The Hand painted Gods of Suchindram

Suchindram is a temple town that has a peaceful old world vibe about it. Reminiscent of a world where nothing is hurried or harried. But my favourite part has to be the hand-painted signage's and walls. One of the few Indian small towns that have yet to be invaded by ugly flex printed banners and signages. These will last as long as they do, to be replaced by we know what.

I especially loved this last one. I'm always on the lookout for handpainted quaint "Men-Women" signs outside public washrooms. This one definitely scores on the cuteness quotient.

Love

I have had it in my head to make a cursive - one piece "Love" for the longest time. And it is thanks to Sunita Thomas, who commissioned me to make one, that these pieces are ready and available for the taking. 

This past month has been busy, what have I been doing? Artnlight is in the process of fulfilling one of its 1st few export orders. All accompanied by the allied entrepreneur- labour shortage issues. And I went through this phase where I hardly used my camera and didn't miss using it. I have been experimenting with using my paints every once in a while, when I have something that I feel is worth sharing I will. It has been an inward looking time and strangely I did not miss blogging or using Facebook extensively either. But like all phases this is coming to its end and I'm happy to share these images with you. I had a beautiful time shooting "Love" and seeing it transform against different backdrops. 

 I had fun shooting these, propping them against different things, places. But this was totally unexpected. I just kept them on the sofa and wow - this just looked so dramatic. All of this is shot in regular broad daylight. No fancy lighting, nothing. All that was required was dancing around them squinting for different angles and watching how it caught the light.

Yes, I do have a few of these ready and they are for sale. Those interested can inbox me on vineeta(dot)artnlight(at)gmail(dot)com

You will definitely see more of me now on. It feels great to be back and I wonder how I stayed away so long. For all of you reading this, thank you for your love and for coming back here.

Meeting BindhuMalini Narayanaswamy, Singer and artist extraordinaire

I heard Bindhumalini's music before I met her. Hers is a powerful soulful voice. A voice that effortlessly takes you to places you have never been to. Deep within, far away, where coherent thoughts never manage to reach. It is a voice meant to heal. It is prayer, it is absolution. 

See & hear Bindu performing at the Kabir Festival in this video by Amitesh Singhal:

So to meet her and see an impish innocent young artist and become friends with a very easy approachable person will continue to be one of the surprising privileges life seems to have granted me. And the more I knew of her the more she gained dimension. One of the few people one may call a consummate artist, an artist whose creativity and talent transcends mediums and methods. So while music is probably what her life revolves around, she also paints, dances, acts. Married to the dynamic lead vocalist in the folk rock fusion band Swarathma, Vasu Dixit, and she is a double graduate, one in art, one in music- masters in vis com from Loyola and P.G from NID.
Bindhumalini Narayanaswamy comes from serious musical heritage, granddaughter of Kalaimani Seetha Doraiswamy, Bindhu grew up in a home where music and art were just a way of life and not something one 'did'. Speaking of her childhood, "And I always liked making something out of the remains of things, sort of junk art. I painted on branches, barks, back of calendars, bent wires to make cycles, figures etc. My family was both amused and encouraging when it came to my experiments. Honestly, now looking back, my main influence was my sister. She was very creative and had a beautiful sketch book full of doodles, cartoons, funky punch lines and themes. I was inspired by her and just wanted to be like her. 
Bindumalini teaches music and travels all over over India performing songs of Kabir and other mystic saints of India. She along with her two sisters also perform "Akatha Kahani" a unique sharing in the form of song, dance and stories on Kabir.

 When I asked her what her aspirations as an artist was - she said,

"To be in constant state of joy, sharing and honest expression and also be known for the same. I do dream of seeing myself perform in various parts of the world, realise all my creative capabilities. I love to dance, and act too. I want to do some good challenging roles in good movies."

Artnlight: What did you want to be when you were a child? :)

Bindhumalini: Everyday I came up with something new that I wanted to become. But I could not decide between the two images of myself, one was about being famous. Just famous, no matter what, and the other was being a bus conductor. According to me, being a bus conductor was the most fascinating thing. Being quick in handing out so many tickets, collecting coins, notes, quickly folding them and tucking it between your fingers while still holding the bundle of tickets of various denominations, and a whistle hanging from the little finger, the compact, many compartment stiff leather bag which he always shook horizontally to get the right change, the pen tucked behind the ear, doing a balancing act without holding to anything, and then having a small paper with boxes that you keep updating. I could watch this and dream on forever. I infact collected tickets so that I could play this game with my cousins. I remember even writing a poem about it.

 


Artnlight: Tell us a little about Sunobhai and how it came into being.

Bindhumalini: Vedanth Bharadwaj is a dear dear friend and a good human being and a great musician. It is a great learning experience to work with him and is full of ease. He is such a good guitarist and no matter what I want to sing, be it a folk number, a hard core carnatic piece, or some masala I conjure up or a nice lilting raag he comes up with a brilliant weave of strings to cushion and drape what I sing.  His playing sets both the rhythm and the background support so it feels complete with just the guitar and voices.

Sunobhai happened when Vedanth called me one day to join him in his production of his second album after his solo Mati Kahe. I jumped at the opportunity and within a week I was back in Chennai and we were working night and day in his then home studio on this album. We both were greatly impacted by the poems of Kabir and the songs of Kumar Gandharv.  Sunobhai is all about our tribute to both.
You can buy Sunobhai on flipkart right here. 

PLAY

 And now to share an exciting part of what Bindhumalini is currently doing, PLAY is an an online exhibition of her paintings that started on 31st March and is on till 6th June. You can see the exhibition here:

Putting this post together, my biggest challenge was, how do I do justice to BindhuMalini in a series of static images? You had to hear her to meet her. And then a crazy thought struck me, we could do a video interview! In her beautiful home in Bangalore. I requested Bindhu if she would oblige. And she agreed. I mailed her the questions and in this video, she speaks, paints and sings in her beautiful atmospheric art filled home and dances in the magical Hampi.  

The film begins with her answering my question, "What is your most favourite part of what you do?"

This is the 1st time there has been a video interview of anyone on this blog & i want to thank Bindhumalini for being so generous and such a sport and doing this for Artnlight readers.

This is her page on FaceBook, do like it if you like her music and want to keep informed about her performances and art in the future. 

And do take a look and spread the word about PLAY, her online painting exhibition.

I would love to hear how you liked this post and Bindhumalini's work and this video interview.
Photo Credits: Elvin Lonan, Sahil Bhattad, Kunal Mithril

MahaKumbh - Part 2, NagaBabas.

I have not wanted to make any post more than this one, but things have kept cropping up, keeping me busy and this has felt like nothing less than an obstacle race. But I also realise that the various interactions I have had with my closest people have shaped this post to be the way it is and each conversation has given me more clarity on my own perspective about the powerful and magical and yet very real Mahakumbh 2013. This is day 2 and the BIG DAY, it is Basant Panchami and the day of the Shahi Snan or Royal bath of the sages and Sadhus and famed Naga Babas who come down from their mountainous retreats to the plains and are visible to the common man. We are all up at 4am and have hit the road with our camera's at 4.30 am and the streets are already full with the marching people who have come in from all parts of India to take a dip in the confluence of rivers on this auspicious day. If we saw people yesterday, today was when the crowds really came pouring in, from everywhere. It felt as if all of India's pious was there to mark its attendance.

 

As large groups of orange flag weilding devouts and Sadhu's march in with their processions, we were waiting poised and ready and in position for the Naga Baba's. But before we speak of the Naga Baba's it is very important to mention the god they follow, the ash smeared and tiger skin wearing omniscient yogi, Lord Shiva is the only ascetic God who wears snakes for ornaments, the crescent moon and the mystical and powerful river Ganga in his hair and once drank poison so he could save the world. The third part of the trinity, Shiva represents the dark night, destruction, death and detachment and is the very picture of formidable fierceness. And paradoxically he is also the ideal family man and the master of Cosmic dance. And the Naga Baba's are his worshippers. They wear only their dreadlocks, marigolds and are ash covered and live in the Himalayan mountain ranges in seclusion and penance. The Aghori sect claims to keep company with ghosts, or live in cemeteries as part of their holy path. Known for their fierceness and even aggression, they live such a life of renunciation that even basic necessities such as food and clothing are dispensed with as part of their spiritual process.

I had seen pictures of Naga baba's through time and I awaited my turn like the rest of us. And they came, preceeded by the Senior Naga Baba's sitting tall astride horses and holding aloft their Tridents. Marching, jumping, stomping, running, full of energy and vitality they filled the streets with their joy and their war cries of "Har har Mahadev".  It was electric.I had never felt more alive, or or more charged or more safe, Separated by thin barricades of bamboo we photograhers ran alongside the gorgeous fierce and the childlike Naga babas. I who could not bring myself to take one picture of people changing after their holy dip, thought nothing of running along the Naga Babas stark in their nakedness, taking pictures of them as much as light would permit, such was their comfort in their skin & the quality of the moment. All I could think of was, omg, omg, look at them, I hope I get pictures, pictures that do this moment justice and pictures that do their vitality jusice. And it was challenging.

 I have never photographed under such conditions, the light was low. And there was crazy super fast action everywhere, my subject and me both were constantly running. At many points I felt my only attempt was to get one single frame without a fellow photographer or a policeman in it. The place was a boon and a bane for a photographer, because there was action just about 360 degrees around you but capturing it without a shake and then trying to get a halfway decent shot was your challenge. I was shooting and working at a pace completely alien to me. For someone who normally takes pictures of only table-tops and immobile objects and almost never of people, it was like being thrown into the deep end of the ocean without knowing any swimming.

 

I am brought up a Hindu and all my life I had seen the domesticated side of Hinduism and then to see this wild child, unclothed, free and exuberant Naga baba version of Hinduism was suddenly such a startling cut to what I thought I always knew. Yes, I had heard of Shiva and his bhuta gana's but it was all in the mythological zone. But to see the Naga Babas in flesh and to feel their spirit gave a very real dimension to the whole thing. I found the NagaBaba's extremely child like in their energies. Innocent and clean. They didn't care about clothes and when we saw them we too ceased to care whether they wore them or no. So whole and complete and beyond clothes was their bearing and attitude. 

It was rumoured that a few photographers had their camera's snatched and twirled and broken by the NagaBabas. 

Putting up their pictures whole and uncropped is what will do them justice, but some of my close friends and family warned me about my blog suddenly getting classified as 'adult' and I saw some of my family getting a little taken aback at the pictures, so I am going to err on the side of caution in this post & put up pictures that will hopefully not offend too many of you. But please do be honest and let me know, if you are hungry for more (because there is a lot more). Or if you think you have seen enough. I really do want to hear from you guys on this one.There are certainly more posts from the MahaKumbh and atleast one more on Naga Baba's coming up.

MahaKumbh - Part1

The Mahakumbh a once-in-a144 year occurance is when Hinduism keeps its date with immortality. (The famous Kumbh Mela comes once in 12 years and the ardh Kumbh once in 6) When devotees from across India and the world come to take a dip and wash their sins in the holy 'Sangam' where the powerful brown Ganga, the black dwindling Yamuna and the mythical Saraswathi rivers converge to form a such a heady forgiving mixture of a river, that millions of India and her modern day saints believe that just a dip can absolve you of your wrong doings. So when Sanjay Nanda sent an online invite to the Indian Photo Tours  trip, I just signed up. No thinking, no discussion, I was going. I knew this trip was going to be different from my other travels. That along with me were two very special and talented people Deeptha Umapathy and Chandan Dubey promised to only make it better.

I was mentally prepared for the crowds and coming from the teeming speed obsessed Bombay, I was ready for a sea of people everywhere I looked, what took me by surprise was the calmness in the crowds. The energy was very different. This was a very peaceful space. The air was rent equally with bhajans and chants of all sorts, and with the tragi-comical and continual announcements of lost people, lost wallets, pan cards, mobiles and every once in a while punctuated by the thundering chugging from the train passing an overhead bridge. And everywhere we looked we saw people carrying their bags walking, walking, walking into the motor free Kumbh city.

Sharing with you a few of my favourite images of the Kumbh Day 1.

 The place is a kaleidoscope of happenings, from processions filled with frenzied dancing, to domesticated street-side cooking by families who live on the streets of the Kumbh, to people drying their clothes, to flower sellers. Its all happening right there simultaneously.

 The Sadhu sightings begin.

 

In the Iskcon Camp, at the entrance they had these beautiful tableau's of gods and goddessed and I saw this man silently sitting and reading his prayers. He almost looked like he was one among the dolls and posters. 

 Walking to the ghats we saw many people and some really stunning women. Completely rural, completely confident.

And we were at the ghats where people were bathing in the river, photography was prohibited in these areas and the area was densely and seriously patrolled by police who would blow whistles straight into our ears if they suspected we were shooting people or women changing.

The evening was beautiful and the sight of the bathers and devotees dipping in the Ganges and offering obeisance in the river will make for one of the most beautiful memories in my life time. I just wish I went there again, less as a photographer and more as someone who is just there and living in the moment. This was one of the many times at the kumbh when I just wanted to be there and soak in the moment rather than angle for that good shot.

 

And as we were walking back from the camp we saw this Sadhu sitting with eyes closed and  completely oblivious to all the activity around him. There seemed to be an aura of quiet all around him and his companion was a man who quietly observed all of us taking pictures of his guru with fierce yet silent eyes.

This was day one and I do have a LOT many more pictures which i will probably upload on FB. It was such a beautiful place and what is it about retrospect that casts a golden glow on everything. The next day was the BIG DAY. Basant Panchami and the day of the shahi snan. The day that the famed Naga Baba's would come out in droves for the Royal dip. They wait for years and years for this big day and photographers come from across the world to capture their magic. Time is playing its own numbers and I will have to wait till Monday till I post about them. See you guys soon.

I definitely want to put in a word for the organisers of this trip, the Indian Photo Tours people. What was so nice about the way Dheeraj Paul and Sanjiv Bhadula organised the trip and the photography class was their mixture of a hands off but always available approach. It is a delicate balance to strike.And they did it brilliantly.