“There is no rule. Just go with the flow,” Narayana Bhattathiri smiles as he moves his brush with a flourish on the surface of the white, open umbrella. The veteran calligrapher, better known as Artist Bhattathiri, is at The National Club, leading a session on umbrella calligraphy, organised in connection with the culmination of Bharatham, the children’s camp organised by Prasanth Narayanan Kalam.
“I haven’t done this before in Kerala. There is nothing complicated about it. While you do it with a calligraphy pen on paper, here you use acrylic brush and acrylic paint,” says Bhattathiri, as he continues at breakneck speed, diligently creating designs on the umbrellas although there were only a handful of participants at the session. While one umbrella has ‘Mazha, mazha’ written on it, others have letters of the Malayalam alphabet and words such as ‘Aksharakkuda’ and ‘Chithrakkuda’ written on them.
It was not easy for the participants. “I have taken lessons in calligraphy from Bhattathiri sir. But this is something new. The difficult part is keeping the umbrella steady while writing the letters or drawing a design,” says Krishnakumar LH, a journalist. Sanoop, who works in Technopark, had the same difficulty.
The veteran artiste says that he does calligraphy on salwars and saris on request. So are there any easy methods involved? “There are only easy methods. Practice goes behind the speed and finish of the strokes, be it on paper, umbrella or fabric. Ensure that the brush is clean and in good condition,” says the artiste, who has been experimenting with the Malayalam alphabet for nearly four decades now.
