India

A vast, visceral complexity. Intoxicating, vibrant, sublime, factious, contrary, riven, joyous, heart breaking, essential.

Between 1988 and 1999, I spent varied periods of time travelling and studying in India. Instantly bitten, the journeying fed attitude, elation, inclination, creative drive and the need for a greater understanding and disparate adventure. A glut of learning and delight was to be had in the raw day to day of such diversity.

The following collages are a condensed, fragmented journal of bus tickets, cinema stubs and photos. In no way do they offer any fullness of events or explain the complexity of such experience, however, they do serve as a personal touch stone to greater memory and gratitude and a resource to other work.

Hue and Routes

88 - 89

The turning wheel to all compass points. Shock,wonder and delight in every fresh mile. Gluttonous for drenching colour; for the new, the bewildering, the never seen.

88-89

Trains, camels and windowless buses into the Rajasthan desert, weeks in devout Pushkar, ambling ghat-side, chillums, sleep in a whitewashed palace turret, long, star lit dinners with a gathering troupe of the travelling. Soon enough scattered to peaks and fields - Shimla, Kerala, Mysore, Kovalam surf, Tamil Nadu. Prison train rolling stock, three day bus rides to find the edges of the huge various land mass.

Journeys by mile, by time slip - the medieval, the Raj-stuck, mud hamlets,
the city rich and the fated rags of the Harijan.

93 - 94

One year studying sculpture at Visva Bharati University, Shantiniketan.

Founded by Nobel poet Rabindranath Tagore out in the rural splendour of West Bengal.

A man who exalted soul before form - an animism echoed in the belly of the place, - a sure reverence for man and beast, for crop and blossom, for leaf - for all that breathes.

93 - 94

Calcutta (Kolkata). A city sealed in time. Independence from the looting toff came in 1947, large parts of the country, however, had not moved on from Partition - an archaic paper bound administration and infrastructure. Spoken English still tweed-clad, clipped and deferential.

Night, Calcutta street lights - a blur of demi glow and vaguely lit paths. Men hauling rickshaws, barefoot on the midnight tarmacadam, vast numbers bedded down roadside under a black swelter of stars. Hotel interiors retaining the decor, cruet and colonial sway of 1951. Art Deco, a rife survival, the exteriors decaying now in the relentless thrust of heat and rain.

93 - 94

Tagore seeps in, - art history classes under the dark spread of Banyan trees. I have a studio in the Department of Fine Art, Kala Bhavan. Working with wood, clay and stone. Sourcing beeswax out in the villages for casting bronze. Bicycles to points distant and the verdant surrounds of the paddy fields. Some nights supping under far off feni trees, coconut sap turned to hooch - flutes, guitars and a caterwauling.

93 - 94

Kala Bhavan, a new flame. A discovery of kimchi and cronies from all parts.

No TVs, no street lights, no boombox ear bleed - a bucolic, pre-industrial calm.

Night was for rooftops, for multilingual gatherings, moonless walks to distant houses through the dense, sweet scents of all that was in bloom.

India

Hue and Routes

All rights reserved © 2024. Tim Cutler. Fishkinfilms. England,UK 07707 171954 www.saatchiart.com fishkin5@hotmail.com www.artmajeur.com

access