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Sharing of information by a Senior Citizen under threat of Property Grab by a Property Grabber who is a practicing lawyer & son of a police man

This sharing of information is addressed to every Senior Citizen of India under threat of Property grab:

I am a senior citizen. I am an artist by profession. I live in B-180. East of Kailash. In June 2009, a new neighbor, a young lawyer & son of a police man came to live in our apartment building after making lot of additions & alterations in his apartment. From the first day, he started to address me in the disrespectful tone of a policeman. He started surveying, enquiring & trespassing my ground floor apartment & basement. Within few days of his shifting in our apartment, I realized that he is a property grabber & his behavior is planned for abuse & aggression for property grabbing…. I started keeping a voice recorder to make law enforcement agencies believe me.…. In India Police & law enforcement agencies help the property grabbers of Senior Citizens even after listening to property grabber’s voice, abusing & threatening Senior Citizen of physical aggression for property grab, even after, he is caught red handed by the Police Officers, demolishing my room without obtaining court’s orders.

Now my aim in life is to make this property grabber feel the same intensity of pain he has been inflicting on me & my family for the last one year. My aim is to ask him to leave his apartment & go & live in a house, without any neighbors for his property grab temptations. My aim is to get him debarred from practicing the profession of law.
I want to set an example, so that no property grabber in India, dare to abuse, threaten & get the clauses in his purchase deed criminally altered to grab any Senior Citizen’s property.

Loud thinking , as an Indian Citizen, to find a solution for our ignored & under developed tribal & other regions of our country.

Our democracy, our bureaucracy, our law enforcement agencies & our justice system are selfish, self-relationship, money oriented, delayed reaction, delayed action & talkative machines. These institutions live in cities & think about cities. These flourish & are dependent on corruption & exploitation. These institutions are capable of proving an innocent / victim as aggressor & an aggressor as innocent / victim. These institutions have ignored & exploited tribal land & people since independence. Repent …. accept mistake ….. ignorance …. system’s deficiency & failure. Clean your police & other law enforcement & social reform help & distribution agencies. Don’t try to find Congress solution, don’t try to find BJP solution, don’t try to find Communist solution, don’t try to find a politician’s solution, don’t try to find a religion solution & don’t try to find a vote solution for it. Try to find a human solution; try to find our nation’s solution for it. Ask exploitation individuals & agencies working in these regions to leave these regions. Meet & request people like Ma Shweta Devi to help. Convince by example, the common people in these regions that peace solution is better for them, for their needs & for their progress than Mao’s aggression solution. Shift & rotate, Prime Ministers, Home Minister, education Minister & Social Reform Minister’s office in the under developed regions of our country. Let there be, one Minister in every Ministry for every under developed region to take care of the needs of the underdeveloped regions of our country & their people. Also, please have a look at the NWFP policy of the British as a solution for some interim period. The fear is, by employing army, we may not make India, a second Pakistan

Beware of Property Grabbers of Senior Citizens Property

Beware, the property grabber neighbor, who is a lawyer & son of a police man will get clauses to help him grab property , inserted or existing clauses modified in the purchase deed of his apartment, to help him to grab senior citizen's property. Go on registering your fears & facts in writing to the Police even if they help the property grabber & not the Senior Citizen

MY ART

My art is my personal creative visual expression, with a concern creeping in.
I don't remember any signs, during my childhood, which could have definitely predicted my becoming a painter-sculptor. I was the youngest child in the family. I was a lonely child who had adjusted to aloofness, enjoying it and hating it alternately. Living in a house which was amidst a jungle (forest), about a kilometer from the road from where, I thought, the 'World' started. From the house, a pagdandi (pathway) led me through the jungle to the World and from the World to my house.

My first relationship in my life, outside my house, began with this jungle. I took the jungle in me through the window and from the terrace of my house. It tempted me and whenever I came out of my house, it engulfed me, as if to take the responsibility to prepare me to face the world. The jungle was never consistent in its behavior towards me - it changed its moods during the day and the behavior when seasons changed. The jungle (forest), sometimes let me feel its love, care and indulgence. It provided me the cover of cool shade when I walked through it, returning from school in the hot summer afternoon - allowed me to explore it, let me climb the trees, pick flowers, listen to the conversations and the music of the birds. Sometimes the jungle taunted me, even scared me,- let a snake pass in front of me. It lengthened the shadows of the trees, allowed the howling wind pass through it, when I had to cross it at night to reach my house - But always in the end, asked the full moon to peep through the branches of the trees, slowed down the wind,- made a flower drop on my way - and guide me home on the 'pagdandi' (pathway). Somewhere, sometime during this relationship with the jungle, I think, the desire to express was born in me. I had no medium at my command to express and the urge got buried somewhere.

Amidst my relationship with the jungle, the world began to change very quickly. The country was partitioned. We fled leaving the jungle behind. I saw a group of people killing one helpless person. I met people who had a compulsion for lying and who planned to harm their dear ones, friends and children, but were accepted as innocents. Urge to express came back and I took a conscious decision to express myself through the medium of painting and later in sculpture.

The journey of my expression through art has been similar to the journey of contemporary Indian art after Independence - of derivation, of introspection and of discovering ones own creative visual imagery for expression.

I started as a painter but later included sculpture also, as form of my expression. This inclusion has not been abrupt but has evolved over the years. On the way, I started making hard-edge paintings. These were abstract derivations with ritual connotations. Third dimension crept in my works at this stage. Around this time, I felt that my works of this period developed an aloof personality of their own after they were completed. I became stranger to them and they, stranger to me. They existed, were accepted and I existed separately. I chanced making some figurative sculptures and found that some part of creative and emotional mine gets intensely infused in my sculptures. I no more became stranger to my sculptures. A togetherness developed and continues, whenever we confront each other. In our different moods and shades of thoughts, we communicate our and humanity's joys, sorrows, conflicts and emotions. I created environment for my sculptures to live and found they were content, more vocal and expressive. I provided for some, organic environment and they accepted it and started growing with the growth of the environment. A mention of my sculpture, Mankind 2110 (An alternative) exhibited in the Fifth Triennale India will explain the role of environment as part of my sculptures, better. A bronze figure of Devi (Goddess) with many arms, on a log of wood suspended horizontally from the ceiling, is walking to descend to a growing paddy field below. The paddy plants grew in height with passing of each day and swayed with the breeze. The paddy field provided environment and the sculpture achieved a total experience of a spiritual happening in nature. The green of the paddy field embarked me on the adventure of using colour in three dimensions in company of my later sculptures.

DRAWING for me is a complete expression and a vehicle to arrive at my sculpture and at my painting. My drawing, to me, is an assurance. These drawings begin to exist independently and along with my sculptures and paintings. My concern in the drawing, in sculpture and in painting, is human form or human face. Elements of environment and concern, I feel, are needed to surround these to provide them context, stature, validity and contemporariness.

I draw, when a compulsion ceases me. I draw more by instinct rather than by the tenants of formal training to draw, with any instrument or tool capable of drawing. The operation starts with a dot or a line or a blot created with the help of a medium. Then a coordination of instinct, fingers, holding the tool or a brush and the medium develops. During this process, a moment comes when a ray of energy flows out of my inner self, through my fingers to the drawing. The drawing is complete and I recognise it - some part of my creativity and emotion gets intensely infused in the drawing.

The erotic in the drawings has symbolic presence similar to Shivling in the temple or the allotted location of panels of erotic sculptures in the scheme of the structure of a temple to guide the devotee, through indulgence, to fulfillment of life circle on earth and after.

I rediscovered my PAINTING through my DRAWING and my SCULPTURE, as if to complete a circle.

Programmed in me, I carry compulsions of my cultural identity. I am an aggregate of my local, regional and global consciousness. I am placed in this changing world which has just entered 21st century. Man is going to crowd the world with assembly line produced products. Man has become a suspect of destroying environment and our cohabitants on earth. He has enlarged himself beyond this planet and is extending his reach in the universe. Man will change the world from ‘natural/material work accessories' world to ‘biological/genetic work specific accessories' world. He will rehabilitate other planets with these engineered work specific accessories and start living there by modifying himself. Man has started imagining that he will master the universe. He is dreaming of immortality amidst planets.

Electronics media is becoming a super power and is taking control of our physical, intellectual and emotional responses. It is churning our cultural identities. It is influencing our needs and choices. Through the advertisements and the programs inserted in between the advertisements, T.V is researching, recreating and inventing 'Icons', as representatives of our time, life, desires, dreams and emotions. Celebrity has emerged as the most powerful and influential icon. One among many types of celebrity icons which are occupying TV screens is the super model in various forms of presentations.

For many years an 'Icon', an elongated human form, most of the times a female, has been evolving to take the center stage in my creative visual imagery, in my drawings, in my sculptures & in my paintings. This icon resembles super model in content and in thought process. Its reach is from earth to heaven. It dwells amidst planets, presuming immortality, surrounded by ‘the assembly line produced products', icons of vanishing cohabitants of this planet and the icons which I derive from my cultural inheritance to accomplish my creative visual expression in my drawings, sculptures & paintings.
Ved Nayar

RAIN

I am tired, always tired, before and after the sleep.
Days and nights, I spend lying on the bed,
under the constant protesting sound of the fan,
blowing hot air.

The Sun is over my head always,
I can not shake it away.
He sucks the winds to boil them,
to throw them back on me.
The shadows have disappeared,
the world is thin without volume.

In the morning and in the evening,
I scan the dusty sky,
search leaves on the branches of the trees,
search a torn piece of cloud in the sky,
to believe in hope,
to build courage to live.

Today, near the horizon,
I saw an arm extended,
to feel the first drop of rain on hand.

INDIAN CONTEMPORARY ART AND THE EMERGING FACE OF GLOBAL CONTEMPORARY ART

Indian Contemporary Art

India is an older cultural identity. It is a small world in itself with much diversity. It lives amidst many time spans simultaneously... in the past, in the present and in the future.

Because of its geographical location and physical features, India has always been open to external influences, cultural attractions and interactions. India has the capacity to generate its own thought process and it has the flexibility to receive, imbibe and use external influences and cultural interactions to enthuse vitality and relevance in its creative human endeavors.

Indian contemporary art, after independence in 1947, has passed through a period of derivation and a period of retrospection, to arrive to mean, an individual artist's creative expression in his own creative visual imagery. Both, the period of derivation and retrospection came into being as reactions to the prevailing situations. The compulsions of creative expression in the artist's own creative visual imagery evolved out of these two reaction situations and the expanding grasp of global perceptions.

Freedom and democracy created a liberation hysteria, a desire to equal, even surpass, western standards of material and creative human endeavor. Artists coming on the scene at this juncture were exposed, to the already established and recognized art directions of Europe & later American, mostly through reproductions and art books while studying in the British type academic art schools in India and not by direct contact with the works of art and the artists there. Because the Indian artists of this period had no direct access to the emerging contemporary thought process in the west, they fell a step behind the contemporary art scenario there and this one step backwardness could not be redeemed.

The application of the gospels of western art appreciation and reference in judging contemporary Indian art further stamped this status. Each one of the western inclined Indian artist picked up the technique and the thought process of a western artist of his choice and began to revolve his work around it. Most of them chose works of those western artists whose creative directions had imbibed Asian or African or Mexican sensibilities and began to feel them selves at home. Some fell for those western creative directions which they felt matched their angry-young-man or liberated or leftist personality image which they wanted to project.

During the west-attraction years, still in and out of their formative years, with wavering faith in their own thought process, many artists reached Paris, London and other art centers of Europe on cultural scholarships. Most of them returned after two to three years, converted. Some came back disillusioned. Some got married there to stay back along with some others who had migrated there to practice art as freelancers. They preferred to uproot themselves from the nourishment of their cultural resource & cultural inheritance.

There were many who did not choose to go. They adopted western mediums and techniques but searched for creative directions from within, around and from the ever regenerating creative visual resource in the country. They did not however close themselves from the world winds. They were sidetracked for some time by fashion-wave and hearsay art connoisseurs and university English honors’ graduates & M.A English, art historians. But these artists persisted and became the first Indian Contemporaries after independence.
When the creative compulsions and needs of expression could not be satisfied by picture-making only with borrowed ingredients, the Indian artists started re-searching indigenous and traditional creative visual cultural resource. Some adopted it in their work and some interpreted it for their expression. This period of introspection arrived because of the reaction to the western derived art and in search of an indigenous identity.

The exponents of the introspection did not suggest withdrawal or isolation from the currents of the world art scenario. Some of the artists, who had already established their creative visual identity in pursuit of western creative directions, chose to search again their creative visual imagery for expression, realising the validity of introspection.

In India the creative visual directions of the past, present and future coexist despite a reaction stance that may prevail against any one of these. You will still come across adherents of Bengal school which was more inclined to traditional directions available in India and the East. Such tolerance and coexistence enrich and smoothly fill the gaps in the continuity in creative visual imagery.

Francis Newton Souza, I believe, was the prodigal son of Indian Contemporary Art in its formative years after independence. No Indian contemporary artist, after independence, had so much creative energy, revolting personality, capacity to work & flight in his imagination & expression. Unfortunately, for Indian Contemporary Art of formative years after Independence, he left India & migrated to U.K to become a western artist. I wish, he had not formed ‘the Progressive Group’. I wish, he had remained in India. I wish, he had, also, opened his eyes & creative sensibilities, instead of taking a reaction stance, towards the creative visual directions evolved by Indian artists from their soil, like Nand Lal Bose, Rabindra Nath Tagore & Binod Bihari Mukerjee & the like, who had, in their journey of evolving their creative visual imagery, experienced the British Rule in India, observed & amalgamated, the Asian nuances of creativity & the fragrance of independent India. Had it happened, Indian Contemporary art of today had been abreast, with its own independent personality, any contemporary world art. The best supporting example for this point of view is that of Tyeb Mehta. Most of his life Tyeb Mehta’s creative visual imagery was western oriented. By chance, few years ago, he was invited to Shantineketan to stay & work there. The result was a series of his paintings, ‘Mahisasura’. He will always be remembered for this series of his paintings & this series will be regarded his best contribution to Indian Contemporary Art.

At a given point of time, most of the artists work following the established creative visual directions. Some artists have a compulsion to explore and establish new creative visual directions. Near about the period of introspection, some women artists like Meera Mukerjee & Gogi Saroj Pal, some self-taught artists like Madhavi Parekh and some prodigals like Ganesh Pyne & Bhupen Khakar, entered the Indian contemporary art scene, each expressing his/her creative compulsions and concerns in his/her own creative visual imagery. Indian Contemporary art, with all its faults, became Indian contemporary art, thereafter. A confident and more self- reliant, second generation of artists after independence are now taking over the contemporary Indian art scenario. But sometime, one gets scared when a second generation artist is always in search of an indigenous visual experience with whose first time exposure, he wants, to attract only western art connoisseur.

In my analysis above, about the emerging Indian Contemporary Art scenario, I have not taken into consideration, that abstract art achieved with the help of evolved establisted technique of the artist which fills the needs of hotel decoration & home decoration requirements

The Emerging Face of Global Contemporary Art

Our world, from the recent past, has started becoming smaller, more approachable and more graspable. It has started to reveal more and sometimes all. With the information technology advances and increasing speeds in the modes of transport, the rate of change on our planet has become faster and this rate of change will accelerate in future.

Consequently, a global face for every creative human endeavor will emerge. The global face of contemporary art has already started taking shape and can be sensed at the international contemporary art events, especially in the West. In these international contemporary art events, sometimes one is overawed by the scale, magnitude and the freedom of the creative experience, sometimes one feels intimidated, sometimes shouted at, sometimes, like a miniaturized disciple, listening to a commandment and sometimes one encounters altered contexts, human scale and placements. The creative experience appears to be the celebration of material, technical virtuosity and sequences of the physical world. Most of these will exist till the event lasts and shall go into the information technology stores for existence. In these events, the conventional format creative visual experiences, hang in unobtrusive corners, like scolded children.

Artists will continue to use conventional formats for making paintings and sculptures. In search for new directions, sometimes sensational new directions, in the creative visual imagery, theatrical installations, ritual, information technology and altered biological code will be explored. In the international expositions of contemporary art, where a large number of artists from different countries will participate, more and more conceptual installation projects will be seen because these have better capability to establish the individuality of the creator and the identity of the work.

The age of art movements prolonging for a long time is over. Contemporary art in future will be an expression of an artist's creative concerns in his own creative visual imagery. His creative concerns will establish his point of reference in history and his creative visual imagery his identity. To be relevant, the artist will be under pressure to produce a substantial body of work before the world moves on.

Contemporary art in future will reflect an aggregate of the artist's local, regional and global consciousness. It will be relevant to the time and will reflect the perceptions of the future. Local, regional and global consciousness will enrich each other and start blending in many permutations and combinations to generate new creative directions. These will provide a balancing human factor and the possibility of immortality to the creation.

The initiative to shape the global face of contemporary art seems to have passed in the hands of the West. The older cultural identities are playing a minor or no role in its shaping. When complete, the features of the face will not represent an aggregate of all human conscience and creative aspirations.

India, China, as well as other countries of older cultural identities, have immense creative visual resource available for use and interpretation in contemporary and avant-garde contexts. These countries and regions have been contributing their share in the World's depository of the creative human endeavor. They have the capacity to generate their own thought processes and have the flexibility to receive, churn and imbibe in their own streams of thought, the alien creative influences and interactions to enthuse vitality, relevance and contemporariness to their art forms.

West has over-utilized its creative visual imagery and is looking around for new inspirations and directions. Older cultural identities can provide inputs for new directions in contemporary art. West is required to alter its codes and references to judge and appreciate creative visual directions of the East. Such and similar happenings will keep the global face of contemporary art creative, human and alive, representative of our past, our present and our future and of this world and beyond. These interactions will help to rationalize creative visual tendencies, emerging on the horizon, to alter and use the nature’s biological code.

Ved Nayar

(This article is printed in the book, ‘EVOLVING HUMAN FORM’, drawings of Ved Nayar between 1976 & 1993 in the collection of Masanori Fukuoka)