The writings on the wall

The British newspaper The Guardian used to run a column called Writers’ Rooms. This series, now discontinued, featured a photograph of the space writers worked in. Accompanying the photograph was the description by the writer of what was on display, and what the writer saw (for example out of a window) as they worked at their desk or sofa. The things that were cluttered around that space were also described. Things like artefacts and other objects that we keep around the house for no utilitarian purpose. 

I have long pushed with editors I know the idea that they should begin such a column in an Indian newspaper. It needn’t be just writers who are featured, and indeed The Guardian, perhaps once they began to run out of writers, started also to feature painters. The series began in February 2007, describing the workspace of novelist and playwright Michael Frayn. It ended in July 2009, with a shot of the dressing room for musicians at the Proms, the annual classical music event in London, prepared for Zubin Mehta.

While I enjoyed looking at the visual and reading about the things in it and imagining the individual among them, it occurred to me that all of us have things about our home that reveal something about us. Actually, this is true about the contents of the house more than the house itself. The reason I am saying this is, of course, because in the modern urban world, the place you stay in is most likely linked directly to your income. It is then a reflection of your career and not so much your personality. It is what is inside, what you choose to have around you, that reveals the self, or what the self is aspiring to be.

The photograph accompanying this article is from a wall in my living room. The arched door partially seen on the right leads to a small terrace that faces land occupied by the parachute regiment. A small part of the wall is unseen on the left. That bit, like most parts of the home, has a vertical bookcase that goes up to the ceiling. Just to its left are a few paintings that we have bought from an annual event in Bengaluru called the Chitra Santhe. This is a once-a-year event run the by arts school, where about 1,500 artists put their works on display on a street that is closed off to traffic for the day. One of the unseen works is on how the sari is a pictorial representation of how to wear a sari correctly.

The bookcase itself is next to the entrance door and reflects the multilingual residents of the house (my wife and I). There are some books in Bangla right on the top. Under that is a shelf or two of Gujarati books, mostly novels but also some autobiographies. A couple of the shelves have Hindi works, most of them religious, including the Brahmasutra, the Bhagvad Gita and the Samveda. 

A wall in my living room, where the arched door partially seen on the right leads to a small terrace. The wall has a vertical bookcase that goes up to the ceiling.

 

Then there are the Urdu works on which I have done some writing, including Manto’s anthology and finally some English books, including all of George Orwell’s. 
 

The reason the works have been kept close to the entrance is either because they are there for quick reference, when I am out for a walk or a cycle ride and thinking about something and need to refer to it the moment I get home, or they are there because they are unread. 
 

The part of the wall that can be seen begins with a few religious paintings. The one of the two Brahmins walking is from Chitra Santhe. The large painting has an interesting story.

About 15 years or so ago, my wife and I were in Kolkata to see a play called Winkle Twinkle. This was about a man who falls asleep, Rip Van Winkle-like, when the communists take over, and wakes up two decades later in the time of Hindutva. Anyway, we were early for the play and noticed that the art school had an exhibition of the works of its students. 

This painting, along with another of similar size, features the outsized young man selling dusters while the classic yellow Ambassador cabs of the city are swarming around him. We bought both of these for Rs 15,000 (or perhaps Rs 15,000 each) and I have always wondered what the artist, who was then 21, is now doing. His name is Arindam and I hope he sees this photograph.

Under it is my collection of busts, accumulated over the years from many trips. There are beautiful ones of the Caesars, Julius and Augustus, and the philosophers from Diogenes and Plato and Aristotle and Socrates to more unusual ones like the physician Hippocrates (depicted as a balding man with a beard) and then playwrights like Sophocles. Most, if not all, of these are likely idealised as they may not have been sculpted in their lifetime.

The marble ones from Italy, like those of Dante, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, and Prussian warriors like Frederick the Great, are close to the real and many of them are superb, even if I say so myself. The worst ones on the whole are the Indian ones (except for one German ceramic bust of Nehru). Why should an idolatrous society be so rubbish at statuary? This has always puzzled me.

Some of the best modern ones are from the Soviet Union, of Lenin and Stalin and writers like Tolstoy. I often spend time holding one up to imagine what the individual was actually like, based on his features.

Further to the right are a series of paintings, almost all modern, and a mix between some cheap ones bought over the years along with some more expensive ones, almost all from Bengali artists. The large black and white photograph towards the top is by the famous artist Gauri Gill, who is a dear friend. Under that, on top of the red table, is a large Sheshnag statue, called a vahana. Just about visible, hanging from the lamp is a little idol of Brahma, the least worshipped god of the trinity, but to me the most interesting. 

The three piles of magazines at the bottom are original issues of Life from the 1960s. I bought them almost two decades ago for Rs 10 each and thought I would go over them, but I haven’t yet managed to do that. At the extreme end is another bookcase. In keeping with my eccentric manner of classification (about which I will write another time), this is entirely filled with Oxford University Press works.

I like this wall and what is shown in the photograph. Someone who did not know me and considered what was on display would form an interesting opinion of me. Whether the reality of the individual matches the sum of the objects he has chosen to put on display is, of course, quite another matter.