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VISUAL NOTES
Bhupen Khakbar
Dark green leaves with a film of rich Prussian blue on the corners - dark branches extending all over the tree -luscious orange fruits hanging on the branches. Calenders depicting Meerabai resem bIing Meenakumari with white sari and cymbals in hands, full and sensuous bosoms and vacant smile on the face. Advertisement of Badshahi soap with cean . arm -,.pits (what a magic!) Angels flying in the sky, well- fed cherubins licking feet of a king. J ehangir Sjtting on the throne talking with old fakirs. Eternal grin on trio's face (Mahatmaji, Panditji, Shastriji) Only thair busts seen in light grey against blue sky. Farmer tilling the earth \vith tractor giving an even broader smile stating that Five Year Plans have been successful and he owes his happiness to that only. film strips on the use of sapotex - increasing growth of whiteness: white - whiter - the whitest. Geographical charts of Haji Malang. The chart shows the main Shrine. Sideways reaching to the Shrine - showing railway bridges high mounatain cliffs, railway station and the main road reaching the high summit. People giving alms, sitting under tree shades, climbing the mountain. High plaster reliefs in Jain Temples depicting Palitana mountain range with every Tirthankara staring at you with glassy eyes.
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Photographs of family group in front of Taj Mahal. Newly married couple in Cinema pose near a Dam. College Cricket team with the Captain and the 路 Vice - Captain sitting on either side of innocent looking principal of the college. Everyone in white shirt and pants. Only faces and hands of brown colour. \Vhite merges into white. Parsee family photograph of 1895. A. D. Surrounded by posh Victorian furniture in the room. Elegant suits, pearl tie-pins, Jari georgette saris. Big family including three generations in one ph0tograph .. Nude woman listening radio Ceylon on Juhu beach. . Photographs of British Raj with Viceroys, battalions of attendants, pomp and glamour of white skin. Shikar scenes of Maharajas with twelve feet (from nose to t.ail) tiger lying on the groupd. Devotee with his cousin brother standing near . ' .N athdwara Temple. The painter has used real gold in the painting of watches~ rings and buttons of the coat. Irani restaurants with Dada Hormuz, king of Iran on horse - back. " 'Actual' pencil drawings of Raj Kapoor, Vaijayantimala and Dilip kumar. Khadi Bhandar shops displaying dove in lacquer-work, poster colour drawing of Buddha and Kennedy on Pipal leaves, landscapes done with waste material and Kanu Desai's Plaster casts of gods and godesses.
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November 10, 1969. Year: 1. Num~er: 1.
Editors: Gulam Sheikh Bhupen Khakhar
4 Resi~ency bungalow University office compound Baroda-2. Gujarat. India . .
VRISHCHIK Will be published on the 10th of every month. It is . nlainly devoted to art and literature but is also open to other fields. It hopes to publish original writings in English, Hindi and Gujarati along with translations from other languages. . There are no fixed rates for subscription, contributions in any form and amount are welcome. It will be run by a group of artists-writers friends \vho consider it ' \vorth running, or from the contributions of well wishers. Thus its number of pages are subject to change depending ' on funds, but it aspires to grow bigger and publish more visual and written material. Advertisements will be accepted in the form of donating of space.
AFTERNOON 23rd of November 1969
0,,:./-0 ." yThe long strip of open asphalt road in front of thc station is quiet. One could count the number of people 'walking here and there upto the distance of half a mile. Behind the rows of Asopal~y lined up on both sides of the road, the dragon-t~il of the hot sun of this afternoon -swallows all movements. Trees seem to have stopped rustling. Birds have disappeared into distant shadows. Only the heavy, sensuous dome of the arts college looms vainly like a lid on the ghost house.
recall the Reichtag? But we do not have any George Grosz to report the situation in its horror and absurd ,vulgarity. Who are these people, th~ authors of this rampage? Some responsible citizens claim to know them all, but have ' no courage to name them in public. Are these the followers of the third creed-of profit and opportunity? Perhaps it's the terrible instinct of violence and of possession , we harbour beneath our apathetic souls and _hearts, th~t is suddenly released at its highest amplitude .. There were sirens, ' reports of riots and announcements of curfew hours on radios, news from papers, and rumours, rumours. Between all this the horror of the situation was watered down in constant discussions over the number and nature of deaths based on reports and rumours. How quickly we get immune to news-however' horrific tbey may be, was best exemplified by the attitudes of the safe classes, who found rhe discussions on deaths an ideal pastime.
Here, on the station stray groups of people sit a~d wait for trains-to escape to some unperturbed city. The 'students have emptied hostels to runaway . for home; if home does not happen to. be Ahmedabad by a stroke of luck. Railway porters sit on steps yawning. Train schedules on white boards in black and on black boards in white • as indifferent as ever, showing cancellations of some of the trains. Only the grin on the face of a half-wit cinema actress from the poster of a newest release mock the thickening silence and lure the mind to another absurd escape.
Gradually tho long hours of imposed leisure grew longer, ~ the discussion.s usually concluded in criticism~: of the police, the military, and the government _were targets and a radical secularist even criticised prophets who had cre·ated different religions.
There in the distance, the town seems to have been devoured in rumours and reality. The stories and facts come by numbers, each one more gruesome than the other. Killing, massacre, burning of buildings and live human beings, looting-all taking place there across the bridge over Vishwamitri, in the city that has been constantly referred to as the city of culture. And, as reports say, this drama is even more violently enacted on the either .~ sides of Sabarmati : a son and father beaten and burned to' death, families pulled out of houses to be executed in streets, husband's body chopped in ~arts in front of wife, nude mothers with babies in arms chased by a mob in empty streets, corpses hung by str!ngs in a public place ... Here, buildings razed to ground and frenzied looting of shops: someone says he saw an old man carrying ~ box of watches, otbers saw a woman struggling with too heavy a box full of . tea--packets which were finally distributed free to all present. Someone noticed an humbly· clad man going into a ' laundry and walking out with suits on. They say when people"broke into shoe-shops, the whole stre~t was soon littered by a variety of footwares. Someone joked that;; mischief makers' had left a big packet of shoe'S at" his -door-:Qut there was not a single identical pair. Others were happy to buy expensive watches sold at a rupee or two the ,next day. It all looks like a story : pu~e fiction. Or a scene from a play of Ionesco or from films like Zorba the Greek when inhabitants of the little island carry the households of ' dying Bubulina. But they say, these · are facts. Do they
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The deserted suburb this afternoon looks strangely beautiful: a cruel irony of fate. The un-humanised streets have revealed a mysteriou~ sjlence that only abounds there in the dark of the night. Now, in the afternoon everything is washed blanche: shadows segregated and gathered in empty compounds. All .this has mad,e the landseape miraculously ominous (that perhaps Piero della Francesca or Morandi would haye liked to p~int). The impending fear is present behind every tree~ But in the front, a solitude of the landscape: of land that can transform itself to worms and animals. And, over the land; a mocking, violent indifference of air ': the landscape as vision that may variis,h at any moment, facing us as a warning to our unbecoming hearts.
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This aspect of itreets-of trees, houses and roads-is 'always vitiated in, the presence of humans. We .. always look at our o,wn species and forget the backdrop. Now tIfe backdrop is violently fl\lng toward the eye, and we are unable to bear its assault. Th,is aspect of man-who massacres innocent passengers on trains-is known yet remains mysterious. He bursts out at his bravest or cowardest at the eighth hour of decision and forgets the mea.ning of blood.
,G. S.