Monthly Archives: October 2013

Santiniketan is a place which pulls Bengaluru based Art writer and historian,H.A. Anil Kumar back again and again..He shares his experience of Santiniketan,A place where spirits of esteemed Art preachers still hovers around

The place I wish to visit and have revisited, time and again, is Santiniketan. The first time I confronted it was in 1989, as an undergraduate student from Bengaluru. My second visit stretched between 1990 and 92 as a postgraduate art history student at Kala Bhavana. And the last time was in April 2010, as an external examiner to the final display of art students’ works. It was also the last time I met young art historian teacher Parvez Kabir who passed away recently, who seemed to be then contemplating of quitting the place, professionally. It was 45 degree hot in the deserted afternoon of the general summer holidays, which, I believe, was the reason for such of his formulating decision and I humorously told him so. Both of us agreed to disagree ‘dialectically’ and had a good laugh at it.

During my first two visits – the second one stretched 104 times more than my first visit which had lasted exactly a week – I could not imagine as to what does it mean to be a Ramkinker Baij in the land of Tagore. During my last visit Parvez was trying to convey more or less the same to me, while I was refuting it, on practical grounds! Santiniketan lives more on its reputation than on ground realities. It was a place which was attempting to make concrete of (i) those that emerged from there and (ii) those that made possible its history. It is not coincidentally that both are one and the same.

During that one last meet with Parvez, I had to catch a train in a while and hardly had few minutes to experience what was uniquely Santiniketan: close the eyes amidst the sweating uplifted face, inhaling the madka-chai, in the seemingly ever raising heat, seated alone on the lonely table just outside the mud hut-hotel in a seemingly deserted place in the scorching heat of the April afternoon. In this sense, Santiniketan had introduced me to the pleasantries of what is generally categorically termed unpleasant, which alleges a certain Buddha-hood to the place. It is the ‘afternoon’ scorching that I pleasantly remember whenever I think about this place, not the everyday-five-hours-load shedding in the ‘evenings’. One can sense only Tagore’s Mandir and museum (Uttarayan) from wherever they are, at this place, like one can sense Eiffel Tower wherever they move around in Paris.

My initial encounter with it was a certain dejavu. In this sense, Santiniketan is like London. You cannot visit them without already having an imaginary picture about them, due to their sheer popularity. In this sense, there is nothing called as ‘first time’ to popular places! The first time I saw it, I knew that I was already familiar with it and only its visibility—which I had no clue about how it looked — had altered, completely!

Going from a city-in-the-making like Bengaluru, I was confronting a place which was not only away by two thousand kilometers but also took me back by half a century. But for the bicycles, cycle rickshaws, campus buses and goats whose tummy frequently touched the ground, ‘petrol’led vehicles were not allowed inside it. It was delightful to watch the cow-catcher metallic pipes horizontally laid near every gate, being successful in catching the legs of those students who had refused to put on weight. Imagine this happening to students in the darkness of the load shedding and also imagine some clueless bicycle rider without a dynamo, hurrying through towards the kitchen via such a cow-catcher. Actually it did happen once in my presence, while I had heard about such occurrence several other times! The leg of reality always gets caught in the cow-catcher-like imagination at Santiniketan.

Perhaps the cows which were thus put away from attending art classes at Kala Bhavana must have been delighted. It was since then that the question as to whether the goats at Santiniketan are short or the ground over there bulges like an elastic in order to romance with the goat? — has stayed with me. What you see is what is represented over there: look in and around Santiniketan and compare it with the works of master artists from Kala Bhavana. The differences are only exceptions.

Rosh (unfermented toddy), which you seasonally get in plenty over there, is perhaps the reason for such creative questioning. There was an art school called ‘Kala Bhavana’ whose heart was a canteen and is a tradition which happens to be still a living tradition even to this day. One could literally place a huge compass and draw a circle, with canteen at the center and all the fine art departments would squarely fit into that imaginary circle! In this sense, Santiniketan is like a traditional woman whose wisdom tells her that the best way to win over a man is through his tummy. More than being a place, Santiniketan is an attitude!

It seems once upon a time, there was a pathway that meaningfully connected the sculpture of ‘Sujatha’ to that of ‘Buddha’ near the ‘Black House’, all three created and constructed by Ramkinker Baij with the aid of art students. Black House, constructed in 1930s, consisted of individual rooms allotted to postgraduate students on a lucky draw-basis. Write your names on sheets of paper, fold or roll them, pick one of them against a room in Black House; and the room would be yours for two years. Similarly the history of all those sculptures, murals, paintings and relief works as well as their creators in and around Kala Bhavana campus are thus selected and projected for a couple of decades as doyens of 20^th century Indian art by art historians. Nothing unusual about it except for the fact that other art schools failed to do so!

In a way, most of my tutors there were celebrities as artists and writers, as well. Even to this day I wonder whether Kala Bhavana is a tourist spot is turned into an art school or is it the other way round, if you can excuse to forget the factual history of the place and remember the contemporary style in which the local guides not only explain the artworks and campus but also introduce the students working inside the studio as, “an unusual artist who has come all the way from Kerala stays here”. The seemingly overgrown three windows and one door that represents all the four walls of our studios had to be shut and open choicely, according to the local guides’ timings of visiting the campus! Often a student inside his studio would feel no less than an animal inside a cage, with even cows watching them from beyond their laxman –rekha, the cow-catchers!

Now an asphalt road criss-crosses that pathway between Buddha and Sujatha, which, along with the humorous fact that next to Buddha’s sculpture lies the girls’ hostel bathroom, feeds well a critic’s interventionist appetite.

When I re-re-re-visited Santiniketan in 2010 after almost two decades, I had already made notes about writing an art-based travelogue about the place, even before I reached there. In between my three major visits to Santiniketan between the years 1989-2010, news about its people, their theatricalities ranging from a sublime serenity to unbelievable eccentricities would reach me more frequently than a monthly report. And the news about the death of most of our friends would be later rectified as false information, directly from the horse’s mouth. Just like I had already visualized this place before visiting it for the first time, my few subsequent visits to this place had equipped me to upgrade my inner-eye vision regarding its colourful occurrence. Between my last two visits to this place, a resident of this place had gained a Nobel Prize and the other resident was not alive to see his Nobel Prize disappear from under the nose of its guardians!

Even before I entered the campus after three years (earlier visit was in 2007), I had made notes in the flight about U.G.C paying only train fair for external evaluators, apart from noting one more fact that the asphalted road that criss-crossed the road between Buddha and Sujatha was very meaningful in a contemporary manner. This was enough to sharpen up the critic’s nails that grew at the edge of my fingers!

Within a couple of years after my first visit, I was enrolled as a student of Art History department (1990-92). Slippers replaced shoes, shaving was stretched from alternative-day affair to a weekly affair, video-films were costlier than the balcony tickets at Chitro and Bichitro theatres (Rs.2.90/-) between Santiniketan and Bolpur railway station; Shamshul da himself was a negative-camera to document any and everyone’s artworks, at the drop of a hat. The fact that he did this for almost two decades is an understatement, in the age of digital reproduction. All these happened apart from a thousand other facts which looked like wonders, since it was like walking through a live table-top model of a township rather than a real one a la Jim Carry’s film ‘True Man Show’. It was a Disneyland/Disneyworld of an artistic and anarchist variety.

Food cooked with mustard seed was consumable only with a thorough coating and dressing of home-made ghee all around it, speaking (even broken) Bengali was ‘the’ visa card to receive warmth among its largely Bengali inmates, in the winter colds. At least I thought so, though Bengali food and Bengalis might readily agree to disagree with it.

Like it happens with all travels, the first visit to Santiniketan was a thriller, literally out of my primary school text book. The second travel to the same place was to ‘travel’ within the Santiniketan campus for two years, whenever I found time between ‘being’ a student of art history in M.F.A course. I was sure to come out of flying colours as a first rank holder, for I was the only student of art history in my class!

Santiniketan is Kala Bhavana, to me. The rest of the places – like Pranthik and Bolpur railway station, Kopai river, Sriniketan around it were places of holiday attractions. The Chaatal premise (near the canteen) was the place where all of us assembled, time and again, throughout the day (and nights). Most discourses occurred outside the classrooms, at Chaatal; and hence the name ‘open-air-school’ to it. To provide another example of how it is a place of dejavu, consider the fact that K.G.Subramanyan was creating the black and white mural on the design department in 1989, during my first visit. Again when I visited it in 2010 he was repainting it! I remember one of his articles about the feel of the Kala Bhavana campus; it carried much nostalgia even to him, thus making the nostalgia of others of my age doubly-nostalgic. We used to play this game of finding the original Gandhi by Nandalal Bose, in a reverse relief, seen on all the Gandhi Bhavan’s throughout the country which was believed to be in Kala Bhavana. Finally we managed to find it behind the old art history department. My tutor R.Sivakumar’s assignment made me visit almost all the murals at Santiniketan, to measure draw them, with a bicycle, a torch, an umbrella, a tape and a notebook, with ever altering friends on every occasion, for the sake of making his book about Santiniketan murals. It was here that I saw for the first time cobwebs on trees both in 1989 and 2010. I am sure they were not the same cobwebs!

What I miss but would not now consume at Kala Bhavana is the guguni for breakfast. If we would, for instance, buy four cup of tea, the canteen owner, one Mr. Maama, would enlist a debt into the accounts of all the four of us. And whenever old-Santiniketanites would meet, the nostalgic dialogue would not conclude without pleasantly remembering him. I had once asked him as to how people over there eat jaamoon sweets, sandwiched between loaves of bread for breakfast, incessantly, everyday; and enquired whether they would not become diabetic. He had that divine smile when he said, “they eat sweets till they get diabetic, because they are worried that they cannot eat sweets once they get diabetes”!

Surendranath Kar’s architectural design of Santiniketan and the old books (as old as 1920s) sold at the Viswabharathi university share a common aspect: they are closely knit with their surrounding and are far away from anywhere. Once I bought a bunch of books, each priced at not more than 25 paise or a rupee. However, when I was about to pay, I was informed that I had to go all the way to the University office, a few kilometers away, pay, get the bill and submit the bill herein and get the books. Santiniketan is so close to one’s heart but too far away to an outsider’s perception.

Santiniketan, to me, is a place to visit again and again, but never to stay. People have changed and the place hasn’t. The same typical architecture, bicycle rickshaws, yellow-white uniforms, afternoon siestas, smell of the polash flowers,  a ragged old man selling ‘ek taka Tagore’ (one rupee Tagore), the wild-west-like-afternoon-heats in summer and ‘shawl’ed colderness pairing people. My batchmates have become the faculty, some have gone and others have left. The age-old mature presence of doyens of visual arts—K.G.S and Somanath Hore—smoking with an authoritarian presence at chataal, or similar assuring warmth (remember Spiderman’s quote ‘with power comes responsibility’) is emptied off Santiniketan. Does the place change people or is it the other way round? My travel experience to Santiniketan in Kannada came out as a book in 2010. The consistent anxiety that the place continue to evoke among my generation became a personified character, a classmate of mine, called Prakshubda. Despite a crystal clear explanation that Prakshu (meaning ‘anxiety’) is a mere metaphor, readers of that book even now ask me two questions: ‘Do you still go to Santiniketan?’ and “Is he (Prakshubda, anxiety) still there”!

Santiniketan not only changes people but also necessarily make them come up with a fable about the place. It is always one’s, yours or my Santiniketan and there is no ‘the’ Santiniketan anywhere as such! In this sense re-visiting this place is re-visiting myself.

Ignoring the glamour and allurement of ‘historical’ touristy destinations, reminiscing about a humble ancestral home that once was and continues to be an inspiration and part of her silent reveries, Sushma Sabnis walks through a golden weave of distant memories from her childhood.

When you are a child, even a bungalow with three rooms seems palatial and that is how I saw my grandmother’s home in Bangalore. Born and raised in Mumbai, the rare luxury of more than two rooms seemed like a boon and the possibilities of living in ‘that’ one extra room were more attractive than the single bedroom kiosks we call ‘homes’ in an ever-shrinking metro. Add to this palace a huge terrace, a patio, and large space surrounding the house with medicinal plants, vegetables, fruits, aromatic flowering plants and old trees which stood like green sentinels at a fort gate – aged and relentlessly observant.

To many, Bangalore brings in imageries of flower gardens and bakeries, though the landscape has mutated rapidly over the past few decades, the green cover has remarkably diminished and bakeries are far and few with the advent of bullying mall culture. The innumerable ‘tourist spots’  like Cubbon park, Lalbaug, the ancient city of Vijayanagara, Hampi ruins, Nandi hills, Mysore palace and many historically significant places have become mere embellishments for tourists’ catalogues and work more as tourism aiding devices than culture marques.

For me Bangalore represents one specific place, ‘2722, Ratnakar’. A postal address which no longer exists but there was a time when you could just say these words to the auto-rickshaw and you would be delivered safe and sound to the correct place. ‘2722’ was the house number and ‘Ratnakar’ was my grandfather’s name, he was a musician, a painter, a theatre actor and a textile designer.

This ‘palace’ is very important for me because I spent most of my summer holidays in an environment being one with nature, art and the quintessential activities which most people deem mundane, but seen from a more historical perspective, they form the fine silken threads of our cultural heritage. When one takes a journey to see new places, specifically to break the tedium of an urban lifestyle, one often looks for unheard of places. New beaches, new temples, new mountains, newly excavated ruins, though all of these ‘new’ places are actually ancient according to their carbonic birth dates, the urban thinking anoints them as ‘not-explored yet’ hence ‘new’. Perhaps, the newness is brought on by the generous sprinkling of resorts, beach view, valley view, river view, forest view, palace view, boulder view..you name it, they have the view!

‘2722 Ratnakar’ was all of the above. There was no river, but a water tank with enough water for the family, there was no mountain but the walls were strongly rooted to weather storms, terrace high enough to view sun rises, there were no beaches, but the coconut tree leaves shaded half the terrace and gardens. They say the walls of an old house imbibe the nature of its inhabitants. 2722 Ratnakar did just that. Though I never met my grandfather, 2722 Ratnakar perhaps subtly activated some creative genes in me. No one left empty handed or empty hearted from this house.

Every summer holiday of mine was spent in this house. I learnt to draw and paint there, developed an interest in music, science and nature there, learnt new languages, and developed taste buds for different cuisines which the kitchen created daily. Most of all I learnt to trust in the silent and powerful, creative nature of life.

Pickling was an art my grandmother excelled at; carefully handpicked mangoes, limes, gooseberries and unconventional like carrots, peppers, gingers gave themselves up willingly to become immortal under her nimble coercing fingers. Pickling, an art of prolonging the life of a food item to cater to the short term memory of taste buds, while preserving the fruit or vegetable from fungal fronds, beyond its seasonal occurrence and elevating them to an immortal status..yes, Ammama excelled at it.

I often wish there were some sort of pickling agents for bygone years and their ever enchanting juicy memories, perhaps one could revisit those tastes, moments and the quiet air which emanated a sense of inner peace.

‘2722 Ratnakar’ does not exist anymore on a google map or any map, it lives and flourishes only in my memory. I do visit it in early morning dreams, breathe in the aroma of Ammama’s delicious cooking intermingling with the rose bushes and jasmine intoxicants, touch the pregnant seed pods of the balsam plants, tickle the leaves of a shy mimosa, pluck some fruit and bite into it and let the experience consume me in its entirety.

Maybe in the future, when technology creates a successfully working time machine, you would find me sitting and painting on the terrace of 2722 Ratnakar, shaded by those gently swaying leaves of the grand old green sentinels.

Even though the mundane and over demanding life doesn’t let him visit Sivagiri often still Johny ML carries a part of Sivagiri in him. Johny ML shares how a small hill in Kerala could both be a literary learning and how lost in its pious silence he could find himself.

I did my pre-degree (today’s +2) at the Sree Narayana College, near Sivagiri, Varkala. There were four groups of discipline for the pre-degree course namely, First Group (Mathematics, Science and Languages), Second Group (Science and Languages), Third Group (History, Economics and languages) and Fourth Group (Commerce, Accountancy and Languages). There was a humble Fifth Group in which subjects like Home Science were taught. There were not too many job options in those days. Aspiring middle class parents wanted their children to be future engineers and doctors. So, the intelligent ones amongst the students vied for first and second groups in order to become engineers and doctors respectively. Brooding types went for third group and fourth group was opted by the ones who had already found their destiny as future clerks. Fifth group was preferred mainly by girls who had failed to score good marks in school final examinations and had thought that their journey as students would soon end with the impending marriages.

In fact, I wanted to leave studies altogether for I found mathematics too complicated, science too tedious, history, a complex jumble of dates and achievements, commerce (oh God, it was a blasphemous word) and home science, so pathetic. But I had to live up to the expectations of so many people around. That was one curse for being a good student in school; you had to prove that you are good forever. To summarize the story, I decided to save future bridges and buildings and took up second group, thinking that one day I would become a doctor. Ariens get bored of things quite easily. By the end of two years in college, I had already weeded out the possible doctor in me. In graduation I studied English Literature.

The year I joined the Sivagir Sree Narayana College was eventful. It was in mid 1980s. A student agitation was going in full momentum. The government had decided to detach pre-degree from colleges and was planning to bring it under a separate board. Habit was the marker then. None wanted to remain in schools after tenth class. The agitation was to protect pre-degree as pre-degree. The agitation went on for a few years and as expected pre-degree courses got detached from colleges and a new educational system of plus two and vocational higher secondary was put in place. To cut the long story short, there were virtually no classes. The daily ritual of going to college and joining the protest continued for a long time. Once the principal declared that the classes were dispersed, I joined the procession of students who walked back to the bus stand which was a few kilometers away.

But I never went back home immediately. Instead I went to Sivagiri hills where the Samadhi of Sree Narayana Guru was located. The great sage and social reformer had set up a ‘math’ there in that hillock in 1904. He preached and worked for social reformation from there. He bid farewell to this world in 1928. People from all over the world come to Sivagiri to pay homage to Sree Narayana Guru.

Sivagiri literally means the Hill of Shiva. From the capital city of Thiruvananthapuram, one has to travel approximately sixty kilometers by road or rail to reach Sivagiri. It is around eight kilometers away from the Papanasam Beach (now a world famous beach) and the famous Janardana Swami Temple. Varkala Thurappu, the first waterway of Kerala is just at the foot of Sivagiri. Cashew Nut and coconut groves give a green cover to the hills around it. At the beginning of Sivagiri one could see Sarada Math where the goddess of vidya (knowledge) is worshipped. Marriages take place here and after the marriage elaborate feasts are served in an adjacent building. Around the math, there are hermitages where the brahmacharis live who would later become the official preachers of Sree Narayana ideals. At the top of the hill one could see the Samadhi (tomb) of Sree Narayana Guru. Every year in December, grand festivals are conducted here that include literary seminars, classical music and dance recitals, religious debates and socio-political and cultural conventions.

Even when I was a child, my mother used to take me to attend these annual conventions. I loved to see those Sree Narayana devotees turning the township into a sea of yellow as the official clothe of Sree Narayana followers was yellow. My mother used to tell me stories about Guru and buy books written by and on him. Perhaps, I knew more about Sree Narayana Guru than about Gandhiji in those days. They had met in Sivagiri in 1925! A few paces away from the SN College and SN High School there was Gurukulam, established by Nataraja Guru, an eminent disciple of Sree Narayana Guru. Next to Sivagiri hill, on the top of another hill, Guru Nitya Chaitanya Yati, a disciple of Nataraja Guru, established an International University for integrated education. All in one place!

Sivagiri was an influence. Its calm, cool and mellowing atmosphere attracted me. I had Shibu Natesan to tell me stories about the SN High School where he studied, Manu, another friend who was an inmate of Gurukulam and Sree Sabin, who was an inmate of Sivagiri. While walking back from the college along with a stream of students who did not indulge in vandalism or eve teasing, I used to move away from them to go and sit at the Sarada Math. I had spent several hours there, at times reading, at times just watching people and some other times losing myself into deep contemplation and yet other times, looking at the small little gifts given to me by some girls in the form of a love letter or a mala. Sitting there I could see time passing in front of me.

Whenever I get time, during my short visits to Kerala, I try to go to Sivagiri. When my son was hardly two years old, I had taken him there. We took him to the top of the hill and let him on the sugar like sand. He giggled when he clutched at sand with both of his tender fists. I thought he was picking up some sense of harmony and tranquility which he was totally unaware of and perhaps would remember if he is reminded of it as grows up. Mundane life has distracted me a lot. I wish I could go and sit there under those mango trees at Sarada math or climb the hill and sit at the steps of Guru’s Samadhi.

But these actions would not be treated with piety. Today, Sree Narayana Guru is also a contested ideal. A man who had worked throughout his life to abolish castes and to reform the society, and a man who had consecrated a mirror for an idol or challenged the priests with his ‘Ezhava Shiva’ (Shiva of lower caste) is now converted into a god by his own disciples and his ideals into another ‘religion’ within the larger fold of Hindutva. He preached, ‘One Caste, One Religion, One God for man’, ‘Be wise by Education and be strong by Unity’, ‘Whatever one does should be for the betterment of others’ and so on. But his disciples say just the opposite. May be Sivagiri is in my mind, not out there.

A Decisive visit to ever busy Delhi offered her a path and an ambition for future whereas stay in serene and scenic Andhra taught her to live in the present. Nisha Aggarwal shares how the journeys complemented each other and touched her life.

Life itself is a journey, perhaps, so many journeys put together. However some journeys are unplanned. They just happen, exactly the same way crucial decisions are taken in life. There is a difference between leisurely journeys and the decisive ones. Decisive journeys could change your life and transform you into a new, shining and elevated self. I cannot ever forget the month of May, 2004 when I travelled to Delhi from Sri Ganganagar, Rajasthan along with my parents and younger brother. On that summer afternoon, I was confronting a new world. Vacuous eyes of the fellow passengers were still watching me. The rhythm of steel created by the wheels of the Intercity Express resonated the rhythm of my heart that was anxiously beating at the expectation of the unknown.

As a child I had always imagined a life in a metro. It was a ‘long lived’ imagination because it was my third trip to Delhi. The earlier visits were, one during my summer vacation after my senior secondary examination in 2001, and afterwards during some family occasion in 2003, but both were to my uncle’s house, who has been in living in Delhi for a long time. These visits had evoked a desire in me; to live in this city for long to know a bit deeper than its glittering skin.

The holidays that I had spent at my uncle’s home began with a morning drive to the local attractions that included ‘nariyal pani’, chaat and at times a sumptuous breakfast at some restaurants. Lazy afternoons were spent in watching movies in home theatre and the engrossing evenings were earmarked for visiting India Gate, Birla Temple, Lotus Temple and some multiplexes or shopping malls. At night the city roads revealed a different scenario before us, the children. I realized that in this city I could pursue my creative life which I was not able to do in Rajasthan. I used to spend a lot of time in completing my cousin’s holiday art assignments and projects which brought prizes and appreciation. Whereas I didn’t have much to do in the name of art at school level apart from some self initiated competitions by my classmates.

Now, I come back to my third travel to Delhi after my graduation in 2004 from Rajasthan, which I call decisive because it was not merely a ‘visit’ instead it was a permanent shift along with the family. It was decisive at the same time critical. Life transforms, as I mentioned elsewhere, when confronted with critical moments. It gives you a new shell to hide or flaunt yourself. But destroying the old could cause a little panic.

Shedding the old shell for me, thanks to Delhi, was easier.  Two years I spent wandering around doing various jobs; starting with dress designing and stitching for a boutique, computer teaching and later on dialing unknown numbers in CA’s office, in a passport consultancy, in a call centre and in a bank’s loan department etc. I was experiencing a ‘new’ Delhi and looking at the lives of the middle class, their aspirations, snobbishness, meanness and desires. I floated above a sea of human beings at the workplaces and never had someone to be claimed as my ‘friend’. It was now time for me to make friends. And once the friends were made, I was seeing the glamorous side of the city too. May be that time glamour for me was merely observing the style statements of the girls passing through Delhi’s roads or learning the basics of how to walk and how to talk.

Outer changes cannot bring the necessary internal transmutation. It needs a plumbing of your soul and I found art as the best route to transmute. In 2006, against my family’s wishes, I decided to become a fine art student. My transformation was slow in the initial days but steady. The severity of the college campus became serene once frivolousness gave way to philosophical discussions. High heels were replaced by Kolhapuri chappals, trendy tops went hiding at the arrival cotton salwar-kurtas, shame burnt my cheeks when I saw my pop-music collection and it took no time to replace them with serious sounding gazals. Trendy joints became a thing of past and their absences were filled by wayside tea stalls.

Poetry oozed out when friends gathered. We did not care the scornful as well as curious looks of the people when we were sketching from the sidewalks of the busy roads. We were small rebels in the making and first of its expression was avoiding family functions; a first rebellion against the system. All this felt real because we were thinking ourselves as ‘artists’ and artists were supposed to be like that. But tricky were the youthful ways that whenever it was needed we did not show any qualm to claim those abandoned customs and habits back. That was the magic of being an artist. Shining colors showed us the flickering innocence, white was satisfying our youthful passions, pitch black stood for depression caused by nothingness and the occasional glances of dull hues heralded an impending maturity. Going back to bright colors made the circle complete expressing the need for energy and courage.

Years in Delhi taught me to deal with life. Two years in campus taught me to deal with conspiracies and strategies. Metro coaches and Delhi Transport Corporation buses gave me quick lessons in dealing with strangers. Days and nights were showing the trails on which my life as an independent artist was impatient to walk.

Complimenting my shift to Delhi came my posting in Andhra Pradesh, this time as a teacher. From a student to a teacher of many students, the shift was abrupt and unexpected. But things happen for good, an optimist in me says always. I had visited South earlier. Coconut fronds gave away the feeling of a green blanket. Sky was like scattered blue in the middle of predominant green. Night silhouetted the landscape like a ghost in flight. Rain came and went unannounced. I had some stereotypical images about South India and Andhra Pradesh confirmed them. However, I never experienced the grace and peace of nature before either in Rajasthan or in Delhi, as first one had dried open sky with parched roads and the second was somber gray patched sky peeping through the craggy balconies.

Ambience of habitation influences the inner self, the way rain evokes music in you. A single blaring of a motor horn could shatter the glass wall of peace. The general pace of a city could infuse speed in your otherwise slow heels. Craving for future might make you lose your present. Ambitions can puncture the inner equilibrium. I have learned to live in peace by creating a balance between ambition and peace.

Looking back, I always ask this question; had it not been the shift to Delhi what could have come to my life? Petals of my inner soul then fold in gratitude before my parents for facilitating that crucial shift. Delhi gave me a reason to live and Andhra Pradesh, a vision. Yet, it is not the end. I would conclude this piece with a few lines from Robert Frost:

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.