The Europe effect ....

The only thing that I was excited about in Europe was Rome, Vatican and the structures of historical importance more than the modern and the post modern art. But I guess I was in for a surprise. Before going I had never really thought of these structures from the religious point of view but when I saw the other tourists, their expressions, the faith, the approach, that’s when the religious importance of these places dawned on me. If one considers the historical circumstances, the rise of Christianity and the objective, then it probably makes sense, else art in Europe was only about scale, Christianity and realism. In retrospect I feel architecturally they were more successful, the sense of space they created with the grandness of the majestic structures are palpitating, but the expressions and the realism of the sculptures get a little monotonous.

Rome with all its stories had always fascinated me and it lived up to its image… it has an aura with the ruins of structures lying here and there. It makes you imagine the life then and connect with the past but Vatican was most disappointing… I had imagined the Sistine chapel to be completely mesmerizing as you see in the books (probably because the picture is only of the ceiling and doesn’t give you the overall idea of space) but when I entered, there were large frescos all over the room not leaving an inch of space to let any of it sink in. Drifting with the wave of tourists from different parts of the world we entered St Peters Basilica. I had still not got over my reaction to The Sistine chapel…and I stood there with my eyes wide and mouth open… WOW!! it was grand, beautiful and rich…there were large sculptures everywhere, frescos, paintings, stucco work, gold, silver, guess everything packed under one roof, I felt confused but couldn’t pin point the reason then I thought of the purpose behind the church and thought of its religious significance… unconsciously I wondered if I was in a palace or a church…with such grandness and rich beauty who would think of god? Wasn’t god preaching minimalism, letting go and feeling light? There was so much for your mind to absorb there that one never thinks of god, of spirituality or of letting go…The only thing that made me feel light were the high ceilings with an opening from where the sunlight was streaming in and beautiful frescos surrounding that opening. The light was giving them a very soft, dreamy look, almost making you feel like its there that the gods reside…and then again I looked down around me and the huge sculptures and painting were staring at the ‘little’ me, overpowering, I had to look away. There were these little areas of respite from that feeling of being surrounded, the extensive use of gold mosaic tiles in specific areas of the church (especially in the historic church in Venice and in some places in Florence) though it was of course used to show the wealth, glitter and the goodness around God, it also created a very divine, meaningful and conceptual look. Unfortunately the other sculptures around it completely overpowered that little glimmer of hope and happiness. I also have to mention here that in some countries in Europe there were these small square stones fixed in the ground in a pattern around the old city almost uniting and enhancing the main historic buildings of importance, burnished with time and rounded around the corners by people walking over them for hundreds of centuries, it was overwhelming to walk on the same ground, touching the same stones, walking the same path that the great rulers and intellectuals of that time must have done…so many centuries ago…

Well in most historical churches of Rome, Vatican and Venice I felt the discomfort and the weight of standing in front of GOD esp. in the Vatican. Everywhere you are surrounded by these huge sculptures with expressions that only remind you of the misery they went through instead of getting inspired to live from the preaching of Christ. I had never felt like this in any church before… the core of Christianity was not this… Its like you are being judged…and have to obey to everything because the self sacrificing Christ and his followers suffered for you… here forgiveness and accepting pain was glorified but the understanding of a deeper reason to suffer and forgive gets lost… you only try and being a human, try very hard to adhere to that what is glorified…rather than understand the reason behind the glorification. It felt like God was judging me, something I never felt in my connections with God ever. It was always like he was there beside me to help me walk no matter what… connecting, conversing, inspiring and sharing my life. Never judging overpowering or dominating… somehow God and his abode were made so overpowering that your connection with him on a spiritual level never grows.

Some modern churches were way better… more simplified, with more empty spaces inspiring you to sit and connect to the invisible power… not underline Power. I was told that was because of the difference between the Roman Catholics and Protestants and their sub divisions…naturally if the belief shifts the approach would change as well…

Amongst all these confusions I spotted ‘Pieta’ in St. Peters basilica and it was beautiful, totally breathtaking…sitting quietly in one corner it made you forget about everything thing else that’s around, all the large sculptures, frescos and wealth, you connect with it in an instant not religiously but as a work of art. To get that kind of expression the artist really has to be connected and be involved in his work…I was amazed…when you compare it with the other sculptures there, the difference in the depth of the expression was clearly visible… a commissioned work for the church, a moment picked up from the history but u can see the dialogue between the artist and his work… a friend rightly said “Great artists have always woven subtext into their art that may be inaccessible even to their own patrons” and that’s what made Michelangelo great…

Its amazing to see the difference of approach in the east and the west. The circumstances were different and the kind of variety that touched the Indian subcontinent due to so many different rulers and their faiths and the assimilation of their cultures along with the one that existed became the reason for the grounded richness. Another difference was that the east was connected very strongly with nature and the west looked at the ideal body for a long long time… therefore the depth of abstract was absent in the west and it surfaced very interestingly in their modern period after the invention of the camera. I ended up more fascinated by the art of their modern times…it was nothing like what I saw in the books… the play of volume, size, medium and texture was used again in a different time but the concepts and the use of allegory and metaphor made all the difference… naturally there were no limitations of religious stories… they explored the possibilities of the senses to its utmost limit…

In the olden times, for the east the disciple’s connection with the supreme power was more important and nature played a very important role in its depiction of the supreme power. That’s what made places like Ajanta, Khajuraho, Konark, etc or even earlier on, Bagh caves very spiritual and sublime. One is completely lost in the magical aura of Ajanta. It was a place meant for religion and the practice of it with no outwardly appearance of any grand God, whether it is Konark temple or Kailashnath in Ellora, scale was important but the lyricism of the beautiful world created by the gods and space to connect to that world is given equal importance…Very down to earth and with its serene beauty it takes you somewhere deep inside the figures without you noticing the anatomy but experiencing the feeling of that expression.

The irony is that in today’s times in the west the churches even though built very early in time are considered the base of religious power, and being used for practicing the faith despite its overpowering feel. Whereas in the Indian subcontinent the structures and temples which exude spiritual energies are alive only in its historical context, while the structures that are used as Gods abode have turned into commercial places of religious significance where you’d be lucky if you even get a glimpse of the idol let alone your time to connect with him or feel the space…

Still looking for the right heading...:)

Im no authority on religion neither do I have much knowledge about it so would invite views to get other dimensions of the same :) Im writing about Jainism in particular because I was born into it and have heard my elders talk of its preachings I could relate to but now my growing dissatisfaction for the way its being practiced led to a discussion with one of my relatives. It helped me connect my spirituality with the base of all religions and clear my confusions to a certain level. In April sometime there was a report on how two elephants were used to pull a rath in Indore in peak afternoon, the rath was double storied with close to 20 people sitting in it including the maharajsab ( Jain saints)…I was aghast to see the picture of the elephants whose legs were tied up with short thick iron chains, so that they can be controlled as there was a huge crowd following the rath…When I started discussing this, the immediate reaction of some people was that they are Digambars and not Shwetambar jain… it disgusted me even more… this is just one example. Time and again I’ve come across incidents where I feel ashamed of how the meanings are distorted and every religion now is adulterated in the way its being practiced, for obvious reasons I like to call my self spiritual and not religious…

So it was on this basis that our discussion started… Mr. Banthia immediately marked me saying you cant criticize a religion as the basic of each religion is simplicity and humanity therefore not believing in it would be wrong. It’s the people who complicate religion, not the religion itself…it was interesting as he asked me if I knew the original meaning of Dharm… which I didn’t…he said it's simply rules to live in a society… he clarified… rules not only to live your own life but to live along with other people… he said the way religion is being practiced now is very complicated. I immediately said yes I cant relate to many things and they confuse me… Mr. Banthia too agreed and said it’s the perception of the people which makes it bad, by just following it blindly without understanding the essence of it.

Luckily my elders were open enough to let me find my own way… Im very spiritual and believe very strongly in energies, in nature being the mother of all creations…and I feel whether it is Mahavir, Buddha, Christ, Shiva or any other God, they all left everything, went and lived their own journey into enlightenment through their own experiences,though their circumstances were different, their times in history were different and their experiences were different but what was similar was that they attained enlightenment by letting go of things... by simplifying life and their thoughts… that is what took them to a higher level where they could absorb the positive energies and float in the atmosphere feeling totally light. Probably they then preached to show the way to everyone but everyone has to go through their own journeys with their own experiences and realizations to find their own enlightenment. For this you have to get to know yourself inside out… probably that’s how I relate to religion… I cant feel the energies in the universe by just praying … I have to connect to it to absorb and create more positive energy to sustain myself, to let go of things and to feel light…

To this his wife asked me how would you get to know yourself inside out and here comes my favorite part…I guess Im lucky that its part of my profession too. In art we express ourselves but how would we express if we don’t know what exactly are we feeling and why?? Therefore one keeps questioning everything one does and sees and feels…analyze them and try to figure out where its comes from… most artists you speak to, the ‘I’ would come in the conversation again and again…not because they are ‘I’ centric or because they don’t look beyond the ‘I’ but because they keep constantly questioning the ‘I’… It’s a journey to look and search for your self, to relate it to others around you and understand the human nature better… its amazing that when you analyze things you might just feel, what you thought of yourself was not what you really are…one reacts to things in a completely uncharacteristic way. Its a long life and one tends to develop knots while living it…while questioning the negative energies one also identifies the knots buried quietly in the past…once you know the knots and accept them, you move on…its not a days process…its in phases, sometimes you are in a certain phase and another time in a totally opposite one, growing and experiencing with time…it just keeps simplifying…you feel more connected to the power in the universe and more positive about things around and most importantly at peace with yourself.

To this Mr. Banthia said there is another way of putting up the same thoughts which incidentally helped me connect to the so called religious thoughts as well. He said when you say you let go, you are using the path of Ahinsa…you forgive, understand that the other person might have a reason to do what he did and also that you had a reason to do what you did, and probably work on those reasons to solve the problem and move on, not let it hold against anyone…that is Ahinsa. Ultimately we both agreed that its important to understand what religion, is to you and why do you need it. Everything exists for a reason, once the purpose is known it becomes easier to identify the road… there is no formula …you have to experience it to ultimately simplify life and let go of it all…strange that a thought like religion, faith or belief in its original form is so beautiful but in today’s world and circumstances man has made it to sound like an abuse.

Abstract thoughts

I have been having very long conversations with myself almost everyday and everyday I think of sitting and writing it down but when I sit, there are so many distractions. However much I try I just can’t remember what I was thinking of writing the whole day… I guess that’s exactly what happens to us in our everyday life, and this time even my work was about similar things… somehow there is a dialogue with oneself almost every minute of the day… Anything that happens or you see is absorbed in that dialogue… you have no apprehensions about that dialogue as no one would hold your words in quotes so you can freely reason out what you were thinking, make your own discoveries and maybe with time and circumstances changing, those discoveries might lead to some other discoveries which were totally opposite to the previous ones… I just love that process… gives me high… that every time you think ‘wow this is it!’ and by the time you reach that ‘this is it’ and thriving on it, you realize there’s more to it… and the process continues…
When you deconstruct the complexities of things, I wonder if we can ever stick to one understanding of a situation… its so multidimensional that everything can be correct in its own way… and everything be wrong in that same way as well… the coin has two sides to it and I guess one can pick up just any side and argue… Only thing is that one needs to figure out how many plus and minus are there for one of the sides to win… so many grey shades that honestly there’s no black and white… But that’s the fun of it as you keep looking for your gray within that basic black and white.
everyone’s caught up in their day to day life…its stressing but in those quite moments when you are with yourself isn’t it fun figuring things out, matching them with your priorities and in the process discovering yourself and others…I guess we all think like this, brood over things, sometimes look for the answers and sometimes the questions for those answers…some people have the luxury of thinking about it and discovering themselves and some don’t…luckily I have that luxury, I can thrive on the process as its part of my work but I see a thousand others whose work has nothing to do with it… they long to have a dialogue but have more practical stuff to attend to first… jobs to finish and between the list of things the thoughts are lost… thoughts that would make them wonder about the sounds and smells and believe in the magic of life…everyone has to work and be a part of the hustle bustle to create and to make things move… guess everything is fine as long as it doesn’t hit the extreme… balance is the key. The rest is all interlinked. One can’t extract anything from anything…