Touching the right chord

L Subramaniam calls it a “lucky coincidence” to have been born in the freedom year. “In fact, my parents had named me Suthanthiram, which means freedom in Tamil. But they subsequently changed it thinking it was too long,” says the violin maestro.

Though Subramaniam was born in India, his initial years were spent in Sri Lanka, where his father worked. In 1958, when the anti-Tamil riots broke out, Subramaniam’s father decided to take his family back home to Chennai. “I remember walking quietly behind the elders in the middle of the night fearful of making any sound lest we were spotted. It was a terrifying experience.”

Back home in India, Subramaniam says it was like experiencing freedom once again. “Though we left behind our material possessions in Sri Lanka, the simple act of walking the streets unafraid was of immense value,” he says. That childhood experience, adds Subramaniam, has made him value the concept of freedom. 

Passionate about music since his early years, Subramaniam nevertheless concentrated on his studies and went on to complete his MBBS at Madras Medical College and registered as a general practitioner. Subsequently he did his master’s in Western Classical Music in California, after which music completely took over his life.

Since 1973, Subramaniam has made historic collaborations and recordings with the likes of Yehudi Menuhin. The Lakshminarayana Global Music Festival started by him is perhaps the biggest global music festival (initially held only in India), and in this 60th year of Independence, he and wife Kavita have major performances slotted in most parts of the world.

On the eve of leaving for a concert in Germany, Subramaniam spoke to Sunday Herald recounting his early days when he had travelled overseas for the first time. “In 1973, when I went to California, I was so homesick. The institute had given me about two years to complete my masters, however, I finished off the course in nine months eager to get back home.” But owing to high cost of air travel, he stayed back, also taking up a teaching assignment.

Indian culture was yet to receive the kind of exposure it enjoys in the West today. “When I played Carnatic music on my violin sitting crosslegged on the floor, the audience thought it was some kind of folk music,” he laughs, sharing his early concert days in the West. “During my first jugalbandi with sarod maestro Ustad Ali Akbar Khan in New York, The New York Times critic came up to me and said it was the best he had heard.”

Things have changed a lot, he remarks. Air travel, for one, has become cheaper and easier but so has the attitude of young musicians, who, according to Subramaniam, prefer to take the path of fast bucks and quick fame. “They miss the basic ingredient - passion and love for their art.”
Dipti Nair

Rang de basanti

Shuvaprasanna Bhattacharya has made his mark on the art scene of India in several ways. Very much a Kolkata man, his paintings have chronicled the city over the decades. He has also epitomized the hope that freedom kindled in midnight’s children, striving to do things positive for art and artists, rather than confine himself to his studio and leave administrative matters aside.

Says Shuvaprasanna, “The government had a limited budget, and could afford a few institutions like AIFACS, Academy of Fine Arts, Jehangir Art Gallery, Lalit Kala Academy and Triveni Kala Sangam. There ware a very few private art galleries or art dealer in our country. Artist usually used to survive through this group.”

But art lovers like Shuvaprasanna changed that. “Gradually, after the 70s, contemporary art in India started changing. After the 80s, mostly due to boom of private galleries and art dealer’s active role, Indian art became most vibrant.” Then came the power of the NRI in the 90s. “Indian art became value-oriented.” However, there is no room for complacence. “Till now, Indian contemporary art has no place in Museums of International Contemporary Art.”

In the 1960s and 1970s, for instance, he captured the violence and political turmoil of Kolkata. Alumnus of the Indian College of Art (class of 1969), he was an active member of the Calcutta Painters group. The year he graduated, he co-founded an organization called, Art and Artists. In 1976, he founded the College of Visual Arts.

This talented painter and printmaker is also the Founder of the Arts Acre, an artist's village, on the fringes of Kolkata. Arts Acre has helped bring together much contemporary thought. At Arts Acre, he has brought together artistic talent from India and around the world.

He has striven to give the painter a better deal in the form of a haven and exposure to patrons. Little wonder, then, that he has been quoted as saying, he is not unhappy that contemporary Indian art is seeing better financial days than those of, say, Ramkinkar Baij, who lived and worked in relative penury and obscurity.

This is Kolkata’s first and only residential village for artists. For this pioneering contribution to the arts, Shuvaprasanna has been awarded by the Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Lalit Kala Akademi, and All India Fine Arts and Craft Society. His paintings are a chronicle of the city he lives in, specially the older Kolkata of the geographical north, with recurring images of crows and narrow lanes. 

Over the last three decades, Shuvaprasanna’s work has from the reality around him to existential realities. His thoughts have taken him from the very real, very near and now to the mystical beyond.

How does the future look? “Art colleges are not updating their curriculum and resources. Instead of creative encouragement, the basic object of these colleges is mostly job orientation,” he rues.
BS

A river runs free

Fame sits very lightly on one of our midnight children, B Lenin, the Chennai-based award-winning film director and editor. In fact, there’s no complexity about him. For him, life is a flowing river.

Being the uncomplicated man he is, Lenin avoids private transport, preferring the public transport, shuns star hotels and lives with friends in cities outside Chennai. Lenin, who has completed 41 years in the film industry, has won several national and state awards for direction and editing. He has been associated with 200 films in five languages.

Lenin was born on August 15, 1947. What did it mean celebrating his birthday on the nation’s birthday especially when he was a child? “I don’t know. I never celebrated my birthday. What’s there in it?” he asked. But he does celebrate the nation’s birthday. Every August 15, for the past 37 years he has been hoisting the national flag in his house, carrying on the tradition that his father, well-known film director A Bhim Singh set.

How does he compare his own growth with that of the country? “I still feel very young,” he confesses. Just like the country he too is still growing up, both personally and professionally, he claims.

What does India mean to him? “Let me give an example. My grandfather came from Rajasthan. He settled down near Tirupati where my father was born. My father married a Marathi woman, my mother. I was born in Madras and Tamil is my mother tongue. And I married a girl from Kerala…this is India,” he concludes.

So he has no complaints? Not at all. “I am very happy with my life and with my country. Look around…can you sleep outside your house without fear, say in Congo? We can walk barefoot and with minimal clothing. Can you do it in Russia or Germany?

If you go to Kerala, you will find all varieties of fruits, and flowers in one place…of course, politicians are also there,” he says with a burst of laughter. He refuses to explain. He will not talk of politicians and mega film stars. Any disappointments?  “None. Like my mother says, if it has to happen it will. Just getting up in the morning is a blessing.”

He is a philosopher too then? “No, not a philosopher. As a people we are a practical lot. Ninety per cent of Indians are satisfied with life notwithstanding so many problems. That’s the greatness of our country.”
R Akhileshwari

Curry for the soul

Born in 1947, Deepak Chopra is a medical doctor and mind-body activist. He is recognised as a guru of holistic healing. He belongs to the generation that grew up with legendary stories of political stalwarts, the sacrifices they made, and their vision of  freedom.

“Mahatma Gandhi, Pandit Nehru, Vallabhai Patel, Motilal Nehru and Subhash Chandra Bose. I remember how much my parents admired them as luminaries, patriots, and statesmen. There was none of the cynicism that the general public associates with politicians today. Only a deep admiration and respect,” he says.

By all standards, Chopra is an unusual doctor, the likes of whom India or the world has rarely seen. If he can relate to matters pushed to the fringes of consciousness by most men and women of science, it perhaps stems from his childhood.

The son of an Army doctor, and the grandson of an Ayurveda practitioner, Chopra “grew up with a sense of magic, mystery, and adventure. Storytelling was a big part of our family life. Many of the stories were drawn from the rich well of Indian mythology.

There was a lot of pride but also a lot of passion that had its source in recent history. I grew up not only listening to these stories but reading The History of India by Jawaharlal Nehru and also about tragedies like the Jallianwallah Bagh massacre.”

A varied childhood for a boy born at a crucial time in world history. “I guess my destiny was woven into India’s destiny. We were both born at the same time and somewhere subconsciously there was the impulse to influence the world with India’s cultural and spiritual heritage.”

Doctor, author and inspirational speaker, Chopra, who lives in the US, has gone beyond simple nationalism. “For me, extreme nationalism in any form is divisive. We Indians tend to be extremely nationalistic. In the new global environment, nationalism will have less relevance... If we do not want to falter we should listen to the great rishis (who said) “Vasudeva Kutumbukum” (the world is our family).
Benita Sen 

Freedom song as muse

He holds the copyright to the catchphrase midnight’s children, though unlike Saleem Sinai, and some 1001 children born as India won independence on August 15, 1947, Salman Rushdie’s birthdate falls in the month of June of that year.

Rushdie, who won the ‘Booker of Bookers’ for his Midnight’s Children that narrates key events in the history of India through the story of pickle-factory worker Saleem Sinai, is perhaps the quintessential child of India after freedom.

The mega success of his second novel, besides catapulting him to literary fame, also significantly shaped the course that Indian writing in English would follow over the next decade. “It seems to me, more and more, that the fictional project on which I’ve been involved ever since I began Midnight’s Children back in 1975 is one of self-definition.

That novel, Shame and The Satanic Verses strike me as an attempt to come to terms with the various component parts of myself - countries, memories, histories, families, gods. First the writer invents the books; then, perhaps, the books invent the writer.”

Rushdie has pointed to Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., as well as his own devout Muslim grandfather, as exemplifying civic ideals of freedom and tolerance. Living with a perpetual fatwa on his head after The Satanic Verses, that keeps reappearing under different excuses - the latest being the knighthood for ‘services to literature’ - Rushdie’s belief in freedom and tolerance have been tested down the years.

At times he has answered with the likes of Harun and the Sea of Stories, while at others he has simply shut himself up; emerging with yet another masterpiece. On a visit to India early this year, Rushdie did not hesitate to mingle with his fans, and listen patiently to fellow authors at a literary meet notwithstanding the Rushdie-bashing brigade. He is currently working on a book set in the Mughal Empire and Renaissance Italy. Rushdie, who would-have-been an artist if not for ‘magic realism’, still rules, with or without his muse.
DN

Tragedy queen of midnight blues

She was born on August 15, 1947. Raakhee, now off-work and a recluse for four years, is perhaps one of the most accomplished of the Bengali female actors who thrived in Hindi cinema down the decades.

Raakhee’s first encounter with the film industry happened in Kolkata when she accompanied actress Sandhya Roy, a family friend, for shoots. Sandhya even groomed her, and soon, Raakhee made her debut in the 1967 film Badhu Baran, followed by Baghini (1968).

During this brief phase, Raakhee fell in love with and married Ajay Biswas, a co-star in her debut film. But when it did not work, the spitfire teenager walked out on him. Around that time, Tarachand Barjatya of Rajshri Productions, noticed her and signed her for his Satyen Bose-directed Jeevan Mrityu opposite Dharmendra.

And it was in Mumbai that the light-eyed actress with the husky eyes created a sensation – she signed a record 10 films even before her debut film made it to the theatres. And her track-record in Bengali and the rushes of her Hindi debut film was shimmering enough to ensure that among the big-banner offers were three films that had the kind of meaty roles normally given only to established stars who were also formidable actresses.

Jeevan Mrityu became a blockbuster, of course, but these three films, a cameo in Reshma Aur Shera, Sharmeelee’s twin sisters’ turn, and finally Lal Patthar, in which she held her punchy own against reign queen Hema Malini’s author-backed role made Raakhee reach the unique slot of being recognized as a brilliant actress in addition to a glamour girl – a rare combination in the first few years of a mainstream career.
Rajiv Vijayakar