--Tushar Bhatt
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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’).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
Showing posts with label wordsketch. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wordsketch. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Saturday, March 26, 2011
An Eloquent Tribute To A Silent Man,Jitubhai
By Tushar Bhatt
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
===================THE END
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
===================THE END
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Rohit Mehta; A forgotten Gujarati philosopher of high calibre
By Tushar Bhatt
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
“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.”
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.”
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 !”
“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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.”
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.
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.”
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
“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.”
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.”
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 !”
“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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.”
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.
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.”
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.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Rajnikumar Pandya: A Trail-Blazing Author who shows the story instead of telling
Tushar Bhatt
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..
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
But, the establishment continues to feel bad. Many writers who are popular among people are unpopular in the literati.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
Meghdut followed an earlier digital documentation of the pioneering Gujarati popular journal,Visami Sadi,and its fearless secular-minded editor
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The album has been offered to public at cost price of Rs.595,and of Rs.295 for the book only.
For the restless author, a new quest begins.
(The End)
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..
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
But, the establishment continues to feel bad. Many writers who are popular among people are unpopular in the literati.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
Meghdut followed an earlier digital documentation of the pioneering Gujarati popular journal,Visami Sadi,and its fearless secular-minded editor
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The album has been offered to public at cost price of Rs.595,and of Rs.295 for the book only.
For the restless author, a new quest begins.
(The End)
Friday, September 24, 2010
Chronicles of extra-ordinary tales of the ordinary
Tushar Bhatt
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?”
Curtly,the teahcer replied: “ Yes, what is it ? What the tiny girl had to stay left Usha contrite with remorse.
God has forgotten to give many things to teachers, but He has supplied them in abundance with the ability to empathise with the pupil .
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.
“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.”
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.”
Despite brave words,tear rolled down her emaciated cheeks.
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? “
Instead of slapping the young student,she should have slapped herself, Usha thought furiouslylf. Who would think of her as anything but a snob?
As she remonstrated with herself, the pricipalalmost choked on her tears.Then,she decided to act.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Handa was aware that piecemeal efforts were not enough. " We need a large number of grassroot level teachers who make a difference. “
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?”
Curtly,the teahcer replied: “ Yes, what is it ? What the tiny girl had to stay left Usha contrite with remorse.
God has forgotten to give many things to teachers, but He has supplied them in abundance with the ability to empathise with the pupil .
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.
“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.”
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.”
Despite brave words,tear rolled down her emaciated cheeks.
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? “
Instead of slapping the young student,she should have slapped herself, Usha thought furiouslylf. Who would think of her as anything but a snob?
As she remonstrated with herself, the pricipalalmost choked on her tears.Then,she decided to act.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Handa was aware that piecemeal efforts were not enough. " We need a large number of grassroot level teachers who make a difference. “
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.
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.
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?
Thursday, September 2, 2010
A painter of rare vintage: Vasudev Smart
Tushar Bhatt
Surat:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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."
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."
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.
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."
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.
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.
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."
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."
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."
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Surat:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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."
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."
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.
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."
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.
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.
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."
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."
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."
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Counting The Asiatic Lions In Their Last Abode
Tushar Bhatt
Sasan-Gir:
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.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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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."
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.".
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."
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.
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
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.
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.
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."
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."
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.".
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."
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.
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
Sunday, January 17, 2010
A musical togetherness
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.
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.
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.
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...".
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.
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."
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."
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."
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
A Barber spells out what haunts the Indian Nation
-Tushar Bhatt
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Was it true that the visitor had done well in his life? The visitor mumbled non-commitally: “Cannot complain.”
The villager riposted rather quickly: ” Well, at least better than me.” The scribe essayed an affirmative, puzzled about the drift of the chat.
There came a query like a good length ball that often makes a batsman lose his wicked.
Was it because the barber had dropped out of the school and the visitor had gone ahead? The newsman again nodded yes.
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.”
The barber:” Why were the poor parents blamed when poverty was responsible for school drop outs?”
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?”
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.
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.
The razor was used to shave both men and buffaloes.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 ?
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?
The barber now fired the mother of all the questions. Are the political parties saying something and doing something else?
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.
The visiting scribe began to feel the burden of guilt and started perspiring.
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. “
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?
Why, why, why?
What is the remedy?
The visitor was speechless.
Instead of going on with the chat, he did the only thing he knew to escape from the reality.
He ran away.
[ The village barber’s conundrum was passed on to many specialists and generalists, politicians and their followers. No
Sanjivani type cure has been prescribed by anyone so far.]
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Was it true that the visitor had done well in his life? The visitor mumbled non-commitally: “Cannot complain.”
The villager riposted rather quickly: ” Well, at least better than me.” The scribe essayed an affirmative, puzzled about the drift of the chat.
There came a query like a good length ball that often makes a batsman lose his wicked.
Was it because the barber had dropped out of the school and the visitor had gone ahead? The newsman again nodded yes.
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.”
The barber:” Why were the poor parents blamed when poverty was responsible for school drop outs?”
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?”
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.
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.
The razor was used to shave both men and buffaloes.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 ?
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?
The barber now fired the mother of all the questions. Are the political parties saying something and doing something else?
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.
The visiting scribe began to feel the burden of guilt and started perspiring.
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. “
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?
Why, why, why?
What is the remedy?
The visitor was speechless.
Instead of going on with the chat, he did the only thing he knew to escape from the reality.
He ran away.
[ The village barber’s conundrum was passed on to many specialists and generalists, politicians and their followers. No
Sanjivani type cure has been prescribed by anyone so far.]
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