Skip to main content

Art dies when...

By Gemini AI


“Is there any politician who is a poet or artist of any sort?” Anu asks me. Anu – Anushri is her official name – is a former student of mine. She gave up science though she was good at it and took up literature for graduation after which she pursued a journalism course with a prominent media house and then became a journalist.

There are a few of them, I tell her. I name Vaclav Havel and our very own Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

Anu thinks I am joking when I mention Vajpayee because she knows how much I detest Vajpayee’s political party to which the present Prime Minister of India belongs.

“Did Vajpayee write any good poetry?” Anu asks.

“I’m not sure,” I say. “He wrote stuff like: क़दम मिलाकर चलना होगा। We will have to go forward together.” I remember one or two such lines of Vajpayee from my teaching days in Delhi. My students there used to recite such stuff in the morning assembly.  

“That sounds more like politics than poetry,” Anu protests.

I meet Anu once in a while in a café outside her newspaper office. Our conversations are usually brief because she is busy unlike me who is a relaxed retired teacher. But today Anu seems to be having some time on her hands.

“Have you heard of Rimbaud?” I ask.

“You never mentioned that name in class, I’m sure,” she says.

“I didn’t. He wasn’t worth mentioning. He could have been a great poet. But his poetry died the moment he came in contact with politics.”

Arthur Rimbaud. French poet who made the whirling world stand still with his poetry before he turned twenty. I couldn’t have mentioned him in my classes. He betrayed poetry. He betrayed love. He became a trader. Of weapons. Of humans.

He abandoned poetry at the age of 20 and took to selling arms and slaves. He left France a few years after Otto von Bismarck invaded his country and went to Africa. Did Bismarck’s power kill his poetry or did Africa’s helplessness do it? I’m not sure.

“He realised that the sword was mightier than the pen?” Anu asks. That’s Anu. Now you know why I love her so much. Sometimes I think she is my alter ego.

“Maybe he realised that poetry was as bourgeoisie as politics. And religion.”

“There you are! Literature, religion, politics – all three belong ultimately to those who wield the power, right?”

I smile. “Genuine literature dissents,” I say. “Rimbaud was too young to understand that.”

“That’s it,” Anu cries out as if she is Archimedes in the bathtub that brought him his Eureka moment. “Dissent is what art is.”

“Assent is what politics is. Religion too. Assent to dogma, credo, and protocol.” And then I ask, “Do you know that Hitler was an artist before he became a politician?”

“What?”

“Yes.”

Comments

  1. Many of us lose art as we lose our youth. It's permitted in youth. But when you "grow up" you have to do something that you can make a living at.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh yes, I'd have perished long ago if I hoped to eke out a living from writing.

      Delete
  2. Hari Om
    ....and there are those who go the other way. The fashion these days is for ex-MPs to write their memoir, though that's less literature, more vendetta quite often. As for art, Winston Churchill was pretty handy with oils and canvas... YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Churchill was an exception, I think. Or maybe the times have changed. Now Trump is the rule.

      Delete
  3. Artists are of a genre. They can become very good at art or a politician! And then they do it good!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...

Dopamine

Fiction Mathai went to the kitchen and picked up a glass. The TV was screening a program called Ask the Doctor . “Dopamine is a sort of hormone that gives us a feeling of happiness or pleasure,” the doc said. “But the problem with it is that it makes us want more of the same thing. You feel happy with one drink and you obviously want more of it. More drink means more happiness…” That’s when Mathai went to pick up his glass and the brandy bottle. It was only morning still. Annamma, his wife, had gone to school as usual to teach Gen Z, an intractable generation. Mathai had retired from a cooperative bank where he was manager in the last few years of his service. Now, as a retired man, he took to watching the TV. It will be more correct to say that he took to flicking channels. He wanted entertainment, but the films and serial programs failed to make sense to him, let alone entertain. The news channels were more entertaining. Our politicians are like the clowns in a circus, he thought...

Stories from the North-East

Book Review Title: Lapbah: Stories from the North-East (2 volumes) Editors: Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih & Rimi Nath Publisher: Penguin Random House India 2025 Pages: 366 + 358   Nestled among the eastern Himalayas and some breathtakingly charming valleys, the Northeastern region of India is home to hundreds of indigenous communities, each with distinct traditions, attire, music, and festivals. Languages spoken range from Tibeto-Burman and Austroasiatic tongues to Indo-Aryan dialects, reflecting centuries of migration and interaction. Tribal matrilineal societies thrive in Meghalaya, while Nagaland and Mizoram showcase rich Christian tribal traditions. Manipur is famed for classical dance and martial arts, and Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh add further layers of ethnic plurality and ecological richness. Sikkim blends Buddhist heritage with mountainous serenity, and Assam is known for its tea gardens and vibrant Vaishnavite culture. Collectively, the Northeast is a uni...

Dine in Eden

If you want to have a typical nonvegetarian Malayali lunch or dinner in a serene village in Kerala, here is the Garden of Eden all set for you at Ramapuram [literally ‘Abode of Rama’] in central Kerala. The place has a temple each for Rama and his three brothers: Lakshmana, Bharata, and Shatrughna. It is believed that Rama meditated in this place during his exile and also that his brothers joined him for a while. Right in the heart of the small town is a Catholic church which is an imposing structure that makes an eloquent assertion of religious identity. Quite close to all these religious places is the Garden of Eden, Eden Thoppu in Malayalam, a toddy shop with a difference. Toddy is palm wine, a mild alcoholic drink collected from palm trees. In my childhood, toddy was really natural; i.e., collected from palm trees including coconut trees which are ubiquitous in Kerala. My next-door neighbours, two brothers who lived in the same house, were toddy-tappers. Toddy was a health...