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ARTIST, UNDONE
With India’s first art fiction, V. Sanjay Kumar, an art connoisseur and collector,
plunges headlong into the whirlwind of the contemporary art world
First it was Geoff Dyer who spun
the heady glamour of the Venice
Biennale with the magic of the
holy temple town of Varanasi
into ‘Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi’ in
2009.
Now, a native of Chennai, V. Sanjay
Kumar, an art connoisseur and collector,
has taken the cue to plunge headlong into
the whirlwind of the contemporary art
world in Mumbai in his debut novel,
‘Artist, Undone’ — being described by
critics as India’s first post-modern art fiction.
The unusual book has been inspired by
a painting, ‘Fat, Forty and Fucked’, by
contemporary artist Nataraj Sharma.
‘The first time I saw the painting by
Nataraj Sharma, I was intrigued. There
were stories going off in my head even as
I looked at it. Much later, I was looking at
constructing a novel around people who
in their forties were looking for someplace
to get to and needed directions at the same
time. The two came together; the painting
became a beginning and men in their for-
32 Pravasi Bharatiya | June 2012
ties became protagonists. For me, the art
world became the canvas, so to speak,”
Sanjay Kumar told IANS.
Kumar, a collector and the directorpartner
of a leading Mumbai art house,
says: “The world of art is familiar and it
surprises me every single day.”
“At some point, I had to dilute some of
the art-related writing as it was getting too
It has characters who are
not people you meet every
day. Yet the canvas is of
middle-class India and
people who come in touch
with art and try to make
sense of it.
dense and involved. That is what the art
world does to you. Once it hooks you, it
drags you in,” the writer said.
The story is about Harsh Sinha — who
is as the painting is titled. Sinha is so
moved by a painting bearing his name and
a compelling likeness to him that he
spends a large chunk of his life’s savings
on it. Announcing a year-long sabbatical
from his advertising job in Mumbai, he returns
to Chennai to his wife and daughter.
Wife Gayathri does not want him any
more; she is more interested in the artist
next door — Newton Kumaraswamy —
an inveterate womaniser and a famous
thief who copies F.N. Souza.
A crushed Harsh, deserted by his family
and without a job, returns to Mumbai to
succumb to the crazy world of art.
Kumar says his story moves between
Chennai, Mumbai and New York. “It has
characters who are not people you meet
every day. Yet the canvas is of middleclass
India and people who come in touch
with art and try to make sense of it,” the
writer said.
1/FORTY
In the age of Twitter, Poet-TV personality Pritish Nandy
experiments with 140-character format in his new
anthology ‘Stuck at 1/Forty’
Insolent, angry, wicked that’s me/Or so you say
before you angrily look away/Faith is so yesterday/Tomorrow
is where I want to be.
Poet, painter, journalist, filmmaker
and television personality Pritish
Nandy has used the 140-character
format to transport poetry to the
age of Twitter in a new anthology, ‘Stuck on
1/Forty’. But he says his 140-character poetry
does not mark a new phase in the evolution
of the popular literary genre, it is just another
form of creative expression.
“I don’t think poetry mutates over the
years. It only keeps opening up to more new
ideas, new vistas and new experiments, particularly
in recent times. People still read
Shakespeare and love it. They still read Keats,
Byron, Shelley. But, yes, they also now read
Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, Corso. They now read
Lorca, Neruda, Cavafy, Enzensberger. Or
Agyeya, Jibanannd Das, Faiz Ahmed Faiz,”
Nandy told IANS.
Nandy said the “world of poetry was opening
up more and more with more poets across
languages being read, more experiments with
new forms, more discoveries and more relevancies
being sought”.
“‘Stuck on 1/Forty’ is one such experiment.
If people read it, like it, share it, if it
grows the conversation on the social network,
it would have achieved its objective. Poetry
need no longer be imprisoned on the printed
page. It must enter our lives and our consciousness.
It must capture our dreams, our
hopes. It is now part of the growing discourse
across all platforms,” Nandy said.
The volume, printed in rainbow colours
and designer typeset, explores a variety of personalised
emotions like love, loss, loneliness,
uncertainty, resignation and new beginnings.
Recalling the way he conceived the poems,
Nandy said he “thought the poems through
in 140 characters”.
“It’s quite easy actually. You can write the
same poem as a 1,000-page epic or a simple
tweet. The idea remains the same. It’s just the
format that delivers it differently to you and
me. We choose which version we want to
read. The poet offers you options. I never
write my thoughts at random. I sit down and
write a book or a column or an essay or even
a work of fiction, almost at one go. That’s the
only way I can write,” he said.
The 71-year-old poet has been writing and
translating regional poetry for most part of
his life. In 1967, he published his first volume
of poetry, ‘Of Gods and Olives’, and followed
it up with nearly 40 books. Nandy was
nominated the poet laureate by the World
Academy of Arts and Culture in 1981. He
was honoured with the Padma Shri in 1977.
Nandy, who was the publishing director of
The Times of India from 1982 to 1991, edited
The Illustrated Weekly of India from 1983 to
1991.
Nandy said during his years as a poet, he
started a poetry magazine that launched
many contemporary poets.
“I opened a small publishing house that
published poetry in English and in translation
from the different Indian languages.
Many of the poets you hear of today were
first published by me in tiny slim booklets.
These booklets are today collectors editions.
We made poetry hugely popular in the
1970s. Thousands attended readings. Thousands
more bought books of poems, poetry
albums. It was the golden age of poetry,”
Nandy said.
The poet said he was not inspired by Twitter,
though the “Twitter format provoked my
140-word experiment with poetry”.
“Twitter is just a means of communication.
Means do not inspire people. Content does.
But the poems will work only when people
read them and like them as poems. That is the
most important thing. Poetry is format agnostic.
It is even idiom agnostic. Language is
changing today,” Nandy said.
But that is not because of Facebook or
Twitter. It is changing because of our impatience,
Nandy said.
“The limits of our tolerance are on a steady
downslide. Even language has become a victim
of this,” the poet pointed out.
June 2012 | Pravasi Bharatiya 33