Vangad ways: Warli artist lends a healing touch to Tata Memorial Hospital

Warli artist Rajesh Chaitya Vangads recent painting assignment demanded a fourhour commute to the Parel campus of Mumbais Tata Memorial Hospital For over two months Vangad negotiated this distance of 145 kilometres from Ganjad his village in Dahanu talukaThe brief given to him was to sketch a tableau of Indias iconic tourist spots keeping in mind the hospitals cancer patients who hail from distant geographical zones of the country Bright images on a red ochre background that exude positivityVangad followed the brief and drew a collage of images Amritsars Golden Temple Kolkatas Howrah Bridge the Himalayan range that connote national unity and hopeStudents work on Warli painting by artist Rajesh Chaitya Vangad as part of Wall Art in DahanuHaving finished the stint Vangad was back to life in Ganjad working on other wider canvases which ask for his concentration on other thematic terrains He will be unreachable on phone until he finishes eight major wall paintings commissioned by expatriate officials working in the Consulate of Switzerland in MumbaiA panel of Warli art done by Vangad at Tata Memorial HospitalFor a 40yearold selfschooled eighth standard passed Warli artist operating from remote Ganjad the diversity in Rajesh Chaitya Vangads assignments is amazing His paintings adorn the walls of Mumbais new international airport terminal His art displays greet you in the National Crafts Museum New DelhiWarli painting demonstrationIn June later this year he will hold a childrens art workshop at Chennai as part of a SPIC MACAY convention on Indian cultural heritage He is doing illustrations for a storybook on Warlis for the Delhibased Katha publishing house He is working on a residency project for foreign artists who wish to stay with him and witness his creative processWarli artist Rajesh Chaitya Vangad poses in front of his work at the Homi Bhabha block Tata Memorial hospital Parel PicsShadab KhanHe is also gearing up for the Wall Art Festival in which Japanese artists are coming to his village to paint one of Ganjads ashram schools Another project on the restoration of the traditional Warli habitat currently occupies his mind spaceBeyond the CVRajesh Vangads professional forays are appealing each steeped in a specific social milieu each calling for a buzzing cultural connection none of which is contained in his onepager biodata His blog post or his online profile does not reveal an iota of excitement that his art has generated over the last decade In the context of todays media environment Vangad is an interviewers challengeHis monosyllabic softspoken replies do not provide clues to his multihued career It is after repeated efforts of unravelling that one gets an idea of the expanse of Vangads porous art Very often he is not articulate about the international groups that hosted him in the past He doesnt recall the names of the ministers and past presidents who honoured him in the Festivals of IndiaHe takes recourse to a small diary which pins down the dates of his upcoming travel to France It becomes the interviewers task to piece together a trajectory that is not just happening in the popular sense of the term but is inspiring in the context of the bridges he has built despite being a man of few words The exchanges that his paintings have promoted underline the potential for dialogue in the traditional artsFor instance he has regularly painted the walls of the Zilla Parishad schools in Dahanu so as to attract dropouts into the academic mainstream Similarly he has taken art classes for Japanese students last year He spent time in the Niranjana School in Sujata Village Bodh Gaya using the walls of the school building as canvas The idea was to electrify students imagination and tell them about the importance of education The Wall Art Festival of which he is now a permanent part travels to schools which are facing a decline in class strength I loved that concept because I am myself a dropout I know what it is to bunk school and each student has different reasons for dropping out Children wake up much later in life and realise how precious were those years he opens up while talking about his incomplete schoolingHe says the school space should be lit up with attractive wall paintings so that children dont run away from school Warlis and other tribal communities of India suffer due to poor schooling and Vangad feels that paintings on school walls can play a positive role in formative education He says a painting of whatever style is a welcome signal to the child A bright school structure makes a big difference to a persons lifeWhen people recall their childhood they invariably remember their school buildings I am hopeful that all Ganjad schools will shine with bright paintings in the days to come so that the next generation of Warli students attends classes every dayPainting and lifeVangad was born June 1975 in a belowsubsistence Warli household in Ganjad Rice farming on over 14 acres of land was their sole source of sustenance Vangads father with two acres to the credit of his nuclear unit took to carpentry as a side business while his mother did traditional painting for festive occasions and weddings Neither Vangad nor his four siblings ever thought of going to Mumbai in search of a job They did not want to try their luck in a competitive city cultureInstead they decided to stick to Ganjad where a piece of earth could bind them as a family As Rajesh Vangad dropped out of the school after the eighth standard he found himself more interested in his mothers pictorial language He felt close to the central motifs in each ritual painting particularly the square known as the chowk He could identify with the mother goddess and other scenes of hunting fishing farming festivals and treesWith very little else to do and no language skills to fall back on he felt the ritual painting dating back to 3000 BCE done inside his hut could save him from dismal unemployment I felt that painting was my livelihood As the family struggled to find its footing I felt closer and closer to the earth and cow dung that made our wallsThe material used for painting a mixture of rice paste and water along with the bamboo stick used for paintbrushes all of it seemed doable occupation for me he reminisces the times when he started with odd jobs He says the past seems like a distant canvas when he gives painting lessons to his two sons now studying in the same school where he dropped outIt is interesting that today Vangad his educated wife and their sons look at painting as a creative profession It was once a source of basic livelihood for him After a Punebased tribal art training institute recognised Vagads work he started looking at it in professional terms He took minor painting work for companies in and around DahanuAmong his earlier assignments were Warli frames done for Bollywood stars of which one was for director Subhash Ghai As Vangads reputation spread he was approached by the National Handicrafts and Handlooms Museum Thereafter he was entrenched in the various Festivals of India and craft melas where he drew Warli lifestyles on cloth paper and walls He is now an active contributor in the Dastakari Haat Samiti the national organisation of artisansConnections galoreFor an artist who started with limited means and who currently lives in an infrastructuredeficient semiurban locale Vangad has truly made many vital connections which Mumbai artists from more privileged backgrounds have been unable to achieve He could have easily indulged in a conventional miscellany of sellable Warli paintingsBut his calling is visibly different His involvement in creative projects makes him more than a painter He is more of a creative collaborator who looks forward to placing his painting as part of citizens initiatives awareness drives and sensitisation workshopsFor instance his paintings at the exhibition Bapu The Craftspersons Vision was the genesis for a Gandhi picture book for Tulika publishers Tulikas My Gandhi Story rests on Vangads impressions of Gandhiji a historical figure he never met but came to know of through his school teacherVangad revisited his history lessons and asked his teacher to recount the highlights of the Mahatmas life Working with coauthors Nina Sabnani and Ankit Chadha he then pieced together a Gandhiji who was like us What is most appealing in the book is the fact that the Father of the Nation has been portrayed as a simple villager drawing water from the well wearing khadi talking about peace and brotherhood Vangads Gandhiji is an approachable community leader much like the creator of the bookLike the Gandhi book Vangad is also involved in another project celebrating the 15th century mystic poet Kabir I feel that Warli art should have these inspiring figures images that we were not exposed to at one point Mahatma Gandhi uplifted the poor people He gave hope to people like me Kabir spoke of a world without caste divides I feel close to these people and want them in my art he saysIn Vangads paintings the process of invoking the past becomes a task in itself When he collaborated with the Japanese artists at the Sakura Wall art festival Hozumisho school last October he drew a luscious green rice field a picture common to Sakura and Ganjad villagesThat was his way of drawing attention to a lesser known facet of IndiaJapan relationship the friendship of Indian poetphilosopher Rabindranath Tagore and Japanese painter Arai Kampo Vangad feels paintings become richer when prefaced with a prologue Before going to Japan he had therefore read about Tagores association with Arai Kampo particularly Arais stay at the Santiniketan around 1916Art includes allVangads secular openended view of Warli art is refreshing He feels an indigenous art remains traditional and pure even as new motifs enter the pictorial vocabulary His predecessors like the famous Warli artist Jivya Soma Mashe have experimented with contemporary images thereby extending the traditional ritual of painting to an artistic pursuitVangad endorses the expansion of the art form and goes to the extent of stating that art thrives when it expands He feels there is a quintessential innocence in the Warli depiction of human and animal bodies particularly the pairing of two triangles the upper triangle depicts the trunk the lower connotes the pelvis both joined at the tipThe Warli art has been appreciated for the unique equilibrium in the animated body shapes Its popular appeal also stems from the fact that these paintings catch the rhythm of nature Vangad feels that as long as the trademark innocence in the depiction is retained the Warli artist is free to include new motifs and modern images Many of his celebrated frames have delineated modern buildings aeroplanes cars and other consumer accessoriesThe entry of these motifs doesnt make the art any less traditional or less interesting A painting is like a story on canvas As long as the storyteller is open to influences the painting will sparkle and burst with energy thats how he puts across his idea of Warli art As of now his mind is divided between many projectsBut one day when he is relatively relaxed he intends to do more offbeat work which will infuse his paintings with unconventional images He wants to paint a huge fresco on Lord Shivas tandav another one on the origin of the Earth yet another on the effects of human pollution on biodiversity one more on Hindu gods and goddesses juxtaposed in a frame The wish list is long but mapped and timed for future delivery It is definitely worth the waitThe writer is a Mumbaibased cultural chronicler