On a creative retreat

art central

There he sat. Under a mango tree. Cross-legged. Clad in a kurta laden with green patina. A shawl draped on his right shoulder. A cap on which mango panicles stick like sequins. On his lap is the sarod.

He is strumming it with his left hand. A smile nearly breaking on his face. A tune almost ready to resonate in the hills and paddy fields. This is Baba Allauddin Khan, legendary sarod player, in bronze, sitting on a platform in Art Ichol, a mint-fresh creative retreat in Ichol, a village near Madhya Pradesh’s Panna Tiger Reserve.
Heart of art

Baba is not alone in the open-air sculpture park. Two men sit on a bench with naked branches stemming out of their necks. A stone man and woman ride a cement motorcycle through a manicured lawn. Four trees stand statuesquely on an undulating mound. The trees are leafless. Not one bird perched on the twig. But when you walk by, you can hear the chirping of a flock of birds.

A room stands on stilts. Two gargantuan sculpted faces stare into the azure sky. An old chatri lives by a pond and an ancient bowli lends antiquity to the three-acre creative retreat that was once a paddy field. From a faraway corner, I hear the whirr of a welding machine in the foundry and the ding of a hammer honing a stone block into an unusual sculpture. I squint to see the glimmer of a million light bulbs atop a hill — it is the temple of Sharada Devi, a Shaktipeeth.
I had flown into Khajuraho and driven nearly two-and-a-half hours into Ichol. It is mango season and the air is redolent with the whiff of mango inflorescence. Maihar, the home of Baba Allauddin Khan and the temple of Sharada Devi, is 7 km from Ichol where stands a structure with a slanted roof overlaid with orange brick tiles. A board announces the identity of the place: Art Ichol. A Creative Escape. Maihar. Stone. Metal. Ceramic. Fine Art. A flight of stairs lead into main building of Art Ichol where trinkets, iron grills, factory discards picked from scrap dealers have been brilliantly recycled for an unusual decor.

A kiln top lights up a dark night with 1,100 half-watt LED bulbs. A hurriedly hewn limestone block lets lotus grow on its belly. Two antique slat-doors live under the glass top of a large table. On the walls are old speedometers. A Cyanide Warning board throws in a quaint twist to the room with wooden floors and French windows. Sculptures everywhere. Big. Small. Arty. Quirky. Edgy. From the window one can see the well-appointed residences for artists. Foundry. Kiln. Welder. Ceramic Studio. Raw materials. Help. All the artist needs to carry to Art Ichol is his creativity.
I sit by the lotus pond with Ambica Beri, the founder of Art Ichol. This is not her first daub of art. Art lover and owner of Gallery Sanskriti in Kolkata for the past 25 years, Ambica has worked with the biggest names in art — Bikash Bhattacharya, Ganesh Pyne, Paritosh Sen, Paresh Maity — arranging workshops, residencies and showcasing them in her art gallery. She often wears black and lives art as if it were her doppleganger.

She narrates an age-old story of a little girl — she still in pigtails and pinafore — who was once asked by her drawing teacher to sketch a fairy. She drew once. One more time. Again. Then again. Until the time the fairy looked pretty. And rea­l. That little girl, then called Ambica Subherwal, now Ambica Beri, the daughter of architect Suraj P Subherwal, studied textile designing. Art continued to beckon. Still does. Not merely as an extension of her Being, but also as a way of chiselling the skills and offering opportunities to unknown, not-so-privileged artists. I am caught in Ambica’s narrative. I walk around Art Ichol. Ponchy, the brown mongrel, walks around with me like a seasoned guide of Art Ichol.

Great escapes

Art Ichol takes forward Maihar’s aesthetic thread that began with the arrival of Baba Allauddin Khan and later of Pandit Ravi Shankar who cut his musical teeth here and also found love (he married Annapurna, Baba’s daughter). Later, I drive to Maihar House, a 100-year-old residence with yellow arches and mustard/blue tiles. At the entrance is a Devi made of scrap and at the back a ceramic studio. From the hollow of a colossal deadwood peep metal sculpted little men. By the lawn stands a lady welded out of iron pipes. Pink bougainvilleas lean on the parapet.

The coucal flits in for breakfast and the koel sings the morning alarm. In Maihar, I trudged to the house of Baba Allauddin Khan where Kailash Jain, a family friend, talked of Baba, Pandit Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan. At Baba’s grave, I knelt. In his room, I saw his favourite sarod. In the courtyard, there was the twang of the sarod that Baba played at Jain’s engagement in 1969.

In Maihar, there was still some art to embrace. From Maihar House, I drove another 7 km to Amaria, a mango orchard that Ambica has turned into a writer’s retreat. Amaria sits smug by the Tamas river. A hammock sways between two ancient trees, a wooden boat metamorphoses into a bar, a luxury tent serves as the living room, and orange and beige define the palette of the studio apartment. Amaria is serene; its calm broken only by the ripple of the river and yelps of Tadu, the little dog. Here, the stars shimmer in the inky night and the placid river offers an eternal friendship.

I came to Maihar in search of art. Here, I found a friend in Ambica. And heard Baba’s sarod. Without it being played. Like, real music as largesse from the unknown gods.