It’s been over 60 years since Independence, and we are still crying ourselves hoarse about the disappearance of the feudal patrons of the arts, as we struggle to put in place organisa

In India, we have a propensity to treat our heritage as part of a flowing river. In a better mood I call it the votive figure syndrome, or when I am miffed about it, the shaadi shamiyana syndrome.

Life, they say, is replete with paradoxes. At one level we like to believe that there should be gender equality, but when that happens, we lament that finer sensibilities are the martyr.

In the last two years, the one thing that has moved artists, art buyers, gallerywallas, art investors and all those who had nothing to do with art, is the price of art.

Curatorial practice in India is still at a juncture where it can hardly claim to have arrived. Artists, gallery owners, scribes, et al, want to be on the bandwagon and be known as curators. However, with neither enough experience nor training or even a finely honed aesthetic sense, the so-called curated shows keep getting launched into the art market. While the average rasika may not be able to point out what is exactly wrong, they can surely sense a difference.

Diamond encrusted human skulls, formalin preserved genitals of a zebra, rotting human excreta on a swing, oozing menstrual blood, scalloped out insides of dolls dipped in human blood, mounds of stinking trash…the list of such revulsion inspired art seems to be getting longer by the day.

Shrikant, a novel by Sarat Chandra Chatterjee, is one literary piece that I think has portrayed a very true picture of India of that period. Any indigenous literary work always gives you more contentment than a foreign piece and that is why when we were growing up, my mother made us read Hindi or translations of other Indian languages.

The real hallmark of an author’s greatness is his or her ability to etch out characters so that they are not mere figments of imagination but grow on you almost like people you know.