Multiple Facets of My Madurai

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So. I am the 57-year-old only child of the author. Leafing through my late father's most celebrated work after his passing, brings me so many emotions. Let me start with the keen memories, since the notion of "nostalgia" is a meta-theme in so much of my father's work. My own nostalgia coalesces around multiple childhood trips to Madurai, (from what was then Madras, and now Chennai), when Appa could still see somewhat with his actual organs of sight. He would lovingly take me to all his favourite haunts, documenting them and cheerfully speaking the stories to me. Sometimes his own childhood friends who were still living in Madurai joined our expeditions, adding different facets to his narratives.

Skim forward over many years. My mother Mahema, immobilized from the youthful age of 32 until her life's end in her wheeled chariot-jail, nonetheless remained determined and quick-of-mind, and supported my father in every one of his creative endeavours. She would read to him as he drew, using the wrists of her paralysed hands (with their unresponsive, limp fingers) to flap forward the pages of famous works of fiction, history or biography. She would scrape the pages resolutely with the edge of her hand and wrist until-not a bunch of pages, but the one single stubborn target page would finally relent and reluctantly turn, (try this yourself) and would read newspapers, magazines or books daily to Appa late into the nights. He would bend over his easel filling in the contours of cloud and the textures of stone, the shadows of leaf and the plays of light with minute precision and sweeping vision. The black-India-ink-magic of his Rotring pen wand would spark whole worlds into being in pure black on white on a 2-dimensional paper plane.

This entire process took no less than 27 years for this one book, as my parents wrestled with time: each of their extreme physical disabilities, financial demands, (Appa in fact worked a full-time salaried job as one of India's most respected battery technologists for 35 years) and honestly, just- "We now must change Mahema's catheter in a medically-sterile way at home, in the dark, during an electrical outage"-kinds of issues.

Then there was the constant arms race against the occult timetable of the degradation of Appa's eyesight, that lead to his complete and utter blindness in the aughts. It involved clever tactics and strategic maneuvers to compensate for the gathering darkness, sometimes inspired, sometimes practical, but always just glancingly ahead of the inky blackness of a dead retina. That just about covers my history of the artwork.... And then there's the writing! It was one of the greatest honours of my life to have served as my father's second, and most stringent editor, and I believe his most candid critic, as we joyfully (he did everything joyfully!) huddled together at 6 a.m almost daily for months, editing the text. I'd like to note that Appa's voice is remarkable and original when you realize that his schooling was entirely in the Tamil language. The process of editing his writing was both fun and tough because neither he nor I hesitated to strongly disagree with each other at times, but that period is yet another locus of good memories. I know that he was very content with the results.

So, clichéd as this might sound, and many have said this already, it is now my turn to publicly state that: parents were real-life heroes and this book is stupendous evidence of that truth.

my Now this is where I drop the pin on the 25year friendship that hatched and grew between members of the family that runs the incredible and world-beating institution that is Aravind Eye Care System, and my parents.

Made for each other' is a trite phrase that acquired currency after the 1939 film of that name, featuring Carole Lombard and James Stewart. It has, since, become a mindless part of the world of commerce, with cards, advertisements, poems using the phrase to describe two well-paired persons, or even a person and an object, for their highly predictable and tedious twosome-ness.

When I once heard Nirad Chaudhuri compare marriage to a neck-tie, I thought the contrarian writer was likening the ties of marriage to a strangulation. But no. He said 'A marriage, in order to succeed, has to be like a neck-tie- either a perfect blend or a total contrast.

I do not know which of the two blend or contrast make Manohar and Mahema a perfect pair, but that question is of little consequence before the coming together of a triple concordance.

Madurai, Manohar and Mahema are a threesome miracle. All three lose themselves in each other. All three find themselves in each other.

Together, they form the subject, the skill and the soul of this book.

Mahema read out to Manohar from books, articles and papers, things about Madurai. And as she did so, Manohar's own indelible memory of scenes and spaces formed the stunning images that this volume holds.

Manohar's pen draws with ink, now flowing thick as a tail-brush and now as thin as an ant's trail on talc. As his nib moves, slowly, deliberately, cell by cell, point by point, in lines as clean as Euclid's and as fine as the veins on a peepal leaf, the light and shade of that city's life arise on the page. A tilt of the pen here, a pressure on it there, now strong, now slight, a joinery here, an ellipsis there, a smear here, the merest dot there, and we have stones carved, trees grown, roads leveled, smoking trains set on tracks, ponds filled with water, buffalos wallowing, ducks paddling, vendors selling, elephants gamboling and hills sitting in sage reflection. Here is art that makes photography seem ersatz and words a failed exercise in description.

For me, over the years, Madurai meant Madurai Shanmukhavadivu and her daughter Madurai Shanmukhavadivu Subbulakshmi, both invoking by their music, the Goddess Minakshi immortalized by Muthuswami Dikshitar's composition of brocade-like dazzle on Her. Since the time I have seen Manohar's mastery of its multiple facets, Madurai also means Manohar's filigrees in line, dot and curve of that timeless city.

Great biographies come in black words printed on white, illustrated sometimes by lovely images. Here, into its eighth edition, is a great story of a great city also in black and white, form replacing word, illustrated, curiously, by a beautiful text, also part of the Manohar-Mahema-Madurai miracle.

It was my friend, N. Ram who first suggested that I work on a portfolio of ink drawings on Madurai and write the matching copy with whatever insight I had on the depicted scenes. This portfolio presents the city of Madurai in southern India through a collection of intricately detailed pen-and-ink drawings with accompanying text. The book gives glimpses of the city's monuments and street houses, its temples and festivals, its surrounding countryside... glimpses of the city's history, its traditions and its social ethos, often viewed nostalgically through the lens of my memory and art... Above all, this portfolio is an expression of one individual's love for his boyhood town.

I have presented here 72 meticulously executed drawings with an additional clutch of supplementary ones and mini-maps. I completed the earliest drawing that appears here in December, 1983 and the last one in July, 2010. Of these 72, I have used 26 in my first book, 'Green Well Years', published in 1997 by East West Books. All the 85 drawings are dated but not presented in chronological order. Instead, there is a layering of information-visual and verbal-including that of street life and transient practices that I grew up with. From buttermilk dispensing to cow dung collection, these are the humble, but living aspects of my city. Along with the changing faces of the street houses and the urbanisation of the adjacent countryside, some of these practices are gradually disappearing. Through it all, the portfolio also records my personal, visual and artistic journey.

As a teenager, I realized that I had a feel for rural scenes and architectural entities, a good comprehension of perspective and a flair for ink drawings. Over the years, ink-on-paper became my preferred medium although it is not an easy one. Tonal differences are created by changing the thicknesses of black lines and by varying the spaces between the lines. How to distil, for instance, the mood and magic of a still fragrant early morning jasmine garden in black ink without the use of colour and depict the fine gradation of texture in every surface? I immensely enjoyed addressing such challenges in my artwork. Fortunately for me, these very challenges became my assets in later years. My vision declined, my colour perception faded and my acuity weakened. But I could still clearly see black and white. With passing years I found it harder and harder to draw and I had to spend longer and longer hours at my easel....However, my motivation to draw and the pleasure I derived from this creative work never declined.

While capturing statuary in ink, my emphasis was on factual precision. So it was with lofty monuments too, but I used my own input in creating the scenes at the ground level, as they really were. I created the artwork on street houses by drawing upon my knowledge of the structure of such buildings, by poring over disparate visual sources, by sketching existing abodes and by using trigonometry. As for rural scenes, by and large, I carefully composed them based on my deeply engraved memory and on existing rustic landscapes without compromising authenticity.

This book brings into focus multiple facets of my Madurai. Through its artwork and the text, this portfolio is also an indirect plea for the civic renewal of this town. My hope is that its citizens will nurture, cherish and preserve its varied, rich heritage, even while looking forward to its assured, vibrant future.