“Do we need to leave the familiarity of home behind and experience different ways of living to start valuing what we take for granted?” ask Warli artists Mayur and Tushar Vayeda in The Deep . Published by Tara Books, The Deep , narrating the Vayeda brothers’ story and featuring their Warli-style artwork, is a negotiation between the known and the unknown: the unknown which suddenly seems familiar and the known which suddenly turns strange with a slight shift in perspective.
Voyage out and plumb the depths, the book seems to say, an exhortation embodied in the brothers’ foray into the larger world from their tiny village that enriches their understanding of where they come from. The physical journey outward translates into a plunge inwards, helping them grow as individuals and artists. Their art evolves into something individualistic while staying anchored to the Warli tradition. The Deep, about the process of this transformation, is also its end result.
Voyage out
Mayur (29) and Tushar (33) belong to the indigenous Warli community of Maharashtra. They grew up and live in the village of Ganjad, surrounded by ancient trees, rushing rivers and the wall paintings that are an inextricable part of their tribal culture. Warli
A page from ‘The Deep’
art is not just an art form but a way of life. Going back centuries, when human life and nature were still conjoined, it is an outgrowth of nature, with its geometric patterns representing the sun, moon, mountains and trees. Man and his possessions, like the house, are placed within this schema, suggesting that human life gains meaning only in relation to nature. Mayur says, “Our childhood was full of adventure — we would go hunting, fishing, swimming in the river night and day. That part of our lives somehow still survives and is expressed in all the stories we draw on canvas.”
But to realise Warli’s worth, they first had to look at it from a distance. This happened when the brothers started commuting to Mumbai for higher studies. It meant spending seven hours in a train every day but it opened up the world, letting in more people, conversations, and the cityscape. And then in 2012, a group of Japanese artists arrived in Ganjad for a collaborative wall art project arranged by an NGO. Working with them, Mayur and Tushar found themselves looking at their village and traditions with new eyes. As they write in The Deep : “[W]hen visitors come to Ganjad, they are fascinated by the many Sapota trees. But for us, Sapotas are just ordinary fruit, there’s so much around that we don’t think of them as special. Warli art was simply there, we didn’t pay much attention to any of it.”
The process of defamiliarisation intensified when they reached Japan’s Awashima Island, having been invited there for a six-month art residency. They were surrounded on all sides by the waters they had loved as children: only, this was the vast ocean with a whole new world of creatures hidden inside.
Similarly, the inhabitants of Awashima were very different in their language and habits, but as simple folks chiefly engaged in farming and fishing, they were also much like the Warli people.
Sense of wonder
The brothers’ sense of discovery and wonder is reflected in the art: in one of the pages of The Deep , Awashima is imagined as a huge jellyfish floating in the ocean. It is unmoored but is also the firm centre of the page. Moreover, it has a house at its heart — miles away from home, Awashima is home. Turning the page, we see two fishermen casting their nets in the sea. Leaving them on the shore, the artists’ gaze travels underneath into the teal blue depths. “Could it be that human beings — whether Indian or Japanese — are like fishermen who cast their nets to fish but can only reach relatively shallow waters?” they ask.
Awashima changes them. They carry the island back with them to Ganjad, which, in the light of their experience, is changed too.
The cover of ‘The Deep’
This palpable yet mysterious process of transformation is symbolised in the final image of the book where octopuses, starfish, lobsters, eels, turtles, water snakes swim in the boundless sea. It suggests the primal womb filled with water, which, connecting all living forms, is at once commonplace and magical.
Stories on canvas
The same applies to the Vayedas’ style, which creates a new vocabulary for Warli art using the existing grammar. Their solid grounding in the art form has allowed them to take it forward by experimenting with it. Mayur says, “We approach the paintings as stories which narrate what we see, hear and experience. The miniature element in Warli art interests us and it is in the details that we can demonstrate our individuality, moving beyond the traditional.” The brothers work as one, tackling a canvas from either side. Working on canvas gives them the freedom to make mistakes and erase and redo — which is not allowed in Warli wall painting.
The Deep is an artefact in itself. Unlike a traditional book, its pages flip open from the top, unfolding in layers, gradually taking us from the familiar rural world of the brothers to Mumbai — which they describe as “another planet” — then to quieter Awashima, and then downwards into the unfathomable depths. Three basic colours are used — white, black and blue — to tell a story of far-reaching implications. The message of interconnectedness is expressed in the sustainable Japanese binding.
Reversing the damage
Introducing the book virtually, Tara Books’ founder and publisher, Gita Wolf, spoke of how the team, especially the designer, Dhwani Shah, brainstormed for months to arrive at this form which embodies the content. The cover is handmade paper marbled by hand, so that each copy is unique.
While individuals usually migrate from the countryside to the city to find success, Mayur and Tushar have decided to stay back in Ganjad. Mayur explains their decision: “In the course of our travels, we had the opportunity to talk to a researcher who was studying the effect of pollution on the Pacific coral reefs. We learnt how the corals are getting bleached due to rising sea temperatures and how plastic waste has been found even in the Mariana Trench, the deepest point of earth. All that shook us. How do we change this, we wondered. We decided to start the process of conservation from our own village.”
While the Warli people have always had a deep connect with nature, things have changed rapidly in the last 15 years. “Wild animals and trees are disappearing fast and we are wary,” Mayur says. They hope to inspire the villagers to return to their original sustainable lifestyle and to be less dependent on the outside world. Having re-realised the value of what they have, they are all the more determined to hold on to it.
anusua.m@thehindu.co.in
