Art work on the streets and
people from all across the city spilling on the roads –the annual ‘Chitra
Santhe’.The newspapers and local TV channel spoke of thronging crowds, police
bandobast and traffic diversions. We set off at noon and stopped for a few
minutes at V.V Puram while hubby shopped for his favorite field beans at the ‘Avarekalu
Mela’ at Sajjan Rao circle. We decided to return another day to taste the
dishes.
The drive to Kumara Krupa road
passed the race course where we observed a rush of people going in to bet on
horses. Hubby thought it would be an experience for us to watch horses racing
but we parked after great difficulty near the center for astrophysics and
walked up to the Chitra Santhe. We passed a parking lot that defied all logic.
Two wheelers and autos were parked wheel to wheel tightly with imaginary space
for maneuvering and a baffling set of people were waiting to park. The parking
fee is well justified, the attendants keep positioning and removing vehicles
continuously. Most people were hurriedly walking towards the horse race.
It was a little discouraging at
first to see the art lovers in hundreds thronging the streets. But we were
caught up in the relaxed mood and viewed whatever we could in the gaps and
those above eye level. Animals, women and nature were the common themes, though modern art, warli art, bottle
paintings stood out inbetween - a splash of different art. So many artists, so
gifted ,so prolific ,that I secretly worried how they were all going to make a
living.
Many people were getting their pencil
portraits made; the artists’ concentration unruffled, despite the milling
talking crowd looking down his shoulders. We didn't enter the very crowded premises of the Chitra Kala Parishat choosing to stroll through the streets
taking in art at a slow pace. Couples were buying paintings discussing the
place they would hang it back home. The prices we overheard were high, though
we ourselves going through tight times never inquired the price anywhere.
Elephants, horses and bullock
carts seemed to speed out of canvases kicking up dust. My personal favorites
were oils and water colors of temples; old beautiful creations of stone
captured with sun and shadow in painstaking detail. A lioness with her cubs at
a drinking hole we believed to be a photograph, until we read the caption, ’Oil
on canvas’.
Rustic women have more character
and are better captured in a painting as also the desert musicians of Rajasthan.
Hubby liked a picture of three rustic teenage boys balancing on a cycle in a
dusty landscape.
Invested here many techniques we
are not aware of but it was plain to our layman eyes that responds to beauty
created by a human being. We could see the struggling talent, the long hours
spent painstakingly before a canvas, unsold rectangles of color, unsung heroes
of an ‘arty world’. Lining the pavements, festooned on fences, arranged in
gutters, viewing the creations at the fair was a beautiful experience.
Ice cream, groundnuts, puffed
rice vendors weaved through the crowds while a young teacher of sculpture at
the CKP (Chitra Kala Parishat), draped in a rustic looking sari, barefoot, picked trash calmly off the roads
throwing it over her shoulder to fall into a conical bamboo basket the women of
the hills strap to their backs. She was 'harvesting the crop of Bangalore',she said in the next day's newspaper.Trash! no escape from it.
People with expensive
cameras constantly captured scenes and paintings. Others did so with their
phones. Children ogled at the paintings with more generous appreciation,
enjoying their day out with their relaxed parents.
We walked back to the car eating
a bowl of fresh cubes of cucumber coated lightly with a paste of fresh
coriander, green chilies, lemon juice and salt.
Many were balancing the framed
canvases covered with newspaper and placing them in their cars. Maybe the next
year, we too will make a purchase ; but today we return with a takeaway - respect for the artist and a mind
soothed by the creativity of another that we can little imitate. (Also a recipe
for making a spicy cucumber salad !)
