Tuesday, 13 January 2015

Art on the streets- Chitra Santhe 2015.

                                        
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 !)







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