The Bodhana Anxiety

Abhijeet Tamhane

With her dispositions, Jesal Thacker could have flaunted herself as a curator, at least so in the page-three parlance. However, she didn’t, and here she is with her venture called ‘Bodhana’. The name that might sound very ayurvedic to many of us, belongs to an organization for documentation and research on visual arts. Intelligibly, Bodhana owes its nomenclature not to ayurveda, but to the teachings of Yogi Aurobindo who Jesal reveres.

As far as I know, Jesal’s work had started long back when she was just a pass-out from Sir J. J. School of Art and thought an Art Gallery would suffice the growing need for research in art. It took some months and some shows for her to part ways with the idea of primacy of the Gallery, and it took her almost a year to shape Bodhana. Engaging passed-out JJ students for collection of resources was one way, and since much of the resources were in Marathi, engaging translators had to follow. Jesal’s frequent trips to Kolkata, crisscrosses in Mumbai and sojourns elsewhere made bridges straight to the artists and Bodhana became what it is today: a source for (mainly) secondary and (sometimes) first-hand resource-literature for a select artists. The list has less than 100 names now, which should grow fast. To celebrate its birth, Bodhana came out with an edited and translated volume of essays and musings on art by Shankar Palsikar, Vasudev Gaitonde, Prabhakar Barwe, Vasant Wankhede and Prabhakar Kolte. While the thoughts and inspirations shared by these artists bind the book, the works by these Bombay Abstractionists will be on display till December 7 at the Jehangir Nicholson Gallery, NCPA.

Bodhana, at this stage, would only escalate anxiety… will it work, how will it, what if not, why should such an effort in art always fail, and so on. To take the word from Neville Tuli of Osians, ‘art institutions have to be self-supportive’. Will Bodhana do it? One knows galleries in (cities like) Delhi and huge acquisitions of resource-material. Nothing comes out, till the gallery is sure of the monetary mileage off a project. Will Bodhana wear the same high-heels? In a city where the NGMA ‘branch’ and our very own Jehangir Art Gallery have locked up their libraries for want of a librarian and the J.J. School library gets its facelift only if ‘the friends of JJ’ would oblige, these anxieties have more weight than you think.