A seatful for a million dollars

There is literary merit in the fact that J D Salinger’s toilet seat is up for auction. Think about the ideas many creative people say they get when they are digesting more than thoughts. Is there any truth in this phenomenon?

As a somewhat creative person, I do come up with the most imaginative description of post culinary indulgences while responding to pathology tests. One doctor even guessed I was a writer based on the poetic justice I did to what appeared to be a drab report that exposed me not only to amoebae and bacteria but also to a future reader.

Given this little episode in the nascent stages when my literary yearnings got a boost, I can conjecture with a degree of certitude that it has to do with the seating arrangement.

It is said that Rodin’s The Thinker is in such an inspired pose. With feet on the ground, while the left side of the brain is occupied in logical activity, the pressure reaches the right side and sparks off the dance of the cerebrum. There is also the psychological fact that something is leaving you; although the departure is welcome in this case, it harks back to a past. This becomes the manure to fill the fertile soil of the future. The mind suddenly has ideas and on occasion they could be psychedelic. It is quite akin to a state of deliriousness as closure is being reached.

The difference between a scientist and an artiste is that the former can soak in a bath tub, think up something and run out stark naked screaming ‘Eureka’ because he has a hypothesis; the latter, due to the peculiar task at hand cannot leave until it is over and therefore there is time to ruminate and think it through. You can later always say that you were preoccupied with your Muse.

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“I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera. It's terrible.”

(Holden Caulfield in Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye)

Reclaiming Tagore

It’s happened again. After the get back Gandhi’s stuff that I discussed here, we are crying about Rabindranath Tagore’s paintings being auctioned by Sotheby’s. The 12 works fetched £1.6 million (about Rs 11 crore). They were owned by the Dartington Hall Trust in England.

I do not understand how activists who have been urging the government to intervene kept quiet all this while. Besides, how did those paintings get to be with the Trust?

In 1939, Tagore presented the paintings to a close friend, Leonard Elmhirst, who had worked as his private secretary both at Santiniketan and overseas, whose Dartington Hall Trust has been the proud owner of them since.

They plan to expand their artistic endeavours to charity work in the field and it will help many new artists.

The buyers do not belong to a consortium we are told and have made individual purchases. A report states:

An Indian diplomat familiar with the matter expressed fears of the set being “cannibalised’’.

We have scant respect for art and many of our museums are in terrible condition. Some years ago Tagore’s Santiniketan was no better and his books were not even available there. Is the big deal about heritage value or about the big money and how we rate our greats according to it?

Individual connoisseurs have often shown more respect and if the work is displayed for snob value then so be it. What do you think these precious art galleries are upto? They sell art as investment, anyway.

This business about reclaiming what is ours - a contemporary form of swadeshi - is getting to be a pain. If it could be ours in England with a Trust for over 70 years, then it can be ours for however long it exists. An expat Indian who has purchased one painting is being looked upon as a shining white hope who will bring it back to India. Art is not property. You can bring it back to India and pickle it for all you want but if you do not appreciate art, then it is worthless. If you do not know how to encourage people with creative talent, it is worthless. If art belongs to a coterie, then it is worthless.

Tagore will be rather happy that his works went for six times the estimated price. He was high maintenance and rather liked the regality of status.