Animals in Stories Since Time Immemorial!

Reading and being read to are a dominant part of childhood. From the moment we begin to understand language, we are regaled with rhymes and bedtime stories. Most stories written for children often have a moralizing aspect that aims at inspiring a sense of right versus wrong in young minds. For those of us who have read the story of “The Tortoise and the Hare”, even today, we immediately connect it to the adage—slow and steady wins the race. This seemingly simple and straightforward story and other fables—“The Ant and the Grasshopper” or “The Little Red Hen”—seem to have a lasting impression on our minds.

What is it about these tales that has kept them alive for centuries and endured generations?

The common thread here is the talking animals that are central to the stories’ unfolding. Be it fables, classics, folk tales or modern satire, literature is replete with instances where animal characters have been used—allegorically, metaphorically or literally—to convey the essence of the story. From Aesop’s Fables to The Call of the wild to Animal Farm, animals have always had a special significance when it comes to story-telling.

Why animals?

Throughout history, animals have had a consistent presence in human tales, which is a testimony to the human-animal bond. This bond or a sense of association can be traced back to the time of early cave paintings. During the middle ages, men compiled elaborate encyclopaedias that documented mythical as well as real animals and their unique characteristics. Today, animals have become a part of the celluloid space as well. It would seem that wherever man goes, so do his beasts—but why?

Perhaps, the history of man is incomplete without his beasts. One of the theories posited by scholars is that using animal characters in stories and assigning them human characteristics allows humans to distance themselves from the actual incident and still experience the emotions or learn the lessons intended.

Whether written for children or adults, good literature works as a thinking device. Works of literature allow us to make sense of our world, understand our belief systems, have a dialogue with ourselves and others, question old systems and create new ones. Populating these works with animals that are similar to us allows us to experience these facets via proxy.

Anthropomorphism or assigning of human characteristics to animals is a device that is used in story-telling. Oral narration being the first mode of transmission of tales, early folklore typically employs anthropomorphism. However, all stories with anthropomorphic characters are not the same. Though the characters are essentially talking animals it is their representation (by the author) that marks the difference. For instance, the pigs in George Orwell’s Animal Farm are quite unlike the pigs from the children’s fable “Three Little Pigs”. While Orwell uses the pig to represent the ruling class of a society—greedy and unproductive—the talking pigs from the children’s story serve a didactic purpose about the benefits of quick thinking and strength in numbers.

In the case of graphic novels like Art Spiegelman’s Maus or, more recently, in Malik Sajad’s Munnu: A boy from Kashmir, symbolic and metaphoric visual representation of anthropomorphic characters creates a richly layered and compelling read. Owing to the emphasis on the visual quotient in a graphic novel, it is inherently well suited to depict anthropomorphic characters. Talking creatures imbued with life in full colour have a definitive impact on the readers. In fact, one may forget to remember that the representation is not always literal.

Campfire’s graphic novel adaptations of classics like The Call of the Wild, The Wind in the Willows and The Jungle Book have given readers an opportunity to enjoy this unique reading experience. By bringing these well-loved characters to life Campfire’s adaptations infuse them with a tangible quality that leaves the reader with a lasting impression. 

The case of The Jungle Book

 

An apt example of a timeless tale involving animal characters is, perhaps, The Jungle Book. The book’s popularity led to its being made into an animated series and a live-action film, more than once.

Jungle Book is as much a story for adults as it is for kids. There are characters in it that all can identify with, irrespective of age. Animal characters in stories appear under different guises. A loyal companion—the eponymous hero of White Fang or Buck from The Call of the Wild, an alter ego—the Cheshire Cat from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, a trickster—wolf from The little Red Riding Hood, a guide, a guardian or even a mentor. The Jungle Book too has its share of such models. Each animal character in this book also represents a quality or trait that is human. There is Baloo—a lovable mentor and teacher, Bagheera—a manipulating schemer with shades of grey, Kaa—the unpredictable ally, Shere Khan—the archenemy and Mowgli, the – boy-who-talks-to-animals. In the book, Mowgli represents every/any person trying to find his place within ‘the world’ (the jungle in his case).

The Jungle Book presents the fantastical journey of a wild man-cub who defeats his nemesis and finds a home with people who accept him as one of their own. As a narrative that uses animals to convey human characteristics—familial love, friendship, loyalty, courage and determination—the novel manages to connect with the reader every time.

My article in the trade journal All About Book Publishing.

http://www.allaboutbookpublishing.com/index.php option=com_content&view=article&id=1509&Itemid=187

Mythology flourishes in Indian graphic novels

No longer living an uncertain existence on the fringes of the publishing world, the Graphic Novel has truly come a long way. Viewed as a niche genre ever since its inception, graphic novels were often thought to be the same as comics. The creation and subsequent publishing of graphic novels like Will Eisner’s Contract with God, Marvel Comics’ Silver Surfer and Neil Gaiman’s Sandman saw a shift in the popular perception regarding the medium. The evolution of the graphic novel in India has, in some ways, mirrored its trajectory in the West. Starting in the 60s, the Indian publishing industry had a rich repository of comics that were being published by publishers like Raj Comics, Amar Chitra Katha and Indrajal Comics. So, although readers were familiar with a format that was similar—images with panel and text—the content and subject were poles apart.  

Changing content

The advent of independent graphic novel creators in the early 90s created a ripple whose effects can be felt even today. One of the earliest Indian graphic novels was Orijit Sen’s River of Stories, a take on the socio-political and environmental issues surrounding the Narmada Bachao Andolan. Another early instance of an Indian graphic novel that is semi-fictional in mode is Sarnath Banerjee’s Corridor. Based in modern Delhi, the novel looks at people and their everyday interactions in an urban setting. Books like these made publishers sit up and take notice of the graphic novel, opening up the possibility of using it to create content for mature readers. Manta Ray Comic’s Hush and Phantomville’s Kashmir Pending that dealt with complex and sensitive issues like child abuse and post-partition aftermath further cemented the position of the graphic novel as a medium for serious storytelling.

The last decade has seen many Indian publishers explore the medium of the graphic novel for the medium’s sake. The combination of visuals and text create endless possibilities of telling and re-telling stories across genres. While publishers like Vimanika and Pop Culture Publishing have used it to create cult-fiction series like I am Kalki and Odayan, Campfire Graphic Novels has used the medium to tell the life stories of great leaders and unforgettable personalities like Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Steve Jobs and more recently, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam.

Mythology and the graphic novel

In spite of novel attempts to create original stories, the one source that most Indian publishers seem to fall back upon, time and again, for inspiration is mythology. Titles like Campfire’s Ravana: Roar of the Demon King, Draupadi: The Fire-born Princess, Krishna: Defender of Dharma and Vimanika’s Shiva: The Legends of the Immortal have created a strong reader base for this genre in the Indian market.

Fresh adaptation of stories from the Mahabharata, Ramayana and other popular mythological tales continue to make it to shelves in bookstores. Retellings of Indian mythology seem to draw maximum readers, especially in the case of the graphic novel. Ingrained in our subconscious since childhood, stories of gods and goddesses are an inherent part of our cultural idiom. An immediacy of association with these tales of superhuman men and women, perhaps allows the reader to explore a world that forms an escape from reality, much like any good film. Therefore, for every original work like Delhi Calm, Kari or Munnu: A Boy from Kashmir, there are three to four mythological stories that are being published.

Even in the case of popular cult-fiction work like Holy Cow Entertainment’s Aghori where the protagonist embraces a terrible sect of ascetics, the source of inspiration is Indian mythology. The story traces the character’s journey that brings him face-to-face with beings out of Hindu mythology, ultimately making a deal with the Devas or gods.

The way ahead

Of late, subjects of horror and fantasy have also seen a rising popularity in graphic novels. On the lines of From Dusk Till Dawn, Shamik Dasgupta’s Caravan is the story of a centuries old vampire coven that travels through the deserts of Rajasthan disguised as a caravan of gypsies.

Besides these, there are a few novel, but short-lived attempts at stylized renditions like Sita’s Ramayana and I see Promised Land that have been illustrated by Patua scroll artists Moyna and Manu Chitrakar, respectively.

Although some seasoned writers and artists believe that the Indian graphic novel needs to let go of genre classification, and look beyond mythology for inspiration, the fact that mythology sells more in India is somewhere reflective of the people’s taste and choice. 

Is it then possible for mainline publishers to not cater to this wide market?

Whether tales from Indian mythology continue to be made into graphic novels or not remains to be seen, but for the time being mythology is here to stay.

My article in the trade journal All About Book Publishing.

http://www.allaboutbookpublishing.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1415:mythology-flourishes-in-indian-graphic-novels&catid=69:kids-a-teens&Itemid=134

SUNIL JANAH: CHRONICLING LIFE

The transformation of a photograph into an iconic image often takes place in retrospect. A photograph derives meaning as much from what is absent or left out as from what is present or captured within the frame. Choosing the ‘right’ moment in the continuum of time is perhaps what ultimately determines the fate of a photograph, as an iconic image that outlives its producers or one that is easily forgotten with time. This couldn’t be truer for documentary photography and photo journalism. In both cases, image taking depends entirely on the chosen moment, a choice exercised by the photographer. A photographer who exercised this choice par excellence was Sunil Janah.

Janah rose to prominence with his hard-hitting coverage of the 1943 Bengal famine. His images of the aftermath of a catastrophe that claimed millions in Bengal shocked the nation to its core. Born in Assam in 1918, Janah belonged to a middle class Kolkata (then Calcutta) family with familial ties to the Medinipur district of West Bengal. During his student days at the Presidency College, Calcutta, Janah dabbled in amateur photography and had every intention of becoming a journalist till he met P.C Joshi, the general secretary of the Communist Party of India (CPI). A member of the CPI’s student wing, Janah was already involved in left-wing politics when he was asked by P.C Joshi to document the Bengal famine. The politically charged atmosphere of the nation coupled with his personal left-leanings led to Janah’s quitting academics and following Joshi who intended to do reportage on the famine. It was on this journey that Janah came in contact with the artist Chittaprosad Bahattacharya who’s sketches of the hunger struck land were published alongside Janah’s photographs in the Indian Communist Party’s paper, People’s War and its sister concerns worldwide. Emaciated, skeleton-like family portraits, a dog chewing on a human corpse and skeletons scattered over the wasteland are some poignant images taken by Janah that have branded the famine as the worst man-made calamity in our collective memory.

Although his work was recognized internationally for its brand of uncompromised narration, it was not without personal guilt for Janah. In an interview with Frontline’s V.K Ramachandran, Janah expressed his distress at not being able to help the victims of the famine actively. Admitting it to be a harrowing experience, Janah also felt that he “had to take photographs”. It was perhaps this belief and his steel determination that kept Janah going, leading to the creation of an exhaustive recording of the disaster. Although Janah viewed himself as an intruder, his photographs never betrayed a sense of invasion of his subject’s privacy. More often than not, the genre of photojournalism does not afford the photographer the convenience of time to compose shots that are ethically as well as aesthetically balanced. In the case of Janah’s images, be it of riot victims, national leaders, famous dancers or tribal women, Janah always did justice to the individual’s subjectivity as well as to the aesthetics of the image.

After his documentation of the Bengal famine, Janah became a permanent member of the Communist Party of India (CPI) and moved to their headquarters in Bombay. He became the official photographer of CPI and travelled the length and breadth of the country documenting the changing socio-political landscape of an evolving nation. In 1945, P.C Joshi teamed Janah with Life magazine’s photographer Margaret Bourke-White. Together they travelled to the south of India to cover the famine that has spread there. Janah’s ideals of socialism reflect across his oeuvre. Even when he was photographing wars, leaders, riots and rallies, Janah simultaneously documented the struggles of the common man. His images of coal miners from Bihar, tea-pickers of Darjeeling and farmers protesting in Telangana are a testimony to his commitment to the CPI’s ethos of being the common man’s voice. Janah’s acute awareness of the nuances of the medium set him apart from his contemporaries. Most of his pictures were taken from below the eye level, imparting an aura of heroism to the subject that was reminiscent of the socialist realism era art in Russia. Although the point of view was dictated by the Rolleiflex camera that needed to be held at waist-level, the precise and tight compositions were dictated by Janah’s own sense of aesthetics. A masterful control of natural light rendered his subjects with a sharpness that Janah strived for in his images.

After the removal of P.C Joshi as the general secretary of CPI in 1948, Janah’s Connections to the party became strained. He shifted to Kolkata (then Calcutta) where he opened a Photo studio and continued working as a commercial photographer. An observation of the images taken during this phase indicates its contrast to the earlier, pre-independence phase in the context of the subject depicted. Janah concentrated on photographing architectural edifices and classical Indian forms. Consequently, he is credited with documenting some pivotal artists like, Ragini Devi, Indrani Rehman, Shanta Rao and Bade Ghulam Ali Sahab.

Janah’s technical prowess of the craft and his passion to document India and its people can be observed in the book, The Tribals of India. For this book, Janah collaborated with anthropologist Verrier Elwin and together they created a visual history of the country’s indigenous folks. There is a sense of ease in the images. The subjects - Mahasu youth, Bhil girls, and topless Kerala women – all appear to be unselfconscious and utterly oblivious to the camera’s eye. Janah’s portrayal of his subjects is devoid of romanticism, depicting them going about their daily chores in their natural habitat. Smiling, laughing and gazing back at the camera, these men and women break away from the mold of the “exotic”. The Tribals of India was Janah’s third book. Janah’s first book titled, The second creature was published by Signet Press, Calcutta in 1948.His second book, Dances of the Golden Hall, co-authored with Ashoke Chatterjee is a collection of photographs of the Indian classical dancer Shanta Rao and her interpretation of the traditional Indian dances.

Photographer Ram Rehman organized a retrospective of Janah’s work in New York in 1998 that featured 600 vintage prints. Rehman describes Janah as a political activist whose activism was his photography. Even after a lifetime of taking photographs, with diminishing eyesight and failing health, Janah’s passion for his craft and his belief in socialism remained intact. In an interview with Silicon Valley based ‘internet radio’ producer Kamala Bhatt, Sunil Janah’s son, Arjun has been noted to say that although his father never went back to the communist party he believed in the goals and ideals of socialism till his dying day.

By Shabari Choudhury

This article appeared in the 75th Issue of the Magazine Art & Deal

Legacy Extraordinaire

       His was a quiet revolution. At a time when the ‘progressives’ of India’s art world were clamouring to claim a language of their own, the contained, silent voice of Tyeb Mehta splintered the canvas of modern Indian art, much like the diagonals in his paintings. Born in Kapadvanj, Gujarat in 1925, into a family whose business was making films, Tyeb Mehta worked as an editor for three years prior to enrolling at the Sir J. J School of Art in Mumbai (then Bombay) in 1947. 
       
      Art came to him by chance when he enrolled at the art school with hopes of becoming an art director. Studying along with contemporaries like Francis Newton Souza, the founding member of the Progressive Group of artists (popularly known as PAG) and Maqbool Fida Hussain, Tyeb Mehta was drawn into a whole new world of colour, form and line. The members of the Progressive Group of artists were the first postcolonial generation of artists in India who actively sought to move away from the western academic model of classicism that was being taught at art colleges as well as the revivalist wave that had appeared with the freedom movement in the country. As a second generation member of the group, any mention of PAG is usually not without the mention of Tyeb Mehta; especially with context to the presence of Modern Indian Masters in the global art Scenario. Although Tyeb Mehta is considered as the harbinger of change for Modern Indian Art; especially post the sale of his triptych Celebration at the 2002 Christie’s auction, the mantle could not have rested with a more reluctant hero. Unconcerned with his rising status or the money that his name could fetch, the artist never catered to market demands or boom periods. He created artworks at his own pace; a testimony to the artist’s exacting standards. Ever since the beginning, Tyeb Mehta was his own harshest critic. He often created and destroyed many complete works before he was satisfied with the output. This process of self censure did not stem from the need to pander to market requirements, but perhaps had more to do with the artist’s lifelong process of learning the craft of image making.
       
      Art historians and critics, who knew Tyeb Mehta will vouch for the artist’s less-is-more approach to life. One can see this approach; of simplicity and starkness, percolating into his artistic practice as well. Tyeb Mehta’s search for a single image, a metaphor to express his experiences of The 1947 Tyeb Mehta, Mahishasura,This poignant image, of a powerful beast being tied up in a state of helplessness, was according to the artist; the ultimate loss of vitality, humanities failure to channelize its energies. This image remained with him till much later, manifesting in stylistically significant later works like the Mahishasura series, especially the Mahishasura, 1996.Often tagged as the ‘Indian [Francis] Bacon’ and compared to Henri Matisse for his technique of colour usage, Tyeb Mehta’s artistic oeuvre speaks a language of its own. Unlike the palpable trauma present in Francis Bacon’s works like the Figure with meat or his other meat paintings that embody the crudity of the act of butchering, Tyeb Mehta’s figures are suffused with a sense of pathos and empathic grief. Undoubtedly, his visits aboard, the first to London and Paris in 1954, the second to London from 1959 to 1964 and the third to New York on a Rockefeller fellowship had significant influence on his method of creation. While studying western masters abroad, Tyeb Mehta witnessed a burgeoning art scenario that permeated his personal visual language with a newness and boldness of form and colour, one that came to be recognized as his mark. The broken, fractured forms, human as well as animal, are often seen arrested in mid-motion, waiting to complete an action whose end seems elusive. This suspended animation that pervades much of Tyeb Mehta’s later works can be presumably linked to his exposure to films from an early age. Captured as moments in time, the austere figures of rickshawallas, falling men and the demon Mahishasura locked in battle with the goddess; to an extent, reflect the stylistic adaptation of the medium of film. 

     When viewing paintings from Tyeb Mehta’s Diagonal series (1969–76), it is impossible not to draw a parallel between the collective trauma of the 1947 India-Pakistan Partition and the chasm-like mark drawn by the artist on the canvas. The diagonal stroke, running from one corner to the other of the canvas, was incorporated by the artist as a compositional tool. A dynamic element, the diagonal effectively broke the picture plane, further distorting the already fractured forms. This division of form along with the flat application of pure colours compounds the misery of these forms whose shrieks seem to be frozen mid-air. During his artist residency at the Vishwa Bharati University, Santiniketan in 1983, Tyeb Mehta produced a 4.5 meter long triptych titled the Santiniketan Triptych (1984). The painting depicts the Santhal community’s Charak festival where the overall atmosphere seems to be that of festivity and bonhomie. The diagonal element is conspicuously absent with more figures used by the artist for a composition than ever before. 

      A loner by choice, Tyeb Mehta needed isolation to create his art. He lived his life in a suburban Mumbai apartment and in his studio; with his wife Sakina and son Yusuf. Never the one to use art as means of garnering fame and popularity, Tyeb Mehta’s way of life remained untouched by his rising public persona even post the landmark Christie’s auction of 2002. Although reclusive by nature, Tyeb Mehta was mentor to a whole generation of young Indian artists in the 1990’s and delighted in any benefit that they received owing to his status in the international market.Succumbing to a long battle with failing health, Tyeb Mehta passed away in 2009. He leaves behind a legacy of artistic distinction, of a life which at times was adverse and at times was painful but one that he lived on his own terms. In his pursuit of a simple life, Tyeb Mehta has left behind a legacy that is extraordinary. 

By Shabari Choudhury 

This article appeared in the 75th  issue of Art & Deal Magazine.

A thought

Blocking sounds with earphones ...people walk on in their own bubble of peace.
Numb to the roar of civilization, waging a war on the senses. It is their respite, this fragile make belief Zen state. But this bubble of peace is changing who we used to be.
Everywhere I look, I see robots plugged in, in trains, at bus stops, car windows... no asking for directions, no possible conversations.  I remember this line from a movie I once watched, "when people stop talking, they start dying in pieces."I wonder if it's true.
Perhaps which is why, we now talk to our gadgets.
We post our thoughts on facebook, on twitter, our blogs but never share them with the one next to us.

Un-boxing homogeneity

I too had a planned trajectory.like one should. like everyone else had. School, college, job - that was it. I enrolled into a professional course as it meant job assurance and straight out of college I took up a job. I was playing by the rules and not wasting time. I was the early bird and I had a worm but once I had it, I didn't know what to do with it. Still, I held on to it. They said Bombay was the place to be if you were in television and so I went. I trudged on and perhaps would have continued had it not been for some bitter experiences of my twenties.

Thinking back, I often question the straight-jacketed approach that was ingrained into me. No doubt, it was the easier approach. It was easier to put on an existing tag than to create one of my own.

In my formative years, I studied in a convent. Moral science was a must and for a child whose household assigned no particular value to religion or rituals, moral science classes, replete with their stories of good vs. evil, right vs. wrong were fascinating, to say the least. Outside of the class, sermons delivered by the nuns and the beautiful serene chapel within the school compound stirred in me a belief that remained unshaken almost till the end of my teens. It never occurred to me to question the message that was being delivered via those terse sermons and stories. Never did I think of questioning their version of right and wrong or good and evil, I simply accepted. I accepted the definitions that were put in front of me. I accepted that if I wasn't the early bird there would be no worms for me.  I never took a moment to think if I wanted a worm in the first place.

Perhaps, I was an inhibited and gullible child but perhaps, my school was a microcosm of the belief system that our society perpetuates. Labelling and conditioning of choice or choices is central to almost every society’s functioning. It is an unease of not knowing, of not being able to neatly box/ contain /put a name to an entity that creates an urgency to assign labels. Labelling possibly facilitates a smoother system of functioning in totality but what bearing does it have or hold on a subjective individual level?  

Looking at my immediate circle of friends and acquaintances I find a number of us, including myself are looking at career changes. Banker turned artist, engineer turned musician there are many of us. Some managed to shed their labels earlier while the rest of us are still trying to figure our way out. There are also those who are effectively paddling both the boats, a job they do and a career they want. Most of us grew up in the 90s when choices were limited but there was also a limitation on our thinking outside the norm.

The ‘boxing’ syndrome is not limited to career and life choices. Be it religion, class, caste, region, gender roles, sexual orientation and all other categories that accompany a diverse society such as ours, the syndrome is ubiquitous. There are floaters who bother the complacency of routine from time to time but they keep to the fringes. Events of the recent past where states of a country have demanded and in some cases coerced a forced exodus of its citizens are further indicative of how the institutional setups use homogenization as a political tool.

Perhaps, heterogeneity is a myth propagated through anthems and advertisements. 

The anachronism of living life in retrospect

Do we grip the past or does the past grip us? Do we stop aging beyond the time that we feel was the best in our lives (and role play the rest) or do some of us actually live each moment in complete mindfulness; aware of our spatio-temporal existence changing each moment?

I came across the concept of ‘temporal drag’ in the writings of the queer theory scholar Elizabeth freeman. According to Freeman, temporal drag is the “stubborn identification with a set of social coordinates that exceed[s] our own historical moment.” However, she uses this term specifically with regard to art practice that takes into discourse the subject of queer. 

To my mind, The word “drag” brings associations of expansion or stretching of time; perhaps a possible connect between the past and the present. it is a lot like being stuck in the nostalgia of youth, like having a splintered soul or a fragmented mind. It’s a feeling of being in between places or a few paces out of sync, desperately trying to catch up with life (it holds true for me and I am hoping I am not the only one here). The dissonance between the physical reality and mental/psychological state is, interestingly (for me), not as disturbing as it should be. Although I cannot help but think that this creation of a comfort zone in the past hinders looking to the future. After all, many motivational speakers and new-age guides talk about living in ‘day-tight compartments’.

Still, it intrigues me and I wonder what creates this ‘drag’ in my mind. I wonder if it is more for some and less or none for others. When and where does this separation being? Is it the failure to realize the aims you set up or the inability to accept that failure and move on with a new plan?