An unforgettable episode

An unforgettable episode


Tushar Bhatt

SURENDRANAGAR.

Darshak is gone from this earth but the memory of one particular remains evergreen. The dust of time has failed to dim its impact.

It was a unique classroom and a unique celebration. One of the tallest Gujarati authors and winner of the many a national award for literature, Manubhai Pancholi,who wrote in the penname of Darshak, celebrated his 84th birthday on October 15 in this sleepy district town ,by delivering public lectures on history of democracy. Hardly a soul in the audience apparently remembered it was his birthday.

The audience did not consist of youngsters as has been customary for Darshak, a lifelong teacher. Under the merciless glare of halogen lamps, relieved only a bit by fans, there sat the elite of so-ciety, doctors and lawyers, teachers and housewives, social work-ers and folk singers, politicians and plebeians, listening for more than an hour and a quarter in each of the three sessions, about how democracy blossomed in Greece; what kind of democrats the Athenians were, what the Romans did and what they did not, brought forward with smart linkages to modern day.
Darshak had been for years thinking, talking and writing about Socrates and Plato, interpreting their thoughts in the modern con-text. His most famous novel carries in its title, Zer To Pidhan Chhe Jani Jani, a subconscious awareness of Socrates' hemlock. That he compulsively talked about Greek philosophers and history was because Darshak, which means an observer, was a writer by hobby only and a teacher by mission.
He said: "It is well-nigh impossible for me to live as Darshak all the 365 days of a year, although I would love to do it. With great difficulty I can manage to live as Darshak for some five to 25 hours a year." The teacher in him cannot be subjugated by the writer in him.
The remaining period of his existence,Manubhai Pancholi remained an untiring and unretiring teacher and not even the frailty of health could deter him.
He was in Surendranagar, away from his home base of Sanosara in Bhavnagar district, on October 14 and 15 as part of an un-usual educational experiment that a handful of imaginative public workers and educatonists had just begun. The three lectures by Darshak, spread of over two days, were video-taped and cassettes of these would,hopefully, be soon made available to schools and colleges in the area to enable a wider audience to learn from what the veteran educationist and writer has to say about history and its lessons.
Said Mr Sanat Mehta, former M.P. from Surednranagar who was instrumental in devising the experiment: " What is needed among our youngsters as well as adults already in the thick of the life's battle, is to look at history of democracy with a new perspective that Darshak provides."
Shabdlok, a voluntary organisation that runs a library and cultural centre, Uttam Prakashan, a co-operative publishing ven-ture,and a Gandhian basic education institution, Maitri, headed by Mr Nagjibhai Desai,joined hands to organise the lecture series.
Although a highly creative person, Manubhai Pancholi blended in his thinking and attitudes a high awareness of reality.To a ques-tion from the audience at the end of the lectures whether it was necessary to rewrite India's constitution to make democracy per-form better in the country, he said: Nothing written on a piece of paper can make democracy work anywhere. What can make it click is what its citizens were prepared to undertake for them-selves."
An enlightened citizenry required people to imbibe a scientific temper and inquiry, a compassion in the heart for the plight of their fellow human beings and a staunch belief in the rule of law. All this in turn needed education, not just in schools and colleges, but throughout life.
Manubhai kept the listeners spell-bound with his insights into history of democracy, laced with Greek and Roman examples, how these states flourished and how they perished.
His voice was often cracking. Once or twice the electricity and the public address system played truant,
the weather was unbearably sultry.But nothing seemed to bother the elderly speaker, or the audience that included Swami Akshay Vivek Bharati, Mr Ramesh Shah, president of the Surendranagar municipality, Prof. Dinesh Shukla, political commentator, Mr Indub-hai Jani and Mr Hasmukh Patel, both social workers, and Mr Mad-husudan Mistry, a leader of the Congress.
The teacher had made it clear in the beginning he did not have all the answers, adding that there never could be all the answers. What could be there was a relentless examination of what is going on around us, compassion in the heart to rise above mere reason-ing and an ability to stick to unpalatable stance if that was what the situation demanded. It was a sure-fire recipe to make an aware citizenry.
Though a Gandhian,Darshak was never hesitant to voice a dis-sent.He believed that Acharya Vinoba Bhave erred in persuading many seasoned Congress not join politics,go to parliament or be-come minister.The country badly needed them to push the admini-stration towards the Mahatma’s goal of Swaraj.Swaraj could be reached more speedily by first providing Surajya, or better govern-ance.

Rohit Mehta, A Gujarati philosopher Ahead of His Time

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 Au-robindo,Upanishad,Gita as also Marx, a teacher with a vast repertoire and a subtle sense of hu-mour and a prolific writer,and a man of unfailing kindliness.
Still some others think of him as a charismatic personality, donned most of the time in spot-lessly white dhoti and yellowish khadi-silk kurta,slightly stocky in build,and wearing a black-framed pair of spectacles over 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 un-der modesty and nonchalance
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 or 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 Socialist Forum within the Congress in the early 1930s .He went to prison repeatedly, starting from stu-dent 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 preacher. 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 59 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 onward 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 scien-tific and mechanical skill as applied to economic production. This scientific technique is becom-ing 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 absorp-tion 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 direc-tion 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 for peace, 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 us, the real problem being the increasing mental tension in the life of the individual. The problem of the individual, 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 eco-nomic activities. But these activities, instead of providing relief, gradually create greater and greater psychological tension in the life of the individual. Probably at no time in human history was the gulf between the subjective and objective factors as great as it is today. 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 civilisation. 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 pro-fessor in physics at the Elphinstone college,Bombay.The bright child was destined 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.
Between 1926 and 1934,the young man was sent to jail five times for his activities in the free-dom struggle, making him a blue-eyed boy of Mahatma Gandhi. He had already been an avid so-cialist 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 authori-ties 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 Ba-babhai Patel, a Congress worker,Jamnadas Dwarkadas took J.Krishnamurti to see the ailing Ro-hitbhai. 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 bend of his mind had already started asserting over his rebellious 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 philosophy for life. He explained in 1937 his transformation in a volume called, A new world of theosophical 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 Being and the becoming, the Eternal Light,the Creative silence,Seek Out the Way,the Search for Free-dom, 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, recalled Prof P.G.Mavalankar, Shrideviben would sing bhajans and hymns appropriate to the theme of his talk.” People would appreciate these after listening to Rohitbhai since the talk would make them understand the bhajans and hymns and their meaning all the better”, Mavalankar said. 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.He used to come to Ahmedabad at least once a year 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 .Prof.Mavalankar remembered 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 remembered 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 shad-ows, 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 ar-rives. 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 came for the last time to Ahmedabad.Shrideviben’s younger brother, Late Devendra Oza, a veteran journalist and humour writer in Gujarati,under the pen-name of Vanmali Vanko had lined up an interview for this writer. Hours before the meeting,Rohitbhai developed 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.

Chandrakant Bakshi’s Journey through literary jungle

Tushar Bhatt

With 126 books already to his credit, the 64-year-old Gujarati writer,Chandrakant Bakshi,did not look like a spent-force,either physically or mentally. It was our first one-to-one chat.There were several surprises.
He smiled easily,laughed heartily,even at a joke at his own ex-pense,behaved what the British gentry would have described as correctly,and generally comes across as an amiable person. He might forget and forgive a physical attack,but never an insult.
Which profile,many of his detractors-- and they are in a legion --would testify,did not sit easily with his profile as an author.If his tongue was witty,his pen was generally barbed,and prone to drip-ping vitriol more often than not, or so it would seem to the detrac-tors.
That made Bakshi a highly controversial writer,and he positively loved controversies.Some say he chased a few if none came his way naturally.A man who took life as it came,and like to take it at a flood,Bakshi was a meticulous craftsman of words.
But,he was not a man with the gift of the gab and nothing to say.He backed up his skill as a wordsmith with an equally meticu-lous research,meshed with ideas designed to create an agita-tion.Simply put, he was a writer who hated to be ignored and did his damn best not to go unnoticed.
Bakshi divided his writing into two compartments,journalistic writ-ing,aimed at specific target audiences of the young,of women, of people in far-flung areas,striving to learn more, know more.It is studded with information and writing in a lively fashion-- a definite infortainment.His other writings,such as novels,short stories are what he said brought him into his element.But,in both types the backbone was a mix of research and experience.
He began writing for publication at the age of 18 and had never stopped,producing during the years 25 novels,12 collections of short stories,two collections of plays,seven travelogues,14 on his-tory and culture,41 anthologies of articles,two biographies,three containing excerpts,10 of translations and 41 anthologies of arti-cles in addition to three volumes of autobiography.Even his autobi-ography,begun in 1987,was an on-going work; more volumes were yet to come,till his last breath.The only branch he left alone is po-etry-writing."I did write some 20 poems but early on in my life, I re-alised poetry was not my forte."
A rebel,who was often at odds with the establishment,he was twice awarded first prizes by the Gujarat Sahitya Academy and the Gujarat government,but did not accept,contending these should go to younger writers.By temperament,he appears to be more at home in combat than in agreement with the powers that be.Many ridi-culed him as a one-man army,always itching for a fight; others think of him as a Don Quixote of Gujarati literature, forever tilting at real or imaginary windmills-- or windbags.
In reality,Bakshi was a warm-hearted person,with a strong sense of personal loyalty and a community sense of rebellion.He loved Calcutta dearly,although he left it many years. He disregarded the criticism of the eastern India megapolis as a dying city:"I spent the best years of my life in Calcutta.I have rich memories.Your friends may not happen to be the most beautiful people in the world,but they are “ your friends",he said, explaining his loyalty to Calcutta.
His growth as a writer was some kind of anti-thesis to the envi-ronment in which he was brought up.He hailed from a family that was not poor.
Born on August 20,1932,at Palanpur in north Guja-rat,Chandrakant did his matriculation from Bombay university in 1948,taking the first class.He did his B.A. from St.Xavier's col-lege,Calcutta with distinction in 1952,took his degree in Law in 1956 and finished his post-graduation from Calcutta university in History and Political Science in 1963.In 1970,he moved to Bombay as a college teacher,joining the Mithibai College of Arts,taking un-der-graduate classes in history and political science for a dec-ade.For five years between 1975 and 1980,he also taught the post-graduate students at the Bombay university in the same sub-jects.For two years he worked as the principal of L.S.Raheja Col-lege of Arts and Commerce in Bombay,till 1982.
But what made him take to writing? Chandrakant had no clear-cut answer,save the memory that he started writing very early.His first short story,in Gujarati,Makanna Bhoot,was written in 1950,when he was 18,and was published the next year in the pres-tigious Kumar magazine.
What prompted him to write in Gujarati was the location of his stores in an area in Calcutta,where no Gujarati was spoken all day."As it was my Gujarati was bad, it was atrocious,and I began to fear I will forget it altogether if did not write."
Remembered Bakshi of his olden days:"I did not know a soul in Gujarati literature,did not even know the language very well. But there was no looking back after I made a breakthrough in 1951. My writing contained the real raw experience of the river-side,of life in a decaying city, of murders and may-hem in day-to-day life, of fish.This somehow made an impact.Bachubhai Rawat told me in those days that for the first time a short story has come where there is real life,you feel the throb of it, feel it breathing.I think that was it.I feel art for me comes from real life.I believe the story con-tent has to be there in whatever you are writing,it should pertain to real life."
He did not think that he was avidly read because he loved to shock people,by being outrageously different."That is a misconcep-tion about me.Actually, earlier there never was any tradition of hard work in Gujarati writing,of marshalling facts, mounting meticulous research,doing a lot of home-work. I have fortunately had the disci-pline of history and law in my training,and I tend to do a lot of work before I put words on to the paper.I read up,move around,talk to people,look at landscape.Nothing gets out of my hands, my control in my writing.I am outcast in literature,am never called for anything, am not on any committee, no official accolade comes my way.The Soviet Union called me,but not in our state.That rankles me some-times,but only momentarily.There has been a conspiracy of si-lence".
"I have only one ambition; I want to be able to live as long as I do in the same way as I am doing now.I ask God to grant me that.I also do not want to die an invalid.I have no mandate to improve the world."He was full of joie de vivre and wished to be that way till the very last breath."I am I,and I want to be so till I am there".It requires superb arrogance or self-confidence to wish that,or perhaps both.
His wish was fulfilled and then one day in the dawn as the night hastily departed, it snatched Bakshi; he became He.

Niranjan Bhagat: A poet and a one-man university

y
Tushar Bhatt


The fingers of both his hands are dancing, as if making - or backing - the point that he is putting across; the eyes, with dis-cernible dark pouches underneath, are sparkling. The voice is loud enough not to need a microphone even in an auditorium, although full of warmth and friendship. The forehead displays the furrows time has made on a face that is otherwise noteworthy because of a largish nose.
But, the owner of these features,Prof.Niranjan Bhagat,poet and teacher,and a human being par excellence, seems to be hardly aware of all the visual impression he is making on his listeners. In fact, it would appear that rest of his body is merely a functional at-tachment to the extremely lively --and invisible feature -- that ticks under the greying hair combed straight, his mind
Prof.Bhagat has not written more than two or three poems in the past 35 years, and even in the preceding 15 years, his work could perhaps fill 200 pages.Yet, it is the profoundness of his poetry, and not his prolificity, that has made Bhagatsaheb, as he is known to countless students of literature in Gujarat, a pillar of post-Independence Gujarati poetry.
For some five years, he had been speaking for an hour-and-a half every Tuesday at the Gujarati Sahitya Parishad on poetry; in Gujarati on poetry in many a language ranging from Gujarati to French. Said a regular listener, one of the 30 odd-people who col-lected at the Parishad to relish the pleasure of his erudition, expo-sition, explanation and critique: "You could listen to him for five hours without ever feeling bored. It is like listening to the roar of the Niagra, ever enchanting. Mark his mannerism of closing his hands to his chest and outstretching them to his listeners, as if he giving them something from the depth of his heart. It is unlike so many others, notably politicians, whose far-flung arms close towards their chest, as if taking away something from those who came in touch with them."
That alone would make Prof Bhagat a unique teacher, a rare bird even in these days of proliferation of educational institutions, with all the Tom, Dick and Harry taking a tutorial tempted to call himself a professor. He is more than a mere teacher. Although he formally retired from teaching in college years ago, he has never tired of delving into the world literature, and meticulously preparing himself to give what he has excavated to others.
Niranjan has been hailed as a poet of restraint and conscious-ness, whose poetic creativity took place mostly between 1943 and 1958.Born in 1926, he calls himself "a child of the city, an industrial city”. At the time of his birth,Ahmedabad still lived mostly was a walled city; the western suburbs were still villages and Gandhiji had been in town with an ashram for a decade or so. The Mahatma's Dandi March took place when Niranjan was a child. On the eastern side of the Sabarmati,he recalled once, were the textile mills, spawning eddies of black smoke into the sky and on the west was the Gandhian establishment, with its subdued noise of the indige-nous spinning wheel, the charkha. The struggle for the country's independence, for the growth of its swadeshi industry, for freedom to go its own way of social, political and economic development was the backcloth against which the young Niranjan's childhood was spent, first in the walled city and later in the Ellis bridge area. His Bhagat surname was derived from an active participation in Magan Bhagat's Bhajan group by his grandfather, Harilal.But this was more of an accident, according to the poet.” I do not perform any religious puja at home, nor do I go to temples. I have never advertised my relationship with the Almighty either through thought in private, or through words of action in public. Even in solitude, I never take God's name without any rhyme or reason, either to my-self or others." Eldest of among three children of his par-ents,Narhari and Menaben,the young Niranjan had a taste of free-dom fight when he suffered a fracture on an arm during a police lathi charge near Gujarat college in 1942.He went to college at the L D Arts in 1944,and to Bombay for two years for post-graduation. He regards his childhood as a very happy period- a paradise. “I have tried to re-enter that paradise through my poetry, a failed at-tempt. Maybe I will still try to do it. I am looking for my childhood in poetry". His creative journey appears to have actually begun in 1942 when he wrote the first line of Mari Papan Ne Palkare. It was not a full poem, but the journey took him to the publication of his first collection of poems, Chhandolay, in1949.He was also given the Kumar medal for the best original contribution to the magazine, Kumar in that year. The next year saw the publication of Kinnari, another volume of his poetry. In 1950, he took up teaching English literature at a college in Ahmedabad, and continued to teach for-ever, even though he no longer goes to a college, having formally retired several years ago. After Pravaldwip, which came out some 35 years, Niranjan appears to have stopped writing poetry, partly because he never felt satisfied that his creation could be better than what it had been till 1958.It is not a writer's block in the sense that he does not have anything more to say; it has something to do with his quality consciousness.
Invariably, whether the visitor is a close friend or unknown ad-mirer, the question that comes up more often than not is: Even so, why did he stop writing poetry? "There is no definitive answer. I do not know why I wrote, I do not know why I stopped. I cannot even say that I will never write poetry again." He says: "Is it a matter in the hands of poet that he will or will not now or ever pen a poem? One thing is sure I will never write anything that looked like a dilu-tion of my earlier work, or a reehash, or a watering down." He gives an impression of being a wordsmith who produces when there is an inner call, and when there is no such call would not do a thing in spite of all the world telling him to produce.Art,in the eyes of a true artist, just happens; it can never be ordered about, or mass pro-duced.
His creative process, he frankly admits, is some sort of a mys-tery to himself. ” I wrote poetry for 15 years because I felt like it; it was all bursting out on its own." His work had never been a forced or disciplined output-- a formalised production process so to say. He has to spontaneously feel like writing and then only could he write. He has written some prose, mostly literary criticism; and more often, he has emptied his thoughts to his innumerable stu-dent audiences. He reads a lot, learnt French, has travelled to vari-ous countries and goes regularly to Paris. "I must have walked a thousand miles in cities of London, Athens Rome and Paris since 1982.Everytime I go to a big city, I roam around. I will always con-tinue to do it."
Actually,Niranjan is a loner. “I do not belong to any camp. I like both classical and modern, traditions and experimentation." Paint-ing,music,scupture,architecture do not seem to attract the profes-sor much; nor do the flora and fauna, birds and bees, animals, sky and the sea, the vales or dells, the plains or peaks. “All these are beautiful and I am aware of that fact, but personally these do not enchant me. I am interested in poetry, cities, and the nameless, faceless crowds roaming the roads in the cities." He is a voracious reader, who wants not to enjoy world literature himself, but enable his friends, acquaintances and even strangers to partake the pleasure. He would dearly love to translate the 164 poems of Baudelaire from French into Gujarati.He has lived a full life, and does not have any regrets. He sets a great store by his friends, who are innumerable in number. He sometimes quotes Yeats:" My glory was I had such friends".
He admits to finding some mystique in the crowds of human be-ings, unstable, unknown, formless crowds. Yet, this attraction is not without a curious detachment. “I am in crowd, but not of the crowd. His desire to translate Baudelaire into Gujarati also stems from this. But, he would like to dodge questions that would commit him to anything. When and how will its flight take place, the bird knows not.

A Barber spells out what haunts the Nation

Tushar Bhatt

His prematurely old face showed no signs of hostility. It did not betray any emotions at all. His voice also discloses anything. 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.

Yet, the fragile man sought permission to speak. The visitor nodded a wordless yes. The people seem to think that the scribes knew more than what they are telling.

The village barber, wearing a shirt with a torn collar and pyjama displaying loose endings of his customers hair-cut, 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 returned the serve rather quickly. He said: Well, better than he had. 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.

Why were the poor parents blamed when poverty was responsible for school drop outs? The barber 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 one think. Better education would have helped him think and understand better, he said.

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 was feeling distinctly uneasy now. 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’ 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 Mira who had said that market economy was fine but what about those 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 salvo. The village barber quietly put in: Are you better-off people in a majority or are 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.

----Tushar Bhatt

An Unlikely Artist: Manilal Mistri

By Tushar Bhatt
On November 3, 1936,a young man stood nervously on the steps at the main entrance of the old Premabhai Hall in Bhadra area of Ahmedabad,clutching a sketch-book in his hand.He had spent the previous evening at a meeting at the Gujarat Vidyapeeth,trying to capture the likeness in a few bold pencil lines of the main speaker,Mahatma Gandhi.
The youth,Manilal Mulchand Mistri, was the next day at the Hall,waiting for Gandhiji.The intention was to get the Mahatma see the sketch and autograph it.
Always a punctual man,Gandhiji came ,walking briskly,almost running.Manilal meekly presented his work.The Mahatma, a man with infinite pragmatism too,turned to Mahadev Desai, as Manilal later remembered,asking him to take Rs.five for the Harijan welfare activities in lieu of the signature.Aware of the Mahatma's practice,Manilal was ready with the cash,no insignificant an amount in those non-inflation days.
Nearly six decades later , Manilal,himself a grand old man,fondly remembered those glorious years of his student days when he was chasing an unusual hobby of instantly drawing pencil sketches of great figures of the independence movement as also of the con-temporary society,and seeking their autograph on the sketches.
Seated comfortably on a sofa at his son, Vijay's house in Ah-medabad,Manilal, a lean,ramrod man in very good state of health for his age,gazed out of the spacious French window,as if trying to piece through the tiny cloud of dust kicked up in the garden outside by a hot June wind.Always a neat and dapper man,he was dressed in a khadi kurta and pyjama,topping the head with a Gandhi cap, a rarity these days even inn Gandhi's home State.
He recalled:"I must have drawn some 400 or so sketches in those years between 1934 and 1943".Most of them were with auto-graphs of the person sketched.
An engineer by training and a contractor building bridges in later days by profession,Manilal Mistri would have left his mark on the sands of time had he not done anything else but do sketches.
His collection of sketches includes those of leaders like Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel,Subhash Chandra Bose,Mrs Sarojini Naidu,Frontier Gandhi Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan,Mahdev Desai,Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya,Acharya J.B.Kripalani,Bhulabhai Desai,Jamnalal Bajaj,Indulal Yagnik,Yusuf Maher Ali,Diwans of Bhavnagar,Prabhashankar Pattani, and of Baroda, V.T.Krishnamachari,historian Dharmanand Kosambi, singer Pandit Omkarnath Thakur,artist Nandalal Bose,philosopher J.Krishnamurti,Sadhu Vaswani,K.M.Munshi,Kaka Kalelkar,Sir C.V.Raman,cricketers Vijay Hazare and Hemu Adhikari and many others of different disposition and vocations.Almost all the sketches were done as a student while Manilal was in Ahemdabad,Baroda and Karachi in the pre-partition days.
Critics have hailed these sketches as of immense value,both ar-tistically and historically. And,yet,Manilal Mistri never had any pre-tensions to being an artist; he did not even get any formal training in pencil sketching or drawing,although his being an engineer may have helped him view things in aproper perspective and dimension.
Said Mistri:" I never gave much thought to my sketches as work of art. I was drawing them because the activity gave me pleas-ure,and to add to the sense of achievement and satisfaction, I had hit upon the idea of securing the signature of the person concerned on the sketch."
Born on July 31,1912,at Chanasma in Mehsana district,in north Gujarat Manilal has spent a life-time in Navsari in south Guja-rat,pursuing several hobby horses in addition to sketching,but had never thought of projecting his work in any manner.The family had a timber business and the young Manilal had set his heart on be-coming an engineer." When I was very young, II used to see an engineer,donning a hat,and going about with great swagger,and getting the respect of all and sundry.I had made up my mind to be-come something like him."
Pencil drawing was a kind of innocent hobby Manilal had picked up without much serious thought of either pursing an art career or doing something artistic.It was just one of his several interests."I was doing these things- sketching, writing on archaeology - for my own pleasure, Niajanand,"he said.
This was no false modesty.His sketches had remained in files,stacked away in an attic for years and years,till in 1985,the Gujarati poet,late Hasit Buch,went to see Manilal at his home in Navsari.
Buch had gone to see him for a different reason.Decades ago,the poet had read a book,written by Manilal,on Modhera,the home of a famous sun temple,near Chanasma.It was an 80-page volume,published by the former Baroda state for the young read-ers.The poet had been so impressed by it that a good many years after he had browsed through it,he had remembered it in 1985.
Manilal put two three files in front of Hasit Buch,asking mildly if he could spare some time to glance through them.The poet thought it was a manuscript of something new written by Manilal Mistri.But,when he opened the opened,the files, brilliant pencil sketches caught his eye,"an attractive and impressive array of drawings,leaving a powerful imprint in the mind"
Buch wrote later: "While looking at the sketches, I shifted my eyes to look at Manilal.In front of me,there was this unassuming man in his seventies,smiling affectionately as he he watched me poring over the sketches." The poet called it revelation of two Manilals in that moment.
Why had he hidden them away in the files? Buch suggested:"Let us put them into frames and exhibit them in Baroda." Manilal did not reply for a moment.Then, in a voice,dignified and controlled he asked Hasit Buch : "Is there really much in the sketches? You see, I had done during my college days.And may I say that at this age,neither money nor fame would motivate me. Forget it."
When Buch returned to Baroda, Manilal rang up,saying that since he was not keeping good health,perhaps Buch should drop the idea of holding an exhibition of the sketches.
As luck would have,Hasit Buch himself was unwell when they spoke and so Manilal came over to inquire after his health. Buch wrote later that he told the old man: "Manibhai the holding of this exhibition is not a matter involving you alone. It is not even our matter; it is something in entire Gujarat is involved. My appreciation of visual arts is that of an interested onlooker.Even then, it seems to me that if we put these sketches on public view,the viewers will have something to gain. Do not say no now,please."
Gujarat ,and the world at large, came to know about these excel-lent sketches,which take the viewers on a visual journey down memory lane,nearly 41 years after they had been pencilled.Some more exhibitions have been held of the sketches since,and one more to come will be at the Jehangir Art Gallery in Bombay in Feb-ruary next.
Said Manilal of his own work: "Of all the sketches I have done, I like that of the Mahatma the best. For one thing, he was the tallest human being I am ever likely to encounter. For another thing, in a few economical lines,I ,even at that young age, seemed to have captured the essence of his greatness. I cannot describe it in words;I can only feel it by looking at the sketch.Others tells me they too experience a similar feeling." The Gandhi sketch showed a thin moustache,and a strand of hair,which many have taken to be a tuft.
Similarly,the pencil sketch of Vallabhbhai Patel, done January 6, 1935,in Baroda is also outstanding. It brings out the stern discipli-narian that the Sardar was.It also has Patel having a bush mous-tache.
The sketches of Subhash Bose,Frontier Gandhi,Mahadev Desai and Sarojini Naidu,too are of immense artistic and historic worth for the history buffs and ordinary souls alike.They together tell the viewers how did our national leaders look six decades ago.
Recalled Manilal: "I used to go to the school in Cha-nasma,always wondering at the excellent sketches and pictures done by the renowned painter Ravi Verma,which were on display at a shop in the village. I often felt tempted to copy them and when I became monitor of my class,I tried copying a few of them on the class black board.They turned out to be very good.Then, a teacher suggested that I draw more often ,and, there I was doing just that. In course of time, I developed an ability to draw exact likeness of an individual's face,without wasting too many lines and that too us-ing a soft black pencil. A pencil was then available in six an-nas.One day I got the idea of seeking autographs of the people whose sketches I had done to authenticate them,along with the date.Even than I did not think of it much beyond a hobby that gave me immense pleasure. I would do the sketch, get the signature and put it away-- perhaps for posterity." His hobby blossomed further when he went to Patan for further schooling.He went to Karachi in 1940 to join the engineering college to become a civil engineer.
These sketches were almost always done very quickly. Said Manilal: "I would go to public meetings and hastily draw the sketches, often standing up or sometimes sitting on the ground.Sometimes I would present the sketch to the speaker the same day,or if the person was to stay, the next day.It was some-thing done in some fifteen to 20 minutes."
Was ever any of his sketch rejected as an unlikely caricature by anyone? No,said Manilal. Most people who looked at the work, would be pleased and would put their signature happily. "Only in one instance I remember this did not happen. I had drawn a sketch of the writer-politician K M Munshi and presented it to him for auto-graph.Munshi signed it,but put at question mark near the carica-ture.I drew another sketch of him and took it to him the next day. Munshi signed without demur."
After taking the engineering degree, Manilal worked as an engi-neer in Baroda for a while, and then joined business in a bobbin manufacturing factory at Kosamba in south Gujarat. Some years later,he became a bridge construction contractor,making home at Navsari.Early in 1940s,he gave up doing sketches alto-gether,worldly matters of working, making money and raising a family becoming his major concerns. He took up the pencil just one more time in 1961 to draw the sketch of Nehru,and never touched it again. "I am now too old and not patient enough to do sketching. I do not have the requsitie strength."
The sketch of Nehru was also different from others in one sense.Manilal could not meet the then prime minister personally and had mailed the sketch to him for a signature,if Nehrru found it good enough. Nehru did find it okay,autographed it in April,1961,but forgetting to put the exact date.
Manilal has also been deeply interested in archeaology too,and had brought out a book on Modhera 60 years ago.At the ripe old age, he was busy updating it, and contemplating to bring it out in English too. He was also toying with an idea of amateur excavation near Modhera to test some of his hypothesis.
Said Pranlal Patel, famous photographer: "In addition to every-thing else, Manibhai was a very good pictorialist.Even at his age, he was interested in outings for photography.Whenever we could manage it, we set out for taking pictures,both in black and white and in colour." The photographs taken by Manilal are also of high quality,revealing a quality conscious mind.A few won prizes and awards in competitions.
Manilal,nearing 90,was a very affectionate family man.Why did he not pursue art as a career."You see,one could not live by art comfortably. I had become an engineer by choice and had plans to excel there too.I never even thought of turning into a professional artist." Even in the autumn of his life,Manilal,as head a family that included two sons and four daughters,was simply adored by his friends and family as a lively grand old man.His wife died in 1990, and he himself was not been keeping well occasionally.
But,Manilal never called it a day."If I rest,I rust" was Manilal's life-long motto,something he had picked up from an obituary of Sir Victor Sassoon that appeared in The Times of India when he was young.His friend,cartoonist Chakor said:" Manibhai was always busy with something or other.He was a true karma-yogi." He had always done things whole-heartedly,but also with a clinical de-tachment,and without any airs.
His sketches,which he never called art,pleased him while do-ing.And,so do they please all those who see them;after all,imparting visual pleasure is an essential ingredient of art.Yet Manilal gave up pencil sketching. How many can give up to-tally,doing something they were good at for a while? He has now gone to his Maker; one can only wonder if he ever picked the pen-cil to sketch Him. No third party will ever know.