january 16, 2006

me and my hometown: lahore in summer
lahore is lahore. it’s old and dusty, congested, noisy. in summer, the city chokes on heat. there is an explosion of greenery – it spills over every wall of every house. the trees in lahore are old. their dark green leaves are covered with dust. their trunks are wide, their bark is parched. they stand still as they have stood for hundreds of years – quiet witnesses to the city’s history.


they know how a blend of myth and reality has always stuck to lahore, like pollen to a honeybee. how lahore might have been named after loh, son of rama, and could be four thousand years old. how anarkali was walled alive by emperor akbar because his son had hopelessly fallen in love with her, a mere slave girl. how aurangzeb fashioned the badshahi mosque from red sandstone and maharaja ranjit singh used it to house his horses after defeating the mughals. the trees remember queen victoria’s bronze statue at charing cross. she wore her imperial crown and dominated the city for fifty years before she was relegated to a nondescript corner of the lahore museum. they remember rudyard kipling and the partition of india. the trees remember everything…


nights are hot in summer. the air is warm and thick, laden with the sweet scent of jasmine. the crickets are loud and magical. on thursdays, devotional music wafts from the shrine of the great sufi saint data ganj bakhsh. mangoes flood local markets - chaunsa, sindhri, langra, anwar ratole. mangoes have a myriad names and personalities. they’re juicy, sweet, tart, aromatic, pulpy, and absolutely irresistible. food is at the very core of lahore’s culture. cart vendors abound. people feast on spicy chaat, ice-cold lassi and sugarcane juice. the town never sleeps. then, everything changes. the monsoon season begins. heavy rains bear down on the city and wash away the dust. lahore is clean, shiny, brand new. it’s ready for another year and another hot summer.

november 13, 2004
mira nair in rochester
went to the dryden theatre to see jack garner interview mira nair. mira nair’s work is imbued with vivid imagery and exotic color. her films have the voluptuousness and sensuality characteristic of india’s culture. she called ‘monsoon wedding’ a “mango of a movie” – what a great metaphor. like a mango, ‘monsoon wedding’ is replete with the scent and flavor of the sub-continent. it is sweet and substantive, yet tricky to partake of, messy. it flaunts the burnished colors of the sun and the scent of possibility, yet the pit at its core is hard and real. it is a saturation of wayward juice and comforting texture but leaves a slightly bitter taste in the mouth.

‘monsoon wedding’ was the first indian film I could relate to. and mira nair is right when she says that this type of validation through the medium of film cannot be replicated as forcefully elsewhere. thank god for a different voice in mainstream cinema, a voice that is intelligent and beautiful, cosmopolitan, international, a voice that speaks of diversity and art, a voice that is most certainly feminine, a voice that is just a little bit like mine.

why I love modern art
to me realism is copying from reality as best as one can. the artist obviously has choices – what to paint, when to paint, what the composition will be like, but there are rules that bind him or her to reality. there can be exaggeration, distortion, some addition and subtraction, but a certain level of recognition is necessary – houses have to look like houses and people should more or less look like people. modern art creates its own reality, its own world. it’s less about technical handiness, art academia or art history; it’s more about how you experience the world around you. this is why I find it more accessible and less culturally elitist. modern art is about moods, attitudes and ideas.

modern art offers a more open venue for creative expression. artists can truly pour themselves into their art. since they are bringing forth a new world rooted in their imagination and life experience, modern art is immensely personal. this is why I connect to modern art at a gut level. i think that the reaction to it is more visceral – you either love it or hate it. realism doesn’t elicit such a strong response because it is not so deeply personal; it is not so personality-driven.

i believe that there is an aura of creative energy that hangs about works of art. viewers are touched by this spark, an infinitesimally small residue of what happened when that artwork was given life – that is the hook. modern art is shaped by an explosive creative process and therefore has more of a hook. historically speaking, modern art has expanded and completely overhauled the very definition of visual art. composition, color, texture or design elements are no longer simply the means to an end but an end in themselves.

before the advent of photography, painting and sculpture were the only way to capture the likeness of people or things. visual art was a means to record, to immortalize. that to me is no longer the overwhelming function of painting and sculpture. artists have much more freedom. marshall mcluhan said that when a means of communication has outlived its relevance, it becomes a work of art. i would modify it to say that when a means of communication has outlived its primary function it then becomes a true work of art.

it’s interesting to me that unlike music or dance, for example, visual art has always striven to emulate the physical world. music doesn’t endeavor to imitate birdsongs or other sounds we hear in nature. there is a concept of harmony and melody – music can be soothing or jarring – but it’s all based on what sounds good and what doesn’t. I believe that visual art should be granted that same discretion – it should be able to look good or not, appeal or disappoint, attract or repel without being a graphic representation of what we see around us.