A Few Paintings

Hogarth Galleries has shut shop.  Which is a bit sad as I used to enjoy going there once in awhile and they also had decent newsletters.  Here are a few paintings from recent newsletters.  The first painting below is from the Northern Territory and is a "desert painting".  The paintings below that are from Cape York. Samantha Hobson was a well known part of the original Lockhart River Gang (she was successful enough to leave the Gang and work on her own and often paints more contemporary themes) while Denise Fruit, also from the same region, was shown as a part of an exhibition called Old Girls, Young Grandmothers.

Separately, the design collaboration between aboriginal and Kashmiri artists appears to be flourishing. Saw plenty of crewel work cushions, papier mache boxes and the like in the better tourist shops yesterday. No idea about its authenticity though Better World Arts, whose label appears on the products, presumably has some kind of check.

Lines

Spell Cheque

I am neither a pedant nor a language Nazi.  For no language is "pure" and spellings change. As an example, early English language texts are often incomprehensible.  So change is inevitable.  And I like language to be inventive. Plus pot, kettle, black - I make plenty of mistakes too. Nevertheless the amount of linguistic confusion in newspapers and blogs and personal communications gives me pause for thought.  Many in fact appear in papers of repute.  Plus it is not a simple case of misspelling but the use of words which mean something else altogether.  Which means a new language is afoot. So I put together a list over a week. Par exemple.:

a. wiles instead of whiles;

b. die instead of dye (more common than one would think, in a century die will indicate dye and the useless e will die to give us the dying of clothes);

c. looser where loser is intended (very popular with the young. Even if it leaves you scratching your head as to what part of the person is now looser and once was tight);

d. The rain was apparently poring. Maybe the u just got washed away;

e. Unfarely, fare is now a multipurpose word. Occasionally though bus fairs go up;

f. Rearing fouls puts one in a fowl mood; and

g. Films have trailors these days.

Sometimes it is a honest mistake.  But people cavalierly persist with it. For e.g. I have been living in Sidney for a long time.  Even though each email of mine offers the polite correction that the city is better known as Sydney. I sometimes fear that I may forget the alphabet "y" too. 

While most of the above examples are not from India (surprise!), my few weeks in India made me realise that proper spelling and grammar have long departed it's shores.  I can excuse the Indian spelling of glamour (it's glammer) on the grounds that its more akin to the way we pronounce the word.  I would rejoice in Indian English too - if it made sense. Alas a phrase like "I was dancing in full abundance in the rain" (attributed to Ms. Rai) only tells me that such rejoicing is premature.  Neither can I excuse the country's shoddy school books,  I would be honest to goodness surprised if anyone emerged fluent in the English language solely on the basis of a school education.   Government-speak and business-speak both exemplify the Indian ability to string obscure words together (a bonus if they are correctly spelled) to emerge with a sentence that means nothing at all.  An immersion in this is so disorienting that you begin to doubt your own grip on the language.

Thankfully some red wine and a curl up with Strunk & White (made more beloved by Maira Kalman's illustrations) offers a small cure for the disorientation.  Never mind that wiki notes that the book  is antiquated and peevish.  Some things just call for these sentiments.

A Tree in Rajawadi

Grandpa Tells a Story

My grandparents’ house is quite old. In the time it came into being, my grandparents must have been one among many migrants in Mumbai. Along with many others they ended up in this  piece of allotted land that was reclaimed from marsh. Everything I know of it before the 70s is mere anecdote and by all accounts it was just a very ordinary cottage, the kind that might have dotted many workers colonies in India. I, always willing to attach romantic notions to the rough and the simple, prefer to retain my assumptions that it was charming, semi-rural and devoid of even a slick of middle class aspiration. The houses were set out in rows and many shared walls with the neighbouring house. It was life on the fringes of a big city, the amenities a distance away or still to come. As lives and incomes changed, many were refurbished.  Additional rooms were added as families expanded. Small strips of gardens ran alongside houses and most were perhaps, like my grandparents', very Indian gardens that housed sacred plants and fruit trees. This is the house I remember from my childhood visits. I have fragmented memories of that time – the playtime of sleepy afternoons, cricket in the lanes and the blaze of roadside anthimantharai (mirabilis jalapa). And of course being doted on and utterly spoiled by my grandfather with many stolen visits to eat forbidden foods. Then again as lives changed the houses were rebuilt, as my grandparents' was. Old patches of garden have given way to indifferent landscaping. Homes now conform to modern ideas and the low structures, the whitewash and asbestos roofs have long disappeared. Along with that much of the next generation has disappeared too, in search of their own fortunes. A community exists but the bonds neighbours build by sharing lanes and walls for a long period of time is slowly vanishing. My grandparents and their friends are perhaps the last of this time.

Whenever I visit my grandparents’ house, I think of its history and that of my own family – the people I have been closest to all my life. This time too it was no different. Inside the house there was a sense of misery, a feeling that the promise of happiness was not even a faint scent in the air. But outside the minutiae of life continued. Asoka trees still frame the window of my grandfather’s room. Squirrels  constantly run up and down the mango tree. Indifferent as the landscaping is, a few ixora plants bloom here and there. Snails leave iridescent trails. The rain pelts down, drips off the walls, the leaves. The cats stroll in and out of the house, perhaps drawn by the off chance of a squirrel meal. I think of these as constants but of course new life has pushed through the unseen, underlying debris of the past.  Then somehow my grandfather became part of all that has been swept away.

Grief is a simple thing; we all experience it the same way. I can say I lost a grandfather and everyone will understand what that might mean. I can write about him, about the life we shared, but it is of little interest to anyone except the two of us. It simply suffices to say, "my grandfather died and I am very sad", a kind of footnote to the way my grandfather would describe the events of his life – as if it was nothing, just events punctuating two points. Even though the journey he made was long and complex, even though he would most want to know what I had to say about his life and demise. But I will say this. When my mother was young, my grandfather used to enliven their travels by picking out random people in the crowd and recounting stories about them. Many were so funny that my mother would collapse helpless with laughter. Somehow this encapsulates the world view he provided us with – both that the world outside of family is interesting and to be explored and that a light touch must be brought to life. Accompanying that light touch was also the grinch in him which no doubt lives on as a bit of darkness in our own personas.

Inexorably, slowly my grandparents’ house will also vanish, a victim of time like everything else. Even the spirits that surround it will eventually leave. For the moment my grandmother, frail as she is, remains a last link. So the house stands - forlorn but still sturdy. It's music is muffled these days but like my grandfather’s voice I hear it often. And the music, the voices of the past fill me with a deep sadness but are also exceedingly pleasant.

For my grandfather, R. Muthuswamy (1922-2010)

Postscript: The title of this post references an earlier one.
And my grandfather's own writings here.

Trip in Pictures

A few pictures from my visit.  Taken in Mumbai and Chennai.

Leaf Kolam for Rainy Day, Ghatkopar

Rainy Day Garden, Ghatkopar

Pigeon and its eggs, Kandivali

Nagas, Temple at Chennai

Pink House, Chennai

                                           

Endplay

"It was my Uncle George who discovered that alcohol was a food well in advance of modern medical thought." - P.G. Wodehouse

Back in Sydney after a few weeks in India.  The pattern of my visits has been similar over the past few years perhaps because more than one visit has been precipitated by a family crisis. The same checkered pattern of the city seen from the air, the same mosaic of apartments, trees, shops that flash past as we make trips around the suburbs, the catching up with family, the random rushed visit to meet the odd friend or visit another town.  This time was no different though a shade of exhaustion has crept in with this repetitive pattern.

I knew my uncle well, I didn't know him at all.  Perhaps this can be said of so many people we hold dear.  People we know are familiar, most often we don't even question the degree of attachment we feel for them.  Then suddenly they are not there and the world is a different place.  It eventually resumes its sameness but this sameness is subtly marked, changed. 

The funeral pyre singes those who stand around.  But where the flame is at its highest it is perhaps purer and calmer, mingling with the air of those who have already gone.  I think this of my uncle and his siblings who are no longer there. Then again my uncle was a restless man who always returned home.  In the past few weeks, on some days I have seen him contemplative and hunched in a washed out, rainy corner of the house.  A cigarette as ever is perched in his mouth and he is as enigmatic, remote and dear in death as in life.