The Mahatma's Resurrection

By Vinod Bhatt

(originally written in Gujarati
         and
translated into English)

By Tushar Bhatt





I could not trust my ears and stared with a dumb expression at my friend. He was emphatic: “You just try and find out if I am telling you the truth.”



He held up a small bottle containing sparking liquid. “Put only three drops of this magic potion on any inanimate thing and it will spring to life.”



Disbelief would just not disappear from my face, although like Gandhiji my friend also had taken a vow never to tell a lie. Maybe, he was making a mistake.



As if reading my thoughts, the friend drove home the point further. “I will tell you what you could do. Just go to any statue standing in a public place, put three drops of the potion into the statue’s left ear and see what happens.”



He was so insistent I thought I had no option but to try. There being any number statues of any manner of people all over the country, it was easy enough. The question now was of choosing a proper candidate in an appropriate place.



It occurred to me why not try the potion on the Mahatma’s statue, standing at the Income Tax Circle on Ahmedabad’s Ashram Road? On his return from South Africa, Gandhiji had made home in Ahmedabad and founded the Ashram, the first HQ of India’s non-violent freedom struggle.



Modelled on a famous woodcut of Nandlal Bose, the statue is beautifully done. With a walking staff in hand, the Mahatma seemed to be in a sombre mood and striding away from the Sabarmati Ashram.



Nevertheless I paused for a jiffy to ponder. Was it proper to carry out this seemingly innocuous experiment on the statue?



No one had objected when some people had bathed the statue of the Apostle of Non-violence with milk to purify it. Later, some other had even applied a blood tilak on its forehead, invoking the Mahatma’s blessings in whatever the cause they were fighting for.



Perhaps, he also would not mind my putting in mere three drops of the potion in the statue’s ear. After all, unlike others I was only verifying the truth of my friend’s claim, a harmless experiment with truth, with no personal or group axe to grind.



I cautiously put the drops into the statue’s left ear. As soon as the drops went in, Bapu came alive.



There was some cramp in his sprightly demeanour, a result of standing in the same rigid position for years. He stretched and yawned. The walking staff in his hand dropped to the ground. Dutifully, I bent down and picked up the staff to hand it back to Gandhiji.



Bapu sanpped: “Not walking staff any more. It would not do. Fetch me a gun. Quick.”


(Though they share a common surname,the Two Bhatts are not related.They are good friends)

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.

A Crisis of Culture Among Gujaratis in the USA

Tushar Bhatt ,travelling in the U S





You will realise the real worth of a family only when you go away from it, alone in the maddening crowds of the world.. The identity crisis that is evident among the Non-Resident Indians in general and Gujarati NRIs in particular is nothing but a manifestation of the feelings of being cut-off from the comforting shelter of the vatvruksh.Society is a mere expansion of the family





From this seed springs forth uneasiness, a doubt about true appreciation of the gravity of a non-resident's real identity, what is he/she- an Indian or an American? This is not the only trouble. The crisis haunts in lesser intensity highly qualified Information Technologists like Tilak Mysore, or management people like Rutu Dave, social scientist like Prof Pravin Sheth, Dr C Mohan,a top scientist with IBM,all in the Silicon Valley's hub San Jose.



In older out-posts like Bakersfield where Gujarati Motels have been there for ages, the cultural crisis is the same. More intensely-hit are people like Harendra Rawat, a self-made marketing man who came to the USA some 30 years ago,or Bina Bhatt who came here a decade ago to make a life in computer. Rawat is so much in India mentally that he refuses to touch anything made in Pakistan. His friend and Bina's husband computer specialist Raj Patel,spent harldly eight months after being born in Gujarat speaks no Hindi and a smattering of Gujarati. Yet he has Gujarati taste buds and loves hot chili in his food.All of them have India pulsating in their heart and mind. They stand erect, eyes moist,when the Tri-colour flutters in the sky, their leaps essaying Jan Gan Man.



The Gujarati Motelians rub shoulders with the higher income groups of IT crowd and doctors in jointly watering their Indian roots.The get together at the temple which houses several gods under the same dome. There are 2 pujaris, a Tirupati Brahmin who came here for hotter weather from Cleveland in Ohio,and the other a Gujarati who shifted his communications line from less prosperous Fiji.



The devotees have equally diverse vocations. While Sujata and her husband , Kirit Desai are reputed doctors, Pradeep Patel and Nayna are specialists in home-delivered grocery of Indian specialities.Pradeep is a singer of note who is good demand. But,he is not the one to sit back and enjoy.” I have my son and daughter studying to become doctors and must earn more.” He and his wife,Nayna operate from Taft, reaching goods to far-off places such as San Jose and even Las Vegas.



They all have gone away from India physically,but would not allow India to leave their heart.



In brief exchange of views with NRIs, this reporter found a deeper alienation haunting them. Like Vishwamitra, they had thought they would be in a new paradise but suspect they have become Trishanku, neither here nor there.What is worse that the first generation NRIs who came to the USA and the second generation born in the USA fight different identity crises.





The first generation NRIs are aware of their origins and believe whole-heartedly that they are Indians first . They are adjusting to American way but are more comfortable with dal,rice and curry than with pitza and pasta.They will resonate with devotion when Vibha and Rasbihari Desai launch into the superb Avinash Vyas copmposition, Maadi Tarun Kanku Kharyun ne Suraj Ugyo.They will weep copiously when Pankaj Udhas sings chiththi Ayee hai, vatan se....They will march proudly and hum patriotic songs with moist eyes, applaud wildly when Sachin Tendulkar sends a Pakistani bowler's delivery soaring into the sky for a massive sixer and cry when they watch terrorist mow down innocent people in Mumbai or Gandhinagar. The first generation has its heart beating for India.



Not so in the case of the second and third generations of these very people. The youngsters find themselves adrift, not fully integrated with the society in their land of birth, the US. These children of lesser culture are not accepted by American society. They face a double whammy of identity crisis. There is no better illustration of this then in marrying. Boys have in mind a role model impossible to find in America. They want their brides to be modern like the American girls and they want their brides to be as obedient as their India-born mothers. They forget that their India born mothers are less modern and more obedient.



NRI girls on the other hand, want grooms who are as prosperous as their fathers and as modern as Americans are. This can rarely happen. As a result, outsiders like me find a great confusion in the NRI society, The first generation NRIs come to India out of love for their motherland; and for finding spouses for their second generation sons, a pure Deshi girl who will be modern as well as obedient girl, a difficult proposition. As for their America born daughters, they hope to find a smart groom who will be ready to be a virtual ghar jamai, a proposition even more difficult. And, yet most teenagers are ten times more obedient than other peer group Americans. They would shy away from talking about dating.



It is a pity that most people tend to regard this dilemma as something springing from personal choice about which society at large can do but little. It is the foundation of a fundamental change coming in the relations between Garvi and Ghardi Gujarat and its foreign children.



If more attention is not paid, the Gujaratis in diaspora will be adrift, going away from the homeland. History is replete with such happenings in the past. Many West Indies islands residents bear Indian sounding names but they are lost NRIs. The same is the case in Fiji, Mauritius, South Africa, Zimbabwe and other countries.





A classic example is of Sinhali residents of Sri Lanka. They are descendants of people who went with Sanghamitra, Buddha's disciple from Orissa and Bihar. They are at war with people of Tamilian origins.



In an essay in way back 1946, George Orwell who wrote prophetic novels like 1984 and Animal Farm, said that the first outpost of a culture is language. When alien influences strike, even before the final surrender of a culture comes the debasement of its language.



Many a time underground and hardly discernible currents are already sending SOS signals which we as a people are not bothered to pick up. Note the fact that Gujarati as a child of one of the most developed languages of all times, Sanskrit is rich but we find use of English words admixed with Gujarati to create some gibberish called Gujlish. Second and third generations of Gujaratis in the US are not bothered about learning their ancestor's language because Gujarati has no wider commercial use in America



But there is a small silver lining to the dark clouds, according to some, but it may be an illusion. The children of Gurjari are uncomfortable that Americans at large as true Americans do not accept them and they themselves do not want to be regarded like their parents, as children of a lesser civilization, nick named Motelian culture. This is claimed to be a healthy sign but actually it is a flavourless Gujarati Undhiyoo without chilies and other spices.



NRIs are desperately trying to keep best of both the worlds. They have a chicken party for birthday on a Saturday and Satya Narayan Katha on Sunday to double celebrate a birthday. The tragedy is that this amounts to seeking a personalised amalgamation of cultures. They put off wedding and cremation to a fixed muhurat on a Sunday or a Holiday only so that ethnic needs do not clash with market requirement.







It has given a steady rise to Godmen and self appointed sentries of ethnic values, celebrating as many holidays as their deep-lined pockets will permit to authenticate their utilitarian compromise. They join hands with other Indians to sing garba, dance during Durga Puja, Onam, do puja during Shivratri and lighting of Holi fire.



In the long run it is a groping in a cultural dark . It is a grave cultural crisis.

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

An Indian-cum-Euoropean Technocrat:Prof. Jaroslav Fric

Tushar Bhatt

    The almond-shaped face,lined with furrows the plough of time has made,is sporting a friendly smile. The eyes,peering from behind the metal-rimmed spectacles,also show a bit of age,with bags and crow-feet.He would easily pass off as an elderly,portly,slightly prosperous-looking foreign tourist,with an obligatory camera on the shoulder.

    A foreigner he is,but the 69-year-old Prof.Jaroslav Fric (pronounced freech) is more at home India than his appearance and English ,spoken with a central European accent, would betray.

    For one thing,he does not wear on his face the perpetual,mandatory scowl that elderly,slightly-prosperous looking foreign tourists carry as a standard baggage--"beggers,flies,filth and awful living conditions".

    For another,he loves India and has been trying to understand the psyche of this ancient land for projecting an image of India.Fric has been visiting and working in India producing hi-tech audio-visual presentations right from 1971-72.

    It was Fric who helped produce an audio-visual show,The Indian People  put up in the central pavilion at Asia-72.It was again he who was called upon to visualise and install Crystal River commemorating the memory of the late Mrs Indira Gandhi at the spot she was killed at her Safdarjung house.

    After three years of work last year,he put together a hi-tech multi-media show,using the latest laser technology , at the Akshardahm complex of the Bochasanwasi Aksharpurushottam Sanstha of the Swaminarayan sect, a fusion of technology and ancient Indian philosophy,of the physical and meta-physical ideas.He has just got a bronze at the 9th International Audio-visual and Multi-Media Festival,held in Munich ,West Germany.There were as many as 135 entries at the festival,and the judges were experts from Germany,France,Spain,England and the U.S., which means it was not easy to impress them with a show that tries to explain intricacies of the Indian concept of Sat-chit-anand.

    Artistic and technological aspects apart,the very production of the audio-visual presentation ,involving spiritual and similar abstract ideas would present a formidable challenge even to an Indian producer because the aim of the show would be to hold the interest of viewers,familiar or unfamiliar with the notions,educated or unlettered,Indians or foreigners.For a person like Fric,born and brought up in Czchoslovakia,it would mean a complete re-orientation of the mind without any guarantee of being able to communicate it all to others. Say Sadhu Atmaswarup Swami and Sadhu Brahmprakash Swami of the sect: "That the show was not only hailed by thousands of Indian visitors to the complex in Gandhinagar,but also attracted the attention of an international specialist gathering indicated that Fric had been able to establish this communication link; he showed what the sect wanted to show,showed in such a beautiful manner,and managed to make an impact as well." Born on June 9,1924,Fric comes from a family that had traditionally been linked with the arts. But it was by no means a family of ascetics for whom transformation from one spiritual track to another may not be an insurmountable problem. Fric has been a down-to-earth man,not mentioning the fact that he lived in the then eastern bloc where man and the party were everything and there was nothing beyond.

    His education too ,therefore,did not equip him to take on the meta-physical.The first steps of his studies took him into the world of technology; Fric studied during the Second World War,when the regular universities had closed,at the vocational school of electronics in Brno,and later ,in the wake of liberation, at the electro-technical faculty of the Czech Technical University.The broad knowledge in electronics led him into research work and at first he worked at the Czechosolvak Research Institute of Nuclear Physics.This would mean he was equipped to be neck-deep in nuclear physics.

    The artistic gene in Fric appears to have made all the difference.To him physics was not a mere abstract science.With a rare sensitivity,he seemed to find "an abundance of interesting visual phenomena - photoelastic effects,tale-telling records of traces of a synthesis of nuclear elements." He was intrigued by the process of visualisation itself,the taking hold of the apparently "invisible" in the physical processes, in tranforming those processes into visible processes and which for outside viewers remained concealed.

    A chance- he calls it "luck" - made him participate in the setting up ofan exhibition called "Aoms for Peace" in 1953,providing him with an opportunity to get acquainted with the different means of audio-visual presentation.He pondered about the multiplication of space,processes of scene-creation,techniques and tricks of stage and exhibition architecture.

    All of which made him give up his research to join at the national enterprise for exhibition design in Prague,and helped create the lighting techniques at the Czech pavilion at the Brussels Export-58.A string of other assignments followed,culminating in his founding in 1969, a creative team named SCARS (Science-Art-Sense) at the Czech centre of fine arts.The teams operates from there even today.

    The grounding in physics and experience in the production of presentations led to a happy synthesis of his scientific outlook,which helped produce solutions to technological and logistical problemss, and his artistic talent,scaling new heights in audio-visual production. He also learnt how to organise talent for diverse jobs needed in such a production,managed to bring together a team of 40 people,and honed skilled in communications so that he could not only understand what his world clients wanted but also give them what they wanted,sometimes writing scrips himself.The first major work of his to attract notice in India was at the 1972 Asian fair,an extensive multi-vision fresco,including severtal freely linked independent parts. It was composed of three parts on the subjects of Indian people, the message and India.

    Fric and his team had by now become an internationally-known professional group,bagging prestigeous assignments for audio-visual presentations.Among the major ones were a show on the Birth of Europe for the European Community pavilion at Osaka Expo,Heritage of Ages on Iran,Victory of the people about his home land,50 years of Pahalvi dynasy again in Iran,The People of Czechoslovakia,the World of Fairy Tales for a Japanese gallery, a UNESCO show on prehistoric life,the Testament of Nehru for Asia-82 In the Constellation of Equals for the then Soviet Union.He has also co-authored a number of books and articles with other writers.

    But the Gandhinagar project was different from all others he had done thus far.It presented a challenge that seemed well-nigh impossible to meet.The monks of the sect had after roaming all over the world,scouting for suitable group of people to produce their audio-visual programme for a permament exhibition-cum-museum complex in Gujarat's capital.They heard of Fric,were impressed by his accomplishments and sounded him on the proposal for Gandhinagar.At first,although an adventurous professional,Fric was sceptical.He looked at the monks,dressed in orange and presenting an outward appearance of being simple,if not simpletons.His brief was to come from the head of the sect, Pramukh Swami,who did not speak English.Indian philosophy was even more mystifying to Fric than Greek and Latin.That was more than three years ago.

    Now, with the multi-media show running regularly week-in-and-week-out for a year,Fric is a man with a totally different perception.

    Fric had just risen from an afternoon catnap,snatching forty winks on a blue bed,rolled out under the open,azure sky in the spacious compound of the Shahibaug temple."You see,the basic problem was for me to grasp abstract ideas of the Indian philosophy such as Atma (soul). The concept of Atma being forever pure and eternal is very different from that of the soul in the west.I did not know even if after grasping it ,I would be able to make an audio-visual show from it."

    In the early 1970s,when he had first arrived in India,he had put up a five-star hotel in Bombay, to find from the window scenes of stark poverty. "Shanty colonies,emaciated people,begging children.I cried all night on the first day,despairing at the thought of how to project a positive image of India out of the immediate impressions that outsiders got like these scenes gave." Fric says,"the image of India abroad is of a poverty-ridden place,full of squalor,backwardness." But he persisted and was able to see the strengths of India, a vast ocean of talent,manpower and untapped wealth.

    He says the problem the Gandhinagar show presented was even more vexing.For so far in his career,he had worked on a physical plane,showing landmarks of either physical progress,technology or history of a people.One had to understand the history of a place,imbibe its spirit,but it was not impossible. "But to translate philosophy into a multi-media was a different cup of tea",he says, even now unable to articulate as to how exactly he did it.A group of seven monks helped him and occasionally he would see the head of the sect.All his life,admits Fric,he had worked for money -- " with a profit motive". The monks or their organisation were in no way capable of matching,say what the Sony of Japan might pay for a multi-media show.Yet,he was inspired to take up the assignment,travelled all over the country,logging more than 30,000 kms.,went to temples, read up history,philosophy,and anything that might help him.

    The resulting Sat-chit-anand show presents the message of philosophy easily ; man's futile pursuits of temporary happiness and the path of eternal bliss, sat-chit-anand by realising Atma and Paramatma as propounded by the Vedas and Upnishads.The show is presented with the aid of six dieo and 8 slide projectors,integrating artistic,optical light and sound effects on 14 screens.It is a computerised production, using a laser disc,leading to an exciting display.Since it was opened in November last year, a large number of people have seen it.

    Fric was in Ahmedabad for an inspection of the equipment. "I was fearful of the toll that the dust,continuous running of the show,the weather fluctuations might take on the presentation.But, I am amazed at the way care has been taken for it; so well-cared the equipment has been that it looks as if it is new." He has spoken to Czech president Victor Havel about the show and when he comes to India in February next on a visit,Havel is expected to come to Gandhinagar to see it.

    So Indianised Fric has become that he has become a great admirer and to some extent follower of the eastern philosophy. He has given up somking and drinking alcohol,does not think that wordly goods can give happiness as his western brethern believe.

    He had purused the profit motive all his career.What profit did he make from the Gandhinagar experience ? With a smile dancing in his eyes,the Czech says: "I have derived a great deal of mental peace for this project.I have done my work as best I could do even when money was decidedly not much.I did not even think of the fame it might get me." It got him that too.

   

   

   

   

A Century old,clicking and active,Pranlal Patel,Wizard of Camera

Tushar Bhatt

It all began in an innocuous way.
It was a hot day in May in 1940.The world was, for several months, at war for the second time in the 20th century. The Quit India movement was a good two years away in the future and the independence of the country as yet a dream.
Thirty years old then Pranlal Patel, a Rolie-flex camera slung on the shoulder, set out for Kashmir, long hailed as paradise on the earth, with a return ticket from Ahmedabad to Sri-nagar via Rawalpindi. Inclusive of the bus-fare from Rawalpindi to Srinagar, the cost per head was a meagre Rs.42.5. But the young man was not from among the rich in search of pleasure.
He was setting out to take photographs, in an era when a camera was a rare thing to pos-sess, more a hobby of the wealthy or the crazy. A Kodak 120 reel cost 14 annas. Like the anna coins, the 120 film too is extinct now.
Every thing clicked in the life of today’ camera wizard Pranlal Patel, internationally reputed pictorialist. His speciality has been his mastery over Black & White photography. So much so that the photographs taken during that trip continue to fascinate even today, not only because of their excellence but as a collection of historic value. It effectively brings out how much more enchanting was Kashmir just 70 years ago and what damage man has done to it. In the process the photographs become an irrefutable witness to an era for posterity, far more trustworthy than words.

Even among the true photo-artists, Pranlal Patel, an Ahmedabad (Gujarat)-based lens man is the rarest of the rare. Active in photography for nearly 70 years, Pranlal in 2010 was in the 101st year of life, and still kicking and CLICKING. He still wields a camera, walks up-right, though slowly, and has most of his slightly yellowish teeth intact and in service.
The 99-year-old Patel is still in photography. He took it up as a hobby in 1932. In no time it became a supplementary profession and then got transformed into a life-long passion.
A representative collection of his vintage photographs at Jaipur (Rajsthan), in March, 2009, has been described by Pranlal as fulfillment of a long standing desire. “I have no desire left unfulfilled. Now, I am waiting for one way travel on God’s train.” He brushed aside protests from listeners. “I have had everything in life.”
He has dozens of albums and has held numerous exhibitions. His work was not just superb photography but also a social, visual history. Most of them though exhibited are yet to be published.
He is curious like a child, and again like an innocent small boy, gets easily absorbed into the present moment, here and now. Behind his spectacles, eyes sparkle with abundant in-terest in life. He is equally comfortable with the children, youngsters.
He is a simple person, though certainly not a simpleton, frugal with words but fluent in thought. What keeps him fit and full of zest for living? “I don’t know. I do nothing special. I eat normal Gujarati vegetarian meal, do padmasan, and eat five pieces of dates with ghee (clarified butter) every morning and drink milk. I regard myself as an eternal student, keen to learn newer things. I have many Gurus; even my grandson Piyush is my Guru because he taught me a lot about harnessing computer as a tool for photography. Among my clos-est friends are two noted young photographers, awards-winner Vivek Desai and Ketan Modi, who runs a highly-acclaimed photography training institution. Vivek is also my dear-est disciple. I am proud of today’s young generation”.
Pranlal is very popular among young professionals and helps them a lot by patiently pass-ing on insights obtained through decades of photography. His photography has been mostly based on box cameras of the old genre and in black and white, without using the flash. He firmly believes that “the real art of photography does not reside in gadgets, whether a flash light or the modern-day digital cameras. It does not rely solely on composi-tion, light and shade, but on the eyes and fingers. There must be a perfect co-ordination between the eyes and the fingers. In turn the eyes and fingers must harmonise with the camera in such a way that they know simultaneously what unusual feature is there in the subject, compose in a way that highlights that feature and decide in unison when to press the shutter. They must become one with each other and the subject being clicked.”
Alas, there is no device in the market that can achieve this feat for the lesser mortals! Those who have learnt the secret are photo-artists, the Masters. The rest are slaves of technology.
Of course, people like Pranlal can throw some hints. “You should think before you pick up the camera to shoot. Most of us do not contemplate in advance. Before going in for shoot-ing, you should think of some unusual angle, slant, and symbolism, colours, light and shadow in the composition. Almost every thing has been previously photographed. You have to bring out something that is different.”
He says “It doe not mean that you should ignore day-to-day life. It means you must learn to concentrate in the present assignment, not just take a fleeting interest in the subject of the assignment but view it as the most important thing in your life, here and now. Your mind should neither wander hither and thither nor waver. You must see what is in front of you at the present moment. Nothing else matters. This cannot be accomplished overnight. You have to practise endlessly. Like a music maker you must never stop doing the riyaz all your life.”
Pranlal quotes an example. Ages ago, he was on an assignment to create a photo portfolio of the new building of a local company. Says he, “I could have done it in two or three weeks. But I took nearly six months. I would go to the building, sit in different places outside and study the light and shade and the time. I wanted to find out the timing and season when there would be best sunlight. I did not even open my camera bag till I had decided that in the forenoon of May there would be ideal light. The portfolio was much appreciated.”
Pranlal’s photographs are not only technically perfect, underlining the superb sense of composition, and skilful management of light and shade but also are so evocative that they seem to have an enduring life of their own, vibrant, vivacious and memorable.
Another trait that separates Pranlal in the rare category is the habit of preserving and main-taining his thousands of negative, repository of images of over 70 years. Together they are a massive documentation of India’s march of progress and social change.
These images also seem to re-assert the prime position black and white pictures occupied in the art of photography, notwithstanding the rapid advancement of colour photography. There is a stream of defeatism about black and white photography these days and in many cities there are no studios that will wash, develop and print black and white pictures.
Pranlal Patel’s pictures celebrate the glory of black and white, re-inforcing what W.D. Wright, a British professor of Applied Optics at the Imperial College of Science & Technol-ogy, observed years ago. He contended that the black and white photographs may appear to the viewers more real than the colour pictures. Over the years, viewers have learned to supply their own colour information to a black and white photograph.” You may get closer to reality with colour but the closer you get the more obvious it becomes that it is a picture, (and) not the real thing.”
Pranlal is reluctant to take to colour photography. He thinks that the black and white photo-graphs have an immense capacity for subtlety, rich sensitivity of detail and graphic urgency. To him it also is a stimulating mental challenge to transform every colour around us into two shades of black and white only and bring a still photograph to life.
Pranlal has, over the past seven decades of photography, earned a reputation as a pictori-alist, extending far beyond the shores of India, bagging awards and prizes. His work has been published in international media for decades. Pranlal has an innate sense of history. For example, take his photographs of the Sabarmati River in Ahmedabad over the past half a century. They instantly tell you a visual story of the degradation of the ecology. Or take the images of a typical wedding in the Patel farming community over past half century. They highlight subtle changes in customs and attire, attitudes and behaviour over time.
At his age most people would be bed-ridden, if alive. Countless others would have hung up their professional equipment and sunk into senility. Pranlal continues to explore life with the same sense of wonder and romance that first made him give up his job as a teacher in a municipal primary school in Ahmedabad.
Born on January 1, 1910, Pranlal has come up the hard way in life, but the harshness has left no trace on his personality. A man with a largish nose, twinkling eyes hidden behind a 25 per cent darkness goggles glasses, he is quick to smile and enthuse. Hailing originally from Jamnagar district, he traces his family home now to Kolki in Upleta taluka of Saurash-tra. He grew up at his maternal uncle’s place, working in Ahmedabad in petty jobs to help family. “I have sold peanuts, soda and lemon soft drinks near Victor cinema hall in Fuvara in olden days, delivered at home newspapers of Ahmedabad, which included at one time Gandhiji’s Navjivan. Remembering his childhood, Pranlal says: “I was, however, a bright boy from the very beginning, who was made to jump several years from Standard I in pri-mary school. I passed my vernacular final (which was not the final year of secondary stage in education but of the primary stage, but in those days, something of a qualification).I be-came a primary school teacher, with an initial salary of Rs.15 supplemented with one or two tuitions”
But, recalls Pranlal, he had an urge to do something different, something so well that peo-ple will remember him by.” This yearning brought me in contact with photography in 1932 when I acquired a box camera. In the early years, I learnt a lot from Col.Balwant Bhatt, an ace photographer himself.” He does not make any claims, but Pranlal must have had a gift from birth to identify visuals, compose them automatically and then capture them exactly as he saw them with his mind’s eye. He began to work as a free-lance photographer even while continuing as a primary teacher. A meticulous diary-keeper, Pranlal noted in 1937 that he had made an income Rs.710 in that year from photography. In 1938, the figure jumped to Rs.1, 241. Not much by today’s standards, but as Pranlal notes humorously: “The rupee was not so cheap in those days.”
Remembers Pranlal: “I was debating with myself if I should continue as a teacher or do something else that will make me stand out. I had been going to Ravishankar Raval’s school of fine arts,dabbling in painting to see if that was going to be my way of life. I think it was around 1938-39 that I got an opportunity to see an exhibition of photographs of Kash-mir, taken by a famous photographer, Abid Saiyed of Palanpur. My mind was, as if, under a spell. I too wanted to capture in the photo frame the beautiful landscapes, natural scenes, snow-capped mountains, the serene life style and lovely Kashmiri people.”
Abid was a sympathetic listener to the young man and not only gave him all the dope, but also a promise to speak to Kodak people to give him film at the dealers’ rate. Three friends from Mumbai and Ahmedabad agreed to join Pranlal on the safari to Kashmir. Before they undertook the trip, something happened that landed Pranlal full-time into photography.
Recalls Pranlal: “One day I was taking class III in Madalpur municipal school, teaching Gu-jarati to the pupils, A camera, as usual hung on the back of my chair. An Inspector arrived from the municipal administrative office for his annual inspection, saw my Super Iconta, and asked: ‘What is this?’ I told him politely it was a camera, to which the inspector retorted loudly,’ If you are so fond of photography and the camera, then open a studio on Gandhi Road. Such things are no good for an ideal teacher.’ I was stunned.”
Pranlal could not sleep that night. The next morning, he went to his principal to tell him he was quitting. “I was rattled by the rude remark. I had the confidence that I would be able to eke out a living from photography, my obsession. Already I was making Rs.200 a month as side income from photography at social and official functions. It was a good enough amount to live on.”
The young man who went to Srinagar in May, 1940, via Rawalpindi, spent a month in the valley. “Among other things, at Srinagar we stayed in a shikara for three days, paying a princely sum Rs.2.50 a day, and then moved on.” The days would be spent photographing the heart-stopping beauty of the Kashmiri landscape and people.
They went to Pahelgam and to remote villages, mountainsides, water-falls and everywhere in the beautiful valley. “One could buy a hundred apricots for six annas. Oh, it was like liv-ing in paradise for a month.”
Says Pranlal :”What all we saw can never be described in words or even in pictures. It was an era of black and white photography, and of mechanical cameras, with no modern tech-nology available to aid a lens man. I took pictures of Kashmir with these limitations, expos-ing fifty rolls of XX film. These rolls were washed locally in Srinagar.On return to Ahmeda-bad, we started enlarging them into prints. Friends and others who saw them exclaimed words like Oh! Wow! Fantastic! Wonderful! Exra-ordinary! Balwant Bhatt helped and guided me into sending these pictures to national and international magazines, earning me a name as a pictorialist.That was a golden period, those days 30 days in Kashmir. I yearn to go Kashmir once more, and capture as it looks today.”
The lucky break into photography via Kashmir made the life for Pranlal. Scores of journals in and outside the country carried his pictures every now and then. He never looked back, becoming more and more famous as a pictorialist with rare sensitivity and dedication, trav-elling widely in the country, capturing events like the wedding in the Mysore Royal family in the fifties and that in the Royal family of Rajkot. He has a huge collection of rare pictures of cities, famines, landscapes and people.
Among the prized possessions are huge albums of photographs of the Iron Man of India, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel whose every visit to Ahmedabad whose mayor he earlier had been captured on his camera. His presence was so routine that when Junagadh princely State was liberated from the Nawab’s rule and merged in the Union, Pranlal was present in the city when Sardar arrived. He hailed Pranlal, saying,” if I come, you too should. Do you keep tracking me? Is it not so?” Pranlal did a lot of photography during the Quit India movement. His pictures were lapped up by photo-hungry newspapers and magazine. His earnings shot up and he filed his Income Tax returns in 1947, to the great surprise of offi-cials. It was hard to imagine so much income from free-lance photography only in those days. Nearly 90 per cent of the surplus was used in buying newer equipment.
Along with still photography, he also undertook movie photography. He filmed extensively and in 1947 and 1957, recorded some 16,000 feet of movie of a religious head’s pilgrimage of Vrajbhoomi; it was so massive that the divine personality got tired by merely watching it. But the photographer was indefatigable.
His wife Damayanti, their son, Anand, their two daughters and grand-children all have taken to photography. Damayanti was a self-made darkroom wizard who could rescue very fuzzy photographs by dexterously doing washing, developing and printing. She was a sort of record-keeper too.
Some 40 years ago when Queen Elizabeth came to Ahmedabad, the state government wanted a hundred copies of an old photograph of the Somnath temple. Pranlal was not at home when Manubhai Trivedi, an information official, came to their studio-cum-residence. Damayanti requested the officer to wait for five minutes during which she spotted the me-ticulously preserved negative. Within ten more minutes she came out of the darkroom with a perfect print of the old picture. The government got a hundred copies before morning. She passed away a few years ago, leaving a big void in Pranlal’s life. His grandson looks after the library work now
Today,Pranlal looks back with great satisfaction that he will leave behind foot-prints in the form of photographic prints to remember him by. But he has by no means called it a day. Tell him of a topic and his eyes shine. A routine day, till recently, began at 5.30 in the morn-ing when he would wake up. After breakfast at 9 a m he would set out on foot from his home for his studio, a distance of two kilometres. If the son and others were not using the studio, he would get into the darkroom, working up to 1 in the afternoon.
He helps youngsters willingly in learning photography, emphasing the importance of com-position, painstaking care for capturing details, judging light correctly and developing and printing the photographs meticulously.
He advocates working not only with body and mind, but also heart. His own involvement in the work is such that he does not remember time or gets tired or hungry when engrossed in photography. Some years ago the Kankaria lake in Ahmedabad had a huge fish population dying out suddenly and the stench of the dead fish floating in the water was awful. But Pranlal took out a boat, taking his own time in capturing just one memorable picture of the dead fish panned by empty boats on either side of the frame. He never noticed the stink, as he clicked away till he had captured the right composition.
He says “photography is something done with the eye, the mind and the heart. The equip-ment, though important, is secondary. With the best equipment in the world, you could turn up with lousy pictures. With primitive equipment but alert mind, you could transform ordi-nary things into photographs of extra-ordinary charm and beauty.”
He generally does not use a flash and none of his memorable pictures has had the use of artificial lights. He believes that the real fruits of good photography cannot be reaped unless one takes an equal amount of care in washing, developing and printing. His one-liner to aspiring photographers is “Do not compromise, either in quality, costs or time de-voted in getting a good picture. Quality always remains in the vogue, whatever the era, whatever the state of technological development. It was so yesterday, it is so today, and will be so tomorrow and the day after too.”
It is all pure Zen of photography.

An Engineering Don & Gentleman Farmer: Vithu Patel

Tushar Bhatt

His eyes twinkled with mischief as his right hands shot up in greetings.The walking gait betrayed a bit of a problem in the leg but the man,clad in kurta and pyjama,moved forward to receive visitors,genuine pleasure writ large on the pock-marked ,bespectacled face.The enthusiasm, the warmth and the lively interest all effectively concealed the real age of the farmer, Vithal J.Patel,who has done pioneering experiments in agro-forestry for nearly two decades now in this corner of Saurashtra.
As he showed around the plantation ,he stopped at a straight-going tree,some 15-foot high."Look at this,it is a real gold mine.It is a red sandal wood tree,around two years and eight months old.In its life span,it will earn me around Rs.six lakhs.Remember,it has come up in an area where last monsoon we got hardly 14 inches of rainfall."The tree was not a solitary example;time and again,Vithalbhai would stop at a tree,pointing out its height,reeling off details about when it was planted,what it was given and how it has grown.The refrain was common;with an innovative outlook in agro-forestry,one could turn even a small field into a veritable money-spinner.The emphasis was so much on what even a small farm-holder could achieve and not so much on what corporate entities could grow.
Vithubhai, as he was commonly known, was a different kind of a gentleman farmer, who was fond of experimenting scientifically; his methods were so unconventional that they aroused ire in equal proportions among the forestry officials and environmentalists, although for different reasons. He had taken to agro-forestry in an aggressive manner, making his farm work like a factory, exercising strict on the various factors.
But,his most unconventional method was to plant saplings rather closely,making them struggle for survival. "We all know of the Darwinian theory of the survival of the fittest.We also know that struggle tends to make one sturdy and stronger.Vithubhai was for years away from farms and was known as Dr.V.J.Patel in his earlier avtar as a teacher. Formerly a professor in civil engineering,he was a noted expert on dam designs and earthquakes who took to farm forestry after leaving his teaching assignment some twenty years ago.
A man with scientific training and a scientific temper,he thought a lot about the survival of the fittest theory to come to a conclusion that for a healthy growth trees -- or, saplings must be made to struggle, and yet they should not be starved of nutrients so that they do not die out for want of enough food for all. He resorted to growing trees in closer proximity than what the forest officials would dream of, add generous doze of fertilisers and other nutrients and provide adequate water to make them bloom. Not only do they bloom,they go tall faster than the widely-spaced trees because each closely panted tree was racing upwards to receive as much sunshine as possible.
Foresters generally follow the precept that trees,if widely spaced when planted, develop better. In the experiments of close proximity plantation carried out at Surendrabag it was found that such trees grew faster than the ones grown along conventional lines; and the number of trees is also higher in closely planted places-- some three to five times more in numbers.
Said Vithubhai: " I am a farmer,earning my bread working on my farm. Many of us farmers live below the poverty line and struggle to survive ; one could not hope to make us invest money and time in the development of degraded land." That led to another poser: If the people living near these degraded land pieces were not ready for development who else would go and help in afforestation ? "The central question to which we need to address ourselves is this-- who will develop the degraded land which has poor fertility.We can rephrase the query-- can we interest the people to undertake afforestation on a degraded land?"
He himself came out with the obvious reply: " It is possible if it can be shown that high income could be generated from the development of wasteland.The productivity level of wasteland should be increased by using simple agro or silvi-cultural practices"
He set out in search of the answers to these and many related questions which form a part of the nation's search as well for a viable farm strategy that combines tree cultivation too.The search ,in the case of Vithubhai,took him on a dusty road that always kicked up some controversy or the other. In the late 1970s and early 80s,he ran foul of the environmentalists because of his experiments with eucalyptus. Instead of planting them widely spaced, he packed in as many as 10,000 saplings in an acre(or,25,000 trees a hectare),showing the small farmers how to reap bumper profits.But since eucalyptus was decried as devouring water resources, Vithubhai switched to other trees,and with equal success.
Apart from evolving viable practices for close proximity plantation,Vithubhai had also succeeded in shorterning the cutting period from five to three years so that the trees started paying off earlier than on a conventional plantation.
The 70 plus-year-old Vithubhai was no crank to be brushed aside lightly. A leftist in his younger days,farming ran in his blood.His father,Jivrajbhai Patel, was awarded Udyan Pundit title by the union government,for his best ber (Zyiphus mauritiana Lamk); he was asked how did he manage to do so well,and answered with a characteristic wry humour that agriculture department of the government had still not discovered him to educate.
Vithubhai took to engineering studies,getting his doctorate in West Germany in 1957,and then teaching at a number of institutions such as Birla College,Pilani,the IIT,Kanpur and the government engineering college,Jabalpur.More than 70 papers of his on engineering subjects got published,many of them abroad.More than 40 of these were included in the Engineering Index, a digest on engineering research published in the U.S.
Vithubhai made several innovations in the cultivation of ber, applying newer methods of insect control and hormone regulation which led to a fruit free from insects of uniform size.
He ridiculed the idea of mere conservation of forest cover for the sake of green cover.His thrust is to arrive at a strategy that leads to man controlling the cycle of tree felling in such a way that while there is tree cover,he also gets enough timber and other wood.Vithubhai felt that newer methods,such as his high density cultivation strategy,helped by addition of nutrients and fertilisers in enough dosage and with just enough watering through drip irrigation c0uld help a farmer achieve wonders in tree cultivation even on his degraded or wasteland.He was not advocating a switch-away from all food crops to tree cultivation only,but to a judicious mix of the agriculture,horticulture and tree cultivation to help restore the lost ecological balance.The Surendrabad plantation had successfully grown trees such as teak (Tectonia grandis), Bakain neem (Melia azedarch), Indian cork tree(Millingtonia hortensis),Savan(Gmelina arborea), sandalwood and Red sanders at Jivdiv Agro-fofrestry Centre.
He said that in tree cultivation,there has been a shortcoming in strategy. "All our experiences in the past are based on the rain-fed forests where trees got water only during the monsoon,no fertiliser was given to them and thus they were starved of nutrients and water for a longer period of the year." What he did at Surendrabag was to bring about a situation where the growth of the life system of trees was in an environment which met adequately its needs for nutrients and water,preferably on a daily basis. Essentially,providing enough water and nutrients were two important lessons of the green revolution which had been applied to farm-forestry." Just as the irrigated wheat gives more output as compared to the rainfed crop,irrigated tree plantations should give five to ten times more growth.To this, if we add increased bio-mass in early stages due to increased population of trees, one will start realising that the earnings go up steeply", said Vithubhai.
The high density plantation that he tried out has several advantages over the conventional farm forestry,he said.These included: plant population that is three to ten times more ,growth in vertical direction of the trees because of close spacing,the sun rays do not fall on the ground because of this and the evaporation losses are cut down,leading to a better utilisation of irrigation through a drip,growth of weeds is reduced because of the absence of the sun at the ground level,the waiting period for the first cutting or thinning can be reduced from six years to three or four years.A farmer can plant ten to 15 rows of 1.2 metres by 0.6 metre or even less spacing along the border of his field,thus utilising borders that generally remain unused.A farmer,said Vithubhai, could go for mixed cropping in the fields completely given to tree cultivation in the initial years and grow horticultural crops such as ginger,termaric,amorphopholous,or yam and bananas.
He quoted figures of income over a period of two decades for a farmer from an acre of timber plantation of savan or teak.He was rated as a maverick by many,although they too grudgingly granted that he was a highly successful one in whatever he was doing. Some others pointed to his butterfly type interest; years ago,he was advoocating the eucalyptus and now he was talking teak,neem and other species.Vithubhai was unfazed by this criticism.He would simply shrug it off,saying nobody was being compelled to follow suit.Yet,hundreds of farmers were doing just that,with the Surendrabag plantation serving as a demonstration project.
The farm-forestry experiments which the gentleman farmer was been pursuing led to steady stream of nearly 10,000 visitors,mostly farmers from Gujarat and elsewhere in the country,makiing their way to his place,16 km from Bhavnagar.But what he was doing had nothing to do with the latest craze for corporate investment in agro-forestry.What he got as visitors were not investors in shares,but farmers who were pining to better their lot.

Temperamentally, he was a man in hurry. Hurry it was when a car he was driving from Bhavnagar to Jamnagar collided with a truck,cutting short a vibrant life when he was in his late 70s.