A Loveable Cyborg
I forgot the name of the film. May be I can go and check it in google. But then I become so meticulous, which I loathe. I remember the character played by Sylvester Stallone being brought into a futuristic world. He used to be a 20th century Cop, who cursed and swore a lot. In his new avatar, he is a cyborg but unlike the Terminator played by Schwarzenegger. He has passions. Stallone falls in love with a new age woman Cop. She takes him home and proposes that they would make love. He waits for her touch. But to his surprise and dismay, she sits before him and raises her hands. She asks him to emulate her gestures. And soon she starts writhing and throbbing. Yes, in a futuristic world (perhaps, that world is already here), people can make love like that. They can create their own communities and even get married with their simulated cyborgian selves and others that defy geographical, linguistic, socio-cultural and racial boundaries. Now, I think I am parroting the words of Baiju Parthan, the artist and the techno-shaman.
Baiju Parthan, as his life story uncoils before us through his own words as well as those of the writer Ranjit Hoskote, appears to be a flower child from the Seventies who is transported to live in a world where parameters and terms of references of life have changed. But Parthan, equipped with his higher intelligence, aesthetic verve and philosophical outlook overcomes the hurdles of the new world and even beats his new age counterparts in efforts and expressions. One feels the triumph of a man, an artist who consciously created a cyborg within him and waded through the jungle of conventional thinking process and art making only to come out as an unsurpassable man and artist.
An aptly titled, dexterously edited and conveniently designed book ‘Baiju Parthan: A User’s Manual’ is one of the richest monographs that we have in our scene. The mutuality between the author and his subject flourishes and blooms when Hoskote handles the intricacies of Parthan’s art using poetic diction, yet not deviating from the objectivity that the subject demands. Perhaps, when one recounts Baiju’s self willed exile from Kerala to Goa several times it achieves the hues of a contemporary myth. As a researcher who holds a Post Diploma in Comparative Mythology from the University of Bombay, Baiju must be the first person to see and enjoy the evolution of his youthful past into a veritable mythology. Then the mythology merges with a history of struggle in the suburban Bombay. Encounters with ‘computers as glorified typewriters’, ‘lessons in hardware and software’ and ‘courses in computer programming’ etc are etched in those annals.
“In the end, one admission is called for- that I am still hooked onto the stereotype of the artist as a solitary being, intentionally living on the edge. To bring forth from within oneself evocative objects that alter our perception of the world,” that is the candid confession of Parthan. He bares open his heart, soul and brain for the reader by allowing him/her to browse through his private journal. Parthan’s tryst with destiny and art is a complex one. He moves from Joseph Cornell to Roy Lichtenstein, from Immanuel Kant to J.Krishnamurty, from Plato to Descartes in order to reveal what is behind his complex works of art.
Baiju Parthan, for an average intelligent person like me, is an intellectual giant having a variety of interests. He is one of the few artists in India who deliberately avoids talking about art and he has the guts to say that his art is informed by other disciplines rather than art history alone. He explains the depth and tenderness of his relationship with Ranjit Hoskote, his Boswell (for the time being at least-What does he drink when Baiju drinks wine, Ink?) and says that they do not discuss much of ‘art’ but they discuss a lot of poetry and other branches of knowledge. The mutual respect and love for each other is vivid and it makes the reading a memorable experience.
‘Fringes’ is what appeals to Baiju Parthan. Anything that comes from the fringes excites him and he is a devoted student of fringe-underground-subaltern-counter cultures. His interest in the cyber world does not vibe well with the institutional/corporate cyber mantras. He translates his affinity for the fringe cultures through a metaphor of the sapwood and heartwood. Drawing an allegorical narrative from his botanical studies, Baiju asserts that the sapwood, the live giving entity is always discarded for heartwood that turns into coffee tables and furniture. “Now the most startling fact. What we recognize as heartwood was once all sapwood. It is the sapwood that in reality turns into heartwood. As the tissue in the living sapwood become defunct it sinks towards the centre of the tree to become part of the heartwood. I will leave you with that picture to draw whatever conclusion you may want to.” Listen to these words. There is greatness in it.
Angst for innovation tinged with nostalgia is what drives Baiju forward. He speaks of his mother, Francis Newton Souza, Mathew (a friend who died in a freak accident), the places he passed through, the buildings that awed him, but always with the sap flowing in between words. He opens the doors of perception so that the viewer can get a friendly entry into his multimedia projects. He believes in cause and effects in a more scientific way. And his works explicate his convictions. Baiju Parthan is a loveable cyborg because he stands for the changes in perceptions. In his own words, “I am a cyborg? I some ways I am, I suppose, because I do have an almost symbiotic relationship with my computers. So much so that they are an extension of one’s being and invisible, almost taken for granted and invisible like electricity. It is a case of the invented tool reshaping one’s perception of the world.”
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