PORTRAIT OF AN ARTIST IN THE RAINS
Rabindra Sangeet and Bollywood songs to train rides and art. Four creators share monsoon-drenched memories and inspirations
I moved to Bombay late September of 2012 and everyone warned me of the awful October heat. I braced myself for the worst. But October decided to spare me that year; it rained every evening! Tucked in the lane anked by a Portuguese church on one end and SiddhiVinayak on the other, I watched people walk in either direction to their place of worship in pouring rain. Older couples hand in hand, wet crows that hung upside down from electric cables, lush green rain trees. Had it not been for that monsoon, I may have never learnt to love Bombay. I am an August born and the memory of the monsoon starting with a roar around my birthday is deeply embedded. Sometimes I have to stop and remind myself that untimely rains are wrecking standing crops and causing damage. But then we as a people have also abolished all possibilities of joy because guilt and shame are dominating our thoughts. We don’t pull up our authorities when things fall apart, but will learn to kill our only chance of joy. I love the Bollywood songs from the 1970s and 80s, where the protagonists are enjoying the rains. There’s something about that simple joy.
GGood and bad:
GRainy day favourites:
The auction and the nal contract in today’s deal were routine, but the play was a step above.
The opening spade lead went to East’s ace and East returned a spade to South’s king. There were 12 easy tricks if the missing clubs split 3-2, so declarer gave some thought to what might be done should one of the opponents have four clubs to the jack. Many players would cash
Rains have always sparked artistic imagination. Vincent Van Gogh’s rain lashed over empty farmland in intense, slanted lines; miniature artists in the Mughal and Rajput traditions drew dark clouds over lush green
elds in which Krishna and his gopis danced; and in a meta commentary on individuality, René Magritte poured his own bowler-hatted self from the sky in Golconda. The arrival of the monsoon can turn us all into pluviophiles, but perhaps it a ects artists more than the rest of us. We asked four artists from across India what the season means to them. the ace and queen of clubs, thinking that they could only pick up a poor club split if West had the length. This declarer took his time before playing any clubs.
South started by cashing the queen of spades, noting that West started with ve spades. The ace, king, and queen of diamonds revealed that West also started with ve diamonds. South led a heart to dummy’s ace and continued with the king of hearts. When West followed to two hearts, his original club
One of my most vivid memories is travelling on the now defunct metre-gauge train that used to run between Vasco da Gama station and Miraj Junction during the height of the monsoons. I stood at the doorway of my carriage as it crossed a bridge halfway up the swollen Dudhsagar Falls. Even at a distance, I could feel the ne spray. In the time it took us to cross the bridge, I was drenched from head to toe! As an artist, I experience the monsoons as a transformative season. The colours of landscape change dramatically from shades of ochre, olive and brown, to deep, saturated greens. I nd the palette in my work is always inuenced by this.
One of my favourite painters is Nainsukh of Guler. A painting of his shows a woman in an orange odhni running, as lightning ashes. The entire composition is full of energy and drama.
GIn Banaras, when the water climbs, we head to the Nepali mandir on Tulsi Ghat, which is located at a height. You can see the whole valley move. When I came to Banaras for my Masters in 2019, the monsoon had just begun. On my rst evening here, I found two young boys conducting the aarti at Tulsi Ghat, and I was infatuated with one of them. I’d visit daily for six months just to see him; I’d watch the way his body moved and transformed. That became the inspiration for my rst performance work, Beyond the Body and Gender.
I have a deep appreciation for Rabindra Sangeet. In Tagore’s songs, such as ‘Aaji jhorer raate’, ‘Megher Pore Megh Jomechhe’, and others, I can vividly see my village, in the Nadiya district of West Bengal, where we’d make boats out of banana leaves and sh in the streets when the rains came. In the monsoon songs of Tagore, you feel as if you’re soaring in the sky and smelling the rain.
GGRainy day favourites: Fresh eyes: Works that inspire:
After these brutal summers, I nd the monsoon really romantic. The city is so chaotic, and this season is cleansing in so many ways. For photography, monsoon helps you create a mood. The light is more beautiful, the colour palette changes. Moody, melancholy feelings — the season’s really emotive. But I also nd myself doing a lot of my drawings and paintings in the monsoon, for which I feel I need to go more inwards.
I love to swim in the rain, and go for long walks — I own two pairs of gum boots. Songs like Shubha Mudgal’s ‘Ab Ke Saavan’ and Billie Holiday’s ‘Stormy Weather’ sound sweeter. And it’s the time to feast on bhajjiya and samosas.