‘Tis light makes color visible: at night
reflections on kabir mohanty’s videos and installations
Mumbai’s harbourline railway is an interesting elevated route along the linear docklands.
Years ago, when there were not many termini, it railed from the Victoria Terminus to
Bandra towards north, via Dockyard Road station. From here it is closer to reach engineerassociate Aziz Kachwala’s workshop in Mazagaon, where Kabir Mohanty is working on his
installation, In Memory. It was my self-imposed pre-requisite to witness him working inprocess. To travel along the harbourline and walk around this ancient land of my beloved
city was a selfish interest, too. Local collective memory still preserves the old names of
places here, some even with a tinge of a saltpetrous smell, e.g. Gunpowder Lane. On to the
sound- and smellscapes of Mazagoan…
One cloudy, humid forenoon.
129 Old Anjeer Wādi in the city’s ancient land of Mazagaon¸ the origin of whose name is
traced to three sources, according to J. Gerson Da Cunha. “One and the most acceptable, is
that of the Marathi compound word ¨ÉSUôMÉÉ´É (machchgāv), the first word meaning fish, and
the second village. Some learned pandits even carry it to the Sanskrit origin ˜Ìt²™ÌOÌë̘Ì
(matsyagrāma), which means the same thing. But this is too pedantic, for Mazagon does not
seem to have ever had so noble and so classical an origin. Then some derive it from ˜ÌÍ·þ−Ì
(mahish) “a buffalo,” making it ‘a buffalo village,” while others, again, call it a central village
in the island, just as the word ˜ÌÌ`ÌOÌœú (māzaghar) means the central part of a house. Of all the
seven villages, which then constituted the original island of Bombay, including Mahim,
Mazagon is the only one whose history can be followed in a chronological succession, from
1534 to the present time.> (The Origin of Bombay, J. Gerson Da Cunha, 1900). The first
Portuguese settlers here were the Jesuits, who established a church in the sixteenth century.
The area is full of historic and mythic narratives about trees, travels and telesthesia. 1
Within such an ancient narrative-conscience, Kabir Mohanty seems to be developing yet
another ‘narrative’ through In Memory, an installation that he created along with sound
maestro Vikram Joglekar. Working on what he calls the ‘foley pit’, he is filling the space
within an 8 feet x 6 feet wooden frame, with primordial looking grassy soil, stone slabs, as if
layered by slates formed over millennia; and pebbles generally found on river beds where
ancient human and non-human civilizations had evolved. He was perhaps sculpting in space,
so I thought. Perhaps in consonance with what the Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky
called, ‘sculpting in time.’ What is interesting in this playful installation (gross weight 500 kg)
is the complex web of sensory sounds (through computer grid) underneath the surface that
invites the viewer to walk on, to negotiate the shores of civilizations, as if! When anyone
Once home to many nationalities, locations in Mazagaon are known by the fruits it grew on its ancient land.
Anjeer Wādi is the place which was once full of fig (anjeer) trees. In the neighbourhood is Sitāfal Wādi where
custard apple grew, and there is Chikoo Wādi that grew chikoo / arkas sapota trees; in the Nariel Wādi, grew
handsome coconut trees and in Tād Wādi, pleasant palm trees. The mangoes of Mazagaon were very famous in
the 17th and 18th centuries, finding reference in Thomas Moore’s Lalla-Rookh (1817).
1
1
walks on it, sounds of her or his walk are recorded amidst the evocation of pre-recorded
‘maze of sounds’. 2
Still-in-the-making, this maze a-mazes me with random (time) cross-connections that
sometime fill the complex web of wondrous wrinkles of our brain (space): D.D. Kosambi
(his idea of myth and reality); Ramkinkar Baij (his idea of sculpture); Gajanan Madhav
Muktibodh (his idea of poesy); Professor J.N. Mohanty (his idea of philosophy); or Mani Kaul
(his idea of cinematography). 3 Idea in the sense of vichār, Í¥ÌZÌÌœú, which also means reflection.
In Sanskrit¸ we have an interesting equivalent for English word memory: ²˜Ìœú: smarah: /
²˜ÌœúsÌÉ smaranam and ²˜Ìß smr / ²˜ÌßÍtÌ: smriti, both opp. ¬ÌÙÍtÌ sruti i.e. known by revelation. ²˜ÌœúsÌÉ is
also remembering, remembrance, recollection, memory; while its root ²˜Ìœú: also means love,
cupid, the god of love besides recollection or remembrance. With ¨Ì̲̍Ì: shasanah or ·þœú: harah
it would become an epithet of Siva and with ²ÌLÌ: sakhah, the moon. As an opposite to ¬ÌÙÍtÌ it
is what was delivered by human authors, law, traditional law, the body of traditional or
memorial law, <ÍtÌ ²˜ÌßÍtÌ:* It also means a wish or a desire. Am I sculpting words by adding?
Like ²˜ÌœúsÌÉ or ²˜ÌßÍtÌ:, In Memory, unconsciously evokes many strange but probably productive
associations.
About sculpting, Ramkinkar Baij, on whom Ritwik Ghatak has left an incomplete film, said:
“its solemn expression is essentially internal, introvert and in-depth. The gravity and grace of
sculptures transcend the limitations of color and evolve through the bare form of solid truth,
like the baby mutating in the womb for its impending nascence.” (Ramkinkar Baij: SelfPortrait, Writings & Interviews 1962-1979, Monfakira, Kolkata) Baij relates sculpture with
sound thus: “The value of sound is feeble for the image-maker. When Tagore himself was
working with forms, I observed that he remained tranquil. But he had spent almost all of his
life juggling words and sounds. The art of conversation, the art of music – both involve
sound. On the contrary, the art of form is totally silent. It demands only meditation. One of
the song compositions of Tagore carry the words Dhyaner dhankhani, paibe apan bani (The
treasure of my meditation shall find its own intonation.)” Perhaps In Memory is in search of
multiple intonations of the subterranean ‘self’ and so is Song for an ancient land.
In Memory is a sound-sculpture, inviting viewers to walk on / in its ‡ù¥™Ì (substance), including
earth, water (suggested), fire (suggested), air, ether (ākāsa), space (dik), time (kāla), soul
(ātman) and mind (mānas). Indian metaphysicians have always thought of reality in terms of
fundamental kinds called ÌzùÌyÌÊ (padārtha). The word padārtha – literary meaning “the meaning
of word” – is generally translated as ‘category’. Since the theory of meaning, in most Indian
‘Foley’ gets its name from Jack Donovan Foley (1891-1967), a sound editor at Universal Studios in the 1950s,
who became famous for his advancements in synchronized sound effects. The purpose of foley is to
complement or replace sound recorded on set at the time of filming (known as field recording). A soundscape
is made up of one or several different sounds in order to create a natural, immersive environment.
3
As an acknowledgement of his gratitude, Kabir Mohanty mentions the names of Professors D.D. Kosambi
and J.N. Mohanty towards the end of Song for an ancient land. D.D. Kosambi (1907-1966) was a world renowned
mathematician, statistician, historian, numismatician and polymath. J.N. Mohanty (1928-) is a reputable
transcendental philosopher and a leading authority on Husserl’s phenomenology. Professor of Philosophy at
Emory University, Georgia, USA, he has authored several books on Indian philosophy. He is no relation to
Kabir Mohanty.
2
2
philosophies, is a referential theory, padārtha means the most general kinds of things that are,
the highest genera of entities. The Nyaya-Vaisesika broadly lists the following seven
categories: ‡ù¥™Ì (dravya, substance), OÌÙsÌ (guna, quality), Fò˜ÌÊ (karma, action), ²Ì̘Ì̍™Ì (sāmānya,
universal), ̨ͥÌâ−Ì (visesa, individuality), ²Ì˜Ì¥ÌÌ™Ì (samavāya, inherence), and +—ÌÌ¥Ì (abhāva,
negation). Professor J.N. Mohanty makes an interesting distinction between perception and
pramāna (cognition, means of true cognition). According to him the scope of perception as a
pramāna is much wider than in the Western theories. “One perceives not only sensory
qualities such as colors, but also substances that possess those qualities. One also perceives
the universals of which they – the qualities and the substances – are instances. One also
perceives the internal states such as pleasure and pain. If Western epistemology, up until
recent times, remained under the pressure of a large distinction between ‘reason’ and
‘experience,’ the Indian thinker had no such distinction before her.” The English words
within parentheses are approximate translations. (Classical Indian Philosophy, J.N. Mohanty).
However, what will happen if we add Œ¥ÌÍÌ (dhvani, meaning of poetic words) to the above
mentioned list? In his Œ¥Ì™ÌÌ¡ôÌâFò: (Dhvnyaloka), Sri Ānandvardhanācharya said:
–ÌÙŒÌæ: FòÌ¥™ÌtÌu¥ÌÍ¥ÌÍ„ù: FòÌ¥™Ì²™ÌÌt˜ÌÌ Œ¥Ì͍ÌÍœúÍtÌ ²ÌÉÍbÌtÌ: Ìœú˜Ìœú™ÌÌ ™Ì: ²Ì˜Ì̍˜ÌÌt̏ÌÜ¥ÌÊ:* ²Ì˜™ÌFÆò +̲̘̍tÌÌtÌÆ ˜ÌîÌtÌ: ÌëFòÍhõtÌ:*
t̲™Ì ²Ì¼þzù™Ì`̘̍̍Ì:ÌëFǫ̘̀Ì̲̍™Ì̏™Ì—Ì̥̘̍™Ìâ `ÌOÌzÙù: tÌzù—ÌÌ¥ÌÌÍzùÌÌÉ ZÌ̘ÌÕ Í¥ÌFòŸÌÌ: ²Ì˜—Ì¥ÌэtÌ*
This would broadly mean that the learned scholars, well versed in the art of poetry, have
named the soul of poetry as dhvani. Through an unbroken tradition, they have taught that the
soul of poetry deserves the designation of Suggestion. It flashes on the well trained minds of
connoisseurs, who also accept the presence of those who believe in dhvani’s non-existence.
Also some others regard it as something indicated and still others who speak of its essence as
being beyond the scope of words.
This is a very simple import of the meaning of what the 9th century treatise says about poetics.
However, what Anandvardhana says about the poetic meaning is perhaps equally true of the
essence of any art. He says, “that meaning which wins the admiration of ²Ì¼þzù™Ì (Sahrdaya), is
called the soul of poetry.” Besides being compassionate, sahrdaya also means a person of
critical faculty. Obviously, a certain kind of healthy artist-viewer relationship is presumed
here, which may not be without ˜ÌÕ˜ÌÌɲÌÌ, deep reflection, inquiry, examination or investigation.
Each of the major schools of Indian philosophy such as Mimāmsā, Tantra and Yoga viewed
and interpreted the nature of the Universe by exploring the nature and manifestations of
‘sound.’ They built elaborate philosophical edifices around the concepts evolved during the
process. Those traditions considered sound as one of the most important principles of
existence; as the source of matter and as the key to be free from it. They described sound as
the thread-like link between the material and spiritual realms. Though the English word
‘sound’ is inadequate to fully signify the meaning of the word ‘dhvani,’ I will retain the
former for the sake of easiness. And I must admit that even some of our own terms
(including dhvani) are used here in a very broad sense for possible productive theoretical /
practical applications.
Some philosophers admit a third meaning of words and sentences. This is called ¥™ÌÉO™Ì
(vyangya); the process of meaning it, or rather the function involved, is ¥™ÌÉ`̍ÌÌ (vyanjanā),
3
sometimes translated into a ‘suggestion.’ The literary theoreticians regard the poetic meaning
to be neither the denotation nor the secondary meaning that is objectively related to the
denotation, but rather as what is suggested but cannot be derived from the denotation.
Anandvardhana calls this suggested meaning dhvani. The lexicographic meanings of the word
Œ¥Ì͍Ì: are also interesting to note - the sound of a musical instrument, the roar or thunder of a
cloud, a mere empty sound, a word; Œ¥Ì̙̍ÌÍtÌ would mean to cause indistinct articulation.
Kabir Mohanty’s sounds in his works – both on ‘screen’ and on ‘soil’ (In Memory, for
instance) are muted as ancient, suggesting an earth, waiting to be dug up for archaeology; to
explore forests of sound in their internal luminosity. As we know, the hierarchy of sounds is
as domineering as any other social, cultural or political hierarchy. I believe it is the sounds of
subalterneity that Kabir Mohanty would like us to hear; the sounds of the weak and the
suppressed that the stronger and louder sounds stop us from hearing; from within history,
and without.
In the present installation, Kabir Mohanty seems to be giving ‘voices’ to those suppressed
‘sounds’, the microtones. In a sense, such polyphony also confirms his belief in human
beings being ‘individually multiple.’ (“We are individually multiple,” Kabir Mohanty quoted
in the beginning of Suketu Mehta’s book Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, 2004)
Kabir Mohanty’s reflection someway evokes the Hegelian concept of Being, which contains
within itself oppositions and contradictions. Every thought, every reality is but a mixture of
Being and non-Being. And as P.C. Nahar and K.C. Ghosh maintain, “Dialectic with Hegel,
therefore, is equivalent to self-development or unfoldment, and the world-process itself is a
process of dialectic of antithesis and synthesis, making differences serve as means to higher
unities.” Kabir Mohanty’s reflection also evokes the Jaina principle of Anekantavāda or
Syādvāda which is an expression of unity in difference. “The Jaina doctrine of Unity in
Difference or the Theory of Bhedābhed, the legitimate outcome of Syādvāda or the dialectic
method of reasoning giving a more comprehensive view of thought and Being.” (An
Encyclopaedia of Jainism, Nahar P.C. and K.C.Ghosh, 1917).
In their evocative depth, In Memory and Song for an ancient land would attract such
interpretations or deeper cross-connections within our own metaphysical or philosophical
resonances; within Kabir Mohanty’s own reflections of time and space, or else how could he
achieve the reflexive perseverance that he does in, for instance, the Diwali sequence in the
Part II of Song for an ancient land? So would I like to think.
Through its archeology of sounds, In Memory as also the under-the-skin dynamism of Song for
an ancient land evoke in my mind some lines from one of Muktibodh’s long poems Andhere
Mein (+ÆvÉä®äú ¨Éå) or In the Dark:
4
¦ÉÚ欃 EòÒ ºÉiɽþÉå Eäò ¤É½ÖþiÉ ¤É½ÖþiÉ xÉÒSÉä
+ÆÊvɪÉÉ®úÒ BEòÉxiÉ
|ÉÉEÞòiÉ MÉÖ½þÉ BEò*
ʴɺiÉÞiÉ JÉÉä½þ Eäò ºÉÉƴɱÉä iÉ±É ¨Éå
ÊiÉʨɮú EòÉä ¦ÉänùEò®ú SɨÉEòiÉä ½éþ {ÉilÉ®ú
¨ÉÊhÉ iÉäVÉκGòªÉ ®äúÊb÷ªÉÉä-BäÎC]õ´É ®úixÉ ¦ÉÒ Ê¤ÉJÉ®äú,
ZÉ®úiÉÉ ½èþ ÊVÉxÉ {É®ú |É¤É±É |É{ÉÉiÉ BEò*
Ê´ÉSÉÉ®úÉå EòÒä ®úÊHò¨É +ÎMxÉ Eäò ¨ÉÊhÉ ´Éä
|ÉÉhÉ-VɱÉ-|É{ÉÉiÉ ¨Éå PÉÖ±ÉiÉä ½éþ |ÉÊiÉ{ɱÉ
+Eäò±Éä ¨Éå ÊEò®úhÉÉä EòÒ MÉÒ±ÉÒ ½èþ ½þ±ÉSɱÉ
MÉÒ±ÉÒ ½èþ ½þ±ÉSɱÉ**
Deep under the surfaces of earth, the poet sees a dark solitary ancient cave and a wide hole in its dark
bottom. Piercing the darkness, stones shine, and on irradiating radio-active pearls cascades a mighty waterfall.
[…] They are jewels of thoughts like blood-red fire, dissolving every moment in the cascade of life and water.
And the poet hears the moist bustle of the rays in loneliness. 4
Perhaps underneath In Memory’s surfaceþ, we hear the moistness of sound, the moist gathered
over civilizations, and musci. Perhaps beneath Kabir Mohanty’s moving images, we would
hear the murmurs of histories at the doorstep. 5 Perhaps like poetry, there is an element of
mystery that Kabir Mohanty’s art is able to retain, I would think. And such sense of mystery
cannot be captured unless a moving image touches its plasticity, which, as I personally
believe, Kabir Mohanty is struggling to achieve even in his video works, a terribly difficult
and rigorous project, not often found in the digital realm. Perhaps his artistic empowerment
is derived from his temporal / Dhrupad engagement. 6
²˜ÌœúsÌÉ* Two decades and a year ago. Screen Unit Program Note of 21 September 1988. In this
cyclostyled foolscap page note, I had introduced the Muktibodh poem thus (through
Shamsherbahadur Singh):
“This poem is a blazing document of the country’s pre- and post-independence history. In it
is a wonderful, fantastic synthesis of the individual and the mass. In its veins throb the
country’s earth, air, sky, its genuine freedom, on its multi-levels of feelings. Dr Prabhakar
Machwe calls it the ‘Guernica in Verse.” (This was a quick translation that I had done from
4
From Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh’s collection of poems titled, Chand ka Munh Tedha Hai (The Moon Wears
a Crooked Face). Andhere Mein is compared to Eliot’s The Waste Land. G.M. Muktibodh (1917-1969) was a
pioneer of modern Hindi poetry. Associated with the spirit of experimentalism in Hindi poetry, which, in turn,
shaped the New Poetry or Nayi Kavita, he was a very significant poet during the 1950s, but comparatively less
known.
5 History at the doorstep was a radical concept that D.D. Kosambi had developed to suggest that history is all
around us to discover and study.
6 Possibly this might lead to an argument about the intrinsic optical and magnetic properties of the two
respective mediums of film (celluloid) and digital. I personally feel that the plastic quality has also something to
do with the artist’s temporal engagement that goes beyond just the materiality of the medium at hand. It’s
finally the time that would determine the work of art’s quality – despite the material intermediacy, of lens, for
example. It’s the pregnancy of time that imbues its light, and light in turn, the svabhāva of its time. My reference
here is to the wayside fruit seller’s ‘apples’ that we see in Mohanty’s Song…
5
Singh’s preface to Chānd ka Munh Tedhā Hai; it was written on 15 August 1964 in New Delhi;
G.M. Muktibodh died in New Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences on 11
September 1964.) 7
Addressing Muktibodh’s writings, Mani Kaul made a film titled Satah se Uthta Aadmi (Arising
from the Surface) in 1980. The film’s music was composed by Ustad Zia Farid-Ud-Din
Dagar. What Kaul said about the ‘sculpting’ of the film is interesting in our context: “This is
the first film project the Madhya Pradesh Government has sponsored and is special in that it
is not a regular fiction film. I had not written a script for it. All I had in front of me was a
bulk of text. For me it was like hewing a block of stone. I did not want to impose a shape
but to discover it. I am very fascinated by this idea. I want to stress the role of improvisation
which is capable of seeing a specific direction.” In Satah se Uthta Aadmi, each shot is
complete in itself, as it does not deploy the aesthetics of montage. (And this reminds us of
Kabir Mohanty’s work in the moving image.) The film was shown at the Cannes Film
Festival’s Un Certain Regard section in 1981. 8 It is the subterranean sonic satah (surface),
along with the way Kabir Mohanty illuminates (through ambient light) his subjects and
objects that has the capacity to evoke strange associations in our mind. For instance, the way
the sun’s rays fall on the apples in the neighborhood fruit seller’s wayside shop, instantly
bring to mind Paul Cezanne’s still life paintings. It does not matter whether Kabir Mohanty
had intended it like that; what is, however, important is the quiet volume-light-feeling his
work implicitly produces. “One does not substitute oneself for the past, one merely adds to
it a new link,” said Cezanne (1839-1906).
There is a definite sense of movement, of an archetypal journey, in Kabir Mohanty’s
installation. “The people moving around in front of me, their movements, talks, laughter,
their blending with Nature; all these float in my memory and coalesce in my perception…,”
said Ramkinkar Baij (1906-1980). “Move, move,” said Auguste Rodin (1840-1917). And the
cross-connection leads me to Jibanananda Das’s much known poem Banalata Sen; 9 the way it
traverses spaces in its epical container.
Screen Unit was a Mumbai-based film club that was in existence for over two decades during the late 1970s
and mid 1990s. As head of Screen Unit, I would write program notes that would often run into several
foolscap-sized coarse cyclostyled pages, and address the members as ‘swajan’. In the Program Note of 3
December 1988, I wrote about its very being: “These PNs have never been simply reduced to the date-titlevenue schedules, stuffed with kind of synopses that would cause gastroenteritis! Instead, they would be
embellished with poems, articles written by members at times, and quotes – creating a certain contextual
ambiences, where one could evolve historicity with D.D. Kosambi or Muktibodh, with Ustad Bahadur Khan or
Ritwik Ghatak…” When Muktibodh was seriously ill with tubercular meningitis in Bhopal, Mr D.P. Mishra and
Mr Lal Bahadur Shastri, the then Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh and the Prime Minister of India,
respectively, had taken personal interest in his health. In the funeral procession were many known and
unknown figures from literary and art world across beliefs and ideologies, including Ram Kumar, M.F. Husain,
Harivanshrai Bachchan, Jainendra, Prabhakar Machwe, Nirmal Verma, Nemichandra Jain, Shrikant Verma,
Bhisham Sahni, Mohan Rakesh, Kamleshwar, Shamsher, Ashok Vajpeyi and many others. (Muktibodh ki
Ātmakathā, Vishnuchandra Sharma,1984)
8 Ustad Zia Farid-Ud-Din Dagar represents the 19th generation of the musical tradition of the Dagar family that
has preserved and nurtured Dhrupad for twenty generations. Besides Mani Kaul, his disciples include the
acclaimed Ritwik Sanyal, Pandit Pushparaj Koshti, Pandit Nirmalya Dey, Gundecha Brothers, Pandit Uday
Bhawalkar and the Ustad’s nephew Baha-Ud-Din with whom Kabir Mohanty has worked.
9 Banalata Sen was a recurrent theme in Jibanananda’s poetic creations, with their rich tapestry of imagery.
There is no documentation that there was indeed someone by that name in his real life. English translation is
by the poet’s biographer, Professor Clinton B. Seely.
7
6
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For thousands of years, I roamed the paths of this earth,
From waters around Ceylon in dead of night to Malayan seas.
Much have I wandered, I was there in the gray world of Asoka
And Bimbisara, pressed on through darkness to the city of Vidarbha… 10
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At day’s end, like hush of dew
Comes evening. A hawk wipes the scent of sunlight from its wings,
When earth’s colors fade and some pale design is sketched,
Then glimmering fireflies paint the story…
I saw such glimmering fireflies painting the stories of Kabir Mohanty’s Song for an ancient land,
within its embedded sounds and inner luminosities, though sombrous at times. In Andhere
Mein, Muktibodh sees the ballet of lightening (´ÉÞIÉÉå Eäò ¶ÉÒ¶É {É®ú xÉÉSÉ-xÉÉSÉ =`öiÉÒ ½éþ ʤÉVÉʱɪÉÉÄ).
Kabir Mohanty’s engagement with sound (as also with light) is long and intense. In this
realm, his extensive sonic explorations with the rudra veena player Baha-Ud-Din Dagar; jazz
musicians and composers Madhav Chari and D. Wood, besides sound expert Vikram
Joglekar, make his work significant. 11 Kabir Mohanty also took a deep interest in the
traditions of ‘real sound’ and how that could deepen into a musicality of its own. To think in
and around sound is Kabir’s svabhāva, I would say. Any genuine work of art should
essentially reflect the ²¥Ì—ÌÌ¥Ì: svabhāva of its creator – her own state, her own temperament,
It appears from Jaina records that the king Srenika, son of the king Prasannajit, known otherwise as
Bimbisara or Bambhasara, was reigning at Rajgriha and was a contemporary of Mahavira, the 24th Tirthankara.
He was succeeded by his son Asoka Chandra or Kunika who removed his capital from Rajgriha to Champa and
was followed by his son Udayee. It was he who founded Pataliputra and removed his capital from Champa to
the new city and died without any issue. Then came the nine Nanda kings followed up by Maurya kings
beginning with Chandragupta, who was succeeded by his son Bindusara and then came his grandson the great
Asoka, King Priyadarshi of the inscriptions. Asoka was succeeded by his grandson Samprati, and his son
Kunala was blind. Samprati was a great Jaina monarch and a staunch supporter of the faith. (An Encyclopaedia of
Jainism)
11 The rudra veena (û‡ù¥ÌÕsÌÌ) is a large plucked string instrument. Zia Mohi-Ud-Din Dagar was one of the 20th
century’s foremost exponents of the instrument, which he modified to produce a soft and deep sound when
plucked without the use of any plectrum.
10
7
her own state of intuition. Kabir Mohanty’s art is the art of his svabhāva and hence it has the
quality of being sahaja, intuitive and congenial that could achieve a certain bhāvasandhi, a unity
of emotions. Personally, I would like to consider Kabir Mohanty a svabhāva artist in the
context of Cinema of Prayoga. 12
It is such an eclectically sonic conscience and rigour – along with his closeness to Robert
Bresson (1901-1999) the French filmmaker, and Bill Viola (1951- ), the North American
video and installation artist – that makes Kabir Mohanty’s art special. In his Notes of a
Cinematographer, Bresson said, “The ear goes more towards the within, the eye towards the
outer.” And Viola has increasingly dealt with video as a ‘sound medium.’ This could be an
interesting key to understand Kabir Mohanty’s videos (as well as sound installations) that do
not treat filmmaking as exclusive of video, neither synonymously. Rather, film becomes one
of video’s sources and inheritances, intersecting it freely.
We call the sense of hearing or the ear ¬Ì¥ÌsÌâэ‡ù™Ì. ¬Ì¥ÌsÌÌâzùœÉú is the hollow of the outer ear. Any
sound that is within the range of hearing is ¬Ì¥ÌsÌOÌÌâZÌœú. ¬Ì¥Ì: is hearing or the ear. It also means
the hypotenuse or FòsÌÊ of a triangle. FòsÌÊ (karna) also means the ear. FòsÌÌË`ÌÍ¡ô: is the auditory
passage of the outer ear. Yet another word for the ear is ¬ÌÌâwÌÉ (srotram). What is to be
imbibed by the ear or to be attentively heard is ¬ÌÌâwÌɏÌâ™Ì. Having many connotations and
meanings, the word FòsÌÊ would also immediately remind us of the great Mahābhārata
character. 13
It should be interesting to know Kabir Mohanty’s idea of videomaking, his video vichār.
Within his spatial and temporal ‘conscience’, Kabir Mohanty’s film- and video-making
practice acquires an enhanced meaning. Unlike filmmaking practice that engages Kabir
Mohanty as director of an ensemble form with actors, video provides him an opportunity to
do what he calls ‘solo’ work, something he has been contemplating for many years. In fact,
for him, both these practices are related in many ways and not mutually exclusive. As he
believes, the great work with the moving image, film or video, fervently resists its narrowing,
and it is fundamentally not illustrative.
12Aiming to broaden and substitute the Euro-American term Experimental Film, Cinema of Prayoga is the new
term that I have attempted to develop. I had first presented it at the Experimenta held in Mumbai in 2004 and
then at London’s Tate Modern in 2006. Also, in 2009, I had the opportunity of presenting the works of Kabir
Mohanty, Amit Dutta, Vipin Vijay and Ashish Avikunthak (besides Kumar Shahani and Mani Kabul’s,) within
the Cinema of Prayoga context, at Mumbai’s National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA). As an
interrogation of the terms Avant-garde and the New Wave, I had also presented it at the Annual Conferene
“The Avant-garde in the Indian New Wave” held by the Film Studies Program of the Yale University, USA, 57 February 2010. I had titled my paper, “Svabhāva Flowing Into Streams: In Continuum – Interrogating Avant-garde.
And the Wave.”
13 Name of a celebrated warrior on the side of the Kauravas mentioned in the Mahabhārata. This Mahabharata
story is well known. Arjuna is also called , FòsÌÊÍ`ÌtÌ ‘conqueror of Karna’. In the epic Ramayana, there is a demon
FÙÉò—ÌFòsÌÊ Kumbhakarna who had ears like the handles of a pot, the pitcher-eared. D.D. Kosambi finds such
ancient names with the termination karna in totemic origins: Jatākarna, Tānarkarna, Mayārakarna, Masārakarna,
Kaharjārakarna, et al. (Myth and Reality: Studies in the Formation of Indian Culture, D.D. Kosambi, Bombay: Popular
Prakashan, 1962).
10. Ākasā and Sound With Special Reference to Music, Prem Lata Sharma in Concepts of Space: Ancient and Modern, Ed.
Kapila Vatsayayan, Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, 1991.
8
As a practitioner of videomaking, how does Kabir Mohanty treat a shot and ‘time’ flowing
within it? Unlike a shot in filmmaking practice, having its beginning and end, video allows
him a greater degree of digressions in the shot-continuum, and that offers him temporal
spaces for improvisations like in the rendering of a rāga. And in a way, in its elaborations, the
shot-taking for Kabir Mohanty becomes like an ālāp (Ustad Baha-Ud-Din Dagar’s
observation). And in this process Kabir Mohanty’s long takes acquire a kind of plasticity,
rare to find in most of the video works produced in India or elsewhere.
Kabir Mohanty also treats his videomaking practice as riyaaz (as in Hindustani or North
Indian classical music: riyaaz being regular rigorous practice) and hence there is an inherent
desire to achieve a temporal rhythm and resonance in the space that evolves within it. Kabir
Mohanty’s use of the word ‘song’ in the title of his video is pertinent. Among several
meanings, ‘song’ would presume a poetical composition. In this sense his videos suggest an
inbuilt rhythm, a metre, a composition that should also hold our attention. In fact, Kabir
Mohanty calls himself a ‘composer’ of his videos.
By alluding to music, Kabir Mohanty also alludes to time. Durée or duration for him is a
‘section of time’. For him this ‘section of time’ is not a shot because it allows
dysfunctionality. As he says, “Something accumulates in this time; something unfolds.
Nothing is left out, you are not editing, you are not putting things together later, you feel a
great sense of lightness. And at the same time, it doesn’t feel slight because a phenomenal
amount of energy has already gone into it. In a conventional technical sense you can call this
a shot, but in a different sense. I think this kind of video practice might be making musicians
feel close to my work. It is the practitioner’s sensibility moving in time. And I think video
provides the experience of a seamless time.” It should be seen how Kabir Mohanty sustains
the ‘section of time’ in his video work.
And in such a broad sub- and con-text, Kabir Mohanty gets very close to becoming an
‘ecologue,’ to borrow the term that music and film aesthetist Madan Gopal Singh has used
for the filmmaker Mani Kaul. While in search of life for cinema beyond image, Singh posits
a question of ‘being’ against that of ‘subject’ and in the process he thinks of a new
‘ecological’ sign. In his essay, Life Beyond Image: Notes on Mani Kaul, he says, “How else does
one talk about the ecologues of cinema, who unlike its auteurs, chose to speak from the fragile
margins of cinema to intuit its new possibilities; ecologues, who opened ‘the question of being’
in turning quietly away from the highways of narrative where the subject never failed to
achieve a certain disposition in rhetoric; ecologues who created space through oneiric
resonance of partial memories and cast words and things in a durative stillness against the
violence of causality in history!” (Cinemaya, Winter 1995-96) I personally think that Kabir
Mohanty chooses to speak from the fragile margins of the so-called video-art; but sturdily
so. The often used term ‘video-art’ has always remained problematic.
Within the bhāva of ecologues, I would like to conjecture the idea of ākāsa (space) and sabda
(sound) with reference to Kabir Mohanty’s work. Interestingly, our great philosophers had
accepted the human body as Śarīrī Vīnā (bodily lute) since, according to them, phonetics
deals with the process of sound-production in the human body. 14 All systems of Indian
In one of his verses, the 15th century saint-poet Kabir calls the body ‘a splendid tamburā,’ while the great
vocalist and re-searcher Kumar Gandharva sang EòɪÉÉ-xÉMÉ®ú ¨Éå PÉ®ú BEò ¤ÉÆMɱÉÉ..., In the city of my body is a house… Yet
14
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philosophy relate Ākāsa (space) with Śabda (sound) either as sound being the quality of
attribute (Guna) of Ākāsa or as sound being existence in Ākāsa. The invariable factors in
sound are (1) Ākāsa (2) Śrotra (ear), the sense-organ for ‘receiving sound.’ No other senseorgan could receive sound. (3) Buddhi = Antahkarana (mind) which perceives sound in its
totality. (4) Prayoga = Samyoga (friction or attack). Thus Ākāsa is the substratum of Śabda
(sound) and sound in turn the Guna or attribute (quality) of Ākāsa. Space, in other words, is
inherent in the process of sound-production. 15
Kabir Mohanty’s video studies (particularly the Song for an ancient land series) evoke the bhāva
(being) that is sombre and celebratory, dark and bright, minimal and non-exuberant, even
while dealing with the fairly recent violent post-Babri mosque demolition history. His images
from stark till photographs evoke forms of sorrow or nÖù&JÉ Eäò |ÉEòÉ®ú*. Ready to attack, the
youngsters holding bricks behind their backs cause a feeling of pain. The bricks stare at us in
our very faces. The bricks that help build (ºÉVÉÇxÉ) also become agencies of destruction (Ê´ÉxÉɶÉ)!
Quietly traversing the photographic documents, Kabir Mohanty’s camera seem to be
questioning the metropolis and its fragile core of secular modernity. In a way, Mumbai
becomes a metaphor for any city, whose denizens mercilessly killed the Other fellow
denizens, even the neighbors. The silences of sounds transfer on to us a certain feeling of an
‘aching emptiness’. 16 nÖù&JÉ Eäò |ÉEòÉ®ú* Kabir Mohanty, I presume, is able to achieve such
evocations by intensely deepening the documentary realism, and transcending it in the
process.
And somewhere on the way, he remembers the Sufi saint, Makhdoom Ali Mahimi (13721431) and his dear goat, whose tomb lies in the same dargāh in Mahim in Mumbai. The Sufi
saint is also the presiding deity of the Mumbai Police. Ironically, it is the same police whose
actions in 1992-93, perhaps the Sufi saint would question. 17 But what remains as a fact is the
kernel, says history. To lend his own voice to the narrative was a crucial decision for Kabir
Mohanty. But I think it came, at this juncture of the film, from his long sustaining belief in
voice being a latent entity, as part of the meta-narrative and its phonetics. Nevertheless, the
written word needed to be carefully chosen, and even one tiny passage would take him many
drafts and long hours of reflection. It is for the first time in Song for an ancient land that Kabir
Mohanty makes a narration in his own voice, whose recording was another lengthy process
to be accomplished, to achieve a certain level of diction, depth and equanimity.
in another self-composed verse dedicated to Kabir, an old singer Raichand from Lunyakhedi village of Madhya
Pradesh, says, Oh! Soulmate of my body-city… These are references from the leading American Kabir scholar Linda
Hess’s book Singing Emptiness: Kumar Gandharva Performs the Poetry of Kabir, Seagull Books, 2009; as also Shabnam
Virmani’s beautifully polemical and poetic documentary film on Kabir, EòÉä<Ç ºÉÖxÉiÉÉ ½èþ, Someone is Listening: Journeys
with Kumar and Kabir. Available in four-part DVD, the other three parts are titled, Eò¤ÉÒ®úÉ JÉc÷É ¤ÉÉWÉÉ®ú ¨Éå, In the
Market Stands Kabir; SɱÉÉä ½þ¨ÉÉ®úÉ näùºÉ, Come to My Country; and ½þnù +xɽþnù, Bounded-Boundless, 2008.
15 Ākāsa and Sound With Special Reference to Music, Prem Lata Sharma in Concepts of Space: Ancient and Modern.
16 “… and above all the never-ending knowledge that this aching emptiness would be all…” wrote Ayi Kwei
Armah in his novel The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born.
17 Makhdoom Ali Mahimi was a Sufi saint from the Konkan region in Maharashtra, widely acknowledged for
his scholarly treatises, liberal views and humanist ideals. Mahimi was born into a family of Arab travelers who
hd settled down on the island of Mahim, one of the seven islands that later formed the city of Bombay /
Mumbai. Revered by both Muslims and Hindus, he was buried in Mahim after his death in 1431. The site later
became a dargāh (shrine) for devotees. Besides the tomb of his mother, the dargāh also contains tombs of
his maidservant and his pet goat.
10
This passage in Kabir Mohanty’s video essay Song for an ancient land, Part II, perhaps provides
a sort of pakad to his video studies – pakad, in Hindustani music, provides a characteristic
catch phrase of a rāga. “The tānpura,” as Kabir Mohanty’s sabda (spoken words) say, “is the
container of all their sounds.” And what the Ustad says through Kabir Mohanty’s sabda is
significant, “It is easy to know when the strings of the tānpura are in tune. When a string is
in perfect tune with respect to another, which has been plucked, it begins to vibrate in
sympathy before it has been plucked.”
Through his scene and sabda (zù¨™Ì-¬Ì¥™Ì) in his Song for an ancient land, Kabir Mohanty evokes the
memory of the Sufi, and it is the goat who becomes the heroine of our times, as she was the
saint’s. In their dark and luminous density, Kabir Mohanty’s images refuse to saturate
history; whose kernel is still palpable. The city is a witness to it and so are the tiny contact
sheets Kabir Mohanty shot so painstakingly and ingeniously with Setu, the cinematographer.
They form inaugural passages of Kabir Mohanty’s Song for an ancient land (Part II). The
extraordinarily controlled pans and tilts acquire a certain depth over the flat surfaces of the
contact sheets, with punctuating glows as markers. After all, the kernel is a fact. And so is
the Sufi’s goat.
While invoking the idea of space (land), Song for an ancient land also invokes the sense of
ancient times that intermingle with our own even now¸e.g. look at the ways in which
fisherfolk dry fish – history, after all, is a process of spatio-temporal contacts – in existence.
Through such suggestions (like with dhvani) ¸ Kabir Mohanty seems to be signifying a maze
of relationships – in their interior rhythm and randomness, in time and space offered to us
by history – ancient and modern
The act of walking on the laid out sand and the stones itself is significant – especially when
the sounds emerge from within and without. We barely think of anything when we normally
walk on the earth – under every step of ours are buried sounds and souls. Perhaps, walking
on Kabir Mohanty’s ‘pit’ would humbly remind us of the layers of our past, remaining
unarticulated, unclaimed. Kabir Mohanty’s articulation through such physicality – of sounds,
stones and sands, along with his video essay Song for an ancient land on screen could infuse the
gallery space with a certain here-and-now primordiality! Unlike conventionally mounted inloop screen, Song for an ancient land would expect of the viewer a two-hour long meditative
viewing.
Kabir Mohanty, along with Vikram Joglekar and Resul Pookutty, creates the forest of
sounds, as he describes it. These non-illustrative, muted sounds embed within them a history
that we see in his moving images on screen, and as already mentioned, even in the still
photographs that he deepens with a certain ‘moving’ sensibility. In the polyphony (forest) of
sounds, Kabir Mohanty seems to be essentially reposing his faith in the “multiplicity of the
nature of the sub-continental self.” And its materiality.
I think this is an important thought emerging from Song for an ancient land itself and the feeling
that its rigor invokes. How do we derive the experience of multiplicity, of anekta? It is not as
simple as the clichéd Indian slogan anektā mein ektā that has finally created a stereotyping,
reducing ultimately the beauty of the multiple randomness of the forest into a stifling
monolith.
11
In the realm of aesthetics, it has always been a problem of balancing between the
development of intellect and evocation of feeling, what I would like to call the
transcendental state of growing from the so-called manoranjan to chittaranjan. It is all right to
create an intellect development corporation (¤ÉÖÎvvÉ Ê´ÉEòÉºÉ EòÉ ÊxÉMÉ¨É ) but the complexity of
retaining the experience still remains. All such endeavours including film or art appreciation
programs in search of meanings should not obstruct experiencing the experience. In his
conversation with Udayan Vajpeyi, Mani Kaul thinks that people are afraid of failing to
obtain a ‘meaning’ from a work of art, of being nirarthak. After all what meaning are you
looking for in music? In Kaul’s words:
+xÉÖ¦É´É EòÉä ½þ¨É EèòºÉä ¤ÉSÉÉ ºÉEòiÉä ½éþ, ¨Éä®úÉ ºÉ´ÉÉ±É ÊºÉ¡Çò ªÉ½þ ½èþ CªÉÉåÊEò Ê¡ò±¨É EòÉ +xÉÖ¦É´É ¤É½ÖþiÉ VÉÊ]õ±É SÉÒWÉ
½èþ* ±ÉÉäMÉÉå EòÉä +lÉǽþÒxÉ ½þÉäxÉä EòÉ ¦ÉªÉ ±ÉMÉiÉÉ ½èþ* +ÉÊJÉ®ú ºÉÆMÉÒiÉ ¨Éå CªÉÉ +lÉÇ ½èþ? ÊEòºÉÒ xÉä EòÉä<Ç iÉÉxÉ ±ÉÒ, ÊEòºÉÒ
xÉä EòÉä< ¶É¤nù Eò½äþ, ÊEòºÉÒ xÉä EÖòUô ¨ÉÓb÷ JÉÓSÉÒ, <xÉ EòÉ +lÉÇ CªÉÉ ½èþ? +lÉÇ iÉÉä BEò BäºÉÒ SÉÒWÉ ½èþ VÉÉä {ÉènùÉ ½þÉäiÉÒ
½èþ +Éè®ú xɹ]õ ½þÉä VÉÉiÉÒ ½èþ* ´É½þ EòÉä<Ç ¶ÉÉ·ÉiÉ SÉÒWÉ xɽþÓ ½èþ* {ÉènùÉ ½þÉäiÉÒ ½èþ, JÉi¨É ½þÉä VÉÉiÉÒ ½èþ* ´É½þ iÉÉä Ê¡ò®ú {ÉènùÉ
½þÉäMÉÒ, xɪÉÒ ¶ÉC±É ¨Éå* BEò ºÉxiÉÖʱÉiÉ ½þɱÉÉiÉ Eäò ʱÉB +lÉÇ EòÉ ½þÉäxÉÉ Vɯû®úÒ ½èþ ±ÉäÊEòxÉ +lÉÇ iÉÉä {ÉènùÉ ½þÉäiÉä ®ú½þiÉä
½éþ* <xÉEòÉ BäºÉÉ EÖòUô iÉÉä xɽþÓ ½èþ ÊEò ªÉä ËWÉnùMÉÒ ¦É®ú +É{ÉEäò ºÉÉlÉ iÉèxÉÉiÉ JÉbä÷ ®ú½åþMÉä* ´Éä iÉÉä {ÉènùÉ ½þÉäiÉä ®ú½þiÉä ½éþ*
ÊEòxiÉÖ ¨ÉÖζEò±É ªÉ½þ ½èþ ÊEò =xÉEäò ¤ÉÒSÉ ¨Éå ªÉ½þ ºÉ¤É VÉÉä +b÷JÉÆVÉÉ JÉb÷É ½þÉä MɪÉÉ ½èþ, BÊ|ÉʺÉB¶ÉxÉ EòÉ, <ºÉºÉä
ÊxÉEò±ÉEò®ú ½þ¨É +xÉÖ¦É´É EòÉä EèòºÉä ¤ÉSÉɪÉå? ªÉ½þ VÉÉä ¤ÉÖÎvvÉ Ê´ÉEòÉºÉ EòÒ ªÉÉäVÉxÉÉ ½èþ =ºÉ¨Éå Eò½þÓ +xÉÖ¦É´É EÖòÎh`öiÉ xÉ
½þÉä VÉɪÉä* ªÉ½þ ªÉÉäVÉxÉÉ +SUôÒ ½èþ ÊEò +Énù¨ÉÒ EòÒ ¤ÉÖÎvvÉ EòÉ Ê´ÉEòÉºÉ ½þÉä, ¤ÉÖÎvvÉ Ê´ÉEòÉºÉ EòÉ ÊxÉMÉ¨É ¤ÉxÉä, ªÉ½þ ºÉ¤É
`öÒEò ½èþ ±ÉäÊEòxÉ =ºÉ ÊxÉMÉ¨É ¨Éå BäºÉÉ xÉ ½þÉä ÊEò +xÉÖ¦É´É JÉbÂ÷bä÷ ¨Éå SɱÉÉ VÉɪÉä* (+¦Éänù +ÉEòɶÉ& ¨ÉÊhÉ EòÉè±É ºÉä
=nùªÉxÉ ´ÉÉVÉ{ÉäªÉÒ EòÒ ¤ÉÉiÉSÉÒiÉ, ¨ÉvªÉ |Énäù¶É Ê¡ò±¨É Ê´ÉEòÉºÉ ÊxÉMÉ¨É EòÉ |ÉEòɶÉxÉ, ¦ÉÉä{ÉɱÉ)
In his temporal engagement, Kabir Mohanty seems to be inviting us to enter this crucial
zone of feeling; of experience, of +ÌÙ—ÌÜÍtÌ, which also means perception (philosophically, it is
knowledge from any source but memory, in which sense it is more sensuous). And
contemplation; challenging the demands restlessly springing from the commodity-consumer
relationship.
At this point of time, I recall what old Sarajubala told the young Anjali in New Life, the novel
by Sharmistha Mohanty, Kabir’s wife: “You will have to resist the desire to turn everything
into language.”
Perhaps Kabir Mohanty’s sensors inside the ‘foley pit’ with their ‘forest of sounds’ suggest
this feeling. Or do they? Listen to the songs that sing the silence of sounds …
-
Amrit Gangar
Amrit Gangar is a thinker, a historian, and a hands-on mind around all aspects of film, all except the
making. He has been involved in the showing, writing, discussing, archiving, provoking, talking, and
thinking aspects. For over twenty five years Amrit Gangar has been a force that stood for
independence and fearlessness in matters of creativity. His ability to see these attributes extends to all
kinds of cinema, regardless of high or low, shastriya or lok, so-called commercial or so-called noncommercial. He ran for many years, Screen Unit, the great film society that did many of the above
things. His is an involvement with the meat of the medium, with the meat of the practitioner, many
of whom are personal friends. He has, of late, also made some work. He lives in Bombay.
12
Note: The title of this essay is from Jalal ud-Din Rumi’s poem Reality and Appearance, Tr. R.A.
Nicholson, from Persian Poems, an Anthology of verse translations edited by A.J. Arberry, Everyman’s
Library, 1972.
Source: the kernel is a fact, Kabir Mohanty, GallerySKE, Bangalore, 2010. www.galleryske.com
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