art&culture
patriot
12
THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH
“NOT ALL THOSE WHO WANDER ARE LOST.”
J.R.R. TOLKIEN,
NEW DELHI|THURSDAY|1-7 DECEMBER|2016
ODYSSEY OF A NOMAD
FROM FACING A LIFE-THREATENING
INCIDENT IN THE OUTSKIRTS OF NAPLES,
LIVING IN A PALATIAL CHATEAU IN FRANCE
TO VISITING WORN-TORN SYRIA, MUKUL
BHATIA’S PROJECT, ‘NOMADIC ORIGINS’,
IS AN ODE TO CONTEMPORARY NOMADS
THE WORLD-OVER
180° SOUTH / Drishti Vij
MUKUL BHATIA, an internationally published and exhibited visual
artist, recently returned to the
country, after finishing a round the
world trip for his new project
‘Nomadic Origins’, a visual anthropology about modern nomads,
funded by an art grant from Matter
Prints, Singapore.
The project came about after
experiencing a certain discontentment, and an immediate need for a
wider life experience. “I left my
‘safe’ job as a senior editor for a
media house in 2012, and travelled
for a year to some of the most unexpected places in South Asia,” he
says. From living with war orphans
in Kashmir and understanding their
trials and tribulations, to being
friends with transgender sex workers in Pune and absorbing the
amount of compassion and trust
that he believes they had in a
stranger like him, he documented
their ordeals as the first of his selffunded stories.
“It was at this time that I realised
that life isn’t fulfilling in a studio or
an office in a big city. The world out
there was waiting to surprise me
and I had to document it! In 2014,
with a generous art grant from
Matter Prints, Singapore, this urge
pushed me to implement the
impossible task of touring across
the globe to meet strangers, live
with them, and document their
extraordinary journey so far, which
became my project ‘Nomadic
Origins’.”
In this day and age, Bhatia
believes that human history has
never witnessed such a large-scale
wandering. He reveals how contemporary individuals have grown
to challenge conventions and take
things in their own hands. “With
global war, economic recession and
the provision of a democratic space
like the Internet, travel has provided an opportunity to learn, and
not conform to the old-fashioned
way of life. It’s an era of individualism and growth, and travel creates
an environment for these changemakers to tailor their life based on
their own set of values, instead of
giving in to socio-economic or
political pressures. With ‘Nomadic
Origins’, I aim to inspire the young
change makers, to take the plunge
and create a life changing journey
for meaning,” he adds.
Migration and displacement,
regardless of the reason, have more
often than not, had a profound
impact on the minds of several individuals. Bhatia discovered that displacement has various shades, and
the reasons behind it, can truly
shape the identity of an individual,
“For the Albanian gypsy I lived with,
displacement is the only way to live
life — it was more essential than a
regular paying job, comfort, or even
three meals a day. For the eightyear-old Syrian migrant, I documented in Istanbul, migration
meant losing an entire childhood,
his family and future. His eyes talked of sadness, nostalgia and anticipation for a new life. There have
been so many diverse individuals
that I met in this journey, and their
reasons for movement simply
makes you want to pack your bags
and leave.”
As a war journalist, Bhatia presumed that life held no surprises for
him. But, stepping out of the country pushed him in some of the
MUKUL BHATIA RECALLS A SCARY NIGHT IN ITALY
“I was with a friend one night on
my way from Sorrento to Napoli
in Italy, and we got a bit too late,
but caught the last bus home. I
fell asleep, but woke up to find
myself with only two other
Italians, and a Japanese tourist,
on the outskirts of Naples, and a
bunch of massively tall, African
men in a bus with loads of trash
they picked on the streets. In
about 10 minutes, they were crazily vandalising the bus, and
intimidating us in a language we
couldn’t understand, the guns
were out and of course, we were
flipping out. I’ve never been more
scared in my entire life. With over
$6,000 worth of equipment, and
friends I really cared about, I was
praying for the first time in my life
to come out alive and safe. As an
Indian, you think the world out
there is supremely safe, but that’s
so wrong. Luckily, the driver of
the bus halted with a sudden
brake on the side of the road, and
that was it. We saw a little bar,
and we ran for our lives, while the
driver pulled the gate as soon as
we were out and the bus left. I
think, we were insanely lucky, and
I value my life a lot more since the
n.”
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PORTRAIT OF A LADY: An encounter with a woman in Amsterdam led Mukul to document her.
scariest, high-pressure situations.
He adds, “What’s strange for me in
India, is someone’s mundane reality in Kyrgyzstan, and vice-versa. I
may have read about it, but to live
it is another experience. I’ve been
lost in airports, I’ve been in dangerous situations in ghetto towns, and
I’ve lived in a palatial chateau in
France, and in such magnificent
contrasts, I’ve learnt the value of
urgency in life, emotional groundedness, and the need for compassion, which I would never have
known, sitting in an indoor office
all day, for the rest of my life.”
Before initiating the project, like
many of us, Bhatia was scared of
being alone, but ‘Nomadic Origins’
helped him appreciate the very
thing he was afraid of. “The idea of
eating a meal by myself in a café
gave me shivers. And, here I was,
hopping all over the world, alone,
for the first time, and it was magically surreal! It gave me a profound
perspective about my identity and
PHOTOS: MUKUL BHATIA
Veronika Kobesova in Prague
Maya Ben David in Jerusalem
choices, and a direction to create a
life that I want, and how to get it,”
he discloses. To learn about this
undiscovered strength, that Bhatia
believes everyone has, “Take a trip
alone, it’s the finest way!”
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