The Idea-smithy

One of my most memorable experiences of this year was The Kala Ghoda Art Festival was held in February. These posts were written for the blog covering the festival. Here they are again, as a reminder of sparks of beauty in this otherwise dirty city.

So much of the colour at Kala Ghoda comes from not just the artists but the visitors as well. That little street is awash with colour. Art students display their fledgling works. Aspiring writers congregate with journalists. Photographers stroll around, cameras casually hung around their necks. Families wander around wonder and curiosity writ large on their faces. Busy corporate types step out to ‘catch the fest’, ties loosened around their necks and their reactions escaping from their normally controlled faces. Tourists bustle about, wide-eyed at the colour. Teenagers mill about, their natural energy, for once, shared by everyone in the crowd alike, age irrespective.

The different faces of the city walk around marveling at the sights. And at each other.

The festival seems to bring out the hidden artist in everyone as the visitors all sport their own brand of individual colour.

Art in its many forms is never as evident as it is in this part of the year. When you walk very close to one of the buildings, you can hear strains of music. As you pass, it gives way to announcements for a children’s event in the parking lot. A little furthur and the organisers are ushering participants into the next workshop or film. Look around and suddenly you’re very aware of art in daily life.

Art is about self-expression, isn’t it? And freedom. And power. And a wry sense of humour.

As you walk around, you marvel at how much beauty, how much raw energy there is, hidden deep inside the people you see every single day. And what happens when they let a bit of their colours show.

The art district of Mumbai is hosting a festival. Movies are being screened, workshops conducted, books discussed, plays (and other acts) staged. There is also a mela happening!

Don’t believe me?

Here is a potter. He beckons…come closer. A grinning imp, paint streaked across his face settles down to touch the clay.

(more…)

The PenTathalon sounded like fun. And unnerving given its ‘Five Exercises for Fiction Writers’ description. What does a fiction writer look like, one wondered. I found out on the morning of Saturday, 3rd February.

Kavita Bhanot, the workshop leader, turned out to be a charming, soft-spoken young lady with a clipped British accent and an eye (and ear) for detail. There were fifteen participants from various backgrounds - a journalist, a business consultant, an animation script-writer, an accountant, a former magazine editor and an advertising professional to name a few.

The five exercises were actually discussions on five aspects of fiction writing: Openings, Description , Characterization, Dialogue and Point of View. Kavita started with,

You all probably read a lot of books and enjoy them. There are actually several techniques employed by fiction writers that you would not have noticed so far because you aren’t familiar with them. In this workshop we will look at some of them and how you can use them in writing.

Day 1 started off with a short talk about Openings. We were read the blurb of a novel and asked to come up with a convincing opening to it. And then our efforts were assessed to see which one was most convincing as the real opening to the book. The really useful part of this exercise was the discussion on why certain openings sounded ‘right’ - the use of certain words with relation to the blurb, the tone connecting with the book’s title and the associated images from the blurb.

The second and third exercises were combined into one ‘field experience’ where we were asked to get out of the classroom and go find material outside. For Description, we had to describe a place through the eyes of someone in a particular mood without bringing the person into the write-up and without using any direct references to the mood. I got ‘Sad’ and I had a hell of a time trying to bring sadness into a description of bright sunlight, colourful streamers, festive music and all the impressions of an art festival setting up! That’s probably why the exercise worked so well; it really was a rigorous mind-muscle flexing challenge and subtlety was a good lesson learnt.

Characterization started by picking up a person, a real person from the aforementioned field visit. It was like playing Spy. Accompanied by that rush of “So this is what the fiction writers mean when they study people!!”. When we returned we discussed our characters - not directly (how boring that would have been!). We actually created our verbal portraits of a room in that character’s house. And then we discussed our descriptions and tried to guess the kind of people these rooms belonged to. Now wasn’t that a great way to lead from observation to imagination to visualization to interpretation? It worked.

Story began where Characterization had left off. Now that we had our characters and had breathed some life into them in the form of their living spaces, their backgrounds, we started to build on their histories, their motivations, their desires and really - the plot. While this wasn’t really one of the five exercises, it connected the five together just like a good story would.

On Day 2, there was a brief discussion on conversations. We had each, on Kavita’s behest, tried to transcribe conversations we had heard the previous day. When I walked into the class, I thought I had failed the exercise since I’d found that:

• I couldn’t write as fast as people could talk
• I couldn’t always write in the languages people spoke in and transliteration was a skill yet to be mastered
• As I announced in lieu of an excuse, “People keep saying the same thing over and over and over again!!!”

Kavita just smiled and asked us all if we had learnt something about conversations. It turned out we all had and that was how we began our work on Dialogue. We discussed different kinds of dialogue and how they could add or take away from a story and the characters. By this time it was starting to be clear how the various elements of fiction writing work with or detract from each other. The exercise conclude with us introducing our characters to each other and framing a dialogue between pairs.

It is a little difficult to describe the last exercise Point of View since it is so abstract. And yet, this was my personal favorite since I had been laboring on a story for a long time without a clue as to why it wasn’t quite working. POV gave me the perspective and I managed to improve it almost immediately.

I conclude by saying that this was a most fruitful weekend on account of the six hours spent learning about fiction writing techniques. Kavita, thank you for a really interesting and useful workshop! And to my fellow fiction-writers, thank you for the additional insights that you brought in and all the very best for your future fiction efforts!

I’ve spent the entire weekend at Kala Ghoda!! I’ve been a regular visitor to the festival these years and thus far my KGAF experience has been limited to perusing the sidewalk outside Jehangir Art Gallery and ooh-ing and aah-ing about the artwork. This year I’m super-excited this time round because of my increased participation. Like last year, I’m writing for the Kala Ghoda Gazette and for the first time I’m actually participating in the events. You can see my more detailed account of the events here.

The Festival is in its 10th year of existance. In the past years I’ve seen a gradual decline with the one rather regrettable year where all I remember of it was a row of food stalls (though my first experience of Kheer Kodom from Sweet Bengal did leave sweet memories). However it looks like the Black Horse has given itself a good shake since last year was an improvement. And this year is positively mind-boggling!

We enter to a cacaphony of lost kids’ announcements flanked by a tent that reveals several messy-fingered children running around wearing Surf Excel ‘Daag achche hai’ tee-shirts. A painting competition is in progress one presumes. There is also a huge whiteboard for kids to express themselves.

We walk around the various art installations and I’m alternately amused and annoyed. I hear one man tell another

Kuch bhi bana dete hai yeh artist log!!

referring to an exhibit of a buzzing mosquito/fly/insect made of metal wires and sundry parts. A girl is posing over a painted motor-bike in a corner while her friend takes a photograph. I resist the urge to yank her off it and tell her that it’s an exhibit in an art festival, not a prop in a photographer’s studio. I wonder what the artist must feel.

The crowds are thronging the food stalls and the stage. That’s quite descriptive of Mumbai, I think. Roti ke liye kuch bhi karega and Tamasha dekh! are this city’s twin motivations. I remember an episode from one of the years past, watching an angry man screaming at the waiters in one of the food stalls.

Call the manager!!! Yahan food khaya yesterday and dysentry ho gaya!

I was amused and not in the least bit sympathetic. Such a ” ” I thought, to eat food off the street as part of an ‘experience’ and then complain about the quality. Where does he think he is - the Reagent? Besides I added as an after-thought, only one of those types would fall sick eating roadside food. After all my gastroentitis attack last year happened after consuming a spinach pasta at one of Bandra’s fancy restaurants not my usual evening bhelpuri off the roadside. Even so, I sniff my plate cautiously before ordering what I hope is a ’safe’ plate of kebabs.

Along the way I bump into familiar faces - colleagues, friends, fellow-bloggers. The culturally-conscious circle in Mumbai is a small tight knit group and bloggers are an even smaller fraction of them. The crowd is almost as interesting as the exhibits with stiff MBA-types (from Nariman Point one presumes) jostle with arty jhola-toting bohemians and inter-mingle with a lot of foreign tourists. Kids are running helter-skelter everywhere and I imagine that their parents are going to have a hell of a time explaining some of the photographs and exhibits on display.

Don’t read that aloud! That’s a bad word (from the photo-exhibit on Mumbai’s train graffiti)

Yes, that’s a fan. Hmm, it does look like an insect. Because the artist thought so, that’s why!! It’s called Modern Art (shakes head and moves away)

The Dilliwalla with me soon gets bored and wants to push off and watch a movie instead.

Yeh kahan mele mein leke aa gayi, yaar??!!

And his rueful expression is so comical that I concede, though not before sampling a panipuri and buying something from the blue pottery stall. On the way, I’m approached by several strangers attempting to recruit me into protesting against garbage dumping in India, preventing smoking, helping children and supporting battered women. I wonder what their connection with art is but I guess good causes need more force of will than invitations.

Before we leave, I manage to get a bird’s eye view of the next act on stage. And I think, my friend would never understand why the festival means so much. In a city that’s eternally chasing dreams that keep getting broken, that tries to burn the candle at every end possible and make them all meet as well, where even the air looks dirty……..art can remind us of beauty, of joy, of expression and also…to laugh at ourselves. It’s a Mumbai thing, after all.

A lot of people come to the Kala Ghoda Art Festival in the evening. A lot of people don’t know what they are missing. And it might be a good idea to not be one of that lot of people!

I was lucky. Having signed up for a morning workshop, I ended up in town bright and early and just in time to watch the festivities being set up. I’ve just spent the entire day in that single lane bordered by Elphinston college, Jehangir Art Gallery, Bombay Natural History society and Rhythm House.

When you watch a stage being set up, when you see banners being unfurled and get an inadvertent sneak preview of what lies beneath the slick show at the end, it gives you a different perspective. It makes you feel a part of the show. This is also the first time I was a participant in any of the events, insofar having been a silent observer (and admirer) of the art shows and music events only. Yes, after all these years as a visitor, I finally feel like a part of the Kala Ghoda Art Festival!

Some quick initial impressions:

• Last year’s lemon-and-chillis motif has given way to a bunch of apples hanging in the very same spot.
• Spray-painted cars, hand-inscribed cars and what’s that - a furry car?!
• The statue of a black horse is not there any more but I did spot a kala ghoda at Kala Ghoda!
• Plenty of stalls hawking wares commonly classified under the general banner of ‘handicrafts’ but also jostling for space with some genuinely funky, interesting exhibits. An out-of-towner friend thought this was a ‘mela‘!
• A very big, very prominent, very loud stall for a heavily advertised beauty product at the very entrance makes for a sharp contrast from the ‘art’ feel of the place. But well, commercialization must go hand in hand with art in order for it to be viable, one supposes.
• The tight-rope walkers got into an argument with the owner of one of the food stalls who wanted to set up chairs and tables in the same space. In his opinion, ‘these people came and ruined business’. One wonders what happens to the additional inflow from the visitors flocking to these events. It is the Kala Ghoda ART Festival after all, not the Kala Ghoda FOOD Festival, right? The real kick in the teeth was his parting shot of “I’ve paid money for this. You haven’t so get lost”. No guesses as to whose side the security guards took.
• A lot of foreigners this time. South Mumbai’s lanes are usually dotted with tourists but the Festival appears to have gone onto another scale and attracting plenty of international attention this time round.
• Some stalls representing NGOs, volunteers for various causes walking around ‘educating’ and inducting people into their causes and some installations with social messages gives this time’s KGAF a very social message-y feel.

Mela meets Social Awareness and they both get a lift from Commercial Sponsors to go to the Arty Party. You’re all invited!!!

Did you ever think of performing poetry? Or SMS as an art form? Did you ever think that Bollywood was Mumbai’s only claim to culture? It’s time for you to meet the black horse then.

Welcome to the Kala Ghoda Art Festival - an eclectic extravaganza of art, music, poetry, theatre, film and writing expression. The KGAF is an annual event and yes, the 2008 edition starts tomorrow!

So take a quick trip down to the southern end of the seven islands. For a teaser….there will be celebrity spottings too!

I’ll be there over the weekend and covering it over here in the next few days. I highly recommend you pay a visit - to the festival and the blog! See you there!