Lifestyle set in art

Kurumba art has the happy disposition of its tribals as its muse and theme, writes Hema Vijay, of the minimalistic depictions that have reached the world stage.

An average traveller on the ghat road that meanders up to Ooty from the small town of Mettupalayam at the foothills of the Nilgiri range tends to miss the mud track that trails off from the mamaram stop (mango tree stop) on this road, about 17 km from Mettupalayam.

But if you care to trek a three-kilometre distance through this overgrown trail, you would come face-to-face with a huge overhanging rock face that sports an assortment of rust-coloured markings.

The markings begin from a height of eight feet from the rock’s base and extend up to 20 feet of its height. Inscribed on the rock are stylised markings of trees and people, pots and chains, curious graffiti, and even a bizarre design that many people fancy to be images of alien sightings. Perhaps this is as near a glimpse of the pre-historic artistic mind as we could get.

Kurumba tribesmen call this massive rock painting Ezhuthupaarai (meaning ‘rock with writing’). Ezhuthupaarai is estimated to be a 3,000-year-old outdoor rock painting and is traced to have seeded Kurumba art, the tribal art dialect that has now caught the attention of the world as a stylised art language. Luckily, this pre-historic rock face is inclined inwards, which has protected the paintings on it from the ravages of rain and environmental erosion down numerous centuries.

“Kurumba art owes its origin and sustenance to Ezhuthupaarai, which has served as a continuum for passing on this art idiom down the centuries,” says G Balaji, research officer, co-ordinator for the Kurumba art revival project initiated by Dr Nanditha Krishna, director of C P Ramaswami Iyer Foundation, based in Chennai.

Most likely, Ezhuthuparai was first used as a rock shelter, with generations of people leaving their thoughts on it, using natural pigments and binders sourced from the minerals and greenery around.

“Perhaps they had used pigments from thumbai plant that continues to grow in these areas,” says Balasubramani, one of the few Kurumba tribesmen, who still retain a grip over this dying tribal art. Balasubramani has exhibited his Kurumba paintings in Paris and New York. He lives in Vellarikombai village, the Kurumba hamlet closest to Ezhuthuparai. Krishnan is another Kurumba tribesman who practises this art.

But the majority of them have turned away from the Kurumba way of life and art, and it is institutions like C P Ramaswami Iyer Foundation and Keystone Foundation which are trying to keep Kurumba art alive. C P Ramaswamy Iyer Foundation, for instance, has got the few surviving Kurumba artists to teach their art to the next-generation Kurumbas and has taught the artists to paint on paper with paint brushes. In fact, it now trains around 20 Kurumba tribesmen every year in adapting Kurumba imagery to modern art compositions, media and methods.

One of the five tribes who occupy various altitudinal zones of the Nilgiri ranges (the Thodas, the Kotas, the Irulas and the Kattunayaka panias), the Kurumba tribesmen are fast dwindling in number as well. As per census records, they number just 1,800 people and live in small hutments spread across 47 hamlets, each hamlet hosting just a handful of houses.

Historically, these tribals have survived as nimble-footed hunter-gatherers and honey collectors who can clamber impossible terrain, growing millets and taking advantage of seasonal fruits that grow on the mountainside. Their art was how they connected with divinity and marked festivities. Traditionally, this art was generally practised only by the community’s holy men, though the general population did pitch in to help.

Style and symmetry

Kurumba art does bring the Warli tribal paintings to mind because of the stick-like limbs, but the similarity ends there. Now Kurumba tribesmen, like Balasubramani, paint on handmade paper instead of rock faces, but they still rely on natural pigments such as terracotta black, the yellow sap of vengai tree, the green extracts of kurinji plant’s leaves, soot black etc. And every now and then, they do experiment with modern, vibrant artificial pigments like purple. “Traditionally, the drawings were done with burnt twigs upon the temple walls or walls of the houses of holy men, and the colour palette was limited to the basic colours of red and white obtained from minerals in the soil, green from plant leaves and black from oxidised bark extracts,” informs Krishnan.

One with nature

Kurumbas who live in the mid-ranges of the Nilgiris are believed to be the descendants of the Pallavas when their reign was at its fag end in the seventh century, but opinion is divided, because while the Pallavas had already mastered architecture and other aspects of modern civilisation, Kurumbas still sport a lifestyle that is best described as a life adapted to nature, rather than a life that is a conquest over nature.

“Incidentally, these tribesmen have for long had a great knowledge of herbal medicines that regarded them as miracle healers. And thanks to their close connect with nature, they knew how to use it to best effect,” muses Balaji. For instance, their mud-walled huts with dung sprayed on the floor and thatched with bamboo and dharbha grass is cool in summer and warm in winter.

Besides a childlike simplicity that appeals to the uncorrupted aspects of our minds, perhaps the most charming aspect of Kurumba art is its deep intertwining with nature. It is a minimalistic and colourful art that revels in symmetry. For the most part, the paintings tend to be happy imagery that radiate both visual and intellectual relief.

Some of these paintings do feature solitary protagonists, such as the one that shows a honey-gatherer climbing up a massive and vertical rock face, but most of them remain communal paintings with a group of people in straightforward revelry. While there is no demarcation of foreground or background, nor much attention to perspective, these paintings are complete — they tell a comprehensive tale.

Kurumba art throws up visuals of drum beats and dancers, megalithic dolmens where they worship their ancestors and do their death rites, the animals and trees around them, forest scenes etc.

Considering their closeness with nature, you would expect nature to be the primeval aspect of the paintings. But it turns out that the notional ingredient central to their art repertoire is of happy people.