Unravelling the artist

Artist, Undone by Sanjay Kumar is a wickedly humorous book — finely written, marvellously layered, intricately crafted and psychologically curious. The book is about hell, of self-discovery, and the price of self-discovery.

The hell in question is the quagmire of Harsh Sinha, a successful urban male in his 40s, on a sticky rat trap that includes his wife and kid in Chennai, and a stress-driven
advertising job in Mumbai. As Harsh’s wife Gayathri informs him, “You are a middle-of-the-road, fence-sitting, hemming-and-hawing custard who just sits around me every weekend and — settles.”

On the other hand, you have the artist, Newton Kumaraswamy. No, not The Francis Newton Souza. But his cover band. His imitator. Newton Kumaraswamy is an imitator who has all of Souza’s theatrics, his vehemence, drinking and foul-mouthedness.

Both Harsh and Kumaraswamy are caricatures of themselves. And it is how these ‘f***ed-up men’ redeem themselves that is the story of this book.

Harsh is skating on custard, when one day, he opens the paper and sees his portrait with all the warts on it, splashed across the paper. The painting in question is titled ‘Fat, F***ed and Forty’. He picks it up for Rs 27 lakh. “Why would an aging art-illiterate like me run after this? Simple. I didn’t want the world to see my tits.”

Harsh picks up the painting. Quits his job and takes a year’s sabbatical. And plonks himself back home. You would expect this act of extravagant bravery would get Gayathri, the wife who complains about Mr Custard, to leap like jelly. She does. But not in the way you were hoping. “Harsh, don’t come back home ever,” she tells him on the doorstep.

You now meet the third vertex in the triangle — wife Gayathri, the untalented, grumpy middle-class, fatty, harridan with an itch in the crotch. But no, she is not that. Harsh may call her that in the heat of an argument, but the author never caricatures her, never portrays her, as such. One wonders why. Why are all the women in the book treated with greater charm?

Kicked out, you have two places to go. To the shrink. Or into art. Back now in Mumbai, Harsh visits helpful shrinks, but only as he delves into the crooked corridors of modern art does he meet answers. In the process, we meet a marvellous collection of humanity, foremost, the very middle-class Roongta, Manoj’s ad colleague and now co-art-world explorer. They resemble Don Quixote and Sancho Panza in art’s strange world. Roongta discovers that it is a topsy-turvy bazaar. A wonderfully etched character is Manoj, the crooked financier and art collector.

Naturally, as you are gripped by the art world’s strange fascination, you do dread meeting your wife on the arm of Newton Kumaraswamy. For the bete noire strides art’s corridors, and will even have a show in the modern Mecca of art: New York!

But if we seek a way out of hell, we cannot avoid meeting up with meaning. If we need to stop frauding, whether we are ad-men or crazy artists, we need to strip bare, face our fears and worse, embrace our joys. Some seek it in shrinks. Some in temples. Some in life. To reveal anything more would spoil your read. For, dear reader, Artist, Undone is a psychological thriller. Why does Gayathri find Harsh “foul-mouthed”, definitely not Mr Custard, so boring? How does Kumaraswamy, the real artist, pretend to be Souza II and not die within? Will Gayathri find life? How will Manoj, harassed by the Income Tax Department, break free?

Sanjay Kumar’s debut novel deserves applause. Is it without fault? Not really. Harsh’s self-proclamation as foul-mouthed is undeserved, the occasional gaali notwithstanding. In his scraps with his wife, not a gaali escapes his lips. Sanjay knows his art, but he does not quite know the shrink-space or ad-world that his character inhabits. And that shows. Harsh’s own self-revelation remains undiscovered through innumerable encounters with shrinks. Really? The ad-world and art-world relationship portrayed is questionable. Most admen see themselves as the true artists of modern era, the real pied pipers of life. “Art does not sell” is an Ogilvy bromide. Besides, all art directors come from art schools. And so, any adman seeking quick insight merely has to connect with his art director, who would know someone who really knows art.

Ironically, as I review the book, there’s unexpected humour. Like Harsh, I am also an ex-adman. I am in my 40’s and soon, I’ll have my sixth solo art show. And yes, like Sanjay Kumar so rightly portrays, art is a strange fickle goddess.