Lotus Pond, Ramachandran and Me

ലോകപ്രശസ്‌തനായ മലയാളി ചിത്രകാരനാണ് എ. രാമചന്ദ്രന്‍. അദ്ദേഹത്തേക്കുറിച്ചുള്ള ചിത്രമായ ‘ലോട്ടസ് പോണ്ട്: ദ് വേള്‍ഡ് ഓഫ് രാമചന്ദ്രന്‍’ ഏറെ ശ്രദ്‌ധിക്കപ്പെട്ടു. ഈ ചിത്രത്തിന്റെ സംവിധായകനായ കെ. ബിക്രം സിങ് രാമചന്ദ്രനേക്കുറിച്ച് എഴുതുന്നു.

It was in the mid 1980s, to be precise in 1985 that I got my first chance to make a film on Indian painting for the festival of India. The subject was an introductory film on contemporary Indian painting primarily meant for general western viewers. By the time, I had quit my job in the Government of India and had made a disastrous start as a filmmaker by collaborating on a film called ‘Andhi Gali’ with Buddadeb Dasgupta. I had decided to switch over to documentaries primarily with the intention of paying off my debts which my well meaning friends had advanced to me in their misplace confidence in my ability and talent. Ramachandran is fond of saying that ‘an artist discovers his ego first and his talent later’. This is equally applicable to budding filmmakers! My being in my mid 40s and therefore supposedly mature, was not enough reason for being an exception to the Ramachandran principle. ‘Andhi Gali’ proved to be a ‘Blind Alley’ for my film career – almost!

Anyway, when I started researching for the film which later came to be called contemporary Indian painting, one of the painters that I encountered was A. Ramachandran. Luckily, by this time Ramachandran had gone beyond his initial phase of painting ghastly images of all kinds of violence that humans inflict on each other. Had I seen those paintings at that stage, I am sure, I would have been appalled. When I, along with my friend Shanto Dutta (who was helping me with the research) reached Ramachandran’s house in the Artists’ Colony in East Delhi across Yamuna River, he was busy working on Yayati – the mural sized work which is a watershed in Ramachandran’s career as an artist. I think by that time 6 large panels of this 12 panel painting were finished and he was working on the 7th panel. And then I met Chameli or rather Chameliji, Ramachandran’s wife. She is one of those ethereal persons who sometimes choose to visit the earth. Ramachandran is blessed that he has Chameliji for his life companion, sensitive, a very fine artist, low key, who has deliberately withdrawn into the background to support him and offer him the world as his playground.

Between the making of contemporary Indian painting in which Ramachandran’s work appears and my first independent film on Ramachandran that forms part of a series for Doordarshan called ‘A Painter’s Portrait’ eleven years passed. The half hour film that forms a part of this series of 13 half hour films on individual painters wetted my appetite to understand Ramachandran and his world a little more closely. Luckily, we had discovered several common friends during the intervening period including the late ‘Arvindan’, one of the most poetic filmmakers that I have ever come across and Adoor Gopalakrishnan, one of the most cerebral filmmakers of India. I am not aware if Ramachandran has any serious interest in cinema but he does have a serious interest in classical music and used to once sing on the Kerala station of All India Radio. In fact, he has quite seriously told me that he is better known in Kerala as a singer than a painter.

I also had opportunity to travel through Kerala and became somewhat familiar with the whole tradition of the mural paintings in Kerala temples that are hardly known in the northern India. In fact my introduction to the murals of Kerala temples had started with Ramachandran taking me around the Attingal temple when both of us were bare above the waist and were only wearing a lungi below the waist – a dress in which I was hardly comfortable. Ramachandran had recently completed a major book on the murals of Kerala temples. Therefore, by 1994 when I decided to make an hour long film on Ramachandran, LOTUS POND, I was better equipped to explore and understand the world of Ramachandran and in this way help other people to appreciate this mysterious and mythical world.

He generously gave me copies of books that others had written on him, made his sketches and drawings available to me and gave me as much time as I demanded, with Chameliji supplying generous cups of tea and an occasional meal. What more can a filmmaker ask for? May be coffee with black pepper, both being the delicious produce of Kerala? Even that I have received in generous measure in the form of Ramachandran’s humour, the like of which I have earlier seen only in Abu Abraham, who also hailed from Kerala.

Ramachandran is a person who carries his wisdom lightly and his sense of humour seriously.

(»LOTUS POND, the movie is available on DVD. More info can be had from info@dreamscaper.com. »Bikram Singh can be contacted at kbikramsingh@bol.net.in)

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