The repertoire of culture's new czarina

If proof was needed that the cultural reign of Alka Pande as ambassadress of the arts is well under way, it is these two books, simultaneously launched by two different publishing houses, that go a long way in establishing her as the diva of Indiana.

For the past years, Dr Pande has earned respect for her handling of the capital's Visual Arts Gallery. She has organised exhibitions, curated them, written introductions for catalogues and essays on the arts for books and magazines and newspapers, authored books, but this time round she has re-invented herself as a serious author with a light touch.

For, unlike her early work, the two books under review are relatively easy to read and grapple with complicated ideas without the business of footnotes that end up crippling illustrated books usually meant more to be seen rather than read.

Picture books place the author at a difficult crossroads. Their very genre indicates that they are meant more to be flipped through than read, but should the reader feel compelled to go beyond the oohing and aahing of the usually excellent photographs, what nature should the text take?

Should it be literary, to show off his or her erudition? Or, perhaps, oversimplified, so that the reader can begin to grasp the vast range presented by a subject? Should it be comprehensive, argumentative, objective or subjective?

Clearly, Dr Pande belongs to the school that aims at providing a comprehensive overview without getting tied up in detailed arguments and, to that extent, remains subjective. So far so good.

Taking cognizance also that picture books remain merely coffee-table accessories, she has attempted to furnish long captions for both books so that the reader (viewer?) may be able, even at casual glance, to glean some of the vital ingredients of the subject matter.

This is particularly so in the case of The Androgyne where the vast range of her professional interests has helped her in putting together the most extensive visual material on the subject.

The context of Ardhanarishvara has been central to Indian literature and even philosophy, but it is the first time it has been explored in a book that looks at it from the perspective of contemporary culture.

What in the West is an oversimplification in cross-gender dressing and behaviour, and is referred to as the "feminine" or "masculine" side by analysts, has been well documented in India thanks to the concept having divine sanction.

The Ardhnarishvara, after all, is the man-woman in the divine, manifested most often in the form of Shiva and Parvati, painted in every form from the classical to the calendar art, and represented in sculpture within a tradition that is thousands of years old.

For Dr Pande, this is the start of the eternal androgyne phenomenon, of why men "become" women (the genetic strain being the vital ingredient, and not mere conditioning, as has been thought by modern day psychiatrists).

While subcontinental literature is profuse with such illustrations, Dr Pande has attempted to see the whole paradigm through the layered obscurations of its portrayal in modern Indian cinema, dance, art and other cult icons.

Bhupen Khakkar's homoerotic paintings in particular, cinema actors (comedians, for it had to be shown as laughable) dressing up and seducing men while wearing women's clothes, male dancers who play women's roles (without changing either their appearance or their clothes), transvestites and male prostitutes, and transsexuals such as hairstylist Sylvie represent the face of a suppressed acceptance in society where, while literature holds its own, puritanism forces an often lonely exile on the neighbourhood androgyne.

Masterpieces of Indian Art is almost like a breath of fresh air after the bubbling underworld of The Androgyne. Here, there are no sub-texts, and while the sway of Indian art is too immense to capsule in coffee-table book format, the attempt "� many will decry it for being vainglorious "� is not without some merit.

Once again, considering the reader is likely to be a layperson looking at an overview of the arts of the subcontinent, the information provided is limited and, more to the point, pertinent.

If the text is often school bookish ("Indian art had its beginnings in the Indus Valley Civilization. A large gap ensued. It is not until the third century BC with the advent of Mauryan rule that a flourishing artistic culture came into being.

What happened during the gap? Sadly, we do not know."), it is clearly because it is meant to be subservient to the visual material that is meant to make up the larger contents of the volume.

Where Indian Art works is in the form of a teaser or, if you will, a trailer of a film: it whets the appetite for more information on the subjects it covers: paintings, sculpture, textiles and jewellery.

It can be pointed out that many of the best works of Indian art do not make it to its pages, just as it can be debated that the book stops short (unlike The Androgyne) of the modern, thereby consigning all that is good in Indian art to the past.

It can be anyone's argument that a representation of contemporary art and sculpture could hardly have been amiss, and at that it would hardly have been wrong, but to confine the hosannas to history is misrepresentational.

It is in this that The Androgyne triumphs, for it is not just a documentary of the past but connects it to the rhythms of modern day life.

The other surprise is the quality of printing: while such excellence has become predictable from the Lustre/Roli stable, the surprisingly well-finished Rupa hardback marks its arrival in a new genre with remarkable confidence.

Ardhanarishvara, The Androgyne
Alka Pande
Rupa
Price: Rs 1,500
Pages: 192

Masterpieces of Indian Art
Alka Pande
Lustre/Roli
Price: Rs 1,975
Pages: 156