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Voyages on the waves of time
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Varanasi lives in his heart and flows from his brush. The dance of the enchantress holds her in thrall. Painter Manu Parekh and Mohiniattam exponent Bharati Shivaji exchange notes on their enduring passions
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Photo: S. Subramanium
BLENDING ART FORMS Bharati Shivaji and Manu Parekh
The cobwebs of time. The dark crannies of an ancient city. The rejuvenation of death. The blinding colours of life. The eternal dance of life and death being performed on the stage of a river. Banaras, an enigma whose magnetism has cast a spell on everyone who brushes past - however fleetingly. How could one of the most creative painters of our times remain untouched? For Manu Parekh's Banaras would give the real thing a complex! His series has immortalised the unexplored dimensions of the place. In contrast, the stillness of Bharati Shivaji's Mohiniattam white stands out, making a statement without uttering a word. Of a journey where the spirit and thought must transcend the mere body. The dance of the enchantress where bhakti is the overriding emotion.
Enchant she does, with her tender concern for the shringara rasa-dominated art. For love distilled to its purest form must culminate in bhakti, finds
Alka Raghuvanshi as she brings together the two pilgrims en route in the cycle eternal.
Bharati: I think anyone who has experienced Banaras can't remain untouched by it, but in your case this fascination for the city has led to many encounters of the artistic kind!
Manu: After I moved from Kolkata I found there was something missing in my being. I needed to connect, perhaps to life centred in a place. And Banaras I felt, was where it was at. The vibrations are fascinating, all kinds of people come there, the faces in the crowds, the landscape, the heads have all found place in my work.
Bharati: My journey into Mohiniattam also took me to unexplored places where few women had gone. I educated myself about the form, photographed, met all kinds of related people, poured over ancient texts, their interpretations, to actually construct parts of the form that had gone missing. The tragedy of this from is that from the temple it came to the palace, from where it headed towards the stage, but now where it goes from here, I wonder. For there were and are few performers.
Manu: Thankfully the painting scene has changed over the last few years. There are buyers for art, which has helped it commercialise to make it viable for us to work peacefully, leaving the gallery to guard our interests. I am totally for commercialisation. Otherwise, the most valuable and creative time in an artist's life, they spend doing a naukri for sheer survival!
Bharati: I wish it were possible for dance as well! I tried to establish a communication with Mohiniattam like a mother responding to an orphan child! And worse was having to combat the perception that it was a poor cousin of Kathakali on one side and Bharatanatyam on the other. Creating awareness too was difficult. Sometimes I feel so bad that future generations may not even know what Mohiniattam is!
Manu: I think this entire situation when people are not familiar with their ethos needs to be addressed. I, for instance, took up a job with Pupul Jaykar in the field of textiles for two years and ended up doing it for 26 years! But then it took me all over the country in the villages, tribal belts, and changed the topography of my mind's canvas! A painter has to know about life. How many contemporary artists can even claim to have seen a village, let alone experienced it? We were always looking westwards. But things are changing now and contemporary art rooted in Indian sensibility is being explored.
Bharati: But shall I tell you something? Even now in Kerala, one government institution has a combined course for Mohiniattam and Bharatanatyam.
Manu: This problem exists in art colleges too. The first thing students do is study Cubism and draw Michelangelo! We have such vibrant roots, why don't we want to teach them? So many narrative painting forms exist, so much vitality would come in our work if we just acknowledged our roots.
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