This year, versatile arts practitioner and Padma Vibhushan awardee K.G. Subramanyan turned 90. The Governor of Tamil Nadu K. Rosaiah inaugurated his travelling show of 90 new works with Seagull Foundation for the Arts at Lalit Kala Akademi on November 4. At DakshinaChitra, Mani Da, as the community fondly calls him, interacted with an audience. With eloquence and acumen, he churned out pieces of wisdom from vast stores of human experience that oft remain hidden. In graphic black and white illustrations, collaged together with text, the original artworks of his 1998 book, The Tale of the Talking Face, are presented at the Varija Gallery. Relating to the 1970s Emergency, this is an allegorical tale about a princess who uses her powers to clamp down on democracy. A verse reads:
And, besides, pictures cannot be prophets
So she covered it with a mirror
Where she could see her own beaming face
Can this be a children’s book? “When you talk about doing books for children, it poses certain problems — what kind of themes?” The appropriateness of what children should be reading comes up — whether epics are too violent or unfavourable to the learning we try to inculcate in the young. Mani Da exhorts, “You cannot escape this world. You cannot protect the child from everything. If you do, the child will become more vulnerable.” And so, his books are not made to be children’s literature, yet their parable-like quality makes them universally accessible.
Teaching at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda in the 1960s, Subramanyan found art students were not clear about many concepts. “What is abstraction? What is distortion? In attempting to answer these questions, I was teaching myself! It is the same thing with books and children. There is always a child in you that you want to talk to. The audience should be within yourself.”
Prolific with his expression and working across many media, and his two worlds Baroda and Santiniketan, Subramanyan’s books spark from social events, political upheavals and the smallest of things. After a gall bladder surgery when his surgeon extrapolated about the millions of microbes inside the body, Subramanyan imagined a “metropolis of microbes” and wrote a poem. Once in Ahmedabad at Haku Shah’s residence, while they were sitting in the veranda, a camel walked by on the street. Immediately, he noticed that Shah’s tall younger son started to imitate the camel’s extended gait. “I realised that, in the world, we are all imitating someone or something.” The book, he eventually produced, let children imagine how they could be like animals. Known for his wit, satire and engagement with social commentary, Subramanyan collages images. “I owe my early illustrations to Nandalal Bose.” Then, pointing his other influence to Bengal’s much-loved filmmaker, he says, “Satyajit Ray discovered the essence of Bengali landscape.” In books, illustrations should not be literal; instead, touch on something different from words, exploring another layer altogether.
Studying Economics at Presidency College, Madras, before choosing the arts, Subramanyan was articulate and questioned everything considerably, sometimes ruffling his teachers at Santiniketan. Determined to excel, he was drawing page after page earnestly when Nandalal Bose came up to him. “You’ve worked hard. But it’s like a kind of laundry list!” When you put in too much detail, the character gets lost, says Mani Da. And then Nandalal Bose handed him a chalk replacing the pen he was working with: what he drew then was completely different. “This difference comes from the primary experience — chalk and pen. Most art schools today do not inculcate primary experience. We know more about the African Safari than what is happening in front of us!”
In 1969, Abdul Ghaffar Khan was coming to India after a long absence for Gandhiji’s centenary. Political parties wanted to spoil the atmosphere and instigated communal riots in Ahmedabad. K. G. Subramanyan responded with his first book — When God First Made the Animals He Made Them All Alike, a narrative with animal characters. “Different costumes and different ways of acting — that difference became deadly to you.” “Who is an artist?” asks Mani Da and continues, “He is a special kind of person who finds sheer joy in living.” Drawing from Gandhiji’s path to win the hearts of all, even those against you, Mani Da says forcefully trying to better the world will go nowhere, instead, “If you love the world, you will make the world better. Plan for a way so that the world can change itself.”
At DakshinaChitra till November 30. New works At Lalit Kala Akademi till November 15
