 I admit, I feel a bit torn between the options that I have in front of me having listened to various speakers in the morning and the debate that it generated brought a few thoughts especially with regard to my being a practicing artist. And so I thought that I would perhaps comment on some of these and then do some ruminating. But then you have something else here. If I say that it was a heavy duty discourse, I mean, I mean it and I mean that it's something which dislodges me in some way to reflect upon issues which are larger. I don't know how to begin and how to end. There may be just questions or there may be just reflections. Thinking about having belonged to what you may roughly call the word that has been now has become quite popular called visual culture. When it's really dissected, you find that it is a segment of that visual culture to which some of us belong. It is in that sense a minority culture. I'm just putting it in numerical terms. And in a way it is associated with a particular kind of culture and particular kind of ideas associated with what quote unquote modern. One can bring in several other discourses along with that. And that culture has existed as I grew up from sixties onwards and observing my seniors and my peers fighting. What shall we say? Odds. My dear friend Bhopal Khakhar had to subsist on doing a job as an accountant because he was trained as a chartered accountant until about seventy-eight or so. After having painted Guru Jayanti and several others he was still working as an assistant accountant in Jyoti Limited and Bharat Linda in Baroda while painting at home. And then you know the story of liberalization that everybody speaks about and the arrival of the auction houses. If I may put it that way, not to speak of other forces that accompanied, that it accompanied. And then there are the media, there are the media reports. For the first time there were two things. Let me tell you that earlier whenever there was an exhibition there was either somebody who was an art critic or whoever he was or she was wrote a short review. Which almost all newspapers had. They were paid a pittance of something like 100 rupees or even less. It was very interesting that after the market opened so to say that the market came into the picture and my friend then was able to give up his job and could then live on sale of his work. That we also learnt that gradually many newspapers stopped publishing art reviews. The reason being artists don't need any publicity. We don't need artists perhaps I say or we don't need art because it doesn't bring any revenue or whatever it is. And then there began a whole process of what the market brings in the world of art. The galleries, number of galleries in my room and it reached its peak. I mean it began in a small way but around 2002 and 2003 it reached its peak when the prices were phenomenally increased. To certain extent that galleries even told us that we were underpricing our work. They were not doing enough business from our work and look at your juniors. So that was the kind of climate that I observed over the years. But what we wanted to paint for instance from let us say if I take a cut-off period as 1970. Both Bopen and I were in Baroda. Bopen began to discover his sexuality around that period of time and began to paint. You know if you know the painting call you can't please all. Something which is indicative of that that the nude man standing outside in a balcony declaring himself. Well I did my own thing and I also found my way. We had very few takers, very few who would either write about us. Interestingly both Bopen and I write in Gujarati. We are sufficiently known as Bopen as a short story writer and I as a poet. But even Gujarati writing did not cover art. It was because we insisted so they would sometimes bring it and some of the journals were. But journals have a very limited appeal and it's also sort of it's a 500 to 750 copies. So that is where it reaches. So it is another minority culture to which it belongs. But then when this whole business of market opened suddenly it was the pricing that brought art somewhere in a region which now people say that the area extended from the upper class to the or to a select few to a larger community of readers especially middle class. Who were sort of you know taken aback and they would not know how to deal with it. You know because they had perhaps seen that there are some crazy people who do such things. But now those things that those crazy people do bring such an amount of money. This is something which is associated in the popular mind. We received all kinds of queries and all that and I know that my friend was so amazingly tactical about both his sexuality. You know he could paint his Gujarati you know which had two nude men and keep it open in his house. And he being a very soft spoken and very nice and very simple man who was here gray hair white hair in fact. So he would go for a very elderly person then what he was at that even the middle class Gujarati who lived nearby would not object. But the same painting when it was taken to Camel they had to put it in a separate room. They could not show it there. So what was happening we were slightly taken aback. Something which can be you know here openly in his middle class locality and some saying which in a sort of whatever you call it. Jahangirat gallery and Camel gallery on the first floor had to hide it. Similarly even here you know and I would not cite all the examples but let me come back to Baroda and. I would say that when it opened when it began to open then suddenly we began to witness many other viewers which we did not. Or the viewers who witnessed others did not viewers and now somewhere there was a kind of a that attack. And that is where all kinds of issues cropped up and particularly with regard to education. I remember when I was teaching Bopen had made a print which is again a very explicit print it was called it's called intimacy. And it was there in the classroom and all the students nobody ever bothered. But if that situation which gradually let us say let me tell you first that it was. A combination of the market opening and the type of new middle class culture that had come to the fore. It was also accompanied by an increasing instance of communalism. It's not that communalism didn't exist but it came on the surface and it began to show in various ways. For instance it was after the 69 riots in Ahmedabad that I came to know about it because then I came to be known by my name. Until then I did not because that we lived in a kind of a Nehruvian sort of syncretic world of sort. So from the 80s onwards one began to notice that that was a gradual rise in the city of Baroda and elsewhere. So there are multiple forces which were rising and we noticed them. But what we did was another thing but what we did was to have sort of protest. What we did was to make posters what we did was to try to explain to people etc. As artists and as you know the story of Samath. It was similar story in Baroda but that story in a way came to a flash point later in about 10 years time after in 2002. And we realized that now whatever that we did was suspect. In that sense you then at one level found a kind of a new world new and let me again use the example of Hopan Khakkar. He built his own house he lived now comfortably he had everything and many other artists young artists too. So there came some amount of money with which many an artist were able to do very ambitious kind of work. Which they would not have been able to do earlier but alongside came all these forces this began to rise right in front of our nose. And it is very difficult I have no answer I don't have actually clear picture of it as to how it works where it works in which measure it works that even in a town like Baroda a particular region has its own particular type of response. It is not the city of Baroda and within that there is a community in which we had function for something like 30 years without being threatened. Without ever being threatened. So what happens when a some non entity you know some legal whatever it is you know comes to the faculty of fine arts and finds that a work in an examination is objectionable and then he brings police with him. Now how do you explain where do you explain where do you you know put it in in which so what is we are talking about mobs and democracy. In one sense they all came together and the entire city of Baroda was a gawk fine arts college where I taught for nearly 30 years you know. In the university hierarchy was at the lowest because university did not consider even its existence because we didn't figure it was. In that sense again using the same board minority that it was a small institution with something like 400 to 500 students. They talked about it when something appeared in the press and now what appeared in the press you know made them aware of this institution in a different sort of way. And the city of Baroda came to know of the faculty of fine arts you know which it had never bothered to find out and they said ah this is what they do. So I am going back to the thing that it is what do you do how do you work what do you work. I mean I mean if I use the idea of sexuality in the case of open kakhar or if I use the idea of let us say political content in the work of another artist. Then these become pronounced these have these became pronounced as the situation grew and that we found ourselves in a situation where we I don't know the questions that arose were like this. Firstly how shall we pursue what we are doing. Shall we be able to pursue or shall we be able to do what we are doing because one of the things that is of prime importance for. I can speak for myself or I can speak for both and to some extent say that look we wanted to do what we had decided to do no matter what happens. I suppose every artist what is grain things of that you know every writer what is grain also thinks that that. But how would you do it you know where would you hide it would you show it here you would not show it in the city of Baroda. So you would only show it outside or nowadays in some cases as I have heard that you show all these things abroad. Which you would not in some cases I know that the Tullodia has faced the problem I know that there are other artists have faced the problem. Then what do you do there are two options one is you find a way to either navigate not navigate but also find a way to deal with the situation. Or evolve a language which allows you to say what you want to say no way so you will have to devolve you have to actually create a new language. And in that I think video has come as a handy tool in some cases not everybody but in some cases it has come. So technology has fed into that but at the same time when I was listening to a friend the perils of using that thing. You know the something you know which you pointed out so succinctly today you know is not often recognized that you literally take it as if it is an innocent medium which it is not. And here brings the you know the whole issue of either medium is message or it is question of means and ends that sometimes the means overtake the ends. And that you try to bring or you try to seek all your answers in your means. And if the means take the form of ends there is likely to be a very serious problem. And I find that there are similar issues which are arising. And so today you know if the exposure is such suppose if it is through I don't know let me let me bring it in a different way. The video and the neck and the rest of the electronic or the type of work which we which could be fed into that territory are viewed by everybody. Is art per se or art I am talking about is does it circulate only a portion of it is only the same because it was under attack that was. But that is not circulating it still remains small or perhaps somewhere outside. So in the larger explosive domain of the IT culture whatever you wish to say that art still function that when art finds its art fights its own battles. Now if we have to put it all together and see that why and how you know to respond how to respond to this there are all these issues that stand in front of you. It's not without that you know that you live in a city now in a place like Sadanand also mentioned the state of Gujarat and everything. Now it is also the culture of fear that has actually been generated. It's not that there well some amount of culture of fear has always been there but not to the extent to which it is. I would only add to this that even when I go somewhere I find that even in the city of Baroda in a corner say that this is it is Hindu this area belongs to even in villages I found hoardings like that. Now where does it come from and how does it work and there are all kinds of minorities which. So in some ways I am using the term minority in a slightly different context and I want to say that it is through which if an artist practices and he is still addressing whom is he addressing. Is he addressing a crowd after you have made the painting belongs to the rest of the world so it belongs to everybody I mean but does it address or is it being viewed by as many people. When it is being viewed by as many people then what happens is what happens to Hussain. So it is interesting in that sense that kind of a culture which spreads and which goes through various means you know brings with it variety of problems and variety of I have not explained myself very well. But I have tried to put some kind of a focus on some of the issues about practicing of being in it and to face it and to find how and I am very in some ways I would like to say that in the last 20 years or so. I think the artist has found various means and they have in some ways I am very happy to say that many have actually confronted the issue frontally. Now this is something which is despite this is nothing to do with the technique culture it is within the culture in which they belong. And it is very interesting that in my time when I was a young artist the culture that existed in the world of art did not allow us to go political. Politics was regarded as something which was outside the realm of culture and art. So it was a sort of an apolitical not that there was no politics every act is political in that sense. But in those days when we were growing it was that kind of thing and anything that you painted which had a very direct content was termed illustrative. Illustrative was a kind of a term of maligning. Now today I am very happy to say that not only these two aspects have not only been embraced but have been explored fully by a couple of generation of artists. And these words are no longer the meanings that they carried in those days. So I am very terribly happy about the whole thing but at the same time the situation is quite complex far more complex than what it appears to be on the surface.