Books: Jan Nordstrom's photo essays ~ Every breath we take

 

 

A book is a book is a book, did you say? I thought my definition of a book were formed enough, until the postman rang my doorbell some weeks ago  ~ and four books by the Swedish photographer-painter- poet Jan Nordstrom waltzed into my life, making me redefine what books are all about.  I’m still trying to figure out all that makes his books special. 

Jan’s books have his poems, and his photographs. But they are not glossy, touch-with-care coffee table books. Nor are they standard-sized volumes that you pick off a bookstore shelf, scan, then toss away.

For there’s a certain fine-tuned sensibility underlying his books that blew me away. Completely. This includes the brilliant photography, the edgy design, the focused intent, the subtle paintings, even the text in translation. It all comes together in undeniable harmony.

Take my favourite of the four, to begin with.

Freedom

Frihet (Freedom) teases me with its cover blurb in English translation: “The story of Erik, Mona and Ruben. For those who live close. About the people who nurse and help. For those who carry hope as an inner world.” 

I open the book. And I stumble upon Eric, just 10, in a wheelchair. He’s at Kalmar country hospital with his mother Marina and his baby brother Axel in a pram.  This is a poetic, pictorial document of his life from 2002-2004.

Eric has been battling leukaemia.  He has been through chemotherapy. He dreams, one day, of playing football with his friends again.  And so he does.

A few pages later, I enter the world of Mona.  A sweet, smiling couple dance in a living room.  Who are they?

In Jan’s words: “Tuesday, November 19, 2002./ The living room./ Dance for a while./ Love each other. / Mona Iveby, 59, and her beloved Bengt Ohlsson, 64./ Mona has neoplasm./ It can no longer be cured./ Only curbed./ Love and the will to live carry them now…”

Through sensitive, gentle pictures Jan makes us look through lenses we have never tried. We follow Mona’s journey. As a nurse helps Mona with a shot of morphine to tackle her pain. As Mona dabs on lipstick, a gesture of self-healing. As she paints every Wednesday, for little things gain great meaning as dusk comes knocking at life.  As the couple drive away to a fairytale island cottage on Oland. By 2003, Mona and Bengt fly away to a cottage in Madeira. It almost makes you believe in miracles in real time.

With courage, with infinite grace, Mona says, “I believe that you need to take risks if you want to live life to its utmost.”

And then there’s 79-year-old Ruben who, post-surgery, realizes, “So little is needed to make someone happy. A smile…”

Jan’s images speak even more eloquently than his text.  An unforgettable hug between Mona and her Bengt, their first in two years, his eyes closed in remembrance.  A part-portrait of Ruben rowing, the deep blue of the sky backdrop in sync with his eyes and his shirt. Eric, back with his peers, his infinity smile a promise of sunshine days to come.

This is a moving testimony to the human spirit ~ and to trained caregivers who heal with their gentle touch, their presence, their ability to understand.

I can understand the impetus for this book only because I’ve met Jan Nordstrom. Way back in the fall of 1999, at Kalmar in southeast Sweden, by the Baltic Sea, where he lives and swims in the icy waters at dawn. The city has a population of over 36,000.

We met when 20 of us from Asia, Africa and Latin America were chosen to participate in a seminar on ‘Women in Journalism’ in the idyllic small town.  Jan was the official photographer and course assistant  ~ and we returned home with portraits that we still look back on with wonder and tenderness.

Loveness

Karlekheten (Loveness) left me just as wonderstruck. For, through poetry, photographs and paintings, Jan evokes l-o-v-e.

I catch my breath over a semi –blurred, full-cheeked, soft-lashed baby in profile in the right-hand corner of a double-spread. He draws my eye in, as gently as a caress. On the blank page opposite, ant-like words crawl into the stillness:  “life cannot be put on hold.”

An image from 'Loveness'

 Jan’s books are as much about his personal talent, as they are about what we’ve come to associate with a Scandinavian sensibility: teasing minimalism, deliberate restraint, evocative layouts that enhance.

What illustrates this in Karlekheten?   

~ A faceless, dramatic black-and-white painting, with the words: ‘you touch my inner being/ in the dreams I have hidden.’

~  A hand emerging from a shirtsleeve, its fingers touching gnarled bark: ‘what do we leave behind?’

~ The love story of Astrid, 84, and Sven, 95, immortalized in a photo-essay, through arms wrapped protectively around each other as they lie side by side, through the tangible love in their eyes as his hand touches her cheek.

It is in the unspoken, the unwritten, the internally visualized that come to life through Jan’s visual and verbal prompts. Each enriches us in intangible ways. That’s what makes this book so precious, priceless beyond counting.

Glow

Glod (Glow) visually shares Kalmar’s luminous past, its glassmaking traditions. As Jan couches it, “So I returned/ Back to the land of glass./ To the knights and wizards of my childhood./ To those who blow life into glass./ To the pride in their eyes. / To the glow./ To the treasure of glass.”

The accompanying visuals are stunning. Black at the centre across a doublespread; to the left, a figure enters the building; to the right is a slatted gate in front of an orange wall, a street lamp lights all. A hand in focus between two fiery panels, as the molten glass is gathered.  Lush green leaves; in the top corner of the frame, a man in a red shirt sips from a glass. In the last quarter of a pitch dark frame, Michael blows the slender beginnings of a vase.

Each frame in this mainly non-textual book is lyrical, even painterly, culled with tenderness. This photo-essay truly glows from within with imagination and insight.  

Together

In Jan’s fourth book, “Tillsammansheten” (Together), I did not have the benefit of an English text. Over its pages, he follows Kalmar FF’s A-league footballers through the season of 2010-11. Being a football fan like him, I was enchanted by it.

For not a single frame would fit into a sports magazine or football reports in a daily. Dagens Nyheter , Sweden’s biggest morning paper, chose it as one of the best books of 2011. 

 Here’s a teaser trailer of what we see on his pages:

Black, hazy figures jumping in the air against a fogged skyline and skeletal trees…

A huddle of red-kitted heads with a pearl grey backdrop…

The toss onfield, viewed through a sea of football-boots with long socks on…

A tantalizing double frame: half a male face in profile looks in from the right edge; facing him is a smudgy maybe-face at the edge of the left. ..

A feathery blue sky; at its base is a tiny player in red; two balls bounce  ~ one above his head, one behind him…

The drama of the locker room, the nitty-gritty of coaching sessions…

The beautiful game comes alive in a million aspects through this poetic, singing tribute from Jan. The power. The joy. The glory. And the sadness of its flipside alike.

Until these books arrived at my door from Kalmar, I knew Jan Nordstrom as a gentle, caring soul, a fine photographer. But the sheer span of his undeniable talent has swept me off my feet.

Now I know for sure that a book is a book is a book, often predictable and recognizable, but not when couched through the eyes of Jan Nordstrom.

Skol to you, my friend Jan!

 *        *        *

More information on Jan’s books, mainly in Swedish:

www.jannordstrom.com

Photography: Prabuddha Das Gupta ~ A life beyond the lens

(Note: This interview dates back to 2002)

Be it a disturbing, yet spiritual journey, or eardrop jewellery stating its exclusiveness, the varied images from the lens of Prabuddha Das Gupta are bold and beautiful forays ... . Face-to-face, he comes across as an individual who prefers near-anonymity to celebrity life, says ADITI DE


A DESIGN Friday gathering in Bangalore. The lights dim. Images appear on a screen. Stark, soaring peaks silhouetted against an unforgiving sky, reflections in a mirage-rich pool. Gorges and ravines, rivulets and cloud-kissed promontories. Vistas bare of vegetation roll into eternity, untainted by pretty blooms, swaying foliage. A face, wizened by harsh winds and mountaintop sunrays, meets the gaze head-on. The landscapes unspool without remorse, without gentleness. 

In less than 10 minutes, we have wandered into Ladakh — and encountered a beauty beyond bleakness in black-and-white. It's a disturbing, yet spiritual, journey; an almost surreal baring of the natural frontier akin to an interior landscape. All evoked by the lens of Prabuddha Das Gupta.

A change of scene. Early September. The Fluid Space Gallery in the IT-hub city. An exposition of Ganjam Nagappa's exquisite jewellery through black-and-white images. Nuanced natural settings. Platinum leaf motif eardrops state their exclusiveness on the rocks to the rhythm of pounding waves. A pendant by Japanese designer Kazuo Ogawa is set against the tawny, lithe textures of a youth's neck. An opulent diamond necklace radiates fire against a tracery of leaf veins. Ogawa's labradorite and platinum piece-de-resistance casts tantalising beads of light over a comely face. Each a bold, beautiful foray by Prabuddha.

Both experiences emanate from the camera of the visual visionary behind advertising campaigns like "Blue Lagoon", "Raymond's" and "Kamasutra", who works out of New Delhi, Goa and now Bangalore. The four times "Photographer of the Year" choice of the Creative Artists Guild, Mumbai, selected for a Yves Saint Laurent grant to spend a year in Paris in 1990. The distinctive sensibility behind two best-selling books — one the celebration of Women (1996) through nudes and portraits, the other, a haunting evocation of Ladakh (2000). The optical wizard whose sleight of lens veers between commercial assignments and self-commissioned projects.

Who is Prabuddha, besides the winner of the New York-based Mercury Gold and Pinnacle awards? What makes him click between solo shows at Mumbai, New Delhi, London, Paris and Brescia in Italy? Why did he give up an academic career in history to pursue photography via a brief shy at copywriting? Did his creative family influence his choices? 

Portrait of Shireen Modi from the Women Artists' series

Face-to-face, Prabuddha comes across as a being yet to tap his own latent potential. An individual who prefers near-anonymity to the celebrity life. He's quite content to stretch out on a sofa at a friend's apartment in Bangalore, clearing spaces for his coffee cup amidst a table cluttered with a guitar, glossy magazines, cassettes and, inevitably, a camera. His current foci include a travelling exhibition and book on street children, which Prabuddha opted to curate — not shoot — for New Delhi-based Youthreach. Titled "Waiting, with light", the non-profit project to sensitise us to over 10 million "invisible lives", is slated to reach audiences in the capital, Mumbai, Kolkata and Bangalore in 2003. 

"After three years of research, Youthreach decided to give these children a platform to express what their universe is like. Their parallel reality is so close to us physically, but emotionally and intellectually it could be another planet," Prabuddha says with passion, ruffling his salt-and-pepper hair. "We see them being beaten up by the police. Or asleep at a railway station. Or walking into a fruit stall to snatch a banana. But beyond that, there is an abundance of joy, of creative energy, of laughter, of feelings about society, about love and peace, about death and god! They have a free spiritedness we've lost. May be we can gain from this mutual exchange." Pausing, he adds, "After meeting these kids, I've been trying to convince my 12-year-old daughter to come with me, to open up her consciousness." 

'Waiting with light' by Achinto

What will the kaleidoscopic photo-essays by pan-Indian talent including Pablo Bartholomew, Achinto, Dayaneeta Singh and S. Paul — interspersed with children's drawings, writings, and recorded conversations — achieve? Prabuddha toys with a heavy silver ring before his deep, rather lazy, voice responds, "The idea is to create an awareness of their universe, to try to integrate these children into what should be a single society." 

Backtracking, we delve into Prabuddha's decision to opt out of academic life. "History, to me, is full of people and their stories. But the way it was taught at Delhi University!" he reflects. "After five years, I realised I'd lost my passion for it. Through history, perhaps I was trying to understand myself in my current scenario, with respect to the land where I belong."

What sparked his aesthetic essay on women? "The idea of nudes probably came from my father (Prodosh Das Gupta), who was director of the National Gallery of Modern Art," Prabuddha laughs. "It was so hot in Delhi that I'd spend my afternoons in the air-conditioned Amrita Sher-Gil room, surrounded by images of women. My father's bronzes were often of women. So, I suppose the camera naturally turned itself in that direction."

Was there a buzz about Women, the first and only book of its kind in India to date? "When Penguin approached me, I had a body of work that went back about 10 years. My exploration had to do with volume and form, shadow and light," Prabuddha says, respooling to his serpent-spiked Milind Soman-Madhu Sapre visuals for a shoe company that triggered a public debate on obscenity and pornography. "My publishers decided it was the right time for this book."

Was the project trauma-free for Prabuddha? "There was so much heartbreak. There were girls and women willing to make these photographs, which, to me, were all about persons. But when the idea of the book came up, they thought of the social repercussions, their families, their neighbours, which was understandable. For many, it was OK to show the body, but not the face and the body in the same image. I had to hack off some heads, turn the images into formal, sculpturesque forms, which was not my intent. I had to have written consent for every image that went in," he sighs.

"I guess everybody has a curiosity about their own bodies. Or perhaps it's about defying convention." With a note of pathos, he adds, "In effect, the book was edited by the subjects, rather than the author. But it did very well, sold out all 4,000 copies."  

What drew him to Ladakh over four years, exposing 80 rolls of film? "I think it's a curious, subconscious need in me. When I was shooting Ladakh, people would ask: `what are you doing? You're supposed to be shooting beautiful women!' Prabuddha laughs. "I've always been a wanderer. While at university, I went from ashram to ashram, before I got busy with life and accomplishment." 

The vistas he summons up are vivid: "Ladakh happened when I wasn't in a deeply spiritual state of mind. The impact was almost physical, like a blow in the face. It was beauty of a very elemental kind. My first feeling was almost one of fear. Though I denied it for a long time, it was like an addiction. I wanted to find out: what was scaring me, disturbing me, knocking at my insides? I didn't start photographing Ladakh until about my fourth trip. By the eighth one, I realised I had a body of work."

How did the closet photographer, who earned his living as a copywriter, come into the open? "I've always been a visual person, even while I was dealing with words," Prabuddha confides. "I'd write a campaign, then some fancy name from Mumbai would be flown in with three assistants and a battery of equipment. You'd be impressed, until you saw the images. 

By 1986, I thought: why not propose to the management that I'll shoot the `Blue Lagoon' jeans campaign? I had only an old Nikomatic. The model was my friend's girlfriend. We got the clothes together. I did the styling. I used an old Volkswagen Beetle car in it, my fantasy car. In all my pictures, I try to bring in something I'm really fond of."

The outcome? "It was possibly the cheapest shoot in the history of advertising," he drawls. "Even with my limited equipment and technical knowledge, I found I could make images that worked at a professional level. It picked up awards."

What enchants Prabuddha about photography? "To me, it's not so much the act of taking the picture as working in the darkroom," he responds. "You put in this blank piece of paper in foul-smelling liquid, and out comes a photograph, just like magic. That's what got me hooked. The dark room, with the red light on, is your own sacred space. But for years, I never really had the confidence to think I had talent enough to make a living by it. My ambition in life is not to make the cover of Vogue magazine.

"I do what I love to do, and do it with joy," Prabuddha says shyly, a hand brushing over his face as he refers to recent forays into writing, a hesitant reaching out towards film. "When somebody asks to see some work, I'm still tentative about, it's almost like stripping naked."

Beyond the extraordinary insights into the ordinary, beyond the preciousness of the momentary, beyond the colours captured in black-and-white, Prabuddha emerges as an individual who stands apart. Especially in his life beyond the lens. 

Art- Design: Dashrath Patel ~ Of crumpled messages

'All my life, I've worked for people with a surplus. Today, for the first time, I am working for people who have nothing'

January 14, 1981. The central lawn at the National Institute of Design  (N I D) at Ahmedabad. It’s Makr-Sankranti. Students dot the green expanse. Colourful kites toss in the air. There’s spring in the air, a shedding of winter layers.

A man of 53 steps out of the ultra-modern brick-and-glass building. Medium height. Medium build. A shock of greying hair. He swings his camera bag to the grass. He joins a group of students, helps their red-and-white kite to soar. It cuts down another kite. His eyes light up behind his thick lenses. A gold tooth glints as he chuckles. A cheer goes up. He mingles with a second group of youngsters, then a fourth, and a sixth. More kites fall to the ground. More jubilation.

That’s Dashrath Patel. Man of energy.

February 12, 1981. Lalit Kala Akademi, Madras. Preparations are in full-swing for the Kumbha exhibition of pottery from all over India. A special section is to display Harappan originals from the local Government Museum. The security guards shuffle uneasily in a corner.

The bespectacled figure in a crumpled kurta carefully places an antique jar on a pedestal. He steps back a few paces to study the effect. Satisfied, he shifts the wooden bases around before deciding where to place the next Harappan piece. “I’m going to place a 2,000-year-old pot there,” he murmurs to someone standing by. The excitement and awe in his voice are barely contained.

That’s Dashrath Patel. Man of ideas.

March 1, 1981. The Skills design and media centre at Besant Nagar, Madras. He perches on a stool, intent on the model he’s working on. He holds a cardboard projector in his hands. Rudimentary, yet functional. Total cost ~ Rs. 10. It is part of his project in ‘liberating the media.’

‘It is my answer to people who have nothing,” he says, with deeply-felt emotion.

That’s Dashrath Patel. Man of the people.

Who is he? Does the man on the street in India know him? Is he a stakeholder in our daily lives?

Dashrath Patel is Gujarati by birth and accent, cosmopolitan by choice. A designer. A painter. A photographer. A multi-media person. A member of the prestigious Magnum circle of photographers. A contributor to Life magazine, with over 1,00,000 transparencies to his credit. He was honoured with the Padma Shri on January 26, 1981.

A diploma in painting from the Government College of Arts and Crafts, Madras. A post-graduate diploma in ceramics in Czechoslovakia. The first chairman of the faculty of Exhibition Design at N I D, which he joined in 1961, shortly after it was founded. He has impressive achievements to his credit: The Shringar pageant of Indian costumes, presented by Air India… the Agri-Expo ‘77 exhibition for the Indian Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation… the Asia ’72 exhibition in New Delhi for the Central Government to mark 25 years of Indian independence… The Nescafe container/ glass…

We sought out Dashrath Patel for some basic answers about design, a little understood concept in the Indian context today. The conversation darts in directions we had not foreseen, illuminating our world with ideas and sensitivities we had held at arm’s length all our lives. Over the hours, we gradually touch base with the person behind the persona. Here he is:

What is design?

Design is not decoration. Nor is it styling. In design, the form should derive from function. How many designs are based on our own needs? When something is really functional, it is ideal. You don’t have to make it elegant. Take the human body. When you trim off the excess, it becomes elegant anyway.

(Laughs) The object of designing is for people to use the result. It is not like the fine arts, where you can say, ‘I’ve painted this. If you don’t like it, go to hell.’ You cannot do that. Design is not an art. It is like pure science or engineering. If I design a shoe for you that pinches, you will not wear it. You won’t say, ‘I will wear it because I like the designer.’ There is nothing to be romantic about. With art, you only think that you’ve wasted your time or your money. It doesn’t directly hurt you. But if I design a bad product for you, it really hurts you. That’s the basic difference.

How do you look at the role of the designer in society?

There is a very important question in my mind. Whom are we designing for? The minority or the majority? We have to consciously make identifications.

That’s why I told some potters at Kumbha, ‘Don’t make the mistake of thinking that, as a craftsman, I’ll do artwork. That way, you’ll limit yourself from the many to the few. Instead of a whole village buying your pots for cooking, you’ll only have Dashrath Patel buying your art.’

After 20 years at N I D, we know that as designers, we have to go to the people. Otherwise, we are only involved in the activity of innovation. Take an instance. If somebody told me, ‘This is a tape-recorder. We want the latest model. Could you design it?’ I can just tinker a little, make a few cosmetic changes, and say it is a new model. Right? But if we want to design something for the people of the country, we have to first identify our values. We cannot design without values. (Passionately) We cannot…

Yet, architects talk in terms of two or three bedrooms in a house. And the man who buys the house seeks only four bedrooms and a garden. But they never talk about the quality of life to be led in the house. Standards of living differ with people. It cannot be stated in terms of bedrooms and bathrooms.

Has the dying out of traditions and the booming urban culture warped the fibre of personal life?

A designer cannot design a way of life. He can only try to understand it. The whole industrial system has brought about faceless products. The cities have brought about a lack of identity. That is why the quality of life is deteriorating.

If the potter in a village gives you a matka or pot, the point is that you have bought the matka from him, not whether the water in it is very cold or not. If a farmer gives me wheat in the barter system, at least I’ll know whether he has given me rotten wheat or good wheat. The personal equation is very important. But today, that phase is over. Human relationships are absent. When I design something, I don’t know who is going to buy it. So, I don’t worry much about the product.

What about the attitude of Indian industry to design?

Design has never been given its due anywhere in the world because industrialists, who produce the design products, are just brokers. They take a product to sell it. Industry has not understood that design has to focus on development. A lot of study is needed.

(Thoughtfully) But today, it is the market of the seller, not the buyer. We have to buy most things unquestioningly. Most industries operate from a profit-making base, not a competitive one. So, the quality of design matters little to them. When the question arises about basic changes, for instance dies or motors, they say, ‘Why should we change when the product is selling anyway? It costs money. If the cost can be recovered in the competitive market, we are willing to do it; otherwise not.’

I once had a letter at the N I D, asking me to design a car. I was thrilled at being given such an opportunity. But actually they just wanted me to change a front grill. They were more interested in mere styling, or the pretence of design, than in real changes…

What, then, is the contribution of a designer to a product?

A cassette player may be working a hundred per cent satisfactorily by engineering standards. But a designer can combine an understanding of the production effort and requirements from the machine with ergonomics or biotechnology to restate the product and make it more economical and acceptable to people. (Pushing back his hair) But we have never studied ergonomics, the human engineering of the Indian people. Even a lever should fit the hand like a glove.

Is the Indian education system responsible for the plight of design here?

Education should be our first priority today, not design. Our education system is rotten. (Angrily) It can never produce an inspired man. It is not meant for taking leadership. We never make decisions, we never make choices. But we have to put some thought into solving our problems. We have to make people think and be aware. We have to act as catalysts.

In Europe, design as a profession is old and established. Design is a very young profession here, hardly 20 years old. N I D has awarded diplomas to just 60 or 70 students so far. Most of the designing in this country is done by graduates from the schools of art. We don’t have enough trained designers. As a result, 90 per cent of the products here are imitations from catalogues. (Emotionally) But you cannot produce a Mercedes-Benz by looking at a Mercedes catalogue…

We have to search for the values of our country. Education has to be based on our experience. I think we’ve come to the stage when we have copied enough. We have to go back to our roots.

It is painful to know that if I don’t get a job in Ahmedabad, I can get one in Delhi or any of the other metropolitan cities. Or even in New York or Chicago. But with our education system, we won’t fit into any village in India, though we’ll be able to do something in any European village. Our education is so alien to our society.

To begin with, let’s talk about it. Let’s have a discussion. (Pauses to think) Design consciousness should begin with education. Instead of painting classes in school, product design can be introduced.

What about your personal experiences as a designer….?

I design because I like fun. (Explaining the Asia ’72 exhibition) During this project, I did the visualization,  the photography and the architecture. We also captured 25 years of free India in a 3 ½ hour film, telescoped into seven minutes, which cost Rs. 1 crore. Inspired by Kalidas’ Meghdoot, some of the shooting was done from a helicopter.

To me, India is sounds, not music. Technically, it was tough. At one point, I was shooting 360 degrees around, wearing nine Nikons on my head, like a hat. Totally computerised, the film involved 190 carrousel projectors to achieve a circarama effect at high speed.

But the AGRIEXPO project in 1977 was even more exciting. All the material we collected could have been turned into a museum of man as he is in an agrarian society. If we preserve everything, we preserve life ~ the way people cook, the way people store food, the way people grow things, the way people plough. The farmers gave me the most magnificent things from their day-to-day use ~ including 100 and 200-year-old ploughs. It’s a pity it’s all been put away in storage.

There’s a bullock cart at the N I D. It’s been in the possession of a family for a minimum of 250 documented years. Do you know what is unique about it? All bullock carts have axles that control the wheels, but this one has no axle at all. When the cart goes through the village, according to the track, the wheel goes out and comes back.

What a fantastic understanding of engineering! But I fear there will be a time when all knowledge will become antiquity. Say, if I can’t read Tamil…

What’s your approach to the ‘Ahmedabad: 2000’ project that you’ve undertaken for the Planning Commission?

I’d recommend that the city should not grow any further. Bombay has lost all its trees. Madras is not far behind. During my student life in Madras, I have seen Mount Road. There were banyan trees on both sides of it. They auctioned them for Re. 1 a tree. Does change have to be in this direction?

Change is not necessary for the sake of change. I don’t change my friends every third day. Nor do I easily change my camera or my house or my kitchen. Let me tell you, we change only what does not directly affect us.

What made you opt for a life in design?

When I was a child, I liked to pluck raw berries and mangoes with my small girlfriends. I could have been a textile merchant if I had known how to calculate because my father had a big business. But the highest I got in mathematics is 5 per cent! (Grinning) So, I had two other choices before me ~ to play or to draw.

If my work is going to remain after me, it will be my paintings and my drawings. I should not say so, but I have a bigger reputation as a painter than as a designer. From Madras, I went to France to study painting. I have a year of exhibitions there to my credit. I joined the N I D, the country’s first design school, because I had no better place to go. It always fascinated me to shift from one medium to another, and to meet people.

When I went to France, I met writers, painters, musicians. When I came an industrial designer, I met scientists, mathematicians, engineers.

I had a lot of dreams then. But now I feel I’ve been cheated. Under the pretence of involvement in social change (at the N I D), I feel we have missed the bus. But I learnt great things at the institute. They gave me magnificent opportunities. Whatever turns out ~ good or bad ~ I am a party to it. I’m not outside it.

What are you working on at Skills today?

All my life, I’ve worked for people who have a surplus. Today, for the first time, I am working for people who have nothing. And therefore, I feel I’m going to be saved by this experience in liberating the media. For instance, if you have a message to convey and need a projector, I will tell you how to make one yourself. So, that you can get rid of me.

When I talk about the cardboard projector, I’m talking about the man who has no means. On that level, it is an achievement. To a person who has seen a carrousel, it means very little. But for villagers who don’t have electricity, anything projected 3 ft. by 2 ft. is a great gain.

I’m not talking of quality. For a man who has never seen a projected image, where does the question of quality arise? I am trying to meet people on a personal level, village people who need a projector but can’t afford one. They can make the cardboard projector themselves.

I can thus liberate my knowledge. Maybe I can give it to people who need it to repair a window or organise a house or to communicate a message.

As a multi-media creative person, do you feel sad that a designer is always called in last on any project?

Are we interested in the letter or the envelope? Usually, the envelope is done first, and the letter or message is crumpled.

(First published in Indian Express, Chennai/Madras, in 1981)