A deserted Kala Bhavan, campus in mid afternoon.  Early December afternoons in Shantiniketan are as sleepy as any other afternoons there.  Braving the slumber and lunch time hunger pangs, however, there was a small line standing in front of a boring looking counter. One could not help but get intrigued by the sudden hint of ‘competition’ in an afternoon when stalls were lazily waiting to be decorated…whilst the faculty and the students had disappeared for lunch. A closer scrutiny hinted that the line was a completion constructed by ‘outsiders’, a weird assortment of very urbane up-market and very poor (looking) people! 

A round of discreet (and some not so discreet) inquiries from ‘in house’ contacts revealed that they were ‘buyers’…out there to buy paintings of ‘famous masters’. More probing revealed that there were speculations about how many Jogen Choudhurys were up for sale. Allegedly, there was a deep disappointment at the shortage of the Master’s works at the last edition of Nandan Mela, and apparently this time there was ‘inside information’ that ‘people won’t be disappointed’. Standing there, it was ‘primitive late capitalism’ in operation when it suddenly occurred that these people were all ‘dummies’, standing there like bricks lined up against a tube well, keeping the turn for their ‘owners’ who were doing some thing else (in this case, eating some lunch). But, this had to be verified, for it formulated an understanding of the structural working of ‘primitive late capitalism’ in an environ that owes its inspiration to earlier histories like the Haripura Congress, and the Cholamandalam initiative.

Walking up to one of the targets/dummies…”What are you standing here for?”…A dictaphone really helps in establishing hierarchies…”I don’t know…madam asked me to stand here”…”Madam who? What does she do?”….”Don’t know…she is an actress…very famous, can’t take her name”; moving over to the next one…”What are you standing here for?”…”madam has gone for lunch”…“What does she do?”…”she runs a art shop in Kolkata…I am her driver”; one could afford to be curiouser and curiouser …but somewhere down the line there was an urge to stop…dwelling too much on this thin line in front of a boring window would stop a larger viewing. It is just that one got to know that though the doors of the mela officially open around 5 pm, dealers and collectors gather there many hours earlier to get previews on what is available for sale and try to unofficially reserve those pieces. 

At the beginning of December, Shantiniketan held its two-day (legendary) Nandan Mela. Started in 1972, to coincide with Nandalal Bose’s birth anniversary, this mela was meant to be where the students of Viswa Bharati’s Kala Bhavan displayed their own efforts and admired and even acquired their teachers’ works of art at affordable prices. Nandan Mela is often romanticised as the student’s very own way of paying tribute to a giant of the Bengal school and outsiders who attended were normally the Bhavan’s ex-students who came from far and wide to relive their time in Shantiniketan. There was also that spirit of public art behind Nandan Mela…may be not ‘new genre’ but definitely public art…the element of making ‘art’ accessible to the local demography…the very milieu from where the grand masters of Shantiniketan derived so much of their inspiration.

In the recent past, the fibre has changed: outsiders come as Page 3 tourists from Kolkata…coming to be seen in a ‘happening place’; outsiders come as gallery agents…looking to pick up high investments commodities for cheap; lots has changed. This change goes hand in hand with the collapse of two categories ‘good artist’ and a ‘high selling artist’…and when students shift their attention from mastering the human form like Jogen Choudhury, to fetching prices like the master, the meaning of Nandan Mela goes through a crucial change which makes it difficult to engage with without (at least) a hint of lament. 

However what one could not understand was, Kala Bhavan’s role in giving this an official stamp, and organising a ‘queuing up for tokens’ for buying Jogen Chowdhury’s paintings (over 25 works were reportedly for sale this year…proving the ‘inside information’ right). While the students and other less eminent teachers of the various departments (graphics, painting, sculpture, textiles, ceramics, etc) are putting up their stalls (specially as we come closer to the ‘last moment’), dealers are busy collecting their tokens. When the mela officially opened, the token holders got a chance on a first come basis to ‘choose their Jogen Choudhurys’. The lowest price was Rs 6,000 this year and the highest (the slab is raised every year) was Rs 80,000. 

Of course, the institution may justify it all by claiming that all the money collected at the mela goes to the ‘Kala Bhavan Students’ Aid Fund’ (set up to help students in need). However, one wonders what all this does to the pedagogical value of an event like Nandan Mela. Students tend to become brash in the pricing of their works…keeping in mind the affordability (re) quotient brought in by the dealers and other buyers, who had managed to take a day or two off from their busy schedules in Kolkata, Delhi, Bangalore or Mumbai. Through all the competing between departments to collect the maximum funds (sadly...proudly aided by Jogen?), the students emulating their teachers in asking for a right “market price”, gallery owners being courted and collectors being pampered, the essence of the mela seemed lost (in transit?).

At the end of the day gallery owners booked students for future shows, collectors commissioned works and many deals were struck (some to be un stuck in future) and a good deal of money changed hands even outside of the (context of the mela). So who are we…outsiders from the mainstream…to come in and lament…object to the how the winds of change are affecting the event-institution called the Nandan Mela. Maybe there would not have been a lament if one did not see a semiotic collapse between the categories of ‘commercial’ and ‘professional’. A lot of the work displayed were shoddy…a lot of them rendered with a serious dose of callousness…executed way too much in the last minute…without any pride…without any passion. If the success of the mela is to be determined by the revenue generated, then the students should just not give in any works or effort…the growing commercial worth of the grand masters of
Shantiniketan will ensure that every year profits rise.

Not that there were no bright spots…the works of some students from the Graphic and Sculpture Departments were worth noticing. The Art History Department stall had an array of good publications on sale (may be because they can’t ride so easily on the shoulders of the Shantiniketan ‘grand masters’).  A group of South Korean students were selling some stunning cinnamon tea and equally stunning drawings and prints at prices, which made you remember Nandan Mela and its prices as they were five years ago. However, it is only when one left the campus confines of Kala Bhavan and went to the banks of Khoyai river to attend the (local) Saturday (crafts) fair, does one notice where exactly the Kala Bhavan students have lost out. Located on the banks of some marvellous Baul singing, this small Saturday evening haat displayed some stunning hand made objects in a wide variety of material…true there were no ‘high art’ claims…but de facto the haat was much closer to the ‘aesthetic movement’   from which Nandan Mela gets its inspiration. It not that ‘Money’ has not made its intervention in the banks of Khoyai, but there is (as yet) no confusion between the categories of ‘commercial’ and ‘professional’…and no brashness, which rides on hand-me-down shoulders.