on Bhupen Khakhar: Waiting for Two, not Godot

on Bhupen Khakhar:
Waiting for the Two, not Godot

“He caught my hand. Involvement, allurement, attraction had disappeared from my heart. I was thinking of paintings”. ( Pages From Diary by Bhupen Khakhar
Contemporary Gallery Specific Art rarely moves me, and even if it does, it evaporates soon, but the moment I saw Bhupen Khakhar’s composition in ceramics * WAITING FOR THE TWO ’. I felt instantly transformed into another space. Nearly, two decades after I saw the piece at a private gallery in Delhi I still feel the vibration of that inside. Within the bulk of works in the exhibition, there was a small drawing in the show titled ‘ CROSSING VAITARNI’. The two works together, if arranged innovatively in a single space could have really brought out the hidden mysterious delightful demon out the two, but as we know, most of the shows are meant to hang the works, merely to sell as much as possible. But that is another matter.

Sufi-Bhakti traditional poetry is overwhelmingly full of this desire for the union of the Two. Its proponents yearn for a long term fusion to realize the God-like one ness, which has often a male-female, yum-yab, yin-yang like pre-condition to realize the Two, with some exceptions in Sufi tradition where Male-Male relationship aspired to for a spiritual union. This union, once processed during Life can endure Death even, and can shine as a unique distant star in the wide open cosmos. But Bhupen’s two never aspire to become a star, and are down to earth entities, almost animal like, who have an earthly urge to realize the other space without abandoning the physical form. The quantum of sensuality hidden under the skin, in the form as-a-bag-as-a-body is almost absolute in the mind of this artist, Bhupen Khakhar.

Again, in a Momin-Khan-Momin couplet, either there is oneness after the union of the two, or only one out of the two if the gaze penetrates the lovers, sitting face to face. This phenomenon of ‘the Two aiming for One’ has almost a monopoly in Indian spiritual understanding, both in practice and in literary traditions as well. Great saint-poet-feminist like Meera, too aimed to submit her entire being to the concept of a sublime merger with the Blue God Krishana. Quite extraordinarily executed in words and action by a range of saints and poets in the past, but with Bhupen it is radically different.

in Sufi conceptual thought we have Ishq-e-Majazi ( love’s empirical side, two as two ) , which follows the lasting realization of love between the two as Ishq-e-Hakiki.( divine love’s oneness ). But Bhupen never seems to touch this over hyped or exaggerated ‘divine’ in love, although he mysteriously discovers the same, but magically, without a trace or a possibility to conceptualize a shrine, unlike in the former.

Before going into dynamics of this ‘two’, we have a highly valued existential one from Samuel Beckett. Waiting for Godot is about a character in absentia, perhaps, someone who is God and Idiot blended as one. Some mundane, routine, and familiar characters are waiting under the tree for this character called Godot. But he never arrives. Here also, the merger of the two into one never happens. Again, poet Momin says, Tum meray kisi tarah na huya, warna duyna mein kya nahin hota ( I tried my best, but if you and I had become one in love, the world would have radically changed). Translated roughly.

Again, in the Backett’s one, there is some sinister air about the non-arrival of Godot. Needless to remind, that Godot was born in the being of nothingness of World War II. There was pain in the air, some hope too. In Backet’s own words, he wrote: “just to escape my awful prose writing those days”. In Sufi-Bhakti poetry it is again, the only means to escape the mundane of the stark temporality heavy upon the mind. But with Bhupen it is the mundane which reproduces its own kind of fish to swim within the mundane itself.

In a Rene Magritte painting, two half-fish-half-human are in a deep embrace on the sea shore with a sailing ship in the back ground, a ship made up of water is a profound desire to fill our consciousness with the idea of a beginning of our love life which emerged from sea life. But as we know we have lost that echo, even if we understand our primordial past scientifically. Drawing it surreally-realistically the figures in stone gives it a vast but sad movement at the same time, although a very powerful visible form to contemplate.

But with ‘waiting for the two’ we are face to face with an invisible presence of a set of two. For this and some other works as well, Bupen uses everything, Indian folk and Modern, Indian mythology and popular, to realize this love’s beginning in the present. He is too interested in what is happening to him and his lover, both imagined and real. He sees this two everywhere, and yet he is rushing to have a ‘ darshan’ of the two. They ‘the two’ are always within his reach, and yet he goes from painting to painting to verify that if the two are still there, on the tree, in the caves, merged in a group, or in a bed room.

Bhupen would not have given birth to this ‘waiting for the two’ and other works if Western Modern art forms had not influenced him at MS University Baroda, but his love for his present as two-as-two never left any space empty, neither for a traditional two-as-one or for a modern one as in Godot. He celebrates life.

In his chapter Disappearance of Literature, from THE BOOK TO COME, Maurice Blanchot says “ …literature is going towards itself, towards its essence, which is its disappearance”. Quite magically, Bhupen has given form to a disappearance through an absence of the two. The absence of the two is ontologically posited in the composition, and hence it creates an instant possibility to deliver this special two. The two can be anything, Lord Rama Lord Hanumana in an sensual embrace ( one of his water colour) , or in ‘ crossing vaitarini’ the two naked males holding the tail of a mythical cow who is helping ‘the two’ lovers without guilt to cross the hell to enter heaven. In one sense, both the hell ( hell as the grotesque figures in the cow )and heaven ( heaven as the two naked males holding the tail ) are just visible in a single frame. This Hindu belief that a cow if donated during life time can help the mortal human being to cross the hurdles after death, for Bhupen it becomes a vehicle to meet his lover waiting in the apartment across the street in Baroda . The painting ‘crossing vaitarni’ is breathing the same air which Bhupen is breathing. Because he is only thinking about Two, always.

This waiting for the TWO is the engine of a thought-machine which transported me once, and is still elevating my circularity of thought to understand both empirical and metaphysical reality of what has disappeared. That is one dimension.

‘Waiting for the Two’ also reminds me a less familiar Prem Chand story in which he shows the strange behaviour of an old lady. She is more than hundred years old, and it was the marriage ceremony of her great-grand-grand children’s marriage where she just uninhibitedly eats the food. And as we know, in India, bride grooms usually arrive a little late in the evening, so these old women had to wait for the couple, endlessly. The story ends with her eating the food left over by guests. No body, interferes in her behaviour, not even his own grand-children.

Bhupen in his work ‘waiting for the two’ shows five old, more than 100 year old women sitting in a row in front of seven plates full of vegetarian meals. There is no one in front of the two plates , and so no one is eating. One instantly realizes that it is because of the material in art which makes it immobile, and hence not Life. The old women are not living forms but dead forms. And if so, then the two holding the tail of a cow are living entities, which are quite worldly, and that is why they are not there, and these five old women are waiting for the two. So, Bhupen celebrates Death without disappearance of the two ( two lovers ) during his life time. Or, if they are they, holding the tail of a cow, and the set of five women had to wait for the two who will arrive any moment, but when?

Paradoxically, the vulnerability of an Artist is multi limbed. The number of arms around his shoulders are indirectly proportional to his inability to manage worldly commitments. The more he realizes his failures in life, the more he invests in Art. He becomes a Bhagwan ( God ) like entity ( say a deity like Vishnu ) who declares his limitations to make love in spite of many arms available to him to hold his beloved. It is almost similar to what we can possibly see in a dream. This vulnerability of artists is universal, and the lovers are not exceptional. They also die like other human beings, and disappear from the vast visibility of our actual continuity of life in the present. It is exactly here, that Bhupen Khakhar escapes the fact of death. He and his beloved are two and want to live and cross the river of this worldly hell unharmed.

In his 1995 water colour, titled “An Old Man From Vasad Who Had Five Penises Suffered from Runny Nose” http://www.artnet.sk/Magazine/features/asia/images/ziegesar3s.jpg Bhupen has once again given birth to a God like thing, who is already walking on the earth somewhere. Here, the newspaper item, becomes a sacred mantra which inspires him to illustrate the latest deity, which is akin to the first artist who might have drawn, for example, a Ganesha after reading or hearing some story about the elephant God. Here, a casually drawn human being with many penises. The figure is almost in a hospital, waiting for a some surgery. He wants to get rid of the surplus of penises, waiting for just one functional penis, and that may eventually heal his runny nose as well. In this work he paints the man’s hand with six fingers, which is unusual but his causal drawing, almost bad drawing of hands is a universal feature in his works.

And this feature ‘Bhupen Hands’ has seduced me to no end. His bad drawing of hands are the tools, like talisman in his paintings which invite us for a ‘darshan’ (deedar in urdu,which means the exceptional look of divinity, or beloved). So, in the work titled ‘Darshan’ he has deliberately painted a pair of such two hands of two men hanging outside the frame of a marriage event. http://www.culturebase.net/inc/mediaimage.php?file=artist_834_2103_khakhar_darshan.jpg . Amazingly, there is no one looking at the main highlight inside the painting. That means, it is almost the norm, but , here in the work it is perhaps aimed to initiate a discourse on homosexuality, therefore, political. In his work ‘ Muslims around a Mosque, again he shows that the notion that non-existence of a QUEER in any community is a myth. He is not interested in the penis as a matter of fact, whether it is circumcised or not. He is interested in the simple desire of a human being, that desire which exclusive-heterosexuality has impaired. The victim inevitably is woman. So Bhupen is a feminist artist in that sense as well.

The two male winged human beings are about to touch their penises. I have read somewhere about some ancient Hindu Vedic practice that the young elder son is supposed to touch all the parts of his body with his dying father to inherit all his smaskaras ( wise ways of living ). This practice includes touching of each others penises as well. So Bhupen in his work yayati http://www.artanddealmagazine.com/images/issue27/essay11.jpg he gifts a pair of wings to these earthly figures. There is no hit of death, nor is there any possibility of loosing any potency because of penis to penis touch. With wings, they look like representatives of Kama Dev ( Love God ) to energize the homosexual world. All his wants is love, nothing but love.


In his work, ‘inside Man’s heart’ he is using Lord Hanuman’s gesture that reveals his love for Rama and Sita. Lord Hanuman rips his chest violently to reveal what is inside his heart. But Bhupen’s protagonist ‘man’ in his water colour reveals not two but many men inside and outside his heart. He has indeed made love with number of men in his life. A simple sensual male to male sex, for a simple human ejaculation.

“ So? it is very rare to have false lovers these days” Says one of his characters, Savita in a Gujarati play ‘ Manjulial Manilal . Bhupen is not worried about what is true or false in love and life. For him this world is the only reality which one needs to realize. This life is worth living, even a for a begger.So the mythological characters become worldly ( almost ) and the real characters become mythological ( almost ).

Any citizen of India or a tourist can sit in the lap of a sitting large Gandhi Bronze, but when Bhupen ( a performance ) sat and got himself photographed by Ram Rahman, he paid an erotic tribute to the Father of the Nation. By sitting in his lap, he
instantly transformed into the penis of Gandhi, because of difference in scale, difference in proportion between a icon and ordinary. But, a small but living penis of a great but dead statesman. He effortlisessly executing his ideas, whether this performance or his water colour; and one keeps on wondering about the genius of this great artist without which Indian Art would have, a little peevishly, always looked a clever derivative of what we casually call Modern Western Art.
Thanks to Bhupen Khakhar, the Artist.