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Book Review
Of name and form
V.K. SUBRAMANIAN
NAAM ROOP — A Tribute to the Divine: Arpana Caur and Shailendra Gulhati; Digital Publications, New Delhi.
This book contains 34 paintings by the artist, Arpana Caur and 34 short poems by Shailendra Gulhati. The authors claim that the book is a `jugalbandi' of name and form, in which the artist and the poet celebrate God's creation together.
At the beginning of a commentary explaining the titles of the 34 chapters in the book, the authors state: "We all come from the formless, but live in a world of name and form. We come from the infinite and timeless, but ours is a world of space and time. At some point in our journey in this world, we all come to a self-assessment of our lives. The bigger statement is, we question life itself. We turn for higher wisdom, better insight, and we find help forthcoming in the very lives of our peers in search of truth. It is then that we realize the importance of the names and the forms, Naam Roop of the divine that walked our grounds to be our guiding lights back to eternity."
The name of the chapters are: Samsara, Sahasrara Kundalini, Satchitananda, Tao, Zen, Nanak, Sufi, Avatar Sakha, Mukti, Parapinda, Sita, Jesus, Kabir, Aum, Zarathustra, Brahma, Saraswati, Ganga, Surya, Kali, Vama Diana, Krishna, Lalli, Gurudeva, Atman, Samadhi, Bodhisatva, Devi, Gan, Murugan, Shiva, and Kaivalya.
The corresponding titles of the 34 paintings are: Sohni Mahiwal, Ascension, Immersion Emergence, Yogi, Tree of Suffering, Sohni, Nanak, Sufi Dancers, The Great Departure, Sohni Mahiwal, Nayika, River of Time, Sita's Circle, The Wound, Kabir, Simarni, River of Time, Beam, Musician, Where many streams meet, Mardana, Yogini, Day and Night, Plunge, Widows of Vrindavan, How Green was my Valley, Connection, Body is just a Garment, Endless Journey, The Great Departure, Changing Times, Baul and The River of Time, Offbeam, Tirthankar.
As can be seen, the themes of the paintings and the poems are common only in a few cases like: Nanak, Kabir, Sita and Zufi. It is difficult for the common reader to correlate all the paintings with the poems and discern a jugalbandi. The paintings of Arpana Caur are surrealistic and convey a mood of mystic gloom.
The poems convey well- known Upanishadic truths, including the famous analogy: the body is a garment. The paintings and the poems are hence to be appreciated on their merits, without labouring at a correlation.
The commentary at the end of the book, which the author calls `Bhasya' is highly informative.
The Dalai Lama in his foreword to the book says: "The contemporary illustrations and poems presented here by Arpana Caur and Shailendra Gulhati's serve to remind us that the ancient values they refer to continue to have relevance in our own day and age."
This coffee- table book is well got-up and printed on art paper.
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