Chapter 15: chapter 15

11“Why wasn’t the black and red blanket that Gaddar used to wear and used in this film exhibited in this exhibition?” Savithiri madam asked me. That was an exhibition with a difference. Kalabavan was like an appendage of Ravindrabhavan, like one’s sixth finger. Now and then, there would be exhibitions of paintings. On that day, were exhibited the costumes used in the film Rangula Kala by Narasing Rao who himself was a painter. Narasing Rao had made an exhibition of the things he had used in his film, like the things used in the set, the artefacts, the wasted film rolls, the cameras etc. At that time the film Rangula Kala was being screened in the theatres.The hero of Rangula Kala is a painter. He exhibits his modern art paintings on the streets for the people to see, with an aim to wake up the people and to drive them to revolt for freedom…As he is modern painter, he is poor. At the same time, his friend earns a lot of money by drawing banners and by painting billboards. This paradox strikes the hero deep. He feels ashamed when he attempts to sell his paintings in modern hotels. The film narrates the painful experiences of a modern painter. The exhibition has been arranged to celebrate the release of the film. There is a scene in the film in which Gaddar sings a song in a street meeting organized by the Peoples’ War Group. Gaddar is very influential among the Andhra people due to his rebellious attitude. That had been a time when films featuring the anti- people attitude of the police, the rebellions against the terrorism lashed out against the tribal people and people taking weapons against the establishment have been popular. That Gaddar had acted in a film meant a lot at that time! It would be an honour for all those connected with that film. I had seen his meetings draw people in thousands!Gaddar always wore that black and red blanket around his waist and over his shoulders. Narasing Rao was a sympathiser of Marxism. I asked Savithri madam how the blanket Gaddar always wore around his body could be exhibited! I thought that she should have known about it. She let out a compromising smile. Her body structure made one wonder. She was a majestic woman with sufficient mounds of flesh, not a gram more or less, fitted exactly where they should be!In that exhibition the script was also exhibited. Narasing Rao had painted some frames of the script. Satyajit Ray used to do like this! Narasing Rao is interested in Ray’s way of film- making and in his way of going gradually and steadily, Savithri madam told me. When I returned to the place where the paintings were, after going around the exhibition, I saw her still standing amidst the paintings. She was explaining to a college student the aesthetics and the emotions one would experience when one saw the colour combinations in modern paintings. I was looking at her awestruck.I told her, “Your age and your interest in modern paintings. so different…a rare combination!” “As one’s age and experience go on growing, so would one’s aesthetic sense and the zeal to appreciate! How wonderful an artist Narasing Rao is! He would go on reaping laurels! You mentioned about my age. How old I am you think? I am eighty!”I wondered how a woman of eighty could enjoy and appreciate modern paintings! I also wondered how her health went hand in hand with her interests! She showed me a scar on her forehead and said, “This scar was left as I came out of my mother’s womb. As in your Tamil Nadu, in old days, only the low caste people would be the midwives. We also have the barber sect, a lower caste, in our village. I was the first child in our village who to be delivered in a hospital. They pulled me out with forceps and the result, the scar! I love and appreciate Gaddar and Narasing Rao who talk about weapons and revolution perhaps because I was brought into this world with the help of a weapon. I am also the first woman in our caste to have my hair- cut like this! But my daughter likes to do her hair into plaits. But still she had her hair cut like mine! We must accept changes! Would the cine-world have accepted Narasing Rao as a hero twenty-five years ago?” She asked.“Narasinga Rao’s Ma Bhoomi tells about the revolution of the Telangana Farmers’ Agitation, in which the farmers fought with weapons. The film has been an inspiration for many a violent revolt. I could appreciate Narasing Rao’s films. But I could not appreciate Mathala Rangrao’s melodramatic acting. I also like some scenes of actor Chiranjeevi’s films. Particularly, his singing and dancing are powerful and he twists his body round and round quite fast. I haven’t seen such fast movements even in your Kamal Hassan. I’ve heard that Yendamoori Veerendranath’s detective and ghost stories are very popular in your Tamil Nadu. Chiranjeevi has acted in Dabbu, Dabbu, Dabbu! That is a very successful novel here too. Good artists rot in commercial environment. Don’t you know that even the skills of your Kamal Hassan are being wasted too!” she continued.I asked her which scene she liked in Rangula Kala. She replied, “Many scenes, especially the one in which the poverty- stricken modern artist, who would not compromise his principles, goes to a rich lady’s house to sell his painting. Sitting in her drawing room, he is eaten up by shame and abject embarrassment. I wept seeing that scene! Every true artist would feel only like that. It is quite cruel to see him suffering from a sense of guilt whenever he meets his lady love. I also like the scene where he, strolling with her on the lush green field of grass, pours out a poem. They walk along the diagonal of that grass field. A single frame throughout. The scene continues till they reach the other edge of the field. That made me think about the emptiness of my lonely life, a life, without a male companion. At the same time, the grass field made me remember the grass fields along the Ganges where water runs steadily and smoothly.“In our family it was quite common for old people to go to Kasi to await their death on the banks of the Ganges. My grandmother was quite adamant that she would die only on the banks of the Ganges and she compelled me to go to Kasi with her. As I thought that it was a good chance to see the Ganges and Kasi, I went with her. It was quite nauseating to see the dead bodies, still burning, being thrown into the Ganges. They say the water of the Ganges is holy! But its dirt and nastiness are very much disturbing. I was with my grandma for a month.She liked the banks of the Ganges, the temple and the boat men. She became very enthusiastic. One day she told me, ‘I think death would not come to me now! Let’s go home!“I ridiculed her saying that I wanted to throw her body into the Ganges! She replied that she was ready to be thrown away even alive! Seeing hundreds of burning bodies being thrown casually into the Ganges, I’ve become wooden to death. I took my grandma back. After six months, she said that she wanted to go to Kasi again. She was very weak. This time my father took her and left her under the care of some ashram. After a month we received the message that she had died. It was quite cruel of me to remember the moving bodies, fighting against the waters of the Ganges, when I saw the hero and the heroine in the film Rangula Kala walking across the grass fields. But that’s how memory associates it. It is quite common that images knit themselves together to torture us, especially in a modern painting!” she told me.She stayed in my mind as a symbol of modern art, even though I could not have a chance to meet her again!