authors like Rajnikumar , Ashwinee Bhatt, Madhu Rye,Labhshankar Thacker and Chinu Modi themselves keep low profile.The basic Gujarati mentality to avoid a clash as far as possible plays a major role in this attitude. <br />
When you find Rajnikumar walking,his gait seems to be so deliberate that you would think he is measuring the land. Actually, he is watching his tread to ensure he does not step on a literati’s toes.Generally, he behaves placatorily, verging on public relations. The Gurus think his diffidence underlines a sense of inferiority, proving he is an intruder. At the best, he may be a journalist who has used literary devices to pep-up his reports.<br />
This tug-of-war goes on, taking an invisible tall. Crows feet are laying a siege around his eyes, his hairs are fighting to retain their black colour, face and the body betray a plumpness. His mind is full of anguish, making him think something is yet to be done.<br />
Not many will detect a veil of somnolence wrapping the author’s persona. He commands a huge fan following but has been dreaming about something else.Only the closest of his friends know that Rajnikumar yearns to be a music-maker, wants to sing, and direct movies. These are his childhood dreams. <br />
Late Vasudev Mehta, a veteran journalist, was the first to notice the graphic quality of Rajnikumar’s writing. He noted that among the contemporary writers, he was perhaps the lone one whose writing can be visualised and picturised.<br />
His widely-acclaimed novel, Kunti,was a highly popular tv serial on national scale. Some years ago, he wrote a novel on an Non-Resident-Indian family,based on a true story,Pushpadaah. It was the first major Indo-US literary work in Gujarati. Rajnikumar is a meticulous writer. To know the local ambience,colours,society he travels to far-off places,to acquire realism he listens to dialogue; he not only reports,he tries to enter the mind of his character,pile up details. He always ends up with more material than he needs.But,this gives him scope to prune so that a controlled flow of the story emerges.<br />
<br />
Rajnikumar’s innate sense of insecurity rivals with film artists like Amitabh Bachchan or cricketers like Sachin Tendulkar; all three know that to survive and win the rat race,they cannot rest on their laurels.They have to excel by being restless.<br />
The author’s quest led him to put together a rare venture in literature; an album on Meghdut, the mammoth lyrical classic of 11th century by Kalidas. An unabashed celebration of life, the Sanskrit volume is a proof of India’s vibrant richness. Kalidas has outdone himself in compositionof verses,called samshloki ( verses written in such a way that they can rhyme and be recited musically,creating an ambience).<br />
Meghdut followed an earlier digital documentation of the pioneering Gujarati popular journal,Visami Sadi,and its fearless secular-minded editor<br />
In 1913,an ardent fan of Meghdut, Kilabhai Ghashyam Bhatt, himself a scholar translated the verses into Gujarati, in a manner that they too could be recited musically. Till todate, numerous translations of Meghdut were done but few could rival with Kilabhai’s work.<br />
Then, in 1940-41,in Palitana, a pupil named Navnitlal Shah got interested in learning Sanskrit and heard Meghdut. Later,he moved to Mumbai and spotted Kilabhai’s translaton,priced at Rs.5 or 6.Now a wealthy old man,Shah still has the copy.He did not need to refer to it since he knew the entire volume,verse by verse,by heart.<br />
Navnitlal is a lover of literature and had earlier joined hands with Rajnikumar to bring out a volume commemorating poet Ruswa Mazlumi who wrote ghazals.Other documentation followed.Eventually, he told the author to attempt something to take Meghdut and Kalidas into Gujarati homes with Kilabhai’s easy translation as the centre-piece.<br />
The volume was accompanied by musical recital of the verse in two CDs by noted folk singer,Prafull Dave.The music direction was done by Asit Desai, another household name. <br />
Rajnikumar said he knew precious little about Meghdut beyond the words Ashadhasya Pratham Divase. He set about learning more and everything he found he put into the book.So the album has articles on related matters by pundits.Its richness has been augmented by sketches and paintings of scenes and people in the epic done by renowned artists like Late Kumar Mangalsinhji, late Vasudeo Smart,late Kanu Desai and a host of others,all rare.<br />
The album has been offered to public at cost price of Rs.595,and of Rs.295 for the book only.<br />
For the restless author, a new quest begins.<br />
(The End)Tushar Bhatt's Gujarathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06743579072111022001noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4358008260678434433.post-74734705963751794922010-09-24T04:40:00.000-07:002010-11-12T06:07:15.564-08:00Chronicles of extra-ordinary tales of the ordinaryTushar Bhatt <br />
<br />
Usha Shukla, a young school teacher in Ahmedabad, stood stunned. In her 30s, she was already a principal, a position that pupils regard as next only to the Almighty.<br />
Less than an hour earlier,she had slapped an 8th Standard girl soundly on the face for not doing home work in the mathematics in a proper notebook. Mota Ben, as lady principals are respectfully called in Gujarat , are often stricter than the male of the species.<br />
The teacher had felt pleased with herself in punishing the erring student who had not uttered a single word in self-defence. Usha was petrified. There was something missing and she felt inadequate to pinpoint it.It made her task all the more tough.<br />
The frail pupil was clad in simple clothes,probably bought from a second-hand clothes vendor on a city foothpath . Middle class young teachers like Usha often realise it belatedly that keeping quiet in such situations did not mean that the student had nothing to say. It could mean more often that the pupil was helpless.<br />
Usha finished the class and made her way to principal’s office,feeling euphoric and believing she has instilled fear of God in pupils Yet,an explicable uneasiness underlined the experience.<br />
As she settled in her swivel chair, the school throne of power, the erring girl asked from the door way meekly :”May I have a word with you, Motaben?”<br />
Curtly,the teahcer replied: “ Yes, what is it ? What the tiny girl had to stay left Usha contrite with remorse. <br />
God has forgotten to give many things to teachers, but He has supplied them in abundance with the ability to empathise with the pupil . <br />
The girl began softly, meekly and yet with a dignity the Almight gave the down-trodden to survive in the cruel world. However bad tempered they are, eventually teachers are also children of the Muse of Knowledge. The dictator in the teacher gave way to Saraswati as words rolled out of the distraught pupil.<br />
“Ben, I have not prepared notebook for home work in not only the mathematics but no subject at all. I got second-hand books from a friend,but I cannot get notebooks. My parents are labourers who go out in the morning for work. The kitchen has nothing to cook so we come to study without food.There will be no food in the night too if the parents did not get any work.”Till I get a scholarship, there is no way to obtain notebooks.I know this is bad.”<br />
She said in even tone that exploded on Usha like at atomic device. ” You can beat me every day, in every period and I will neither cry in the class nor stop coming to school.”<br />
Despite brave words,tear rolled down her emaciated cheeks.<br />
Usha Shukla was devastated by the impact. “Oh, my God. How could I be such an idiot? What kind of a taecher am I ? Am I a teacher? What a shame that I did not know about her plight? “ <br />
Instead of slapping the young student,she should have slapped herself, Usha thought furiouslylf. Who would think of her as anything but a snob? <br />
As she remonstrated with herself, the pricipalalmost choked on her tears.Then,she decided to act. <br />
She later told a jury of eminent citizens,led by retired chief justice of Gujarat High Court, B J Diwan who adjudged her best suited for an excellence award by the Eklavya Foundation: ” I decided to educate myself.I was nothing but a romantic dreamer.My colleagues said that there were a number of children in our school itself in similar predicament.”<br />
Usha told them:” Come what may, we will make a beginning. “ The girl who was a victim of Usha’s wrath, was provided with not only notebooks, but everything a pupil needed. Usha and her colleagues got extra lunch boxes from their homes which will be left in a room so that the needy could quietly go and eat,without anyone knowing and hurting their self-esteem.<br />
For the middle class teachers this was not an easy effort. In the days of steady income and spiralling prices, it requires a Herculean effort to meet both the end meet. <br />
If God had created everthing , He should also be accountable for everything. The Brave Motherly Hearts decided never to donate money hereafter to temples, mosques, gurudwaras,churches..every placewhere a cash box for His acolytes ‘ sustenace is found. Not happy with the way He performed his job, the teachers replaced Him with school children.In the entire existence there was nothing holier that children.<br />
Sceptics may argue that despite such kodiyan(earthen lamps) burning themselves out the darkness in our education system continued.It was as if there was darkness at noon.But,there are some Good Samaritans contnue to furrow their lone plough, and support innovative Gurus. Every year since 1997, Eklavya gives several awards for excellence in education.For more two decades, teachers from Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar districts in Gujarat have been given these awards. Usha got it in 1998.<br />
Said Sunil Handa,chairman of the trust,”we are trying to identify the finest,most hard-working and steadfast teachers who have made a significant diference in the lives of their pupils.” It was the jury’s job to find such teachers. <br />
The battle-hardened jury was deeply moved by the extra- ordinariness of the ordinary, when Usha narrated the simple tale.She and her colleagues were without power ot means to bring about a massive change in India.However,they were honest teachers. Everything they attempted did not mean necessarily a success. They had not been able to prevent young girls dropping out when they reached marriageable age.The parents would not want their daughter to have a lot of education so that there would be out-qualidied their spouses.For years now, girls have been forging ahead while the boys fared poorly in ssc and other competitive exqminations.<br />
Handa was aware that piecemeal efforts were not enough. " We need a large number of grassroot level teachers who make a difference. “<br />
Since 1997, 13 annual awards have been given on September 5, Teachers Day. Every year award winning Gurus narrate their life story and experiences.Then,in 2009, a journalist,Neerja Choudhary, was the chief guest at the award ceremony. She heard a veteran teacher,Perin Lalkaka describe her life . The story-teller in the scribe sprang into action. In her speech, Neerja,suggested experiences of the award winners should be brought out in an anthology.<br />
Handa and his colleagues took to the suggestion and a bilingual book, in Gujarati and English, Aviram Athak ( Joyful Path,Tireless Walk) comprising of life stories in 36 walks down the memory lane is the end-result. The 168-page volume ,priced at Rs.100 a copy. was released in 2010.Its charm lies in togetherness of daily-life experiences, tunring into an extra-ordinary boquet of tributes to the mission of teaching. Alone or together, they would not bag a Nobel prize for literature.<br />
It will ,however, bring home what ordinary citizens can do if they are are committed to a cause.A concerned and impressed parent neatly summed up: “No literary masterpiece has changed the world. But education has and will do so forever. Needed are committed teachers and a sensitive society.” We need good primary and secondary teachers. A Nobel prize can wait. A Gujarati idom says it all neatly:” Tipe Tipe Sarovar Bharay.” What is a lake of water but joining together of a vast number of drops of water?Tushar Bhatt's Gujarathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06743579072111022001noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4358008260678434433.post-36001002444996175332010-09-20T19:46:00.000-07:002010-09-20T19:46:30.284-07:00A Maha Pundit of Letters: Harivallabh BhayaniBy Tushar Bhatt<br />
It was a little after 3.30 p m,with the May sun mercilessly beating down on the red and white houses.As the mercury hovered around 44 degrees C.,even the society watchmen had hidden himself in a shade.The man who opened the door at 25/2,Vimanagar in Ahmedabad,however,seemed oblivious to the heat haze all around.<br />
With a large forehead,marked by waves of wrinkles made perhaps by too much of thinking,sporting a mole on the left side,the receding hairline,the prominent nose and ears and a lined face with sunken eyes that have crow's feet all around,all told a story of how Dr Harivallabh Chunilal Bhayani,has been marching with time- and is oblivous of it too.<br />
Born on May 26,1917, he was standing on that day in the doorway on the eve of his birthday; " it is a bonus time for me",he said,reflecting on how time had fled. A foremost exponent of Prakrit ,the ancient language,Sanskrit,and old Gujarati as also the modern one,Bhayanisaheb,as is he generally known,had,however,not allowed the sands of time to run away from the hour-glass of life so far without extracting,what he had set out to do some half-a-century ago.<br />
Harivallabhbhai today is one of the handful people who can boast -- and ,he does not -- of being an authority in linguistics,not just a man of letters,of whom there are many in Gujarat and India,but a pundit of letters.<br />
For all his contributions in research in the ancient works in Sanskrit,Priakrit,and in enriching the Gujarati language through original work on words and their roots,Dr.Bhayani has remained in the penumbra of popular accolade.Most have heard of him,but few have known of his pioneering work in linguistics.<br />
Yet,Dr Bhayani had no regrets that he made Ahmedabad his home.A low-profile man,with an equable nature,intellectually, he is so towering a personality that he appears to be rather non-chalant about the contemporary disinterest in him and his work by his fellow human beings.The mere cataloguing of what he has done over the past 50 years is daunting enough to tell one about how tall are his achievements.The list of his published works number 69,topped only a few days ago by the publication of a short volume on etymology of the Gujarati language.<br />
His works encompass texts edited from the original manuscripts along with notations from Sanskrit,Prakirt,Apabrahmsa,old Gujarati and old Hindi-- titles such as Lilavati-Sara,Taragana,Rasalila,Pamdavala,Bhasha Vyakaran.Those contianing papers on linguistic,literary and cultural studies of classical litrature include four books; those on renderings or translations from the ancient languages include seven books,on grammatical and liguistic sides include more than a dozen and those of collections of critical essays number a three-fourth of a dozen,folk-literary studies and collections of folk-songs numbering six,and five volumes of miscellaneous work.These are in addition to nearly a hundred research papers published on a variety of Indological subjects.Prakrit and Apbhramsa are the languages in which the old Jain literature had been written and in the beginning of this century,it looked if these languages would be lost forever.Thanks to the scholars like Muni Jin Vijay and Dr Bhayani,many texts from these have been rescued.<br />
What sets him apart from other researchers in the ancient literature and languages is that he thinks that neither that literature or those languages are without any relevance today. " You have to blame the professors of Sanskrit for making people view that language as something of a dead language,and its literature supposed bereft of interest today. It is not so.Through ages,languages and the literary works have an important role in shaping the life;they are full of meaning for even the modern-day life." For instance, the old literature shows us how variagated and rich our social life was,how imaginative the people were,how artistic we were.It is a rich heritage of culture,which has a definite continuity in our modern existence too.<br />
He was born in Mahuva,in Bhavnagar district of Saurashtra,into a family where his grand-mother had a stellar role to play,in the formative years of his life. He recalled:" My grand-mother had become a widow at a very young age and had brought up my father almost single-handed.Then,when I was about a year or so,my father died.Then the mother died,and so the grand-mother had to bring me up.I had a sister,but she too died young.I grew up listening to stories and bhajans,folk-tales and songs,in a Vaishnavite household." He went to M.N.High School in Mahuva,getting through the S.S.C. with flying colours in 1934.The small scholarship enabled him to go to Shamaldas College in Bhavnagar.The lonely child seemed to have a special love for books from the very beginning.He would spend hours in company of books in the college library. In 1939, Harivallabhbhai took his B.A.with Sanskrit as special subject,again with flying colours,bagging another scholarship to go to the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan in Bombay for further studies in Sanskrit.He passed his M A with six papers in Sanskrit and two in Ardhmagdhi,in first class,winning Bhagwandas Purushottamdas Sanskrit prize.In 1951,he completed his Ph.D. in Prakrit.He got interested in comparative philology even while in college.He was greatly influenced by a Jain acharya,Muni Jin Vijayji,who was a distinguished researcher in ancient literature,as also by the work done by Sir Ralph Turner, a renowned Indologist and expert in linguistics,who had done pioneering work in India and Nepal.From 1945 to 1965,Dr Bhayani lived in Bombay ,undertaking teaching at post-graduate level and research in Apbhramsa literature.at the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan.His output has been great eversince,underlined by qualities of meticulous research,notations and explanations of ancient works,many of which would have been lost in the mist of time. "Even today,there are hundreds of manuscripts in Prakrit and Apbhramsa,lying at a number of place in Gujarat,waiting for scholars to rescue them,and bring to the notice of the people."<br />
He considered his job as that of a link, a bridge between our ancient literature and modern one; "It is an important assignment to my mind because it helps enrich our present-day literature and language,establishes our link with the past.The past does not remain a dead burden but gets merged into the modern era through such efforts." His only regret is that there are not enough people interested in serving as these essential links with our past. " It is difficult even to get people who can do the correct proof-reading of such literature."<br />
In 1965,Dr Bhayani shifted to Ahmedabad as professor of linguistics at Gujarat University,devoting a decade to the job.Between 1975 and 1985,he was an honorary professor of Prakrit at the L D Institute of Indology in the city.<br />
During this professional career,his real contribution was in guiding innumerable students for their doctoral work,and in applying scientific methods to the study of the Gujarati language. In 1993,he was given the honorary fellowship of the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London. Prof. J C Wright has noted a " strong correlation" between the careers of Dr.Bhayani and Sir Ralph Turner,who was the first scholar to apply then then modern "neogrammarian" methodology to the study of Gujarati.Dr Bhayani, who had first seen a work by Turner,even while in college in Bhavnagar,has just brought a volume on the Gujarati language on the pattern of what Turner had done some three decades ago.Among the innumerable awards that have come to him are Ranjitram medal for contribution to Gujarati literature in 1965,the President's award of certificate of honour as an outstanding scholar of Sanskrit in 1985,and a Sahitya Akademi award for the best Gujarati book of 1980-81.<br />
Despite his life-long study of ancient literature, Dr Bhayani is a modern critic.He regretted that there is a trend in modern literature that took it away from the real life. " I am not saying that literature should preach or propagate,but how can it remain aloof from the contemporary society and its ways? How can it behave as if literature has nothing to do with society.Our literature should also not aim at becoming the literature of the Bhadralok only.He regretted that while literacy had spread,literary development was lacking.<br />
He perceived that a habit to turn away from the real life in literature not only made it ireelevant but also led to a dead-end.It was a pity that some people thought that literature had something to with form and language,and had little to do with contentt.If the concept of content -- or matter -- was taken out from literature,it would lost meaning. A reader could then well ask: Why should I read such literature ?<br />
As a critic,Dr Bhayani has been forthright,but never venomous. He hates getting into a slanging match just to prove that he was right. His detractors say that he too much of a soft-hearted man to get into controversies.<br />
Long past the prime of life,Dr Bhayani loves to listen to music,meet friends for discussions and go for walks whenever possible.He has an even temperament.Said his wife: " I have never known him to lose his temper." The only son of the Bhayanis live in Bombay while the old couple leads a life contented,but as busy as that of a bee in Ahmedabad.He has formally retired from work;but he is neither tired,nor has he called it a day in his research work.Tushar Bhatt's Gujarathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06743579072111022001noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4358008260678434433.post-33465089209489798382010-09-19T01:05:00.001-07:002010-09-19T05:42:47.246-07:00Tushar Bhatt's Gujarathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06743579072111022001noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4358008260678434433.post-51184775785511594212010-09-18T20:21:00.000-07:002010-10-18T06:02:17.525-07:00<a href="http:///"></a><br />
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For South Africa,where Gandhiji perfected his weapon of Satyagraha in the early years of this century,a marathon revolution against the apartheid is over with the advent of the Nelson Rolihalahla Mandela government in power.For Gujarat,Gandhiji was not the only connection it has had with that country which suffered untold miseries for nearly half a century under the racist regime.Gujaratis had settled in Africa long long ago;there were immigrant labourers and traders from the State in South Africa,as also in other countries in the African continent.
Gujaratis are still prominent at many places in South Africa,although along with the black people they too were treated as children of a lesser God by the white rulers.The dramatic victory of the African National Congress (ANC) against the unjust racialist regime itself has taken long. "When the African National Congress set out its vision for a non-racial society on January 8,1912", says the ANC's election manifesto, " we did not know how long it would take to achieve." Nelson Mandela,now 75,was not even born when the struggle against the white ruler began.
Gujaratis too participated in this struggle.Memroies of one such fighter flood back in the mind as South Africa embarks on a more difficult task of national reconciliation and reconstruction.
It was in December, 1991,when clad in a deep green saree,Mrs.Fatima Meer who looked like a typical matronly Gujarati housewife-- which she is -- walked into the offices of The Times of India in Ahmedabad.The appearance was deceptive in her case: the grand-motherly deportment,the toothy smile,the soft-spoken greetings in Gujarati --Kem Chho ? --pronounced with the sweet lilt as is done by the people of South Gujarat,all hid a veteran leader of Indian origin in South AFrica's embattled African National Con-gress,with a record of life-long fight against aprtheid.
The struggle began when she was in school,and barely 17.Today,at nearly 65,she has not called it a day. "I have been in-volved in protesting against the racial policies eversince my school days.They tried to kill me once, bombed our house twice,and for my activities,I was sent to prison for five months without any trial.To cap iot all, the government banned me from public activities for 12 years,forcing me to live within a neighbourhood of about two square kilometres.
She went on talking in a quiet,matter-of-fact tone.There was no trace of bitterness or resentment,as if,like the other great Indian,the Mahatma,she had anticipated the racist regime to behave no dif-frently.
Unlike Gandhiji,however,Mrs Fatima Meer never thought to re-turnning to India her ancestral country. " My grandfather migrated to South Africa from Surat when he was 16. My father was born in Surat,and I have been to Surat to visit Rajawadi,our old home." For all her years away from home,she spoke fairly fluently in Gujarati. But that was about all as far as her active Indian connection is concerned.
In fact, she described herself as a South African,born on August 12,1928, at Durban, the daughter of a journalist.Her father, Mr.Moosa Ismail Meer, was the editor of a journal,The Indian Views,for six decades from 1910 onwards.
Mrs Meer was the founder and the first president of the Federa-tion of Black Women in South Africa, an organisation which too was banned in 1976. A socilogist by training,she was director of the Institute of Black Research at the University of Natal, as also an honorary research fellow.Of late, she has been the editor of Madiba publishers,a subsidiary of the Institute for Black Research.
A prolific writer,her books include an official biography of the ANC supremo, Mandela, a book that has been published in nine languages,and another on Black Women Workers.Her works,of course, also include a volume on Gandhiji -- Apprenticeship of a Mahatma.
To an Indian ear,Gandhiji's name,his ideology and how we should draw inspiration from his life and work -- all sound like too familiar a rhetoric,for the Mahatma has been converted into a propaganda material by self-seekers and other image builders in the post-Independence years.
But what Mrs Fatima Meer had to say about the Mahatma, even in the closing weeks of 1991, did not sound like a blast of bombastic cliches. "Gandhi is relevant today also. The most important thing to learn from him is to how to get in otuch with one's own soul."
Mrs Meer could foresee even when nobody knew in 1991 how long will it take to end apartheid :"In my country too, we have a stupendous task in rebuilding our society on the lines of equality between human beings,disregarding the colour of the skin." It was this quest to define the relationship of new man and woman in re-building South Africa in the post-apartheid era that had brought her to Ahmedabad three years ago on a flying visit. She had gone round looking at the work being done by the Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA) among the women of the poor." I am not surprised,butt am impressed as also inspired by by the Gandhian methods used for the uplift of the opressed women in this city.I would love to start something similar in my country",she had said.
Although she is not associated with AFESEWU,Mrs Meer's fond hopes seem to find an echo in what has been started in Durban by Ms.Horn and her colleagues.
In some ways,the task of helping the women of the poor in South Africa is even more daunting than in India.As a country,South Af-rica is not exactly poor;its per capita income roughly matches that of Argentina.But its tragedy is the stark poverty of the black peo-ple.Behind the national average,black people have incomes one-tenth those of whites and nearly half have no formal jobs. This re-porter had asked Mrs Fatima Meer as to what were the conditions of the women in such a miliue ? She replied: "When we consider women's freedom, we are not just considering it in the context of an aprtheidal society,but in the context of a male dominated society, a domnation that occurs across race and class.White women were favoured to the extent that they were part of the white people and so their status was higher than that of black men."
She was blunt: "As in practially all human societies,in South Af-rica too,women constitute a majority of the population,but have an insgnificanct influence on the legislature of the country or on any kind of corporate decision-making ,whether on the level of man-agement or labour.South Africa's nearly 16 million women suffer from oppression as a result of male domination."Again, African women constitute more than 70 per cent of the women in her coun-try,and their status is most depressed of all.Untrained in any sphere ,under-educated and largely confined to rural areas, a vast majority of them remain excluded from tje job market.Those employed find the lowest paid jobs; 57 per cent of African women in gainful employment are employed as domestic servants or farm labourers,and as such remain outside unionisation.There are prob-lems in agricultural sector where a majority of the women live. "Our task in helping the women of the poor will be tougher than that faced by organisations like SEWA." Is SEWA model applicable to South Africa ? "It is not that our domen do not have any skills.They,for instance, skilled in bead-making.There is a beautiful tribe called Ndebele,whose women do lovely mural paint-ing.But,these have to be revived ,enriched.And this is not to be viewed in isolation.Nearly half of the black youths need work,and so we have to evolve a system in which machines and handicrafts exist together.We have to develop a strategy for this."
The mid-80s saw a decline in the economic well-being of South Africa as a whole because of the economic sanctions and boycott by many countries.Now that it has set on a new road to equality,the recovery will be there.But it still is an uphill assignment,even more so for organisations like AFESEWU.Tushar Bhatt's Gujarathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06743579072111022001noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4358008260678434433.post-74828272719562194862010-09-15T20:14:00.000-07:002010-09-15T20:18:13.526-07:00Then & Now : 100 minutes of history,eternity of indifferenceBy Tushar Bhatt
Time: 11.40 a m on March 18, 1922.
Place: A ground floor room at the Circuit House in Shahibaug in Ahmedabad.
Scene: Barely 20 minutes before the trial, often compared with that of Socrates, of Mahatma Gandhi on charges of sedition.The court room was filled to the capacity.
The charges were that the three articles published in Young In-dia of September 29 and December 15,1921, and February 23, 1922,titled Tampering with Loyalty, A Puzzle and Its Solution and Shaking of the Manes. After the arguments by the Advocate-General, Sir Thomas Strangman,the court asked Gandhi if he would like to make a statement.
The Mahatma,then 53, stood up,erect and unafraid.The court room was all ears,as if the entire the world were intently listening to what this man who described himself as a farmer and weaver had to say. "...I have no desire whatsoever to conceal from this court the fact to preach disaffection towards the existing system of government has become almost a passion with me....Non-violence is the first article of my faith. It is also the last article of my creed.But I had to make a choice. I had either to submit to a system which I considered had done an irreparable harm to my country, or incur the risk of the mad fury of my people bursting forth, when they understood the truth from my lips....I am, therefore, here to submit not to a light penalty but to the highest penalty. I do not ask for mercy. I do not plead any extenuating act."
Gandhiji then read out the statement in a measured tone,tracing the events of Chauri Chora,the Punjab and other places in the country,which made him become an "uncompromising disaffection-ist and non-co-operator" from a " staunch loyalist".
" I discovered that as a man and an Indian, I had no right. More correctly I discovered that I had no rights as a man, because I was an Indian....The administration of law is prostituted consciously or consciously for the benefit of the exploiter."
Gandhiji said: " Affection cannot be manufactured or regulated by law. If one has no affection for a person or system one should be free to give the fullest expression to his disaffection so long as he does not contemplate, promote or incite to violence."
" I hold it to be a virtue to be disaffected towards a government which in totality has done more harm to India than any previous system. India is less manly under the British Rule than she ever was before. Holding such a belief, I consider it to be a sin to have affection for the system and it has been a precious privilege for me to be able to write what I have in the various articles tendered in evidence against me."
He told the judge: "The only course open to you is either to resign your post and thus dissociate yourself from evil, if you feel that the law you are called upon to administer is an evil and that in real-ity I am innocent; or to inflict on me the severest penalty...."
The statement that sounded like the testament of India's freedom struggle had taken just 15 minutes to read. There was a hush in the court room.
The air was heavy with apprehension. The sessions judge,Mr C.Broomsfield,began slowly : "....The law is no respecter of per-sons.Nevertheless it will be impossible to ignore the fact that you are in a different category from any person I have ever tried or am likely to try. It would be impossible to ignore the fact that in the eyes of millions of your countrymen are a great patriot and a great leader. Even those who differ from you in politics look upon you as a man of high ideals and of noble and of even saintly life.I have to deal with you in one character only."
The judge handed the Mahatma an imprisonment of six years adding that " if the course of events in India should make it possible for the government to reduce the period and release you, no one will be better pleased than I."
As the judge left the room, followers crowded around Gandhi. Some fell at his feet,others were sobbing.Gandhi was smiling and cool.The Great Trial of Gandhi had taken 100 minutes.
TIME MARCHES ON And, an eternity of casualness follows.Here is a scene frozen in memory.
Time: Around 3.45 in the afternoon on a humid July day in 1997,barely four weeks before the 50th anniversary of India's Independence.
Scene: Circuit House in Shahibaug.
Despite being state guest house frequented by VIPs,the lawn gives an impression of poor maintenance,an impression that would strengthen inside the historic room.The place is quiet, with only a handful of bearers and other minions on government payroll,are bustling around,wearing the patented bureaucratic look of being purposeful without being meaningfully so.In short, not doing much. Nobody has time to answer queries related to the past, pre-occupied with the mundane matters of the present. " The manager saheb has gone out for work" comes the pat reply from a bored clerk,manning the telephone-cum-reception desk. A limousine slides into the portico and he does not have time even for a bored non-reply. A chhota-make-believe VIP, i.e. a political hanger-on of a leader,has arrived.
All along the four wall,stacked are smaller chairs,numbering more than 35. Some one dozen more chairs, of moulded plastics are piled up at one place. The general idea appears to be that no one, but no one should, run short of a chair, at least in this room,if not in the state and the country at large.
Everyone appears blissfully unaware of the real significance of the room,where Gandhiji was tried.It faces the dining hall on the ground floor and is used now as a lounge for visitors and as a place where occasionally politicians of all hues hold press conferences. "You see, the place is really inexpensive as compared to a hotel", says a worker, explaining why politicians choose the lounge to tell the media on-record untruths, right under the mournful glance of the Bapu,whose life-size oil painting adorns the far-side wall.Mercifully, the politicians generally sit with their back turned on the historic Gandhi trial documents.
The floor tiles wear a dirty look,as if it has only been sparingly and grudgingly swept all these days. Three-piece sofa sets,each one complete with side and front tables are in front of all the four walls.There are several doors but only one is open; two neon tube-lights throw pools of eerie fluorescent light.Three fans are turning in true government-fashion,going round and round without cooling the room.
On another wall is a large painting ,depicting the scene of Gan-dhi's trial but hardly anyone seems interested.Next to it is another oil-painting,with Gandhi sitting in his famous posture.The next wall has the honour of having a bust each of the Mahatma and Sardar Patel.So much for the effort to render the place beautiful.It has the signature of PWD all over.
The actual documents-- or,truthfully,photostat copies of these -- are housed in display panels,numbering nine and mounted on steel tubings,pushed into the room corners in clusters of threes and twos.The first panel,mounted on a black paper says boldly, The Judgement,but the first page of the judgement that should be under it is missing. The second page (see the photograph) has been eaten into by moths.The tube lights on each panel are resolutely switched off,lest someone reads the historic documents.
Outside the room are two plaques,one in Hindi and the other in English,telling visitors of the historic importance of the room. An employee is half-dozing on a chair,presumably doing his duty to-wards the government and the state it rules,thanks to the Ma-hatma.
It all looks like an ill-kept,unkempt place honouring the apostle of cleaninless in personal and public life, a stark reminder of how far we have come to his ideal of Swaraj after half-a-century.If it is a determined effort designed to make one forget about Gandhi, it succeeds eminently.
The eternity of indifference persists, with minor modifications visualised by the Babudum.
MAHATMA GANDHI AMAR RAHO.Tushar Bhatt's Gujarathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06743579072111022001noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4358008260678434433.post-84298352926445551472010-09-13T21:03:00.000-07:002010-09-18T01:10:53.683-07:00Tushar Bhatt's Gujarathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06743579072111022001noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4358008260678434433.post-21858012910263683432010-09-03T04:53:00.000-07:002010-09-07T07:11:49.981-07:00The Mahatma's Resurrection<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVPQFZCGn3LhSrwC10WWcPhBXr05hyphenhypheno9WifiypZd7a6GOTPs1r3kpMbyTCKkJmN6TFsyCWEifzqoXqdBnIk3fypabtOjTGxsdr-_9c1wEnrdl_IW8oD-IGAFYqSaxs9tHnwxKX3wQhV_bK/s1600/1215_10_54---Gandhi-Statue-San-Francisco--California_web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVPQFZCGn3LhSrwC10WWcPhBXr05hyphenhypheno9WifiypZd7a6GOTPs1r3kpMbyTCKkJmN6TFsyCWEifzqoXqdBnIk3fypabtOjTGxsdr-_9c1wEnrdl_IW8oD-IGAFYqSaxs9tHnwxKX3wQhV_bK/s400/1215_10_54---Gandhi-Statue-San-Francisco--California_web.jpg" width="267" /></a></div>
By Vinod Bhatt <br />
<br />
(originally written in Gujarati<br />
and<br />
translated into English)<br />
<br />
By Tushar Bhatt<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
I could not trust my ears and stared with a dumb expression at my friend. He was emphatic: “You just try and find out if I am telling you the truth.”<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
He held up a small bottle containing sparking liquid. “Put only three drops of this magic potion on any inanimate thing and it will spring to life.” <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Disbelief would just not disappear from my face, although like Gandhiji my friend also had taken a vow never to tell a lie. Maybe, he was making a mistake. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
As if reading my thoughts, the friend drove home the point further. “I will tell you what you could do. Just go to any statue standing in a public place, put three drops of the potion into the statue’s left ear and see what happens.”<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
He was so insistent I thought I had no option but to try. There being any number statues of any manner of people all over the country, it was easy enough. The question now was of choosing a proper candidate in an appropriate place.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
It occurred to me why not try the potion on the Mahatma’s statue, standing at the Income Tax Circle on Ahmedabad’s Ashram Road? On his return from South Africa, Gandhiji had made home in Ahmedabad and founded the Ashram, the first HQ of India’s non-violent freedom struggle.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Modelled on a famous woodcut of Nandlal Bose, the statue is beautifully done. With a walking staff in hand, the Mahatma seemed to be in a sombre mood and striding away from the Sabarmati Ashram.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Nevertheless I paused for a jiffy to ponder. Was it proper to carry out this seemingly innocuous experiment on the statue?<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
No one had objected when some people had bathed the statue of the Apostle of Non-violence with milk to purify it. Later, some other had even applied a blood tilak on its forehead, invoking the Mahatma’s blessings in whatever the cause they were fighting for. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Perhaps, he also would not mind my putting in mere three drops of the potion in the statue’s ear. After all, unlike others I was only verifying the truth of my friend’s claim, a harmless experiment with truth, with no personal or group axe to grind.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
I cautiously put the drops into the statue’s left ear. As soon as the drops went in, Bapu came alive. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
There was some cramp in his sprightly demeanour, a result of standing in the same rigid position for years. He stretched and yawned. The walking staff in his hand dropped to the ground. Dutifully, I bent down and picked up the staff to hand it back to Gandhiji.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Bapu sanpped: “Not walking staff any more. It would not do. Fetch me a gun. Quick.”<br />
<br />
<br />
(<i>Though they share a common surname,the Two Bhatts are not related.They are good friends)</i><br />
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<a href="http:///"></a>Tushar Bhatt's Gujarathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06743579072111022001noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4358008260678434433.post-32459530471172882672010-09-02T21:23:00.000-07:002010-09-02T21:23:35.717-07:00A painter of rare vintage: Vasudev SmartTushar Bhatt<br /><br /> Surat:<br /> Cars screamed past and two-wheelers zoomed ahead,mindless of others on the road.Traffic on the road near the modest house called Rupayan in Jay Somnath Society was so mad that one would think it wanted to reach the moon instantly, far ahead of the speed of light.In the midst of this gigantic madding crowd called Surat lived a physically old but mentally young man,Vasudeo Smart,who appeared to be working as furiously to take the traditional Indian painting-in tact,nevertheless-into the future .He had been prolific all his life, documenting ,improving upon and innovating newer symbols in the classical Indian style of painting.Over the past half a century,Vasudeo had done thousands of paintings,frescoes,scrolls,line drawing,panoramic colour pieces,mammoth compositions such as Ram Vivah,Independence,that are truly speaking inclusive of hundreds of works which can easily stand independently as works of art and together bring home an impact of magnificence, authentic,artistic and vibrant in every detail.<br /> Born on July 17,1925 in Surat in the household of father Balwantram and mother Gulabgauri,Vasudeo was among the tallest Gujarati artists.In the twilight years of his life,he was back in his hometown Surat, adding a lustre to the cultural life of the diamond city.<br /> Though his home State,Gujarat,appears to have taken Smart for granted,Vasudeo carried on with his brush,his colours and his pursuit of painting regardless.<br /> It was shortly after 2 p m when many of his age would be in bed ,enjoying a siesta.In the autumn of life Vasudeo seemed to be a man of different genre.He was not only up and about,but alert as well. <br /> As the footfalls approach the door of Rupayan,across the small foreyard which has a karan tree with branches hung with painted pots, a voice called out.In a jiffy,Vasudeo ,with a toothy bespectacled face,sporting short,white hair and equally grey bush moustache,right hand in a sling,appeared in the door frame.Even before a query was made,he perceived the question and said: "I slipped in the drawing room some two months ago and got a hairline crack in my shoulder.My hand is itching to work and I am hoping to be back at doing what I have always done,painting,in a day or two."<br /> A lifelong art teacher who spent more than a quarter century as reader in Indian painting at the Banaras Hindu University (BHU),he was completely at ease with young and old alike.If total informality,modesty and friendliness were his individual traits,the master could still turn out nattily-dressed for public occasions--complete with a Gandhi cap tiltingly set on his head, as neat and dapper a man as his paintings were.<br /> Vasudeo Smart was a titan among painters in Indian classical style,living away from the limelight of public attention for some years now;yet, he had not sunk into inactivity.His friends say he appeared to be busier than ever,bursting with ideas,seeing opportunities to do paintings. Where ordinary mortals will perceive chaos,noise,milling crowds and drabness, Vasudeo found patterns,beauty,texture and colours.A deep and throbbing sense of romance and wonderment at the day-to-day life and an ability to bring it all on into minutely detailed paintings,strong in lines,marvellous in composition and superb in colour selection,were his hallmarks.<br /> He was strongly rooted in Indian traditions of art,thanks to his upbringing and teachings of giants like Jagannath Ahivasi,his mentor.His fields of specialisation are as vast as his repertoire in Sanskrit literature. Innumerable frescoes,murals and line drawings done by him were in collections of various societies and individuals in the country and abroad.A restless man,he also authored several books on arts and paintings.Notable among these is Roop Samhita, a collection of 2,000 Indian designs and a book in Gujarati,Bharatna Bhint Chitro.<br /> Critics have hailed his works as very sensitive,true to life in the smallest detail,with a very strong line drawing,unity of colour and sense of proportions.Said Natu Parikh:"Many of his paintings are an assembly of a hundred of even two hundred works of art.In each detail,he has gone into its aesthetics painstakingly.He was not a man in hurry, rather he was a perfectionist who insisted of getting every little thing right." <br /> His works also display a rare ability to afford a panoramic view,without having to use too much of perspective to tell a viewer what is the central or focal point in the mural.There is a breath-taking scale in his work and still there is a rhythm,as also movement that help a viewer easily grasp what is being shown.In a way, it is a very effective story-telling too.<br /> Parikh noted another characteristic of Vasudeo,citing it as a proof of ever-growing process of his art.Vasudeo never tires of bringing out new symbols.He could draw clouds in a variety of ways,trees in so many different styles that one marvels at the grand mind of the man. All this was not work of his fertile imagination; he had really absorbed minute points of subtle difference in each species of tree,or each span of an overcast sky to underline the identity of each cloud,lending it not only elements of art,but an identity of its own.<br /> Not just this,he took his observations very seriously and could,years later, recall the nuances of subtle difference between the clouds or trees or even a water mass he had done in different paintings.A good teacher,Vasudeo Smart had never ceased to learn more to expand his artistic depth and horizon.<br /> Vasudeo's father was a Sanskrit pundit who eked out a living as a Brahmin performing puja and other religious ceremonies.Recalling those years,Vasudeo's voice cracks "My mother was a deeply religious person who used to sing melodiously.I still remember those days of childhood when I and she would be sitting on a swing as the dusk feel.There were no lights,just earthen oil lamps and mother would sing.I loved to listen to her as also the the Sanskrit strotras and shlokas.I used to remember many strotras by heart." <br /> The love for Sanskrit language had been a lifelong passion."There was some element of art as well in our Vaishnav home inasmuch as the various rites of worship of Krishna called for decoration.The Vaishnav temples were also having rich traditions in arts,be it in music,literature,or painting.A neighbour,Zinukaka,was a good portrait artist.And so was an inspirationa cousin,Late Bhanu Smart."<br /> Said Smart:" The atmosphere in Surat too made an impact on me. It was then a great city of culture.During the Diwali days,women would compete with each other in doing colourful saathia (rangoli) in front of their homes.Cuitizens would go round the city in the night,looking at the magnificent array of rangolis and appreciating the works of art.<br /> The child Vasudeo,by the time he went to school,had thought of what he wanted to become in life-a painter.He had passed inter exam in drawing while in school only and opted to go to Bombay in 1943 after passing his matriculation to study art,rather than going in for a degree like B.A.The family was monetarily in dire straits.Vasudeo's voice cracks as he remembers those days.: "There was no money.With difficulty my father could send me Rs.ten or so a month. I used to do tuition and some other work in Bombay to make both ends meet.Once my father even wrote to me suggesting I might think of doing a B.A. instead. I wrote back a Sanskrit strotra to the effect that I was determined to do what I thought was best for me." Tears welled up in Smart's eyes,his voice went hoarse and turned into a whisper; " When my father died ,this chit of mine was found in his pocket."<br /> While in Bombay,he had also imbimbed some of the spirit of the Indpendence movement.That probably explains why his chosen dress is that of a nationalist of the freedom struggle days.In 1948,he took a diploma in painting,standing third in order of merit.For two years after 1949,he was a fellow in Sir J.J.School of Arts,after having worked for a year as an art teacher at Sarvajanik Education Society in Surat. In 1951,he came back to work for seven years at Jeevan Bharati in Surat.Between 1958 and 1960,he went to the B.H.U as a scholar sposnored by the Government of India to study in the fine arts section under Mr Ahivasi.Then,he spent a year in Ahmedabad,teaching at the CN college of fine arts.In 1962,he went back to Banaras as lecturer in painting and remained there upto 1985,rising to become a Reader in Painting.<br /> Thanks to Ahivasi,his art mind got focussed on Indian painting and Vasudeo made a study in depth of fresco paintings of different styles and techniques,preparing the identical size paintings of murals found in Ajanata and Bagh caves among other things. In 1954,he copied frescoes at Badsami caves for the Lalit Kala Academy,New Delhi,and went on for documenting in a similar manner murals at Orchha and Datia in Uttar Pradesh.He travelled to many parts of India studying the traditional Indian painting and imbibing the best of it. He had been given innumerable awards and prizes and held many one-man exhibitions in different cities in the country. <br /> Mr Ahivasi laid foundation for the later greater flights in paintings of Vasudeo."He was so meticulous.He would call a pundit on Mondays in the month of Shravan (the most rainy month) to read Meghdoot of Kalidas,just to bring home to us boys what it was all about.He would ask us to try capture in painting what the poet was saying in words."<br /> The habit stayed with Vasudeo all his life. "For doing a painting on Ram Vivah,I read Ramayana several times. For doing documentation of the magnificent Jain paintings in south Guajrat in recent years, I read up everything that was there about Mahavir."<br /> Those were the days of nationalism in the newly independent India."We had paintings being done under western influence,method.We had great exponents in western as well as Bengal wash methods.We did portraits,life,landscape,but it was Ahivasiji who impressed me most in looking for carrying forward the Indian style of painting. I learnt a lot by going round the country.More than everything else, I learnt to imbibe what was aesthetically superb in various styles practised in the north, in the south,everywhere." <br /> He said:"I have nearly 2,000 paintings of different Indian styles. I am toying with an idea to bring out a volume on it, A Study of Indian Paintings.It is such a rich tradition,you see. I feel a small book can be brought out on the use of circles, squares and triangles alone in our traditions.And,the richness of colours.The Vaishnav padas will tell you a lot about colours and their vividness. There are three main seasons and their colours,and then there are the conjunction periods of these seasons and their colours,the evenings have their own colours,and so do the dawns." The voice became animated a great deal as Vasudeo went on narrating the potential of doing things about Indian style of paintings.<br /> He fondly recalled his association while in Banaras with another Gujarati,and a long time resident of Surat, Pundit Omkarnath Thakur."Punditji would snarl at you,when you talk of trying to render the innumerable ragas and raginis into painting.I would join issue with him and tell him,these paintings were doine mostly on the basis of description available in shlokas.You want to paint something about Bhairav raga,then you take the time of morning when it is rendered,show a temple of Mahadev etc. For really bringing on to canvas the true nature of ragas and raginis,one has to be able to transform the rendering itself into painting. I would ask Omkarnathji,the singers should themsleves pick up the brush and attempt it."<br /> The sense of wonder and romance have been becoming sharper with the passage of time.Age did not seem to affect Vasudeo's sense of visual pleasure and his ability to convert that personal experience of joy into a painting. Some years ago,he was impressed by the vast variety of kites in the Rander bazar,then in the Barhanpuri bazar in Surat."There were hundreds of kites, each one with a different design.We knew a few names of kites such as Ladvedar,Kagdi,Matki, although the younger generation is beginning to forget about it all.But the richness of design struck me.So I settled down to do a painting in which I included 350 kites, all of different colour combinations and design.If you really want to study design and its impact on one's sense of art,you should look at the kites more carefully." The moot point that he made,and yet did not spell out in so many words,was that there is so much vibrant and colourful in life around us only that one can derive ideas from it,if only one cared to observe it, think about it and explore possibilities,with all one's mind,heart and hand.<br /> His own creative process,however,hinged more on his ability to feel,and capture, a central or focal point in doing any painting.Years ago,he was in Nagaur,Rajasthan,when someone told him of a panghat where village women,dressed in colourful attire,came to fetch water.The man added that once upon a time,when women did not go out so often,every time a daughter-in-law came to the panghat to bring water,her mother-in-law would make her wear the best she had.That clicked in Vasudeo's mind and led to a lovely painting,with traditional Rajasthani milieu.Again,when he went to the Himalaya,Vasudeo had taken a copy of Kumar Sambhav,just to see if what the poet wrote about different types of clouds was a figment of imagination or what. It turned out to be not fiction,but based on minute observations.<br /> Vasudeo had done a large number of paintings based on Indian classical themses,often derived from Sanskrit classics,and striving to translate into the lines,and colours of what the writer was describing in words.He had a deep knowledge of Sanskrit and thought that had he not become a painter,he would have become a scholar in Sanskrit.His friends assert that he is a pundit in Sanskrit,nevertheless.<br /> Vasudeo had just finished documenting the priceless paintings in the jain temples in south Gujarat.Till recently,he used to go every alternate day to Broach and Ankleshwar for this.<br /> He was a rare combination of an erudite scholar,a master painter and an eternal student.Vasudeo Smart was on an endless quest that,with each passing day,appeared to be sharpening his senses of visual presentation.The ability was backed by his childlike innocence,and nurtured by the care his nephew ,Jagdeep,showered on him after the passing away of Vasudeo's wife,Pramila.The only visible gap in the grand master's life is the death of his wife in December,1987,which he tries to cover by working harder.In homage to her memory,Vasudeo brought out an album of paintings, Rasikpriya.Death had separated Rasik and his Priya,but memory was a powerful potion for him.It kept Vasudeo Smart going,and going great. Then in mid-90s he made a quiet exit from the world. In 2009, his nephew Jagdeep who adored him as a blood relation and Guru,too died at the age of 53.<br />Tushar Bhatt's Gujarathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06743579072111022001noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4358008260678434433.post-17705660202058043322010-06-20T20:20:00.001-07:002010-06-20T20:24:43.722-07:00A Crisis of Culture Among Gujaratis in the USATushar Bhatt ,travelling in the U S <br />
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You will realise the real worth of a family only when you go away from it, alone in the maddening crowds of the world.. The identity crisis that is evident among the Non-Resident Indians in general and Gujarati NRIs in particular is nothing but a manifestation of the feelings of being cut-off from the comforting shelter of the vatvruksh.Society is a mere expansion of the family<br />
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From this seed springs forth uneasiness, a doubt about true appreciation of the gravity of a non-resident's real identity, what is he/she- an Indian or an American? This is not the only trouble. The crisis haunts in lesser intensity highly qualified Information Technologists like Tilak Mysore, or management people like Rutu Dave, social scientist like Prof Pravin Sheth, Dr C Mohan,a top scientist with IBM,all in the Silicon Valley's hub San Jose.<br />
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In older out-posts like Bakersfield where Gujarati Motels have been there for ages, the cultural crisis is the same. More intensely-hit are people like Harendra Rawat, a self-made marketing man who came to the USA some 30 years ago,or Bina Bhatt who came here a decade ago to make a life in computer. Rawat is so much in India mentally that he refuses to touch anything made in Pakistan. His friend and Bina's husband computer specialist Raj Patel,spent harldly eight months after being born in Gujarat speaks no Hindi and a smattering of Gujarati. Yet he has Gujarati taste buds and loves hot chili in his food.All of them have India pulsating in their heart and mind. They stand erect, eyes moist,when the Tri-colour flutters in the sky, their leaps essaying Jan Gan Man.<br />
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The Gujarati Motelians rub shoulders with the higher income groups of IT crowd and doctors in jointly watering their Indian roots.The get together at the temple which houses several gods under the same dome. There are 2 pujaris, a Tirupati Brahmin who came here for hotter weather from Cleveland in Ohio,and the other a Gujarati who shifted his communications line from less prosperous Fiji.<br />
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The devotees have equally diverse vocations. While Sujata and her husband , Kirit Desai are reputed doctors, Pradeep Patel and Nayna are specialists in home-delivered grocery of Indian specialities.Pradeep is a singer of note who is good demand. But,he is not the one to sit back and enjoy.” I have my son and daughter studying to become doctors and must earn more.” He and his wife,Nayna operate from Taft, reaching goods to far-off places such as San Jose and even Las Vegas. <br />
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They all have gone away from India physically,but would not allow India to leave their heart.<br />
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In brief exchange of views with NRIs, this reporter found a deeper alienation haunting them. Like Vishwamitra, they had thought they would be in a new paradise but suspect they have become Trishanku, neither here nor there.What is worse that the first generation NRIs who came to the USA and the second generation born in the USA fight different identity crises.<br />
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The first generation NRIs are aware of their origins and believe whole-heartedly that they are Indians first . They are adjusting to American way but are more comfortable with dal,rice and curry than with pitza and pasta.They will resonate with devotion when Vibha and Rasbihari Desai launch into the superb Avinash Vyas copmposition, Maadi Tarun Kanku Kharyun ne Suraj Ugyo.They will weep copiously when Pankaj Udhas sings chiththi Ayee hai, vatan se....They will march proudly and hum patriotic songs with moist eyes, applaud wildly when Sachin Tendulkar sends a Pakistani bowler's delivery soaring into the sky for a massive sixer and cry when they watch terrorist mow down innocent people in Mumbai or Gandhinagar. The first generation has its heart beating for India. <br />
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Not so in the case of the second and third generations of these very people. The youngsters find themselves adrift, not fully integrated with the society in their land of birth, the US. These children of lesser culture are not accepted by American society. They face a double whammy of identity crisis. There is no better illustration of this then in marrying. Boys have in mind a role model impossible to find in America. They want their brides to be modern like the American girls and they want their brides to be as obedient as their India-born mothers. They forget that their India born mothers are less modern and more obedient.<br />
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NRI girls on the other hand, want grooms who are as prosperous as their fathers and as modern as Americans are. This can rarely happen. As a result, outsiders like me find a great confusion in the NRI society, The first generation NRIs come to India out of love for their motherland; and for finding spouses for their second generation sons, a pure Deshi girl who will be modern as well as obedient girl, a difficult proposition. As for their America born daughters, they hope to find a smart groom who will be ready to be a virtual ghar jamai, a proposition even more difficult. And, yet most teenagers are ten times more obedient than other peer group Americans. They would shy away from talking about dating.<br />
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It is a pity that most people tend to regard this dilemma as something springing from personal choice about which society at large can do but little. It is the foundation of a fundamental change coming in the relations between Garvi and Ghardi Gujarat and its foreign children.<br />
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If more attention is not paid, the Gujaratis in diaspora will be adrift, going away from the homeland. History is replete with such happenings in the past. Many West Indies islands residents bear Indian sounding names but they are lost NRIs. The same is the case in Fiji, Mauritius, South Africa, Zimbabwe and other countries.<br />
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A classic example is of Sinhali residents of Sri Lanka. They are descendants of people who went with Sanghamitra, Buddha's disciple from Orissa and Bihar. They are at war with people of Tamilian origins.<br />
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In an essay in way back 1946, George Orwell who wrote prophetic novels like 1984 and Animal Farm, said that the first outpost of a culture is language. When alien influences strike, even before the final surrender of a culture comes the debasement of its language.<br />
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Many a time underground and hardly discernible currents are already sending SOS signals which we as a people are not bothered to pick up. Note the fact that Gujarati as a child of one of the most developed languages of all times, Sanskrit is rich but we find use of English words admixed with Gujarati to create some gibberish called Gujlish. Second and third generations of Gujaratis in the US are not bothered about learning their ancestor's language because Gujarati has no wider commercial use in America <br />
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But there is a small silver lining to the dark clouds, according to some, but it may be an illusion. The children of Gurjari are uncomfortable that Americans at large as true Americans do not accept them and they themselves do not want to be regarded like their parents, as children of a lesser civilization, nick named Motelian culture. This is claimed to be a healthy sign but actually it is a flavourless Gujarati Undhiyoo without chilies and other spices.<br />
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NRIs are desperately trying to keep best of both the worlds. They have a chicken party for birthday on a Saturday and Satya Narayan Katha on Sunday to double celebrate a birthday. The tragedy is that this amounts to seeking a personalised amalgamation of cultures. They put off wedding and cremation to a fixed muhurat on a Sunday or a Holiday only so that ethnic needs do not clash with market requirement.<br />
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It has given a steady rise to Godmen and self appointed sentries of ethnic values, celebrating as many holidays as their deep-lined pockets will permit to authenticate their utilitarian compromise. They join hands with other Indians to sing garba, dance during Durga Puja, Onam, do puja during Shivratri and lighting of Holi fire. <br />
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In the long run it is a groping in a cultural dark . It is a grave cultural crisis.Tushar Bhatt's Gujarathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06743579072111022001noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4358008260678434433.post-5591880967578763462010-01-30T06:46:00.000-08:002010-02-05T22:14:15.902-08:00Counting The Asiatic Lions In Their Last Abode<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Tushar Bhatt </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Sasan-Gir:</div> The dawn itself had given notice of a sultry day ahead. As hun-dreds of workers and forest officials sat patiently in their hide-outs next to some 650 watering places all over the Gir forest for the tenth census of the last of the Asiatic lions, there was no other way for them but to bear it with a grin. The first estimation of their popu-lation, of course, was made as early as in 1880, but data collected before 1936 were only guess-estimates.<br />
Only a small number of citizens have first hand experience of what happens during a typical census of lions where non-foresters are generally not allowed. This made it all the more enchanting for me. <br />
Over three to six days, mostly in May,every few years,three-member teams of these enumerators would sweat it out physically verifying the number of lions in the 1,412 square kilometre-Gir sanctuary and national park, as part of a week-long-operation to count the wildlife, especially the big cats and their prey.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7VJvTx9jEXEYwgP4CqG3dTCBIpGhXYswc79uTSIJqQL3OP_Zyu0nS9PoOdPuALVuwpnHYMjMDhSVfb3gFsWeim4Lp4yVMfMoOvDw2AaQLf_o9j1vaNLYYblgRYC1ZrDlAWXB2YYJC2B5L/s1600-h/Three+lions+-+fl.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7VJvTx9jEXEYwgP4CqG3dTCBIpGhXYswc79uTSIJqQL3OP_Zyu0nS9PoOdPuALVuwpnHYMjMDhSVfb3gFsWeim4Lp4yVMfMoOvDw2AaQLf_o9j1vaNLYYblgRYC1ZrDlAWXB2YYJC2B5L/s640/Three+lions+-+fl.jpg" width="640" /></a></div> <br />
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Enumerators in the census of human beings go from doorstep to doorstep,but the lion enumerators had to be content with spotting them at one place a beast would unfailingly come in a cycle of 24 hours -the watering station.<br />
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Afterwards, what stuck most vividly in the memory of many was the unusually hot season. They had known the mercury to shoot up to around 41 degrees C,buton these days it seemed to have climbed to near 43 degrees C,making the deciduous forest somnolent. The customary fragrance of the forest-- different in the summer, the winter and the monsoon-- was conspicuous by its absence, as if it too had gone on a casual leave, fearing a sun-stroke.<br />
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Said Bhadresh Upadhyay, photographer from Rajkot, who was there to "shoot" the census operations: "I have been to the Gir in-numerable times, but I have never known such a hostile weather. It was so hot that at many places where baits had been kept to lure the more languid of the lions to come out from their bushy hiding for a kill,did not even bother to turn up."<br />
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Explained Mr Rameshchandra Java,Gujarat's former principal chief conservator of forests;" The census had three ways of cross-checking the counting.The first one was by visual count, done by the teams sitting next to watering stations. These teams had actu-ally been at place since a few days when there was a dress re-hearsal of the drill on that day. A typical team would sit on a machan, a platform-like hide-out mostly built up a tree, and ob-serve the animals arriving for drinking water at the watering hole. This time at as many as 150 watering places, the forest department had to build these hide-outon grounds only since no tree cover was available near enough..The Gir is a dry forest and in this season most trees are bereft of leaves, save the khakhra tree."<br />
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The visual count, said the official, would be noted down with exact timing, the direction from which the animal came and the direction in which it left and when. "Lions usually roam over a defined terri-tory only, each pride of the beast having some specific area marked out for itself. The timing would help eliminate the possibility of duplication if the beast was sighted within a few minutes at an-other machan in a given direction."<br />
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Then, during the daylight hours, the teams would check out the ob-servations with pug marks of the lions; each beast has a separate pug mark, and experienced foresters, called shikaris(hunters, though hunting is something they never do), can identify different animals as also different lions from pugmarks.<br />
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Yet another way of matching the results with the first observation was to tie a bait in the vicinity of the machan as the bait would lure out those rare ones which did not come to the watering place or a beast that had escaped being counted at the watering place.<br />
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The census, said Mr Java," is fairly accurate" and provides interest-ing and important insights into the demographic profile of the Asi-atic lions and whether or not their prey-base enough as also whether or not the development policy aimed at enhancing their numbers and preserving them better was working or not.<br />
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In the count of lions in 1990, it was found that there were as many as 284 animals; this time, officials are confident, the figure will go at least upto 310.They are also hoping to find a corresponding rise in the other animals which serve as prey to lions.Many expert think that 300 lions are well-above the saturation figure. The population pressure is causing the majestic beast to roam out of the Gir for-est,causing concern among the villages in Amreli,Junagadh and Porbandar districts.<br />
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Today, the Gir is synonymous with the Asiatic lions, the Panthera leopersica. The species came to India some 6,000 years ago from Persia and were to be found in the areas of today's Punjab, Hary-ana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, western Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and other parts of Gujarat as well. "Somehow, lions never crossed the Narmada", said Mr Java. Nobody knows why.<br />
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The last Asiatic lion, outside its Saurashtra home, was killed in 1884.This was a result of the destruction of its habitat as also a mad hunting-spree for trophy. Said Mr Java: "One factor I can think of for the elimination of the Asiatic lions from so many countries and other areas in India too is that it is a royal animal. It is not cun-ning like a tiger and would face aggression bravely, getting killed in the process."<br />
<br />
Even in Saurashtra, its area of habitat has gradually shrunk. The old Gir area extended over as much as 5,000 sq. km and included in the early part of this century areas as far as Mitiyala, Barda,Alech hills, Chorwad and the Alech hills in addition to the Girnar mountain.There were semi-wooded forests and corridors of grasslands, sparsely populated zone to enable the beast to move about freely. Pressure of human population and farming ate into this area. In the latter half of the 19th century, the lions deserted the hills in Barda and Alech, and Mitiyala in 1955.<br />
<br />
The Gir was officially made a sanctuary in 1965 and its area of 1412 sq. km is surrounded by a buffer zone of another 489 sq.km.About the steps taken since, Mr H.S.Singh, the then conser-vator of forests(wildlife circle)at Junagadh, said that 'the most im-portant aspect of the Gir today is that it has become a very stable, tremendous regenerating, self-supporting and sustaining ecosys-tem owing to its rich and diverse flora and fauna. The Gir is a unique eco-system, harbouring more than 400 plants species, some 32 species of mammals,24 species of reptiles,310 species of birds and more than 2,000 species of insects, in addition to many micro flora and fauna."<br />
<br />
This, said Mr N V Kataria, former divisional forest officer at Sa-san,was a direct result of efforts made at conservation and preser-vation of the wildlife and flora and fauna. A study by Dr Paul Joslin had revealed in 1972 that the Gir displayed an overwhelming evi-dence of accelerated degradation of the ecosystem. It warned that if nothing was done to arrest the rate of decline in the number of surviving Asiatic lions, the species might be extinct in two decades.<br />
<br />
The warning was heeded to. In 1972 itself, the government ma-chinery swung into, with a Rs.58 lakh project. The forest officials have been able to tackle serious problems facing the sanctuary such as grazing, poaching, lopping, and cutting of grass and began programmes for soil and moisture conservation, habitat improve-ment and fresh plantation. "Degradation of the system has been ar-rested and reversed and we are determined to continue our ef-forts," said Mr Indravijaysinh Jadeja, a former minister for forests in the Keshubhai Patel ministry of the Bharatiya Janata party.<br />
<br />
Actually, the Gir has almost always been in the centre of public at-tention. There has been a regular outcry against anything that might endanger its rare distinction of being the lone habitat of the Asiatic lion. There have been numerous complaint of quarrying on the periphery of the forest, protests against allowing religious places to go in for bigger construction and even at suggestions to relocate some of the lions elsewhere. "There is a tremendous pub-lic pride for the Gir and even well-intentioned suggestions such as relocation of a few beasts have been met with resistance", said Mr Yogesh Joshi,a banker in Talala. An ordinary, but regular visitor to the forest, he symbolised an average citizen's anxiety that nothing should be done to undermine the uniqueness of the Gir.<br />
<br />
It was one such popular outcry, reflected in a letter to a newspaper at the beginning of this century that led to the imposition of a ban on shooting the lions in the Gir. Lord Curzon,the viceroy then,had accepted an invitation from the Nawab of Junagadh, in whose do-main much of the Gir came, for a lion shoot. Mr. Java said: "I do not remember the name correctly, but I think it was some one called, Mr Vaishnav, who wrote an anonymous letter commenting on the inappropriateness of shooting an animal that was on the verge of extinction.The viceroy gave up the idea and instead urged the Nawab to ban lion shooting which the Nawab did."<br />
<br />
The Nawab retained the right of allowing a few privileged guests to shoot a lion initially, but after a report in 1913 that the number of li-ons in the forest had dwindled to a mere twenty, banned it alto-gether.<br />
<br />
In 1880, Major Watson noted that there only 12 lions. At one point of time early in 20th century, their number was put at as low as five animals. In 1920 Sir P.R. Cadell estimated the lion population at 50.<br />
<br />
The first organised census of the Gir lions was done in April,1936, which showed there were 287 beasts in all, inclusive of 143 males,91 females and 53 cubs.It was based on counting and measuring the pug marks at watering places, assuming that a lion must drink at least once and seldom more than once in 24 hours. Some 700 workers were engaged in the enumeration.<br />
<br />
The next counting was done by Mr Wynter Byth in April,1950,on the pattern of the 1936 census, save that the pug marks counting and measurements were taken not at the watering stations but on roads, paths and train tracks. Their number was put at between 219 and 227, of which between 179 and 187 were grown up beasts. There have been censuses during the intervening years too.<br />
<br />
In 1968,the census was carried out through direct visual count to minimise margin of error, and showed the lion population at 177 li-ons, including 60males, 66 females and 51 cubs. The next count-ing, done in May, 1974, included the census of herbivores and other animals so far not counted. In this counting, lions and other animals were counted on live baits and at watering stations. A dye was used to mark the animals from a distance and measurements of the right forepaw were taken to avoid duplication. The census put the population at 180 lions, including 40 males, 52 females as adults, 13 males and 25 females as sub-adults and 50 cubs. In 1979, the results put the figure of lion population at 205 and in 1984,their population stood at 239.The last counting in 1990 showed there were 284 lions, including 99 males, 122 females and 63 cubs.<br />
<br />
Mr H S Singh, formerly conservator of forests (wildlife circle), Juna-gadh, said that the carrying capacity of the Gir also would show up in the census of other animals, which serve as prey for the lions. He felt that food was not a limiting factor in the Gir as the popula-tion of major ungulates, which lions take as prey, had risen at the rate of 14.2 per cent a year over the last two decades. "If this trend continues with positive changes in the habitat, the Gir can support more lions that the existing population.".<br />
<br />
He pointed out that lions had disappeared from the neighbouring forests in the middle of this century. Habitat improvement in the Gir led to a growth in their population and lions had started visiting neighbouring forests again. Till 1990, lions were casual visitors to the Girnar,Mitiyala and coastal forests. Now they have started cap-turing their lost territories once more. "Now there are at least four satellite populations of lions and second generation of migrated li-ons has made the Girnar and the coastal forests their home.The dispersal path of the lion is almost the same as the path of their ex-tinction from those areas. In the Girnar area, there may be a dozen lions by now."<br />
<br />
Officials felt that the 182 sq. km forest area of Barda in the nearby zone could be an area where excess lions population could be set-tled. This area was chosen for their settlement in 1979.Now,whether man wants it or not, lions might just go there.<br />
<br />
There also was need for a better management of the Girnar, Barda, Mitiyala and coastal forests as also some neighbouring patches in an integrated manner. The time may have come for evolving a Greater Gir eco-system management. This and a host of related issues will be in a sharper focus when an analysis of the1995 lion and wildlife census in the Gir are available. The au-thorities, especially the politicians, may face an unenviable task of choosing between the pressures of vocal human population and the lion population<br />
<br />
Enumerators in the census of human beings go from doorstep to doorstep,but the lion enumerators had to be content with spotting them at one place a beast would unfailingly come in a cycle of 24 hours -the watering station.<br />
<br />
Afterwards, what stuck most vividly in the memory of many was the unusually hot season. They had known the mercury to shoot up to around 41 degrees C,buton these days it seemed to have climbed to near 43 degrees C,making the deciduous forest somnolent. The customary fragrance of the forest-- different in the summer, the winter and the monsoon-- was conspicuous by its absence, as if it too had gone on a casual leave, fearing a sun-stroke.<br />
<br />
Said Bhadresh Upadhyay, photographer from Rajkot, who was there to "shoot" the census operations: "I have been to the Gir in-numerable times, but I have never known such a hostile weather. It was so hot that at many places where baits had been kept to lure the more languid of the lions to come out from their bushy hiding for a kill,did not even bother to turn up."<br />
<br />
Explained Mr Rameshchandra Java,Gujarat's former principal chief conservator of forests;" The census had three ways of cross-checking the counting.The first one was by visual count, done by the teams sitting next to watering stations. These teams had actu-ally been at place since a few days when there was a dress re-hearsal of the drill on that day. A typical team would sit on a machan, a platform-like hide-out mostly built up a tree, and ob-serve the animals arriving for drinking water at the watering hole. This time at as many as 150 watering places, the forest department had to build these hide-outon grounds only since no tree cover was available near enough..The Gir is a dry forest and in this season most trees are bereft of leaves, save the khakhra tree."<br />
<br />
The visual count, said the official, would be noted down with exact timing, the direction from which the animal came and the direction in which it left and when. "Lions usually roam over a defined terri-tory only, each pride of the beast having some specific area marked out for itself. The timing would help eliminate the possibility of duplication if the beast was sighted within a few minutes at an-other machan in a given direction."<br />
<br />
Then, during the daylight hours, the teams would check out the ob-servations with pug marks of the lions; each beast has a separate pug mark, and experienced foresters, called shikaris(hunters, though hunting is something they never do), can identify different animals as also different lions from pugmarks.<br />
<br />
Yet another way of matching the results with the first observation was to tie a bait in the vicinity of the machan as the bait would lure out those rare ones which did not come to the watering place or a beast that had escaped being counted at the watering place.<br />
<br />
The census, said Mr Java," is fairly accurate" and provides interest-ing and important insights into the demographic profile of the Asi-atic lions and whether or not their prey-base enough as also whether or not the development policy aimed at enhancing their numbers and preserving them better was working or not.<br />
<br />
In the count of lions in 1990, it was found that there were as many as 284 animals; this time, officials are confident, the figure will go at least upto 310.They are also hoping to find a corresponding rise in the other animals which serve as prey to lions.Many expert think that 300 lions are well-above the saturation figure. The population pressure is causing the majestic beast to roam out of the Gir for-est,causing concern among the villages in Amreli,Junagadh and Porbandar districts.<br />
<br />
Today, the Gir is synonymous with the Asiatic lions, the Panthera leopersica. The species came to India some 6,000 years ago from Persia and were to be found in the areas of today's Punjab, Hary-ana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, western Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and other parts of Gujarat as well. "Somehow, lions never crossed the Narmada", said Mr Java. Nobody knows why.<br />
<br />
The last Asiatic lion, outside its Saurashtra home, was killed in 1884.This was a result of the destruction of its habitat as also a mad hunting-spree for trophy. Said Mr Java: "One factor I can think of for the elimination of the Asiatic lions from so many countries and other areas in India too is that it is a royal animal. It is not cun-ning like a tiger and would face aggression bravely, getting killed in the process."<br />
<br />
Even in Saurashtra, its area of habitat has gradually shrunk. The old Gir area extended over as much as 5,000 sq. km and included in the early part of this century areas as far as Mitiyala, Barda,Alech hills, Chorwad and the Alech hills in addition to the Girnar mountain.There were semi-wooded forests and corridors of grasslands, sparsely populated zone to enable the beast to move about freely. Pressure of human population and farming ate into this area. In the latter half of the 19th century, the lions deserted the hills in Barda and Alech, and Mitiyala in 1955.<br />
<br />
The Gir was officially made a sanctuary in 1965 and its area of 1412 sq. km is surrounded by a buffer zone of another 489 sq.km.About the steps taken since, Mr H.S.Singh, the then conser-vator of forests(wildlife circle)at Junagadh, said that 'the most im-portant aspect of the Gir today is that it has become a very stable, tremendous regenerating, self-supporting and sustaining ecosys-tem owing to its rich and diverse flora and fauna. The Gir is a unique eco-system, harbouring more than 400 plants species, some 32 species of mammals,24 species of reptiles,310 species of birds and more than 2,000 species of insects, in addition to many micro flora and fauna."<br />
<br />
This, said Mr N V Kataria, former divisional forest officer at Sa-san,was a direct result of efforts made at conservation and preser-vation of the wildlife and flora and fauna. A study by Dr Paul Joslin had revealed in 1972 that the Gir displayed an overwhelming evi-dence of accelerated degradation of the ecosystem. It warned that if nothing was done to arrest the rate of decline in the number of surviving Asiatic lions, the species might be extinct in two decades.<br />
<br />
The warning was heeded to. In 1972 itself, the government ma-chinery swung into, with a Rs.58 lakh project. The forest officials have been able to tackle serious problems facing the sanctuary such as grazing, poaching, lopping, and cutting of grass and began programmes for soil and moisture conservation, habitat improve-ment and fresh plantation. "Degradation of the system has been ar-rested and reversed and we are determined to continue our ef-forts," said Mr Indravijaysinh Jadeja, a former minister for forests in the Keshubhai Patel ministry of the Bharatiya Janata party.<br />
<br />
Actually, the Gir has almost always been in the centre of public at-tention. There has been a regular outcry against anything that might endanger its rare distinction of being the lone habitat of the Asiatic lion. There have been numerous complaint of quarrying on the periphery of the forest, protests against allowing religious places to go in for bigger construction and even at suggestions to relocate some of the lions elsewhere. "There is a tremendous pub-lic pride for the Gir and even well-intentioned suggestions such as relocation of a few beasts have been met with resistance", said Mr Yogesh Joshi,a banker in Talala. An ordinary, but regular visitor to the forest, he symbolised an average citizen's anxiety that nothing should be done to undermine the uniqueness of the Gir.<br />
<br />
It was one such popular outcry, reflected in a letter to a newspaper at the beginning of this century that led to the imposition of a ban on shooting the lions in the Gir. Lord Curzon,the viceroy then,had accepted an invitation from the Nawab of Junagadh, in whose do-main much of the Gir came, for a lion shoot. Mr. Java said: "I do not remember the name correctly, but I think it was some one called, Mr Vaishnav, who wrote an anonymous letter commenting on the inappropriateness of shooting an animal that was on the verge of extinction.The viceroy gave up the idea and instead urged the Nawab to ban lion shooting which the Nawab did."<br />
<br />
The Nawab retained the right of allowing a few privileged guests to shoot a lion initially, but after a report in 1913 that the number of li-ons in the forest had dwindled to a mere twenty, banned it alto-gether.<br />
<br />
In 1880, Major Watson noted that there only 12 lions. At one point of time early in 20th century, their number was put at as low as five animals. In 1920 Sir P.R. Cadell estimated the lion population at 50.<br />
<br />
The first organised census of the Gir lions was done in April,1936, which showed there were 287 beasts in all, inclusive of 143 males,91 females and 53 cubs.It was based on counting and measuring the pug marks at watering places, assuming that a lion must drink at least once and seldom more than once in 24 hours. Some 700 workers were engaged in the enumeration.<br />
<br />
The next counting was done by Mr Wynter Byth in April,1950,on the pattern of the 1936 census, save that the pug marks counting and measurements were taken not at the watering stations but on roads, paths and train tracks. Their number was put at between 219 and 227, of which between 179 and 187 were grown up beasts. There have been censuses during the intervening years too.<br />
<br />
In 1968,the census was carried out through direct visual count to minimise margin of error, and showed the lion population at 177 li-ons, including 60males, 66 females and 51 cubs. The next count-ing, done in May, 1974, included the census of herbivores and other animals so far not counted. In this counting, lions and other animals were counted on live baits and at watering stations. A dye was used to mark the animals from a distance and measurements of the right forepaw were taken to avoid duplication. The census put the population at 180 lions, including 40 males, 52 females as adults, 13 males and 25 females as sub-adults and 50 cubs. In 1979, the results put the figure of lion population at 205 and in 1984,their population stood at 239.The last counting in 1990 showed there were 284 lions, including 99 males, 122 females and 63 cubs.<br />
<div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivV46JXN1C1vk0AbEF8ajTdWmYRI447_iMj7YxdzQkZiqeYFk4H8CZ4Hu2gIQHAB14Mw4XJwLpXVeEwPgQGUsIa13CJEQvH1CfjO1VUlC0Sedyf80XdwGyGkNvOBe88eojbIAEkFEEAMg0/s1600-h/lions-mauling-a-zebra_are_you_next[1].jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="427" kt="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivV46JXN1C1vk0AbEF8ajTdWmYRI447_iMj7YxdzQkZiqeYFk4H8CZ4Hu2gIQHAB14Mw4XJwLpXVeEwPgQGUsIa13CJEQvH1CfjO1VUlC0Sedyf80XdwGyGkNvOBe88eojbIAEkFEEAMg0/s640/lions-mauling-a-zebra_are_you_next%5B1%5D.jpg" width="640" /></a></div> <br />
Mr H S Singh, formerly conservator of forests (wildlife circle), Juna-gadh, said that the carrying capacity of the Gir also would show up in the census of other animals, which serve as prey for the lions. He felt that food was not a limiting factor in the Gir as the popula-tion of major ungulates, which lions take as prey, had risen at the rate of 14.2 per cent a year over the last two decades. "If this trend continues with positive changes in the habitat, the Gir can support more lions that the existing population.".<br />
<br />
He pointed out that lions had disappeared from the neighbouring forests in the middle of this century. Habitat improvement in the Gir led to a growth in their population and lions had started visiting neighbouring forests again. Till 1990, lions were casual visitors to the Girnar,Mitiyala and coastal forests. Now they have started cap-turing their lost territories once more. "Now there are at least four satellite populations of lions and second generation of migrated li-ons has made the Girnar and the coastal forests their home.The dispersal path of the lion is almost the same as the path of their ex-tinction from those areas. In the Girnar area, there may be a dozen lions by now."<br />
<br />
Officials felt that the 182 sq. km forest area of Barda in the nearby zone could be an area where excess lions population could be set-tled. This area was chosen for their settlement in 1979.Now,whether man wants it or not, lions might just go there.<br />
<br />
There also was need for a better management of the Girnar, Barda, Mitiyala and coastal forests as also some neighbouring patches in an integrated manner. The time may have come for evolving a Greater Gir eco-system management. This and a host of related issues will be in a sharper focus when an analysis of the1995 lion and wildlife census in the Gir are available. The au-thorities, especially the politicians, may face an unenviable task of choosing between the pressures of vocal human population and the lion populationTushar Bhatt's Gujarathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06743579072111022001noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4358008260678434433.post-65823939884574195732010-01-29T21:25:00.000-08:002010-01-29T21:25:00.308-08:00An Indian-cum-Euoropean Technocrat:Prof. Jaroslav Fric<meta content="text/html; charset=utf-8" http-equiv="Content-Type"></meta><meta content="Word.Document" name="ProgId"></meta><meta content="Microsoft Word 11" name="Generator"></meta><meta content="Microsoft Word 11" name="Originator"></meta><link href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5CTUSHAR%7E1%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml" rel="File-List"></link><o:smarttagtype name="City" namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype name="PlaceName" namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype name="country-region" namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype name="place" namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"></o:smarttagtype><style>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 9.2pt;"><span lang="EN-GB">Tushar Bhatt</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 9.2pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 9.2pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"> The almond-shaped face,lined with furrows the plough of time has made,is sporting a friendly smile. The eyes,peering from behind the metal-rimmed spectacles,also show a bit of age,with bags and crow-feet.He would easily pass off as an elderly,portly,slightly prosperous-looking foreign tourist,with an obligatory camera on the shoulder.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 9.2pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"> A foreigner he is,but the 69-year-old Prof.Jaroslav Fric (pronounced freech) is more at home <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">India</st1:place></st1:country-region> than his appearance and English ,spoken with a central European accent, would betray.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 9.2pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"> For one thing,he does not wear on his face the perpetual,mandatory scowl that elderly,slightly-prosperous looking foreign tourists carry as a standard baggage--"beggers,flies,filth and awful living conditions".</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 9.2pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"> For another,he loves India and has been trying to understand the psyche of this ancient land for projecting an image of India.Fric has been visiting and working in India producing hi-tech audio-visual presentations right from 1971-72.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 9.2pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"> It was Fric who helped produce an audio-visual show,The Indian People put up in the central pavilion at Asia-72.It was again he who was called upon to visualise and install <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Crystal</st1:placename> <st1:placename w:st="on">River</st1:placename></st1:place> commemorating the memory of the late Mrs Indira Gandhi at the spot she was killed at her Safdarjung house.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 9.2pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"> After three years of work last year,he put together a hi-tech multi-media show,using the latest laser technology , at the Akshardahm complex of the Bochasanwasi Aksharpurushottam Sanstha of the Swaminarayan sect, a fusion of technology and ancient Indian philosophy,of the physical and meta-physical ideas.He has just got a bronze at the 9th International Audio-visual and Multi-Media Festival,held in Munich ,West Germany.There were as many as 135 entries at the festival,and the judges were experts from Germany,France,Spain,England and the U.S., which means it was not easy to impress them with a show that tries to explain intricacies of the Indian concept of Sat-chit-anand.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 9.2pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"> Artistic and technological aspects apart,the very production of the audio-visual presentation ,involving spiritual and similar abstract ideas would present a formidable challenge even to an Indian producer because the aim of the show would be to hold the interest of viewers,familiar or unfamiliar with the notions,educated or unlettered,Indians or foreigners.For a person like Fric,born and brought up in Czchoslovakia,it would mean a complete re-orientation of the mind without any guarantee of being able to communicate it all to others. Say Sadhu Atmaswarup Swami and Sadhu Brahmprakash Swami of the sect: "That the show was not only hailed by thousands of Indian visitors to the complex in Gandhinagar,but also attracted the attention of an international specialist gathering indicated that Fric had been able to establish this communication link; he showed what the sect wanted to show,showed in such a beautiful manner,and managed to make an impact as well." Born on June 9,1924,Fric comes from a family that had traditionally been linked with the arts. But it was by no means a family of ascetics for whom transformation from one spiritual track to another may not be an insurmountable problem. Fric has been a down-to-earth man,not mentioning the fact that he lived in the then eastern bloc where man and the party were everything and there was nothing beyond.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 9.2pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"> His education too ,therefore,did not equip him to take on the meta-physical.The first steps of his studies took him into the world of technology; Fric studied during the Second World War,when the regular universities had closed,at the vocational school of electronics in Brno,and later ,in the wake of liberation, at the electro-technical faculty of the Czech Technical University.The broad knowledge in electronics led him into research work and at first he worked at the Czechosolvak Research Institute of Nuclear Physics.This would mean he was equipped to be neck-deep in nuclear physics.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 9.2pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"> The artistic gene in Fric appears to have made all the difference.To him physics was not a mere abstract science.With a rare sensitivity,he seemed to find "an abundance of interesting visual phenomena - photoelastic effects,tale-telling records of traces of a synthesis of nuclear elements." He was intrigued by the process of visualisation itself,the taking hold of the apparently "invisible" in the physical processes, in tranforming those processes into visible processes and which for outside viewers remained concealed.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 9.2pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"> A chance- he calls it "luck" - made him participate in the setting up ofan exhibition called "Aoms for Peace" in 1953,providing him with an opportunity to get acquainted with the different means of audio-visual presentation.He pondered about the multiplication of space,processes of scene-creation,techniques and tricks of stage and exhibition architecture.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 9.2pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"> All of which made him give up his research to join at the national enterprise for exhibition design in Prague,and helped create the lighting techniques at the Czech pavilion at the Brussels Export-58.A string of other assignments followed,culminating in his founding in 1969, a creative team named SCARS (Science-Art-Sense) at the Czech centre of fine arts.The teams operates from there even today.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 9.2pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"> The grounding in physics and experience in the production of presentations led to a happy synthesis of his scientific outlook,which helped produce solutions to technological and logistical problemss, and his artistic talent,scaling new heights in audio-visual production. He also learnt how to organise talent for diverse jobs needed in such a production,managed to bring together a team of 40 people,and honed skilled in communications so that he could not only understand what his world clients wanted but also give them what they wanted,sometimes writing scrips himself.The first major work of his to attract notice in India was at the 1972 Asian fair,an extensive multi-vision fresco,including severtal freely linked independent parts. It was composed of three parts on the subjects of Indian people, the message and <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">India</st1:place></st1:country-region>.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 9.2pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"> Fric and his team had by now become an internationally-known professional group,bagging prestigeous assignments for audio-visual presentations.Among the major ones were a show on the Birth of Europe for the European Community pavilion at Osaka Expo,Heritage of Ages on Iran,Victory of the people about his home land,50 years of Pahalvi dynasy again in Iran,The People of Czechoslovakia,the World of Fairy Tales for a Japanese gallery, a UNESCO show on prehistoric life,the Testament of Nehru for Asia-82 In the Constellation of Equals for the then Soviet Union.He has also co-authored a number of books and articles with other writers.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 9.2pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"> But the Gandhinagar project was different from all others he had done thus far.It presented a challenge that seemed well-nigh impossible to meet.The monks of the sect had after roaming all over the world,scouting for suitable group of people to produce their audio-visual programme for a permament exhibition-cum-museum complex in Gujarat's capital.They heard of Fric,were impressed by his accomplishments and sounded him on the proposal for Gandhinagar.At first,although an adventurous professional,Fric was sceptical.He looked at the monks,dressed in orange and presenting an outward appearance of being simple,if not simpletons.His brief was to come from the head of the sect, Pramukh Swami,who did not speak English.Indian philosophy was even more mystifying to Fric than Greek and Latin.That was more than three years ago.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 9.2pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"> Now, with the multi-media show running regularly week-in-and-week-out for a year,Fric is a man with a totally different perception.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 9.2pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"> Fric had just risen from an afternoon catnap,snatching forty winks on a blue bed,rolled out under the open,azure sky in the spacious compound of the Shahibaug temple."You see,the basic problem was for me to grasp abstract ideas of the Indian philosophy such as Atma (soul). The concept of Atma being forever pure and eternal is very different from that of the soul in the west.I did not know even if after grasping it ,I would be able to make an audio-visual show from it."</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 9.2pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"> In the early 1970s,when he had first arrived in <st1:country-region w:st="on">India</st1:country-region>,he had put up a five-star hotel in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Bombay</st1:place></st1:city>, to find from the window scenes of stark poverty. "Shanty colonies,emaciated people,begging children.I cried all night on the first day,despairing at the thought of how to project a positive image of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">India</st1:place></st1:country-region> out of the immediate impressions that outsiders got like these scenes gave." Fric says,"the image of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">India</st1:place></st1:country-region> abroad is of a poverty-ridden place,full of squalor,backwardness." But he persisted and was able to see the strengths of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">India</st1:place></st1:country-region>, a vast ocean of talent,manpower and untapped wealth.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 9.2pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"> He says the problem the Gandhinagar show presented was even more vexing.For so far in his career,he had worked on a physical plane,showing landmarks of either physical progress,technology or history of a people.One had to understand the history of a place,imbibe its spirit,but it was not impossible. "But to translate philosophy into a multi-media was a different cup of tea",he says, even now unable to articulate as to how exactly he did it.A group of seven monks helped him and occasionally he would see the head of the sect.All his life,admits Fric,he had worked for money -- " with a profit motive". The monks or their organisation were in no way capable of matching,say what the Sony of Japan might pay for a multi-media show.Yet,he was inspired to take up the assignment,travelled all over the country,logging more than 30,000 kms.,went to temples, read up history,philosophy,and anything that might help him.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 9.2pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"> The resulting Sat-chit-anand show presents the message of philosophy easily ; man's futile pursuits of temporary happiness and the path of eternal bliss, sat-chit-anand by realising Atma and Paramatma as propounded by the Vedas and Upnishads.The show is presented with the aid of six dieo and 8 slide projectors,integrating artistic,optical light and sound effects on 14 screens.It is a computerised production, using a laser disc,leading to an exciting display.Since it was opened in November last year, a large number of people have seen it.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 9.2pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"> Fric was in Ahmedabad for an inspection of the equipment. "I was fearful of the toll that the dust,continuous running of the show,the weather fluctuations might take on the presentation.But, I am amazed at the way care has been taken for it; so well-cared the equipment has been that it looks as if it is new." He has spoken to Czech president Victor Havel about the show and when he comes to <st1:country-region w:st="on">India</st1:country-region> in February next on a visit,<st1:place w:st="on">Havel</st1:place> is expected to come to Gandhinagar to see it. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 9.2pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"> So Indianised Fric has become that he has become a great admirer and to some extent follower of the eastern philosophy. He has given up somking and drinking alcohol,does not think that wordly goods can give happiness as his western brethern believe.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 9.2pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"> He had purused the profit motive all his career.What profit did he make from the Gandhinagar experience ? With a smile dancing in his eyes,the Czech says: "I have derived a great deal of mental peace for this project.I have done my work as best I could do even when money was decidedly not much.I did not even think of the fame it might get me." It got him that too.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 9.2pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 9.2pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 9.2pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 9.2pt;"><span lang="EN-GB"> </span></div>Tushar Bhatt's Gujarathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06743579072111022001noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4358008260678434433.post-58314547322499916722010-01-21T20:44:00.000-08:002010-01-28T05:06:58.256-08:00A Century old,clicking and active,Pranlal Patel,Wizard of CameraTushar Bhatt<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgLlgQIrekbw8xKeRerIn2NODv1YHIAc8DUQo9z1l7KYUh9nQXGkMp4z2zfmruU8gONiWcYr2ohNDQO1ImHIGQE_9U2dPPnHwYAglcQfzrO77sv08rfwLxkO4h5PyealTKuTc7NwImdMFI/s1600-h/_MG_0228.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgLlgQIrekbw8xKeRerIn2NODv1YHIAc8DUQo9z1l7KYUh9nQXGkMp4z2zfmruU8gONiWcYr2ohNDQO1ImHIGQE_9U2dPPnHwYAglcQfzrO77sv08rfwLxkO4h5PyealTKuTc7NwImdMFI/s400/_MG_0228.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
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<br />
It all began in an innocuous way. <br />
It was a hot day in May in 1940.The world was, for several months, at war for the second time in the 20th century. The Quit India movement was a good two years away in the future and the independence of the country as yet a dream.<br />
Thirty years old then Pranlal Patel, a Rolie-flex camera slung on the shoulder, set out for Kashmir, long hailed as paradise on the earth, with a return ticket from Ahmedabad to Sri-nagar via Rawalpindi. Inclusive of the bus-fare from Rawalpindi to Srinagar, the cost per head was a meagre Rs.42.5. But the young man was not from among the rich <img alt="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq8EWqGbktP-_hlnJ__1sYTvebenAyiiImpibXEiTtr2QyyfPEMwhydahOLhHfXGRBKBNvLJbjt8WLzBDNmVAPT6xmwL8cC_x1lqgVx0WiqqeGVY9-TuzArSzKEwWfNWxOpKUMkYmyseHS/s1600/_MG_0228.jpg" height="688" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq8EWqGbktP-_hlnJ__1sYTvebenAyiiImpibXEiTtr2QyyfPEMwhydahOLhHfXGRBKBNvLJbjt8WLzBDNmVAPT6xmwL8cC_x1lqgVx0WiqqeGVY9-TuzArSzKEwWfNWxOpKUMkYmyseHS/s1600/_MG_0228.jpg" style="cursor: -moz-zoom-in;" width="1031" />in search of pleasure.<br />
He was setting out to take photographs, in an era when a camera was a rare thing to pos-sess, more a hobby of the wealthy or the crazy. A Kodak 120 reel cost 14 annas. Like the anna coins, the 120 film too is extinct now.<br />
Every thing clicked in the life of today’ camera wizard Pranlal Patel, internationally reputed pictorialist. His speciality has been his mastery over Black & White photography. So much so that the photographs taken during that trip continue to fascinate even today, not only because of their excellence but as a collection of historic value. It effectively brings out how much more enchanting was Kashmir just 70 years ago and what damage man has done to it. In the process the photographs become an irrefutable witness to an era for posterity, far more trustworthy than words.<br />
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Even among the true photo-artists, Pranlal Patel, an Ahmedabad (Gujarat)-based lens man is the rarest of the rare. Active in photography for nearly 70 years, Pranlal in 2010 was in the 101st year of life, and still kicking and CLICKING. He still wields a camera, walks up-right, though slowly, and has most of his slightly yellowish teeth intact and in service. <br />
The 99-year-old Patel is still in photography. He took it up as a hobby in 1932. In no time it became a supplementary profession and then got transformed into a life-long passion.<br />
A representative collection of his vintage photographs at Jaipur (Rajsthan), in March, 2009, has been described by Pranlal as fulfillment of a long standing desire. “I have no desire left unfulfilled. Now, I am waiting for one way travel on God’s train.” He brushed aside protests from listeners. “I have had everything in life.”<br />
He has dozens of albums and has held numerous exhibitions. His work was not just superb photography but also a social, visual history. Most of them though exhibited are yet to be published.<br />
He is curious like a child, and again like an innocent small boy, gets easily absorbed into the present moment, here and now. Behind his spectacles, eyes sparkle with abundant in-terest in life. He is equally comfortable with the children, youngsters.<br />
He is a simple person, though certainly not a simpleton, frugal with words but fluent in thought. What keeps him fit and full of zest for living? “I don’t know. I do nothing special. I eat normal Gujarati vegetarian meal, do padmasan, and eat five pieces of dates with ghee (clarified butter) every morning and drink milk. I regard myself as an eternal student, keen to learn newer things. I have many Gurus; even my grandson Piyush is my Guru because he taught me a lot about harnessing computer as a tool for photography. Among my clos-est friends are two noted young photographers, awards-winner Vivek Desai and Ketan Modi, who runs a highly-acclaimed photography training institution. Vivek is also my dear-est disciple. I am proud of today’s young generation”.<br />
Pranlal is very popular among young professionals and helps them a lot by patiently pass-ing on insights obtained through decades of photography. His photography has been mostly based on box cameras of the old genre and in black and white, without using the flash. He firmly believes that “the real art of photography does not reside in gadgets, whether a flash light or the modern-day digital cameras. It does not rely solely on composi-tion, light and shade, but on the eyes and fingers. There must be a perfect co-ordination between the eyes and the fingers. In turn the eyes and fingers must harmonise with the camera in such a way that they know simultaneously what unusual feature is there in the subject, compose in a way that highlights that feature and decide in unison when to press the shutter. They must become one with each other and the subject being clicked.”<br />
Alas, there is no device in the market that can achieve this feat for the lesser mortals! Those who have learnt the secret are photo-artists, the Masters. The rest are slaves of technology.<br />
Of course, people like Pranlal can throw some hints. “You should think before you pick up the camera to shoot. Most of us do not contemplate in advance. Before going in for shoot-ing, you should think of some unusual angle, slant, and symbolism, colours, light and shadow in the composition. Almost every thing has been previously photographed. You have to bring out something that is different.”<br />
He says “It doe not mean that you should ignore day-to-day life. It means you must learn to concentrate in the present assignment, not just take a fleeting interest in the subject of the assignment but view it as the most important thing in your life, here and now. Your mind should neither wander hither and thither nor waver. You must see what is in front of you at the present moment. Nothing else matters. This cannot be accomplished overnight. You have to practise endlessly. Like a music maker you must never stop doing the riyaz all your life.”<br />
Pranlal quotes an example. Ages ago, he was on an assignment to create a photo portfolio of the new building of a local company. Says he, “I could have done it in two or three weeks. But I took nearly six months. I would go to the building, sit in different places outside and study the light and shade and the time. I wanted to find out the timing and season when there would be best sunlight. I did not even open my camera bag till I had decided that in the forenoon of May there would be ideal light. The portfolio was much appreciated.” <br />
Pranlal’s photographs are not only technically perfect, underlining the superb sense of composition, and skilful management of light and shade but also are so evocative that they seem to have an enduring life of their own, vibrant, vivacious and memorable.<br />
Another trait that separates Pranlal in the rare category is the habit of preserving and main-taining his thousands of negative, repository of images of over 70 years. Together they are a massive documentation of India’s march of progress and social change.<br />
These images also seem to re-assert the prime position black and white pictures occupied in the art of photography, notwithstanding the rapid advancement of colour photography. There is a stream of defeatism about black and white photography these days and in many cities there are no studios that will wash, develop and print black and white pictures.<br />
Pranlal Patel’s pictures celebrate the glory of black and white, re-inforcing what W.D. Wright, a British professor of Applied Optics at the Imperial College of Science & Technol-ogy, observed years ago. He contended that the black and white photographs may appear to the viewers more real than the colour pictures. Over the years, viewers have learned to supply their own colour information to a black and white photograph.” You may get closer to reality with colour but the closer you get the more obvious it becomes that it is a picture, (and) not the real thing.”<br />
Pranlal is reluctant to take to colour photography. He thinks that the black and white photo-graphs have an immense capacity for subtlety, rich sensitivity of detail and graphic urgency. To him it also is a stimulating mental challenge to transform every colour around us into two shades of black and white only and bring a still photograph to life.<br />
Pranlal has, over the past seven decades of photography, earned a reputation as a pictori-alist, extending far beyond the shores of India, bagging awards and prizes. His work has been published in international media for decades. Pranlal has an innate sense of history. For example, take his photographs of the Sabarmati River in Ahmedabad over the past half a century. They instantly tell you a visual story of the degradation of the ecology. Or take the images of a typical wedding in the Patel farming community over past half century. They highlight subtle changes in customs and attire, attitudes and behaviour over time.<br />
At his age most people would be bed-ridden, if alive. Countless others would have hung up their professional equipment and sunk into senility. Pranlal continues to explore life with the same sense of wonder and romance that first made him give up his job as a teacher in a municipal primary school in Ahmedabad.<br />
Born on January 1, 1910, Pranlal has come up the hard way in life, but the harshness has left no trace on his personality. A man with a largish nose, twinkling eyes hidden behind a 25 per cent darkness goggles glasses, he is quick to smile and enthuse. Hailing originally from Jamnagar district, he traces his family home now to Kolki in Upleta taluka of Saurash-tra. He grew up at his maternal uncle’s place, working in Ahmedabad in petty jobs to help family. “I have sold peanuts, soda and lemon soft drinks near Victor cinema hall in Fuvara in olden days, delivered at home newspapers of Ahmedabad, which included at one time Gandhiji’s Navjivan. Remembering his childhood, Pranlal says: “I was, however, a bright boy from the very beginning, who was made to jump several years from Standard I in pri-mary school. I passed my vernacular final (which was not the final year of secondary stage in education but of the primary stage, but in those days, something of a qualification).I be-came a primary school teacher, with an initial salary of Rs.15 supplemented with one or two tuitions”<br />
But, recalls Pranlal, he had an urge to do something different, something so well that peo-ple will remember him by.” This yearning brought me in contact with photography in 1932 when I acquired a box camera. In the early years, I learnt a lot from Col.Balwant Bhatt, an ace photographer himself.” He does not make any claims, but Pranlal must have had a gift from birth to identify visuals, compose them automatically and then capture them exactly as he saw them with his mind’s eye. He began to work as a free-lance photographer even while continuing as a primary teacher. A meticulous diary-keeper, Pranlal noted in 1937 that he had made an income Rs.710 in that year from photography. In 1938, the figure jumped to Rs.1, 241. Not much by today’s standards, but as Pranlal notes humorously: “The rupee was not so cheap in those days.”<br />
Remembers Pranlal: “I was debating with myself if I should continue as a teacher or do something else that will make me stand out. I had been going to Ravishankar Raval’s school of fine arts,dabbling in painting to see if that was going to be my way of life. I think it was around 1938-39 that I got an opportunity to see an exhibition of photographs of Kash-mir, taken by a famous photographer, Abid Saiyed of Palanpur. My mind was, as if, under a spell. I too wanted to capture in the photo frame the beautiful landscapes, natural scenes, snow-capped mountains, the serene life style and lovely Kashmiri people.”<br />
Abid was a sympathetic listener to the young man and not only gave him all the dope, but also a promise to speak to Kodak people to give him film at the dealers’ rate. Three friends from Mumbai and Ahmedabad agreed to join Pranlal on the safari to Kashmir. Before they undertook the trip, something happened that landed Pranlal full-time into photography.<br />
Recalls Pranlal: “One day I was taking class III in Madalpur municipal school, teaching Gu-jarati to the pupils, A camera, as usual hung on the back of my chair. An Inspector arrived from the municipal administrative office for his annual inspection, saw my Super Iconta, and asked: ‘What is this?’ I told him politely it was a camera, to which the inspector retorted loudly,’ If you are so fond of photography and the camera, then open a studio on Gandhi Road. Such things are no good for an ideal teacher.’ I was stunned.”<br />
Pranlal could not sleep that night. The next morning, he went to his principal to tell him he was quitting. “I was rattled by the rude remark. I had the confidence that I would be able to eke out a living from photography, my obsession. Already I was making Rs.200 a month as side income from photography at social and official functions. It was a good enough amount to live on.” <br />
The young man who went to Srinagar in May, 1940, via Rawalpindi, spent a month in the valley. “Among other things, at Srinagar we stayed in a shikara for three days, paying a princely sum Rs.2.50 a day, and then moved on.” The days would be spent photographing the heart-stopping beauty of the Kashmiri landscape and people.<br />
They went to Pahelgam and to remote villages, mountainsides, water-falls and everywhere in the beautiful valley. “One could buy a hundred apricots for six annas. Oh, it was like liv-ing in paradise for a month.”<br />
Says Pranlal :”What all we saw can never be described in words or even in pictures. It was an era of black and white photography, and of mechanical cameras, with no modern tech-nology available to aid a lens man. I took pictures of Kashmir with these limitations, expos-ing fifty rolls of XX film. These rolls were washed locally in Srinagar.On return to Ahmeda-bad, we started enlarging them into prints. Friends and others who saw them exclaimed words like Oh! Wow! Fantastic! Wonderful! Exra-ordinary! Balwant Bhatt helped and guided me into sending these pictures to national and international magazines, earning me a name as a pictorialist.That was a golden period, those days 30 days in Kashmir. I yearn to go Kashmir once more, and capture as it looks today.”<br />
The lucky break into photography via Kashmir made the life for Pranlal. Scores of journals in and outside the country carried his pictures every now and then. He never looked back, becoming more and more famous as a pictorialist with rare sensitivity and dedication, trav-elling widely in the country, capturing events like the wedding in the Mysore Royal family in the fifties and that in the Royal family of Rajkot. He has a huge collection of rare pictures of cities, famines, landscapes and people.<br />
Among the prized possessions are huge albums of photographs of the Iron Man of India, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel whose every visit to Ahmedabad whose mayor he earlier had been captured on his camera. His presence was so routine that when Junagadh princely State was liberated from the Nawab’s rule and merged in the Union, Pranlal was present in the city when Sardar arrived. He hailed Pranlal, saying,” if I come, you too should. Do you keep tracking me? Is it not so?” Pranlal did a lot of photography during the Quit India movement. His pictures were lapped up by photo-hungry newspapers and magazine. His earnings shot up and he filed his Income Tax returns in 1947, to the great surprise of offi-cials. It was hard to imagine so much income from free-lance photography only in those days. Nearly 90 per cent of the surplus was used in buying newer equipment.<br />
Along with still photography, he also undertook movie photography. He filmed extensively and in 1947 and 1957, recorded some 16,000 feet of movie of a religious head’s pilgrimage of Vrajbhoomi; it was so massive that the divine personality got tired by merely watching it. But the photographer was indefatigable.<br />
His wife Damayanti, their son, Anand, their two daughters and grand-children all have taken to photography. Damayanti was a self-made darkroom wizard who could rescue very fuzzy photographs by dexterously doing washing, developing and printing. She was a sort of record-keeper too. <br />
Some 40 years ago when Queen Elizabeth came to Ahmedabad, the state government wanted a hundred copies of an old photograph of the Somnath temple. Pranlal was not at home when Manubhai Trivedi, an information official, came to their studio-cum-residence. Damayanti requested the officer to wait for five minutes during which she spotted the me-ticulously preserved negative. Within ten more minutes she came out of the darkroom with a perfect print of the old picture. The government got a hundred copies before morning. She passed away a few years ago, leaving a big void in Pranlal’s life. His grandson looks after the library work now<br />
Today,Pranlal looks back with great satisfaction that he will leave behind foot-prints in the form of photographic prints to remember him by. But he has by no means called it a day. Tell him of a topic and his eyes shine. A routine day, till recently, began at 5.30 in the morn-ing when he would wake up. After breakfast at 9 a m he would set out on foot from his home for his studio, a distance of two kilometres. If the son and others were not using the studio, he would get into the darkroom, working up to 1 in the afternoon.<br />
He helps youngsters willingly in learning photography, emphasing the importance of com-position, painstaking care for capturing details, judging light correctly and developing and printing the photographs meticulously.<br />
He advocates working not only with body and mind, but also heart. His own involvement in the work is such that he does not remember time or gets tired or hungry when engrossed in photography. Some years ago the Kankaria lake in Ahmedabad had a huge fish population dying out suddenly and the stench of the dead fish floating in the water was awful. But Pranlal took out a boat, taking his own time in capturing just one memorable picture of the dead fish panned by empty boats on either side of the frame. He never noticed the stink, as he clicked away till he had captured the right composition.<br />
He says “photography is something done with the eye, the mind and the heart. The equip-ment, though important, is secondary. With the best equipment in the world, you could turn up with lousy pictures. With primitive equipment but alert mind, you could transform ordi-nary things into photographs of extra-ordinary charm and beauty.”<br />
He generally does not use a flash and none of his memorable pictures has had the use of artificial lights. He believes that the real fruits of good photography cannot be reaped unless one takes an equal amount of care in washing, developing and printing. His one-liner to aspiring photographers is “Do not compromise, either in quality, costs or time de-voted in getting a good picture. Quality always remains in the vogue, whatever the era, whatever the state of technological development. It was so yesterday, it is so today, and will be so tomorrow and the day after too.”<br />
It is all pure Zen of photography.Tushar Bhatt's Gujarathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06743579072111022001noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4358008260678434433.post-34321102968586231642010-01-21T02:58:00.000-08:002010-01-21T02:59:33.676-08:00An Engineering Don & Gentleman Farmer: Vithu PatelTushar Bhatt<br />
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His eyes twinkled with mischief as his right hands shot up in greetings.The walking gait betrayed a bit of a problem in the leg but the man,clad in kurta and pyjama,moved forward to receive visitors,genuine pleasure writ large on the pock-marked ,bespectacled face.The enthusiasm, the warmth and the lively interest all effectively concealed the real age of the farmer, Vithal J.Patel,who has done pioneering experiments in agro-forestry for nearly two decades now in this corner of Saurashtra.<br />
As he showed around the plantation ,he stopped at a straight-going tree,some 15-foot high."Look at this,it is a real gold mine.It is a red sandal wood tree,around two years and eight months old.In its life span,it will earn me around Rs.six lakhs.Remember,it has come up in an area where last monsoon we got hardly 14 inches of rainfall."The tree was not a solitary example;time and again,Vithalbhai would stop at a tree,pointing out its height,reeling off details about when it was planted,what it was given and how it has grown.The refrain was common;with an innovative outlook in agro-forestry,one could turn even a small field into a veritable money-spinner.The emphasis was so much on what even a small farm-holder could achieve and not so much on what corporate entities could grow.<br />
Vithubhai, as he was commonly known, was a different kind of a gentleman farmer, who was fond of experimenting scientifically; his methods were so unconventional that they aroused ire in equal proportions among the forestry officials and environmentalists, although for different reasons. He had taken to agro-forestry in an aggressive manner, making his farm work like a factory, exercising strict on the various factors.<br />
But,his most unconventional method was to plant saplings rather closely,making them struggle for survival. "We all know of the Darwinian theory of the survival of the fittest.We also know that struggle tends to make one sturdy and stronger.Vithubhai was for years away from farms and was known as Dr.V.J.Patel in his earlier avtar as a teacher. Formerly a professor in civil engineering,he was a noted expert on dam designs and earthquakes who took to farm forestry after leaving his teaching assignment some twenty years ago.<br />
A man with scientific training and a scientific temper,he thought a lot about the survival of the fittest theory to come to a conclusion that for a healthy growth trees -- or, saplings must be made to struggle, and yet they should not be starved of nutrients so that they do not die out for want of enough food for all. He resorted to growing trees in closer proximity than what the forest officials would dream of, add generous doze of fertilisers and other nutrients and provide adequate water to make them bloom. Not only do they bloom,they go tall faster than the widely-spaced trees because each closely panted tree was racing upwards to receive as much sunshine as possible.<br />
Foresters generally follow the precept that trees,if widely spaced when planted, develop better. In the experiments of close proximity plantation carried out at Surendrabag it was found that such trees grew faster than the ones grown along conventional lines; and the number of trees is also higher in closely planted places-- some three to five times more in numbers.<br />
Said Vithubhai: " I am a farmer,earning my bread working on my farm. Many of us farmers live below the poverty line and struggle to survive ; one could not hope to make us invest money and time in the development of degraded land." That led to another poser: If the people living near these degraded land pieces were not ready for development who else would go and help in afforestation ? "The central question to which we need to address ourselves is this-- who will develop the degraded land which has poor fertility.We can rephrase the query-- can we interest the people to undertake afforestation on a degraded land?"<br />
He himself came out with the obvious reply: " It is possible if it can be shown that high income could be generated from the development of wasteland.The productivity level of wasteland should be increased by using simple agro or silvi-cultural practices"<br />
He set out in search of the answers to these and many related questions which form a part of the nation's search as well for a viable farm strategy that combines tree cultivation too.The search ,in the case of Vithubhai,took him on a dusty road that always kicked up some controversy or the other. In the late 1970s and early 80s,he ran foul of the environmentalists because of his experiments with eucalyptus. Instead of planting them widely spaced, he packed in as many as 10,000 saplings in an acre(or,25,000 trees a hectare),showing the small farmers how to reap bumper profits.But since eucalyptus was decried as devouring water resources, Vithubhai switched to other trees,and with equal success.<br />
Apart from evolving viable practices for close proximity plantation,Vithubhai had also succeeded in shorterning the cutting period from five to three years so that the trees started paying off earlier than on a conventional plantation.<br />
The 70 plus-year-old Vithubhai was no crank to be brushed aside lightly. A leftist in his younger days,farming ran in his blood.His father,Jivrajbhai Patel, was awarded Udyan Pundit title by the union government,for his best ber (Zyiphus mauritiana Lamk); he was asked how did he manage to do so well,and answered with a characteristic wry humour that agriculture department of the government had still not discovered him to educate.<br />
Vithubhai took to engineering studies,getting his doctorate in West Germany in 1957,and then teaching at a number of institutions such as Birla College,Pilani,the IIT,Kanpur and the government engineering college,Jabalpur.More than 70 papers of his on engineering subjects got published,many of them abroad.More than 40 of these were included in the Engineering Index, a digest on engineering research published in the U.S.<br />
Vithubhai made several innovations in the cultivation of ber, applying newer methods of insect control and hormone regulation which led to a fruit free from insects of uniform size.<br />
He ridiculed the idea of mere conservation of forest cover for the sake of green cover.His thrust is to arrive at a strategy that leads to man controlling the cycle of tree felling in such a way that while there is tree cover,he also gets enough timber and other wood.Vithubhai felt that newer methods,such as his high density cultivation strategy,helped by addition of nutrients and fertilisers in enough dosage and with just enough watering through drip irrigation c0uld help a farmer achieve wonders in tree cultivation even on his degraded or wasteland.He was not advocating a switch-away from all food crops to tree cultivation only,but to a judicious mix of the agriculture,horticulture and tree cultivation to help restore the lost ecological balance.The Surendrabad plantation had successfully grown trees such as teak (Tectonia grandis), Bakain neem (Melia azedarch), Indian cork tree(Millingtonia hortensis),Savan(Gmelina arborea), sandalwood and Red sanders at Jivdiv Agro-fofrestry Centre.<br />
He said that in tree cultivation,there has been a shortcoming in strategy. "All our experiences in the past are based on the rain-fed forests where trees got water only during the monsoon,no fertiliser was given to them and thus they were starved of nutrients and water for a longer period of the year." What he did at Surendrabag was to bring about a situation where the growth of the life system of trees was in an environment which met adequately its needs for nutrients and water,preferably on a daily basis. Essentially,providing enough water and nutrients were two important lessons of the green revolution which had been applied to farm-forestry." Just as the irrigated wheat gives more output as compared to the rainfed crop,irrigated tree plantations should give five to ten times more growth.To this, if we add increased bio-mass in early stages due to increased population of trees, one will start realising that the earnings go up steeply", said Vithubhai.<br />
The high density plantation that he tried out has several advantages over the conventional farm forestry,he said.These included: plant population that is three to ten times more ,growth in vertical direction of the trees because of close spacing,the sun rays do not fall on the ground because of this and the evaporation losses are cut down,leading to a better utilisation of irrigation through a drip,growth of weeds is reduced because of the absence of the sun at the ground level,the waiting period for the first cutting or thinning can be reduced from six years to three or four years.A farmer can plant ten to 15 rows of 1.2 metres by 0.6 metre or even less spacing along the border of his field,thus utilising borders that generally remain unused.A farmer,said Vithubhai, could go for mixed cropping in the fields completely given to tree cultivation in the initial years and grow horticultural crops such as ginger,termaric,amorphopholous,or yam and bananas.<br />
He quoted figures of income over a period of two decades for a farmer from an acre of timber plantation of savan or teak.He was rated as a maverick by many,although they too grudgingly granted that he was a highly successful one in whatever he was doing. Some others pointed to his butterfly type interest; years ago,he was advoocating the eucalyptus and now he was talking teak,neem and other species.Vithubhai was unfazed by this criticism.He would simply shrug it off,saying nobody was being compelled to follow suit.Yet,hundreds of farmers were doing just that,with the Surendrabag plantation serving as a demonstration project.<br />
The farm-forestry experiments which the gentleman farmer was been pursuing led to steady stream of nearly 10,000 visitors,mostly farmers from Gujarat and elsewhere in the country,makiing their way to his place,16 km from Bhavnagar.But what he was doing had nothing to do with the latest craze for corporate investment in agro-forestry.What he got as visitors were not investors in shares,but farmers who were pining to better their lot.<br />
<br />
Temperamentally, he was a man in hurry. Hurry it was when a car he was driving from Bhavnagar to Jamnagar collided with a truck,cutting short a vibrant life when he was in his late 70s.Tushar Bhatt's Gujarathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06743579072111022001noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4358008260678434433.post-54788615074003811642010-01-21T01:29:00.000-08:002010-01-21T01:29:45.212-08:00Painter Somalal Shah's Magnificent ObsessionTushar Bhatt<br />
<br />
Some people become a landmark in the cultural life around them in such a way that their presence is always felt and valued,and their disappearance enhances the worth of their presence.Somalal C.Shah ,avant garde painter and art teacher par excellence,who died at the ripe age of 89,was in this category.<br />
For such people the late poet,Gani Dahinwala,had said poign-antly: Zindagino ej sachesach padgho chhe,Gani; Hoyna vyakti,ne enu nam bolaya kare. ( That ,Gani, is the real echo of a life truely lived,when a man may be no more but his name keeps cropping up.) <br />
For more than 60 years,Somalal not only gave India superb wa-ter-colours, sketches and disciples in such an abundance that no artist or art teacher could have dreamt of leading a more meaning-fully productive life than was his.With his death,last of the major practitioners of the "wash method" in colour paintings is gone.But,he has left behind a rich line of disciples who include Khodidas Parmar,Pradyumna Dave,Natu Parikh,Urmi Parikh..The list seems endless.<br />
The son of a lower-middle class shopkeeper in Kapadvanj in central Gujarat,Somalal's tallest contribution was the innumerable paintings and sketches he has done depicting the day-to-day life in Saurashtra.In an era before Independence when art was still re-garded as an exclusive preserve of the elite,he brought the com-mon man into his work with such an authenticity that his paintings have already become a documents of history to learn how people lived in not too distant a past.His work has often been compared with what Zaverchand Meghani did in words for the folk arts;he did it in paintings. Poet Prahlad Parekh called his works poetry in painting.<br />
For three decades,he made Bhavnagar his home and brought on to paper in vivid water colours not only the colourful people but also the birds and animals of Kathiawad.His birds of Saurash-tra,done painstakingly and in bright colours, still remain un-matched, and are as well-known as the book of that name by Prince Dharmendrasinhji which they illustrated.<br />
A contemporary of such artists as Rasiklal Parikh,Kanu Desai,Yagneshwar Shukla and Chhaganlal Jadav,Somalal was the last in the line that had been encouraged by Ravishankar Ra-val,often hailed as Gujarat's kalaguru.<br />
A traditional painter,Somalal,however,was no conservative;while no despising anything ,whether modern or abstract,he would only want to stick to his own particular style,a mixture of Bengal's wash method ,further enriched by bright colours and an individuality of the artist that made it not only inimitable but also patently his own.<br />
The tallness of the artist-and the man -in Somalal was that he was totally unassuming and without either the ego or the arrogance of his stature as an artist.Neither was he a show-man.<br />
Ms.Urmi Parikh, a disciple of his,remembered him as a kindly uncle,dressed in white khadi zabbha and dhoti,topped with a khadi cap,a dark complexioned,wiry man.An older student ,Pradyumna Dave,retired professor of fine arts at the M.S.University in Baroda,said Somabhai was always like this. He remembered the days in Bhavnagar when his students would learn more from his talking-while-walking in the evening than from anywhere else.<br />
Said Natu Parikh,another student,retired professor of the fine arts college in Ahmedabad: "One could not dream of having a bet-ter teacher in art than Somakaka.He had an innate kindliness and would never run down anyone,whether an abstract painter or a novice doing badly in his class." Somabhai's eldest son, Suresh Shah, an engineer by profession,remembers this trait of his father from early childhood.Innumerable number of noted and not-so-noted artists of today ,trained by Somabhai,say in unison that had it not been for the grand old man,they would never have become what they did.<br />
Honours came to Somabhai early in life,along with recognition but these never left any burden on him.He would be till the last breath the same restless individualist,whose only regret in the past few months had been that because of bad eyesight he could not paint any longer.He was given the Rs.one lakh Ravishankar Raval state award for arts by the Gujarat government in 1990 on his 85th birthday.The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation gave him a civic reception in 1988,and he got an award from the Gujarat Lalit Kala Akadami.Much before that,in 1949, he was given the Ranjitram gold medal.<br />
He was born on February 14,1905, in the family of Chunilal Shah,who had a grocery store (income Rs.120 a year in those days,according to Somabhai's son Suresh).There was no tradition of arts in the family where there always was a shortage of every-thing.Mother Jekorben had to bring up her son and three daughters in a household that could not buy more than 125 grammes of milk a day. Quoting his father,Suresh says:" They had to make do with-out even vegetables on many occasions;rotla and pickle being the staple."<br />
The young boy,Somalal,was fond of drawing a lotus in his exer-cise book from his earliest days.Nobody could say where he got his inspiration or who guided him. "It seemed a sort of inborn talent to paint in him", says Madhav Ramanuj,poet and a professor of finer arts in Ahmedabad.Though without much guidance,the young man was a determined soul; he would merrily go on doing drawings even while evening duty at his father's store,unmindful of the pos-sibility that some buyer may cheat him by not paying the full amount for provisions purchased.<br />
After passing the matriculation,he came to Ahmedabad to join a college for a degree in arts (not art),but hid heart was not in the books; it was in the water colours and palette.A sympathiser,Harilal M.Desai,sent the shy,hard-working youth of few words to the school of arts in Bombay.By that time,he had met Ravishankar Ra-val and had impressed him with his paintings,especially because these had been done without any formal training. The first recogni-tion of his talent had come a little before that in the early 1910s when a silver medal was given to a work of his at a students arts exhibition in Umreth.His output impressed the authorities in the Bombay school so much that he was admitted to the second year directly.<br />
By this time, he was fixed on following Bengal's wash method of painting.After a year in Bombay, Somalal shifted to Kala Bhavan in Baroda,in 1927,where a noted painter, Pramod Kumar Chatterjee really initiated him in the work of his life-time.To further hone his skills,Soomalal later went to Calcutta to study for eight months at Oriental Art Society,set up by Avanindranath Tagore,living in a godown;he would sleep with his shoes on so that the rats infesting the godown would not bite him.He learnt a lot about the wash method,and eventually earned high praise from Avanindranath for his painting,Bride.The painting today is in the collection of the Bhavnagar maharaja.After seeing the work,Tagore told Somabhai:" You need not go to any institution to learn any more.Learn from Nature and life because while life is an ocean,an institution is only comparable to a pot." It was in 1929.Nanabhai Bhatt was on the look-out for an ideal art teacher for his innovating educational insti-tution,Dakshina Moorti Vidyarthi Bhavan in Bhavnagar. He stayed on in the princely town for thirty long years, later teaching the princes ,and then joining Alfred High School.He was an ideal teacher,recalls Khodidas Parmar,pursuing nothing but paintings in all his waking hours. He had a keen and observant eye,registering minutiae of the daily life around him in Gohilwad and Saurash-tra.The colours of their attire as also also of the landscape made a deep impression on Somabhai,further refining his wash method,adding bright colours,giving a symmetrical proportion to his compositions,teaching him a great deal about the importance of a camera-like registering of details of anatomy. Said Natu Parikh,"He would carefully study and imbibe the details,the colours and the proportions of everything around him before doing anything."<br />
Said Khodidas;" He began putting on paper what he considered to be thelife-force in the things,people,animals, birds and even landscape around him." The result was masterpieces like Chhaiyo, Govalan, Mindhalbandho, Saarika, Vanjara,among others of his hundreds of works over the years. Ms Urmi Parikh,quoted Somab-hai himself about how these came about."He would say, 'In the evening,I would be on the terrace,with the sun about to set.The rays of a dying strobe would be trying to ward off the oncoming dusk,as cows came home,kicking up clouds of dust.This would in-terest me immensely. Then, in the mornings and evenings, my mind would go on photographing sub-consciously the Bharwad and Mer women,walking in a musical gait,with shining brass pitchers balanced on the head,their colourful odhni flying in the wake.All these colours and compositions would later get into my paintings."<br />
His students agreed that his eyes would see the beauty of soul even in most commonplace of subjects and objects.This ,they felt, was not just the result of innate intuition; it also was a mental disci-pline that could empty his mind of all other things to enable it to be filled forever with indelible pictures of a grazing goat,or a running buffalo.He also had the ability to retrieve these images and bring-ing them on to the paper,put in appropriate colours so that one will feel the life-force in the painting even if one had never felt in the original scene.<br />
Pradyumna Dave said that Sombhai pursued his profession like a yogi,detached but fully immersed in it. He would sometimes take as much as two months over a painting if it did not satisfy his own critical judgement.Natu Parikh has seen him washing off colours even if others had found the work to be fine."He was never outward oriented,or do anything to make a buyer happy or complete a work in a deadline," added Dave.<br />
Said Urmi Parikh:"Somakaka had an uncanny ability to bring to life ordinary scenes and characters,be they birds,animals,human beings or even a balcony of an old house.He would also do a lot of paintings on historical and mythological characters such as Karna and Kunti. Nothing was alien to him." His son,Suresh ,recalled the old man had done superb ink drawing to illustrate history text books for children.<br />
He liked soft contrast in his paintings,even though he was a master of bright colours.Till the colours and tone meshed, he would go on working. He would say:"I believe the picture frame should stand out on a wall, and the picture should stand out in a frame.In the paintings,in the same manner,the characters should stand out from the rest of the background.Then only can it become an out-standing work." Most of his were.<br />
He insisted on making a painting that would be pleasing to look at not only from a distance,but also from close proximity.A stickler for perfection,he also knew where and how to leave things unfin-ished at places in a picture so that the painting would have a cer-tain raw and fresh quality about it.His sense of colour was so sharp that he,according to Suresh Sheth,art critic and professor of fine arts,could perceive difference in tone in the different hues of even white.<br />
His studio on the first of his house at Diwakar society in Paldi area of Ahmedabad had a deserted look after his death.There were a couple of wooden beds,and nothing else,although in the storing space under the beds were caches of his works-- paint-ing,sketches,some finished,many unfinished. He had the facility to work on several projects simultaneously and could switch from one painting to another.In later years,Somabhai had taken to start working around 2 p m after a cup of teach; he would sit on the floor in a lotus position and on a low stool in front would be the board with a paper on it. Around him would be cakes of water col-our,tubes,a big palette,a flower pot full of brushes of different sizes and two bowls of water to wash out the used brushes.He would get lost in work.Sometimes he would start working in the morning too.That was at the age past 85. His eyesight had failed him,leaving him with a lasting regret, said Dr. Dinesh Parikh, a medical scientist who knew him well, that he could not paint as much as he wished to.<br />
Quite early in his life, painting had ceased to be work, a chore; it had become a hobby,then a profession and then an obsession. The magnificent obsession survives in the form of hundreds of paintings, sketches, illustrations, and will keep his memory green for a long time now that he is gone.Tushar Bhatt's Gujarathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06743579072111022001noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4358008260678434433.post-57070839503536443052010-01-17T19:01:00.000-08:002010-01-26T08:43:35.748-08:00A musical togetherness<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div>Tushar Bhatt<br />
<br />
Is Mrs Vibha Desai there,he whispers up the telephone wire in a sonorous voice,glancing at his watch which shows nearly 5.30 in the evening."This is Mr Vibha Desai this side," he says equally af-fably to the inevitable query at the other end.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijSWheGduMboLFcZdyf_JeCvTaPbSgGn6tGhoCrNAPVfdfGpY3iYLdcJlqHm-fZUmc2b2eRaGhoTDZtmKfFU-MxS5RmiNIhtrD_ct9PWWp8rKBEyWOgIiDjsBlKtspuP6PWS-OGeJteGiV/s1600-h/MVC-595F.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijSWheGduMboLFcZdyf_JeCvTaPbSgGn6tGhoCrNAPVfdfGpY3iYLdcJlqHm-fZUmc2b2eRaGhoTDZtmKfFU-MxS5RmiNIhtrD_ct9PWWp8rKBEyWOgIiDjsBlKtspuP6PWS-OGeJteGiV/s400/MVC-595F.JPG" width="400" /></a><br />
</div> That is quintessential Rasbihari Desai,renowned Gujarati singer, composer and music-maker,whose contribution to popularisation of sugam sangit,people’s own music, is unmatched.<br />
<br />
Evening shadows have already begun to lengthen outside his third floor ,modest flat as Rasbihari turns to the amused visitors."You see, it is her work-place, the Income Tax office and obviously she is better known there.So what is the harm in identifying myself by her name.Do not wives identify themselves by the name of their husbands? It is the same thing." This was a routine scene till Vib-haben retired sometime ago.<br />
Actually,no such explanation has ever been necessary in the case of the Desai couple,musical people both, whose marital life of more than three decades began on a musical note and has been forever an ever deepening creative relationship.<br />
Minutes later,Vibhaben,clad in China silk sari,and sporting an apologetic smile for being late by a few minutes,enters the drawing room.She and Rasbihari,dressed in khadi pyjama and a kurta,exchange mere glances, before settling down on the sofa.There is a harmonium too.Although she knows the visitors are there to talk to her about her husband's musical journey through life,the first thing both of them do is not to talk,weaving flights of fancy words,or faked emotions, or counterfeit mod-esty.Instinctively,he starts playing the harmonium,its notes filling the evening air of the semi-darkened room,escaping through the open windows and doors to reverberate and vanish into the open sky.She knows intuitively what is about to be sung and as if by a commonly operated switch,Rasbihari and Vibha launch into a de-voitonal piece,"Maadi Taro Divado Jale...".<br />
The brief performance was not to please the visitors,nor to im-press anyone.It was more of a tribute to their own musical togeth-erness.Vibha Vaishnav was 19 when she first came into the life of physics professor at the Bhavan's College,Rasbihari.Already a man who had decided on his way of life,Rasbihari at first tried to ward her off but they were as if made for each other.If after three dec-ades a couple can spontaneously display the sweetness they seem to exude every moment of their togetherness,it does not need a thought-diviner to tell that the sweetness has become a hallmark of their existence.<br />
What has been the sweetest memory of their life ? A smiling Rasbihari keeps quiet for a long moment,but his sweeter half even-tually bursts out with a reply that would in in print come across like a reply written by a public relations officer for public consumption." I cannot recall any specific moment for all moments of our togeth-erness have been equally sweet." Discerning incredulousness on the face of her guests,she adds"our philosophy of life is to take every moment as it comes.My thinking about the world has been chiefly moulded by him and both of us have learnt to find a centre within ourselves as a validation point,rather than to rely on the out-side reference points."<br />
But,is it not too much of self-effacement of her own personality ? "Where is the self-effacement? He is a staunch believe in khadi and wears nothing but khadi.But he has never imposed ,or even sought to suggest,I should emulate him. I merrily go on with what-ever I like ,man-made fibres, China silk,cotton,whatever."<br />
A former assistant commissioner of Income Tax,Vibha is an indi-vidual in her own right,a singer of top quality."She has more self-confidence and consistency in her singing",says her hus-band,unabashed,and rather proudly.On her part,she says"I am only a singer.I need direction.I depend on him to show the direction, even to identify a sur,correct it.I can sing,but that is all.He is much more than a singer. He is a composer too. He creates, I only fol-low."<br />
In their musical passage through life ,what are the moments of performance they cherish the most ? Rasbihari quickly recalls two occasions, once in India and and the other abroad,years apart when Vibha's rendering of a spiritual piece brought tears to the eyes of the audience.Now that is self-effacement.He does not re-member any of his own, though his admirers can tick off any num-ber of occasions when they remember Rasbihari having excelled. But, he does not. It is a typical modesty,and it is totally genuine.As for Vibha,she just cannot place her fingers on any such memory of a single occasion.<br />
This again is no false modesty;it is a reflection of her husband's attitude towards life and self.Rasbihari comes across as a man de-tached even from his own self,often referring to himself as Rasbi-hai, as if he were talking to a third person.The gaze from behind the clack-framed glasses is so piercing that for a moment or two one feels,the man is not looking at,but through his visitor.Actually,it may not even be that.He is there,in body and mind,but spiritually he may not be there even as chats animatedly with his guests.This is no hypocritical mask Rasbihari is wearing;strangers,long time friends and his family,all sense this,and respect it.<br />
Both have rich voices,and yet have resisted all temptations to turn professionals.As amateurs too,they have not been artists of the mass variety.They have,many feel,been rather niggardly in giv-ing out the music they possess.Personally,in the form of cas-settes,that is. Both have a legendary following of people who have trained in singing with them in the Shruti organisation over the years. They have been generous with the new com-ers,understanding to a fault and helpful a lot.Both are neither of the show-biz world nor in it.Rasbihari has a first rate voice, a superb kharaj,and Vibha has a deeply melodious one,and both sing with their heart and being.To them,music is neither a career nor a hobby."It is a spiritual activity,sadhna.Says Rasbhihari:"To me,music is not something that comes from your vocal chords,or hands or any instrument that you play. It comes from the heart,is channelised through the body ,kept in the trim through arduous "ri-yaz".Both of us treat ourselves as students of music forever."<br />
His spiritual bend of mind came from his aunt, Mrs Nirmalaben V.Desai who not only set him on path of spiritualism but also incul-cated in him a love for literature,language,and the much-noticed self-effacement of his own self.<br />
Says Rasbihari: "We -- that is Rasbhai and Vibha -- believe that it not I - the ego of I in the capital letter form -- but some un-known,divine element that sings through us.It is such a deep-rooted belief that every public performance of his always begins with a prayer to that element in a being.The initial seeds of spiritu-alism planted by Nirmalaben were given a further help by Rasbi-hari's acquaintance with Madhusudan Maharaj, a yogi in the early sixties.<br />
He was initially reluctant to have his 60th birth day celebra-tions,but was literally pestered into it by his fans.The result is that it being celebrated as completion of 60 years.Yet, he would not go for pomp and public adulation.Instead,he and Vibha and a few other friends like Kshemoo Divetia,Gaurang Vyas,and Ashit and Hema Desai,have gone in for making two cassettes of songs and bhajans,serving as landmarks in Rasbihari's musical pro-gress.Since,it can never be a solo effort for him,it is is inevitably with Vibha and ,not stopping at that roping in others too.The out-come is a pair of audio-cassettes,Sayujya I and II; sayuyja means togetherness.For 28 years,the couple have helped train hundreds of enthusiasts in what is called Gujarati sugam sangeet,light mu-sic.Though light,it is not a musical pursuit of light-heartedness. It is damn serious in its rigourous training, rendering,and even re-cording,and it is with a purpose. So,here in Sayujya is a bhajan Rasbihari had heard in his childhood,wayback in 1941,"Chyam ra-hiye guru vana,finding a place in the collection. There also is the first composition that brought him into sugam sangeet in 1952-54-- "Madhav tun betho deva",composed by late Suryakant Dave of Visnagar.So is in it, the song sung by Vibha,"Najarunna kanatani bhool",that was eventually to bring him and her togther.There is a rustic bhajan,"Ramranankar vage",composed by Rasbihari's grand-mother Mrs Mahalaxmi Desai,herself an unlttered person but highly musical.There also are modern compositions of poets ranging form Narsinh Mehta to late Sundaram,late Harindra Dave,late Avinash Vyas , Anil Joshi, Suresh Dalal, Mariz, Vinod Joshi,Adil Man-suri,Rajendra Shah,Manoj Khandheria,Amar Palanpuri to Bhag-watikumar Sharma,spanning the period between 1941 and 1995.<br />
The fete is not intended to get money for the Desais."We will love to divert everything to organising music camps every year in order to nurture and give philip to the new talent in different cities in Gujarat."<br />
Rasbihari recently underwent a heart bypass surgery in the US,but has lost none of his verve and vigour.His voice is as firm,deep and sonorous as ever.Money-making had not been among the goals he set for life.One could say he has achieved it;he has not made much money.He does not seem to seek any-thing,and accepts whatever life brings him.His wife too shares his values .They are a value-based couple,above prices and pricing.<br />
<br />
Tushar Bhatt's Gujarathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06743579072111022001noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4358008260678434433.post-73633655196049783672010-01-17T03:21:00.000-08:002010-01-19T05:35:43.378-08:00A Barber spells out what haunts the Indian Nation-Tushar Bhatt<br />
<br />
<br />
His prematurely old face showed no signs of hostility. It did not betray any emotions at all. His voice also disclosed nothing. He spoke as if he was reading news on the Door Darshan.<br />
<br />
The village barber had diffidently asked the visitor if he could take two minutes. He needed no permission because he and the visiting journalist sat on the same bench for three years in the village primary school before the barber dropped out. <br />
<br />
But, the income divide creates a wide chasm in society and many people deny friends marooned on the have-not side. The journalist could not but acknowledge the friendship for more than one reason. <br />
<br />
The barber’s father was horse-carriage man of a buggy owned by his doctor father. The barber’s mother was the Dai (a class of women who assist pregnant women at the time of delivery and then for days to come look after the infant) who was present at the visitor’s birth.<br />
<br />
<br />
The village barber, wearing a shirt with a torn collar and pyjama displaying loose endings of his customers cut hair, began his quizzing in a matter-of-fact tone. <br />
<br />
Was it true that the visitor had done well in his life? The visitor mumbled non-commitally: “Cannot complain.” <br />
<br />
The villager riposted rather quickly: ” Well, at least better than me.” The scribe essayed an affirmative, puzzled about the drift of the chat.<br />
<br />
There came a query like a good length ball that often makes a batsman lose his wicked. <br />
<br />
Was it because the barber had dropped out of the school and the visitor had gone ahead? The newsman again nodded yes.<br />
<br />
Now a googly came. Was it not because the barber’s father was poor and needed his son to add to the family earnings quickly while the visitor had no such compulsions as his father was a middle class man? The scribe could not but say: “Yes.”<br />
<br />
The barber:” Why were the poor parents blamed when poverty was responsible for school drop outs?” <br />
<br />
He followed up smartly: “ Do the middle and upper class babus and politicians really know poverty? How can one formulate policies to combat poverty if one didn’t know what it means to be a poor?”<br />
<br />
Reading the journalist’s mind, the barber said:” you are wondering about my questions.” Even though he had only a smattering of education, poverty made him think, he said. Better education would have helped him think and understand better.<br />
<br />
The poverty in the barber’s house had been a hereditary reality, an empty virasat. The veranda of the mud house had now for three generations served as hair-cutting shop, sometimes half-mockingly called a saloon or still worse men’s beauty parlour. There was a single chair for hair-cut. One of its four legs was broken and had been kept in place by wrapping round pieces of a thin rope. In front of the wobbly chair, the mud wall was adorned with a mirror cracked in several spots. When a customer looked at himself in the mirror, he would see multiple images of his face. The razor and a pair of scissors dating back to the barber’s grandfather were still on active duty.<br />
<br />
The razor was used to shave both men and buffaloes.<br />
<br />
<br />
The journalist felt uneasy now, but his barber friend went ahead mercilessly. He could not renovate his shop, buy new razors and scissors, acquire new furniture, and install new mirrors because that needed money. His grandfather, father and he himself had been unable to borrow from any source. <br />
<br />
Everybody asked for money, something called margin money. Some banks were said to be giving the full amount but you needed touts to get and touts demanded a cut. In fact, everyone in the world was asking for money. <br />
<br />
He asked the scribe if there was a way out. Nobody gave money to poor to make them earn more. Again, in the past decade another threat for the poor had come up. Everybody said the government was getting out of education and health, allowing private money to make more money through hefty fees.<br />
<br />
The village barber said now it appeared impossible for his grandchildren to make good in life because their parents would not be able to find money. The same situation prevailed in medicine. Even for traveling on some roads one has to pay toll.<br />
<br />
Then came a rocket. How and where would the poor find money for all these facilities? His own reading was that the life of the poor had already become more difficult with the recent years’ so-called pro-poor policies.<br />
<br />
The barber did not know but he was echoing a question raised many a moon ago by the economist and at one time finance minister of West Bengal, Dr Ashoke Mitra who said that market economy was fine but what about those poor who were not in the market ?<br />
<br />
A missile attack followed. If all the politicians proclaimed from rooftops that they are for the poor, how come the prices of foodgrains, pulses, vegetables and other day-to-day things were not going down and the authorities keep saying: mahengai kam ho rahi hay?<br />
<br />
The barber now fired the mother of all the questions. Are the political parties saying something and doing something else? <br />
Or, to put differently, are they using the poor as election winning pawns and after getting into power misusing their mandate to further worsen their plight? Sometimes he wondered if men and women in positions of power were working to eradicate poverty or to eliminate the poor.<br />
<br />
The visiting scribe began to feel the burden of guilt and started perspiring.<br />
<br />
Then came a nuclear-head charge. The village barber quietly put in:” Are you, the better-off people, in a majority or are we,the poor, larger in numbers? “ The hapless newsman murmured: “The poor are more in number. “<br />
<br />
Now it was the turn of the barber to be bewildered. His voice trembling, he croaked. So far the haves were reaping the fruits of Independence. If the have-nots are more in numbers, why do they allow this topsy-turvy governance of our Republic?<br />
<br />
Why, why, why?<br />
<br />
What is the remedy? <br />
<br />
The visitor was speechless. <br />
<br />
Instead of going on with the chat, he did the only thing he knew to escape from the reality. <br />
<br />
He ran away.<br />
<br />
[ The village barber’s conundrum was passed on to many specialists and generalists, politicians and their followers. No <br />
Sanjivani type cure has been prescribed by anyone so far.]Tushar Bhatt's Gujarathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06743579072111022001noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4358008260678434433.post-43110386822906030492010-01-17T01:17:00.000-08:002010-01-19T05:35:43.378-08:00A Celestial Encounter with Swami Chidananda, God's Own Man Tushar Bhatt<br />
<br />
He sits on the ground,atop an ochre-coloured clothpiece,the back supported by a board.The lean bespectacled ascetic,Swami Chindanada,head of the Divine Life Society,who turns 80 on Sun-day,looks completely at ease,as if he has been there all his life.Around him are some books and booklets,his constant com-panions in his ceaseless wandering throughout the world.<br />
The serene face is no stranger to Ahmedabad,but this time his three-day visit coincided with his birthday,a day being observed as no different from other days.But,he is a monk with a difference, somebody who is in the world,but not of the world, a man totally without ego.His huge following would do almost anything that he might care to ask;and he never asks for anything.<br />
He treats even a sceptic with great affection,as if the visitor is a dear disciple,launching into a discussion with a gusto,neither age nor fraility standing in the way.<br />
What is the necessity and relevance of spiritual life,the sceptic asks,echoing a sentiment often heard in the modern,technological world,where space has shrunk,distances spanned.The Swami's eyes lit up,a smile flickers on his lips.He ticks off what man has achieved through centuries of scientific development: "Jungles have been converted into cities,and night has been converted into day.We have conquered time,distance and air.We go under the water faster than the fastest sabmarine animal created by God; we are able to fly in the faster than any bird created by the Creator.We have outdistanced the fleetest animal upon the surface of the earn and vast knowledge has been accumulated.There are thousands of libraries with millions of books, universities agalore,and education has spread."<br />
He pauses for a flickering moment,silence underlining the extent of progress mankind has made."And, in spit of all this ,is it not ironical that today human society lives in a fear psycho-sis.Sedatives and tranquilisers are needed by many.Why? The modern man is an anxiety-laden creature.The world is fulled with problems, complexities and there is a great state of worry,fear and uncertainty."<br />
Some may even be tempted to ask: Has man a future? Is he on the brink of a global destruction?<br />
Swami Chindananda says: "The problem that faced our pre-historic,stone-age ancestors-- the problem of survival -- has now come back to confront the modern man,after so much of progress and accumulation of knowledge."<br />
What is the reason for this,why is not man better off than those bygone days. "Yes, we are better off in certain ways.We have more comforts.We can live life with great ease,less exertion,and if that is taken as a better state of life then we are vastly better off than our ancestors."<br />
But is it globally so,is everyone,in that state ? Why are there dis-trust,hostility,hatred,cut-throat competition,conflict,restlessness,all around,whether in the developed West or,the less developed coun-tries ?<br />
The Swami reasons:"We cannot say that the scientific knowl-edge,technology,advancement,discoveries by themselves have brought mankind to the situation that prevails today.We cannot say so because knowledge is only accumulation of information and facts,The forces that man has learnt to harness are amoral,neither good nor bad.They are just there and they are neutral since by themselves,they do not possess the ability to cause any experi-ence to man.They cannot destroy because they are inert and so we cannot say that by themselves they constitute the present prob-lem of mankind.It is the way in which these forces are applied,the way in which they are used that decides whether they are a men-ace to mankind or a boon."<br />
Swami Chindanand continues to speak in an even tenor,his words are almost like a whisper, a secret being shared with a close friend. "If man has been civilised,he has progressed,should be-come better and better ? Should he not create a world where there is peace,happiness,where man lives without fear,there is amity,co-operation,harmony,a feeling of unity and brotherhood? Should not this characterise real civil civilisation, the true progress ?"<br />
The evening shadows are lenghthening in the garden outside. The Swami says:"This has not happened because man has totally ignored the nature of the human being,neglected the spiritual di-mension of a human being's personality,and ignored the cultivation of the spiritual aspect of life."<br />
He becomes a bit descriptive,as if to put it across in a more ru-dimentary fashion." Man has brought about a wonderful transfor-mation in his outer environment,but never paid much attention to his own cultivation.So many fields of knowledge were brought about,cultivated and evolved,but human culture was totally ne-glected."<br />
Swami Chindanad comes to the moot point: "The great blunder which man committed was to take a purely materialistic view of the human being.They looked upon a human being as a physical and psychological creature, a bilogical being endowed with a faculty of thinking,feeling and reasoning,and they said if you cater to the needs of the body and mind of man, that is all there is to it. You have done your duty."<br />
He goes on:"This materialistic view of the human being led peo-ple to evolve social theories and political philosophies which were oriented towards bringing about a state of well-being of the physi-cal man and the psychological man."<br />
In India,says Swami Chindananda,it has been known that man is endowed with a third,and higher factor that ,in fact, is his true iden-tity.The physical and psychological aspects of the human beings are to be provided for,but not at the neglect of man's true Self." Spiritualism is needed to help man cultivate the third level of his being.He says that the power of thought,feeling and reasoning make the human beings different from animals,but not necessarily superior."Unless man cultivates his true self,the very intellect may cause his downfall,may become a curse."<br />
The Swami says:Man should become aware of his inner divin-ity.Divinity withim himself each human being is potentially divine.". He once wrote:" Man is part of God.There is, as the Quakers say in the West,that of God in man.This concept is one of the basic and fundamental concepts in all religions.The essence of education is to try to bring about in the psychological man nobility.The essence of living true life is the awakening of the sleeping and slumbering divinity."<br />
What is it that distinguishes man,asks Swami Chidan-anda,himself providing the answer. "It is the ability to be compas-sionate, the ability to feel for the joys and sufferings of others, the ability to wish to ameliorate the sorrows and troubles of others.Man is the only unique creature in the entire creation who can think of others,who can try to live for others."<br />
The clock is ticking by.A young disciple,mindful of the time as also the stress continuous talking is imposing on Swami Chidan-anda,silently pushes an alarm clock in fron him.But the monk ig-nores his imploring glances.Later,Swami Adhyatmanand recalls:" Swami Chindanand would never shrink from making his point ,no matter how much pain it might cause to his body."<br />
Born on September 24,1916,as Sridhar in an orthodox family at Mangalore,Swami Chidananda graduated from the Loyola College in Madras in 1938,and joined the Himalayan Ashram of Swami Sivananda in 1943.He was later put in charge of the dispensary and served patients,some afflicted by leprosy with great compas-sion.He took sanyas in 1949,and a decade later,went to the West for two years on a lecture trip.He succeeded Swami Sivananda as president of the Divine Life Society in 1963 and has been on the move ,giving discourses and lectures throughout the world.<br />
The neglect of spiritual aspect of life because of the focussing of attention of the materialistic view of the human personality has been a costly error,he says.The only solution to the present crisis gripping the world is to rectify this error.Identify yourself with oth-ers,feel their sufferings, try to alleviate their sufferings." That, of course,would only be a beginning to awakening the spiritual nature of the human beings.Service of man is worship of God."<br />
A shining example of this near at home in Gujarat;the 80-plus-year old Dr Shivanand Adhvaryoo of Virnagar.For nearly four dec-ades he has been working for combating eye ailments and blind-ness from that small village in Saurashtra.One Dr Adhvaryoo has made so much difference. It is an unspoken thought: What a cu-mulative change would there is if there were many more such peo-ple in different walks of life.<br />
Swami Chidanand attained freedom from the burdens of this world in 2009.<br />
<br />
Tushar Bhatt's Gujarathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06743579072111022001noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4358008260678434433.post-49775805814362606912010-01-17T00:51:00.000-08:002010-01-26T08:48:16.100-08:00A melodious life, a soothing voice: Rasbihari Desai<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFkaoY7AF06jSzhMyOfpNs5gLsfUNallSuWg5t9EKlWFRZ3SalmAzyWDTjWuX9JsohMDt1wCHHLfVg9rA2zGvQJ7zyo_nVPlsZGjzibRd1R7Qckfo1uynkoGiXz5w3RE0CUwCxnpWxcv_K/s1600-h/MVC-591E.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFkaoY7AF06jSzhMyOfpNs5gLsfUNallSuWg5t9EKlWFRZ3SalmAzyWDTjWuX9JsohMDt1wCHHLfVg9rA2zGvQJ7zyo_nVPlsZGjzibRd1R7Qckfo1uynkoGiXz5w3RE0CUwCxnpWxcv_K/s320/MVC-591E.JPG" /></a><br />
</div>Tushar Bhatt<br />
<br />
Even if he were to keep utterly silent the man sitting in a chair in the third floor flat at Chandra Ratna in Ellisbridge area of Ahmeda-bad appears to have an unmistakable presence --not that of an in-timidating personality who dazzles his surrounding but that of someone like the full moon in a night sky, soothing and allowing other stars also to shine.<br />
The man, Rasbihari R. Desai, noted Gujarati singer,composer and music-maker, nevertheless, also gives an impression of being detached from even his own self; he often refers to himself as Rasbhai,as if he were talking about a third person. The gaze from behind the black-framed spectacles is so piercing that for a mo-ment or two you feel the man is not looking at but looking through you.The biggish glasses rest on a rather large nose and seem to separate the rest of his face from the large forehead topped by wavy hair.Unconsciously,he tries to pat down the waves from rising into a mesh antenna at the top of the head.<br />
The visual image could be dismissed as an effect created by the first impression were it to undergo a change in subsequently. In Rasbihari's case,even those who have known him for years would easily vouchsafe that the air of curious detachment around his be-ing is indeed a permanent feature.<br />
That also perhaps explains the low profile he projects in Guja-rat's cultural life,in spite of having a rich voice,considerable musical talent that he has nursed through rigorous self-training over four to five decades and the yeoman's service that he has done in helping others to make a name in the sugam sangeet,light music.<br />
He insists on continuing as an amateur artist instead of becom-ing a commercial or professional artiste; for he sincerely believes that he is neither of the showbiz nor in it.He has been in the lime-light,but would not move a little finger to keep the spotlight on him-self.<br />
Says Kshemoo Divetia, a noted Gujarati music composer: "Rasbhai has a first rate voice, a superb kharaj, and sings with all his heart and being." Madhav Ramanuj, a noted poet,says: "Rasbhai is a unique music-maker in more ways than one.For one, he does not pursue music either as a career or hobby; he does it as a kind of sadhna ,spiritual activity. For another, besides being a music-maker par excellence, he is also a human being of the same grade."<br />
Rasbhai,as Rasbihari is generally known,approaches music with a sense of reverence,combined with a scientific attitude of a life-long professor of physics. He says: " To me,music is not something that comes from your vocal chords,or hands or any instrument that you have.It mainly comes from the heart,is channelised through your body kept in trim through arduous 'riyaz'. I always treat myself as a perpetual student of music."<br />
Born on June 23, 1935, at Patan in north Gujarat,Rasbhai lost his mother,Durgaba,when he was hardly 4 years old.His fa-ther,Ramanlal,who died in 1983,had a melodious voice.He used to sing patriotic songs with great fervour and sweetness at the meet-ings and processions during the fight for the country's free-dom,earning the nickname of being Meghani of Patan.(The late Mr Zaverchand Meghani,poet who also had a rich voice, has long be-ing hailed as Gujarat's poet-laureate of the Independence move-ment.) Rasbhai's grandmother, Mahalaxmiben,too had a very sweet voice and had a vast repertoire of bhajans,kathas and folk songs. She could recite the entire Ramcharitmanas from mem-ory.Thus, although Rasbihari had no formal exposure or training in music,the talent ran in his blood.<br />
Even as he grew up as an average boy,Rasbihari,thanks to his aunt,Nirmalaben V.Desai,developed a spiritual bend of mind.In a commemorative volume,brought out after her death,Rasbihari re-calls how the foundations for his future life were laid during the eight years he spent at her aunt's place till he reached the age of 12.Her influence was to exert a great deal in his life,shaping his dreams,tempering his ambitions,providing him courage and sol-ace,and always there as a guiding star.It was she who in addition to the love for music inculcated in Rasbihari a great respect for lit-erature,taught him spiritualself-effacement and introspection.She herself was a good singer,wrote a lot and worked ceaselessly as a social reformer and teacher. <br />
Says Rasbihari: "Music,simply put,is the language of emo-tion,language of the heart.Every human has some music in his or her being.There really can be no true enemy of music-- not even Aurangzeb,the moghul emperor." But why some people can sing or play music and why others could ,perhaps,enjoy it all only is some-thing that defies explanation. "Our ignorance about such things is limitless. There are machines that can synthesize and produce something very akin to a human voice. But, no, you cannot repli-cate a Lata Mangeshkar through such a machine." This was be-cause music was not only a product of vocal chords or hands play-ing tunes and rhythms; it also was a product of the heart,of the in-volvement of the self of the person doing it.<br />
Rasbihari firmly believes that when he sings, " it is not I -- the ego of I in a capital letter - but some unknown,divine element that sings." This was so everywhere,but some recognised it and others did not. In truth, every public performance of Rasbihari and his singer wife, Vibha,begins with a prayer to that element in a be-ing.Since he sings with all his heart,his lack of formal training in music never posed a big impediment to him.He has a natural gift of a rich,resonating voice; he enhanced this gift by a systematic self-training that included even pranayam. His enchanting kharaj (lower octave) is the result of his regular pranayam that needs deep breathing. Lower octave, say music critics, is a sound produced from the depth of the navel (nabhi) and deeper and more pro-longed the breath is richer it would be.How enchanting it all could be can be sampled from a duet the couple has sung: Maadi tarun kanku kharyun ne suraj ugyo (written by Avinash Vyas) or Ame komal komal (written by Madhav Ramanuj).The couple has sung poems and ghazals written by many noted Gujarati poets such as Anil Joshi,Sheikhadam Abuwala,Harindra Dave,Bhagwatikumar Sharma and Ramesh Parekh.<br />
Rasbhai began singing quite early in his life,but the real turning point in his life came when in 1964 he got married to Vibha Vaishnav,herself a top-notch singer.Says Rasbihari: " She has been a source of constance inspiration and encouragement.She is the first critical listener of anything that I sing or compose." The husband frankly says about his wife, who is an assistant income tax commissioner, that she is a superior artist as compared to him as far as self-confidence and consistency are concerned.They have given musical performances at hundreds of places in Guja-rat,India and abroad,and bagged honours. Rasbihari and Vibha have also some long play rcords and cassettes to their credit.<br />
But,Rasbihari's most significant contribution has been to go be-yond self-development. On the Dushera day in 1961,he was in-strumental in the formation of a voluntary grouo,called Shruti,devoted to music. "Some friends met at my house on that day and we decided to sing together,experimenting with different styles and innovations in light music." The group, which had initially 22 members,has helped put on the high road of music a number of budding young people.Today there are 28 members in Shruti,but ,says Rasbhai, times have changed. "The pace of life all around us has quickened.Thirty years ago,it was not difficult to find three hours twice a week for the group activity.Today,it has become a tough thing to do. Yet, whenever programmes are to be organised, we do get together."<br />
Rasbhai had taken to music as a mission only.Quite early in his youth,he decided to become a teacher,resisting family pressure to go for engineering which was the in thing then. He took up teaching of physics in a government college in Ahmedabad,later shifting to the Bhavan's college,and in his spare time at the Bhavan's started twice a week classes in light music,another activity that has given philip to young aspirants.Even today the class is conducted.He has also been at a number of youth camps ,run by the state govern-ment for ten days in the summer vacation,for moulding talents in music. Recalls Mr Kshemoo Divetia: " I would go for two or three days. But Rasbhai has a knack for these things.He is very comfort-able with students and can devise ways to keep them occupied throughout the day even as they learnt a lot about music." In 1980, Rasbihar got the best playback singer's award in Gujarati for his song,Maari Ankhen Kankuna Suraj (written by the late Ravji Patel) for the path-breaking film, Kashino Dikro.He and Vibha have also toured the U.S.A. extensively,and recalls fondly how very well-responsive the crowds there were. In Cleveland,says the singer,the audience gave them a standing ovation for as long a period as a song would last. At another place,they gifted them more money impromptu than the amount they were to get as honorarium.All through these years, Rasbhai has resisted playing to the gallery.He says that his amateur status,backed by his ability to eke out a living as a teacher,enabled him to stand up against making "compro-mises" that would have meant playing second fiddle to commercial interests.Essentially,the Desais sing for themselves, for their own artistic fulfilment and believe that if do it with hearty involvement,it makes an impact on the audiences too.<br />
Rasbhai has no regrets;he has got no ambitions either. He is content that he remained a teacher for more than three dec-ades,which enabled him to remain an amateur in music as he de-sired.Then,he took premature retirement ,giving up teaching some five years sooner than the age bar would require to devote more time to music. Vibha continues working.He does some writing on music as well as on physics since " I like writing ".He puts much store by the yoga in music and feels that music is a kind of yoga only.He calls his devotion to music a process of mind purification (chittashudhdhikaran),and he keeps harbouring a restiveness that he should be able to be more and more creative in music-- "till this body lasts".He thinks that as his pursuit -- or devotion,as he would put it-- intensifies,he would be able to bring out more music from his being.All around him,Rasbhai does not find reason for despair on the music front in Gujarat."There are a lot of talented young people who will shine soon."<br />
He stands aloof,singing mainly for what is called nijan-and,unimpressed by the rat race around him to hit the top of the chart. He is popular,but he is not a populist.The spiritual balance of mind that he has achieved enables him to follow his own motto: Surilo kanth,surilun jeevan ( melodious voice,melodious life).That he has entered the sixtieth year of his life is a little known fact.And,Rasbhai is not bothered about it.<br />
Tushar Bhatt's Gujarathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06743579072111022001noreply@blogger.com3