 organized by the Typography Society of India. I am extremely happy to share with you this landmark that we'll be completing one year this 27th of June. Today we have a master calligrapher Mr. Narayanapattadiri one of the finest calligraphers India has ever produced with us. He'll be speaking about his life journey from a fine art student to a fine calligrapher and a graphic designer. He shares his experiences in various fields he left his mark as a calligrapher including publication design, film and video, exhibition, motion graphics etc. Today this biographical talk will take us to unexplored areas and applications of the wonderful art form of calligraphy. Narayanapattadiri graduated from College of Fine Arts Trivandrum. In 1982 he joined Kalakumadi group of publications in Trivandrum as an artist and his designation was calligrapher. He is the first person in Kerala to be designated as a calligrapher. He worked on the creative expression, calligraphic expression for titles for different stories and articles in the publication that time. More than four decades he played explored and expressed with Malayalam alphabets giving fine expressions to titles of stories, poems and articles in different publications. He is a recipient of the Jigji Excellence Award in International Calligraphy for many years. He has conducted several exhibitions in art galleries and educational institutions in different parts of the world. His works are exhibited in the prestigious Calligraphy Stone Park in urban China and also at calligraphers in conversation, the annual International Calligraphy Exhibition in San Francisco. He is the chief organiser and the festival director of Kachadatapa, the first national calligraphy festival of Kerala. Mr. Bhattadiri designed a permanent exhibition of his calligraphic expression based on the legendary writer Mr. Ovi Vijayan's Malayalam classic, Kasakinda Itihasa, which is a first-of-his-kind calligraphy series based on an oval in any Indian language. It has been my privilege to be his friend for a long time and I was following his work. I am also like thousands of other calligraphers in the world. I am also inspired by his work. And one thing which is very important to note that like when you attend Tibetan painting or the sculptures or when we attend any event of spirituality, there is a sense of calmness and everything becomes very calm around you. So when you attend a workshop or a calligraphic demonstration by Mr. Malayalam Bhattadiri, the most important thing is that his calmness and the spiritual feel, he shares it with the entire audience. The entire place becomes very calm and serene and quiet. And his calligraphy I feel is a personification of elegance, beauty and charm. And he does a lot of interesting experiments with different styles, colours, textures and tools. And I was very privileged few weeks back when he shared on a personal level his recent experiments with the oblique pen where he developed a very different technique and style of expressing Malayalam letter forms in a calligraphic style based on the oblique nib. And very important, another very interesting thing is that he wakes up at 3.30 every morning and from 4.30 onwards he spends a few hours on the most important time of the day. He spends on his calligraphic experiments and shares it in different social media, his Facebook pages, a wonderful source of inspiration to many generations of calligraphers around the world. And he has played a very important role in making calligraphy very popular in the public, not only in India but abroad also. And one of the greatest things about the lockdown, a lot of youngsters have taken up calligraphy, have taken inspiration from great masters like Marana Bhattaki. I am extremely happy to introduce him to all of you. On behalf of the organizing committee of the Typography Society of India, I would like to thank him for accepting our invitation and for giving us this talk. Over to you, Mr. Marana Bhattaki, thank you very much. Good evening everyone. Our main theme for today is expression about expression and innovation in calligraphy. And I would like to emphasize more on Malayalam. As you may all know, Malayalam is one of many Indian languages that have very beautiful languages. Considering it is included in the government of India's list of classic languages, we can understand the value and legacy associated with it. Like many other languages, Malayalam is also a language that has grown roots and bounds to roots and then to its roots as well. Personally, I am very fond of the language and its levels and have carried them in my heart from the inside. During my school days, I had a habit of writing in my classmates who saw this, approached me to write their names on their new text books and notebooks. And I would affectionately write their names as per their request. I was careful that I shouldn't be writing in a similar way at all times and wanted to bring about some difference each time I was. To be very honest, I did not know what is calligraphy or even there was such an art. When I go to college, my writing experience moved to out-of-no-books, to postage all of it. I had written my own poems in Kerala that is Kalyerikumastu and even in invitations such as wedding invitations, such as on the Saturdays. Apart from the sheer curiosity out of doing it, I really don't think at all that was done because of the love for calligraphy or for money. Later, I joined in the College of Finance. It was essential to find a job for surveyors and I hence worked with a senior friend, The ability to write letters kept me going there too. The same skill then gave me the opportunity to collaborate with the Kalaagavani group, the Kalaavani group of publications. This is one of the very well-known publishing houses in Kerala. My main job was to write titles for stories, poems and other articles written by most popular Malayalam writers, authors. As I was regularly doing this difficult job, I was given a task of writing 45 titles in two days. It slowly started to become more and more interesting than just a routine job. I can easily say that I did that job for 18 years with a lot of enthusiasm. It was there, I was given a title of a calligrapher. No one in Malayalam language has ever been given such a status before or ever since. Although I have now made my living as a graphic designer, I continue to work on titles for many publications, many publications and films, movies and other digital media. The Malayalam script is something I really love about all the Indian scripts, not only because I have been practicing the script since I went out and the aesthetics of the script, it comes on a scoop or something that I look to explore every single day. There is a popular job about the people of Kerala. It has been said that they will speed the language of the place they moved to in little to no time. This indicates how good Malayalis are to accept and to learn a new language, a new culture, etc. It is very much possible that, possible and true to an extent. And hence I think we should, we should not pass this so far as a job. Being someone who deals with the letters of the Malayalam language, I feel there is still a long way to go in this game. In my view, Malayalam letters can be written like how we write letters of any other language in the game. And I am skeptical this is a possible to everybody on the line. That is something I feel is a bonus of the Malayalam script. The script, the structure and its forms are very flexible compared to other counterparts. Another peculiar feature of the script is that I have been able to explore with this possibility to make ambigrams. For those of you who don't know about ambigrams, this is a calligraphy which reads the same straight and held upside down as well. I have been able to make around nearly 25 of them. And I have not seen many other coming up with ambigrams in any other legal language. I will show you some ambigrams of mine. This is my name, Malayalam. The ease which can be extended and moulded in such relations. There is a speciality of Malayalam. Now coming to the Khandarmeri calligraphy, my curiosity for exploring more about the letters has now reached calligraphy. More than just about writing letters in a beautiful poem, calligraphy has now grown into pieces of creative art that may contain compositions with the letters. It has sound known at least in some channel, to work of art which are work people or even more than paintings. I am so illiterate to know that there are many people who still keep all this in their minds and express them sometimes. Due to the constant encouragement of Sundar, one of my close friends, now he is normal. I was able to collect and hold an exhibition of over 150 selected works from over 40,000 calligraphy and calligraphy titles that I wrote in December. The exhibition is in December 2012. I was lucky to receive the support of many friends, many many friends for the year. And the success it had achieved will never be forgotten. It paved the way for me to hold exhibitions in Kerala and other parts of India like Delhi, Bombay, Sennai, etc. Even see this. If my memories are right, it is from 2050 that I have started posting one or two calligraphy works daily in Facebook for which I have been receiving some great response. I will show you some FB posts. It was during those times, one of my other friends, Anu Bhamakshi, told me about Hachitha. He is a very good Indian calligrapher. My perception about calligraphy slowly began to change after I saw the works of Hachitha. The writing still went on without anyone to leave the way. No one to point out the thoughts and shortcomings. All I had was a belief and optimism that I was doing good enough. It should be in 2016 that I received an email from someone named Saren Kulkarni. The email was an imitation into a calligraphy camp organized by Atharaya Impune. I was totally shocked. The etiquette followed and I reached the phone and asked for the schedule. Both team Hindi speaking calligraphy, whom I did not know. And then there was me trying to be one of them. I was scared that I did not know Hindi. On the next morning, when we were going towards the campsite from the hotel, I was waiting alone in the hotel lobby helplessly looking at the other calligraphists who were up to students and friends who were talking to each other joking and visibly having a lonely time. Suddenly there was a man who came to me with a picture in his mouth. Are you not aware of the man who did this work? I really was giving my answer. But that was a different result. He then stayed with me until the end of the camp while working and eating. The bone which started back then it is still going to be destroyed. After being someone who used to use brushes, I got to learn about various calligraphy tools and various techniques of calligraphy from much earlier. I think I have said this before and I would like to say it once again. That meeting must definitely be in the training world or that was the training world of my calligraphy day. The new face of my calligraphy that we give back is not doubt at the stage you are seeing today. I will show some of my works. The day I post one or two calligraphy works in Facebook like this. These are the works from that day. These are in Malayalam poems. I like poetry also. I am writing Malayalam poems for famous poets. I am indeed indebted to many calligraphies in India and abroad and their influence is also visible in Viva. I feel it is safe to assume that calligraphy has been tremendous development in almost all languages. The number of calligraphy exhibitions, festivals etc. that are organized regionally, nationally and internationally is just a testament to the energy that prevails about calligraphy. Nowadays calligraphy is including making the fashion designers and architects including calligraphy in various forms in different languages. I have personally done calligraphy and variety of fabrics in Kutka, T-shirt, T-shirt etc. I feel that it makes the fabric even more beautiful and popular among the people. The interests that we are seeing in the younger generation to learn and practice calligraphy is surely giving us signs that the future of this art is going to be even more exciting even though it is lagging behind compared to other languages in India. I am thrilled about how the calligraphy scene is improving Kerala and Malayalam languages as well. One day a schoolboy asked me what is the scope of calligraphy and how it may trigger calligraphy? I replied that the scope depends highly on the skill. If you are very skilled there are ample opportunities to express your work in calligraphy and gain money from it. The key to success I feel is that one needs to practice as much as they can so that the art will move to its perfection. I also would like to say that you should not work on emptying just for money involved. The passion towards the art is more important than the money that will come from it. I will show some more words. Every day I work at 3 o'clock in the morning and one hour I practice. Good times to everyone. I can see the influence of many artists in calligraphy. Thanks to them too. Okay Narayan. We are going live with the Q&A session. Thank you very much for sharing your wonderful experience with our audience. It was a wonderful experience listening to you and seeing your work. I will be reading out questions. Can you tell us something about your predecessors in Malayalam calligraphy? Many artists might have seen the works of your previous generation people who have worked in the area of Malayalam calligraphy and have seen how they inspire you to their work. When did you plan to make the oblique pen calligraphy public? It is not in the public domain yet. It was a wonderful work. I am very curious to know when do you plan to make it public? Malayalam is a way of publishing upto the English language. I can't say anything else. I would like to say something about the writing style of Malayalam and the other languages I have defined. I have extended my research on Malayalam and English. I think Malayalam is the type of version of Malayalam. have defined. All Indian languages are clockwise and the English and other they are anticlockwise. So the oblique pen is little difficult to write in Madhyalan letters. That is why I am trying to develop a new state. That is why it is... And can you share something about your dream project, you know, that video you are planning to do with hundreds of people around the world writing the letter? On the world calligraphy day, August 11th, I am planning to make a video on 100 calligraphies with 100 languages from 100 countries. They will write the first letter of their native language. That is what I am planning. Some are sending the video to me and I will write it. What is the inspiration to do a video film like that on the first letter? Have people's perception of calligraphy changed over the years? Yeah, there are very, very, very much things. Most of the calligraphies are artists also. So the colouring style and other things. Your stamp that you use in your work looks very interesting. Can you tell something about it? When I went to South Korea, the Chinese calligraphists and the Korean calligraphists, they put their sign in their mark. Need your own stamp. What is your favourite tool? We have worked in different tools. Depends on the writing style. What inspired you to become a professional calligrapher? And can you tell us about this? How did you start this making up and doing that When did you start all this and what was the inspiration to do that? Because at that time, very silent, no phone, that is the main. When did you start this thing of making up a tree and doing all this? When did you start this habit of making up early? More than six or seven years. Earlier we talked about the public opinion of calligraphy. Like many calligraphers, you have also mentioned that the awareness is a problem. When we were organising the Kachetadapa event in Trivandrum, that time also a lot of people asked, what exactly is calligraphy? And what is this three-day program and what is the big thing about sort of people demonstration, workshop and lectures and so on. So what is your plan, I mean how do we improve the public awareness about calligraphy? In Kerala, nobody knows about calligraphy, that is the main problem. Not only Kerala, everywhere there is a problem. Even when a lot of people ask, what is the calligraphy, what is the big thing about? Now I am planning to see the education minister and tell him to include calligraphy in school syllabus. That will be a good thing. The education ministry is one of my friends. Let us hope that it will work out and you know, you will get to include this in the school syllabus. That will make good future. But how do you, how will we train the teachers to teach calligraphy? Who will teach? The drawing teachers, in the school there is a drawing teacher. Most of the drawing teachers, I take a workshop for the school drawing teachers here, one day workshop. But most of the teachers were interested in writing, so they can do. And you might have seen, there is a big change in this calligraphy scene all over, after lockdown. What is your opinion? What is the impact of lockdown on calligraphy? More time to work. More? More time. Because whatever I have observed, there are suddenly I can see hundreds of calligraphy youngsters in India taking calligraphy and they are doing a lot of work and posting their work every day. Before the lockdown, I have never seen that kind of work happening in Instagram. Now you can see different age groups from a 10 standard child to a 60 year old person. Now two people are working in calligraphy, posting their work. I have never seen that kind of activity happening in social media before the lockdown. So do you think it is a positive thing? Something is positive. Because in this lockdown, I designed two fonts, one is working on Malayalam font. Malayalam font is very difficult to make it do its, it is more than thousands. So it is very difficult. In the lockdown, I have more time. Is it the same one you wanted to have Mohanlal involved in that? But he is not accepted. No, but it is the same font you are talking about? No, no, that is another. And can you tell me something about, you know, you do a lot of experiments with this upside down, the mirror. Yeah, I can figure it out. I can figure it out. And so sometimes in a workshop, you have done writing your name upside down and then. So how did you start all this and how do you feel about this kind of experiment? Everybody can do that writing for us. We study the letter very softly, then we can write here, anyway, we can write. No, after that, I have written your name for your birthday and sent it to you. So did you see that video and did you see that upside down and then you see Narayana. But what do you feel about this kind of experiment that other people are doing with your name? You know, a lot of our students also started doing that after seeing my birthday. Everybody can do that. Everybody can do that. Yeah. And can you tell us something about your permanent work in China, which is displayed in the stone? Yeah, there is a calligraphy park in China. Calligraphy stone park. They think the calligraphy in cloth or paper will damage after years. So they plan to engrave the calligraphy work in the stone. So for that, they take a wide area to build this calligraphy stone park. They are collecting all over the languages and their calligraphy. From India, they have only two works. One is Devindranath Bhattagore's, another reason why. That is a very important thing to have. Can you tell, share your experience about creating that permanent exhibition on the Soviet Viziennes, Northern? Yeah, yeah, with the Kasak in the Idihasa. It's the 50th year of Kasak in the Idihasa. So in Kasrak, the Viziennes Spain, there is a Ovi Viziennes memorial hall and the gallery, it's a long area. There are a series of calligraphy based on the Ovi Viziennes novel, Kasak in Idihasa. That is permanently, permanently exhibited in Kasrak. And what was the feedback from his readers, you know, because it is a classic novel and there are a lot of readers who are hooked on to that. What are their reactions, the readers' reaction to the calligraphy? Some will call me and they don't know me. And can you share some of your experiences of organizing the first calligraphy event in Kerala? It was the first time, it was a very big, and a lot of calligraphers from all over India. 14 calligraphers from India. And a lot of participants and it was a very important thing to start something in Kerala. Inspired by the type of day. In Malayalam, nobody knows about the, I want to understand about this calligraphy. And can you tell us something about that kind of a relationship, calligraphic expression and font design. You have been both the areas. You have been associated with many font design and a lot of other work. So how do you relate the two of them? In that way, we have freedom to do anything. My own font will have some rules, technique. There is one more question. Do you plan your works and composition first or go with the flow instead? And how do you see the next generation of calligraphers emerging? How do you see their work and how do you react to them? Some of the new generation students are very, very good. They are working. They will find to do good work. And like you mentioned earlier, before also in some other interviews that when you look at applied art education, when we look at applied art education in India, enough importance is not given to calligraph. And one more problem is that not enough importance is given to regional language calligraphy. For example, in Kerala, I don't know how many applied art and students teach Malayalam calligraphy. There is this area of concern I wanted to share with you. You also mentioned in many other discussions that students pass out from their respective states without knowing their mother tongue calligraphy. So, applied art education could really change regional language calligraphy. What do you feel about it that how do we plan to contribute to something to change the situation at the future? They are looking for a scope in this calligraphy. So, in Malayalam calligraphy, there is no reason, only in Kerala. But that's why they are in English. So, do you think that design institutes and applied art institutes contribute more to developing calligraphy? Markshops for design schools and finance colleges here, I will teach them Malayalam calligraphy. How did they react to it? How did they cooperate with it? Most of the students are like some students are not interested in Malayalam. Okay. So, we will conclude the session now. I will just share my screen and thank the people who have contributed to this. I will take one minute. So, I would like to on behalf of the organizing team, myself, professor Parunthi, Dr. Uday Kumar and Chirag Danthar, I would like to thank everybody. We would also like to thank the Hasgeek team and all the group members of the Typography Society of India, WhatsApp and Facebook, everybody. And those who want still to send any questions to Mr. Narayana, you are most welcome to write to us, sumwerk.tsi at gmail.com. And now I will stop here. I want to thank Mr. Narayana Bhattadiri for spending his valuable time with us. It was a wonderful experience seeing your work and chatting with you.