Another hartal

Vazhuthacaud Junction in Thiruvananthapuram at 11.45 am on Saturday, June 26.
This area normally buzzes with activity at 11.45 am on most days, including Saturdays.

Kerala ‘enjoyed’ another hartal a couple of days ago. This one was to protest against the rather sharp rise in fuel prices. The hartal was called at really short notice — a lead time of about 15 hours. It obviously threw life in Kerala out of gear: no shops or restaurants or banks or public transport during the 12-hour hartal.

The decision to raise the prices of petroleum products and to let some fuel prices be determined by market forces is a pretty strong punch below the belt for most Indians. And for a State like Kerala that imports much of what it consumes, the pain is probably going to be more intense. There’s no doubt about that.

But how this hartal or the others that are likely to follow are going to send fuel prices down is unclear.

Why can’t all those benevolent people who promote hartals chose, instead, to focus their energy on finding meaningful solutions to the issues that spark-off hartals. For instance, economics and logic would indicate that there’s only one direction in which petroleum prices are likely to go — up. So wouldn’t the folks who called the hartal on Kerala on June 26 do more all around good if they choose to promote and support the adoption of non-petroleum energy sources? Why can’t they form a science cooperative to do research into non-conventional, sustainable energy sources and how they can be used — instead of petroleum — to fuel India’s growth?

Wouldn’t pushing for initiatives like this have much more meaning than calling silly hartals? And, perhaps more important, they would arguably create much more goodwill for the ‘brand’ and probably bring in more votes too.

Waltzing with the unions

Moving house can be fun. It can also be stress-filled and exhausting and can chew up large chunks of time without you even realising it. And, as a bonus, it can even help you shed a few kilos. I’m sure my friend Sumi over at Musings, who moved house a couple of months ago, will agree.

I imagine that in most parts of the world, when you are set to move, you get a couple of relocation companies to give you some quotes and then zero in on one where the price-value equation makes sense. The movers roll in, pack all your stuff, cart it off to your new home and, perhaps, even unpack your belongings and set it all up. At least that’s the way it happens if you can afford the prices that movers charge. And if you can’t afford movers, I guess you cart all your stuff to your new home with some help from friends and family.

In Kerala though, moving house is a bit like being part of a velichapad or temple oracle’s performance ritual. Just as you are never quite sure of what the velichapad will say or do when possessed by the deity, so too are you never sure of just how Kerala’s unique headload workers’ unions will behave.

In most parts of India, if you bring something in a truck to your house or shop or office, you can pay people to unload the stuff for you. In Kerala, such work is the exclusive preserve of members of the headload workers’ unions; and each locality in the State has its own complement of headload workers’ unions.

What that means is that you — personally — can unload your belongings from a truck, but cannot employ just anyone to do it for you. Instead, you have to employ members of the various unions to do it for you. No complications so far. Where this practice really gets interesting is that the charges for unloading your stuff are usually decided by the unions.

Things get even more interesting when you have to load or unload very heavy objects or things that require the skills of specially trained workers. In such cases, the union members do not do the work; instead they watch the work being done and are paid ‘nokku kooli’ or a wage for the privilege of viewing the work. Nokku kooli, even the unions officially agree, is illegal, but it happens.

There are, of course, ‘officially fixed’ rates for unloading various things; a price list of sorts. Most often though, what you pay for unloading your stuff depends on your negotiation skills and, more important, on the whims and fancies of the union reps in your locality. So if you get them during the ‘happy hours’ you may be socked with a whopper of a bill and then again, you may not. It’s all very unpredictable.

Which is why unloading stuff from a truck and, some times, loading it on to one, in Kerala is very similar in spirit to the velichapad’s whirls, swirls and mumbles when he is in the deity’s thrall. A dance with a blend of choreographed and spontaneous moves.

Snapshot: The model’s last pose

Some time last week, I was driving past The College of Fine Arts-Kerala in Trivandrum when I saw a konna or Golden Shower tree in full bloom. I stopped to take the picture above; a version of which I used in my piece on Vishu.

In the foreground of the picture is the statue of a man — bare-chested, arms locked behind his back, mundu drawn up and tucked around his waist. There’s something very arresting about the sculpture. Perhaps it’s the expression on the statue’s face — faintly proprietorial and confident, yet simultaneously melancholic and stoic.

The sculpture is of Chellappan. One of the many works — sculptures, paintings and clay models — he’s featured in. For Chellappan is, or rather was, a model for students of The College of Fine Arts.

But Chellappan will model no more for he committed suicide on Sunday, as this piece in The New Indian Express says.

Chellappan was, as the Express piece puts it: “…the most sought-after model by the students of the Fine Arts College… There was literally no one who had not made a sculpture, a portrait or a clay model on him.”

A few years ago Francois Daireaux, a French artist who was holidaying in Kerala, stumbled across one of the many statues of Chellappan sprinkled around The College of Fine Arts. And as this piece in The Hindu Metro Plus points out: “He (Daireaux) stopped to take a picture and behold! – into the frame walked the living sculpture himself, the man, the model.” One thing led to another and several months later Daireaux did a Chellappan-focused exhibition at the Centre d’art Abbaye de Maubuisson in France.

What it was that drew art students — and Daireaux — to feature Chellappan in their work is not very clear. Perhaps, it was his craggy face and the droop of his belly. Or perhaps it was because he was easy to work with.
I’ve seen Chellappan in the flesh a couple of times and what always struck me was that he was a caricature waiting to be captured. So much so that if I could draw or sculpt even a bit, I’d have grabbed the opportunity to capture him; that was how striking he was. And perhaps it was this hard-to-pin-down presence that Chellappan exuded that made him a popular model.
Not everyone, however, is impressed by Chellappan. As a senior lecturer at The College of Fine Arts told me this morning, a wry smile on his face, “There are lots of models here, but he (Chellappan) has become a metaphor.” The lecturer believes that Chellappan is more a creation of the media. And with another smile plastered on his face, but in words that oozed a sense of pique, he added: “Lots of big and important exhibitions are held here, but the media hardly mentions them. But him…”

I wonder what Chellappan would have had to say to that. More important, did all the attention, from the media and others, make a qualitative difference to Chellappan’s life. I suppose we’ll never know now.