A Tale of Labour Class!

“আপনি যদি মরুভূমিতে পথ হারিয়ে ফেলেন / যদি হঠাৎ অশ্রু আপনার গালে নেমে আসে / অনুসন্ধান করুন: কারণ আপনার বাড়ির দরজায় একটি ঘোড়া থাকতে পারে “

“If you lose your way in the wilderness / if suddenly tears roll down your cheeks / seek: for there might be a horse at your doorstep”

Like Bengali singer-poet Anajan Datta, artist Biswajit Das too might have felt the same verve deep inside his heart. That is why, while pouring his heart out on the canvas, he constantly went on rediscovering the same magical power of the horse. That is why this edgy and unconventional exhibition is named as ‘Horsepower’. Nevertheless, this exhibition does not focus only on horse-tales, it goes on to depict the horse as a special identity that is hidden amongst all of us…

এই গাধাটিকে কিছু জল দাও … অন্যথায় এটি মারা যাবে!

The ethical question of offering (or not offering) some life-giving water to the dying donkey is entirely your personal consideration. But you better be convinced about one thing – wherever you go, you’ll find the reign of His Majesty The Donkey everywhere. Today’s state, society, and values are all governed by the donkeys’ diktat! It is so powerful that it can wipe any civilization clean out of the pages of history with a single back-kick. It can set a whole country ablaze to satisfy its thirst for oil. When Donkey is the ruler, horse is bound to be cast away, like an expandable, useless, yet exploited set of muscles.

Today, donkeys are riding those horses. They don’t hesitate to open fire at the working class… randomly, as per their whims and fancies. They are the ones who convert the labor-intensive industry into capital-intensive one. It seems there’s a scary conspiracy to establish and ensure the dominance of donkey-hood replacing the hardworking, truthful and equalitarian horses. This is thus the artist protest on behalf of those horses, against the donkeys on two legs… because the artist’s heart echoes the poet’s dream –

ঘোড়া কখনই মানুষের হতে চায়নি,
সে কখনই আত্মসমর্পণ করতে চায়নি
সে কারণেই তিনি কখনই পরিবর্তন চাননি
পুরুষদের ভাষায়… ”(‘ ঘোড়ার গল্প ’/ অঞ্জন দত্ত

The horse has always been the center of attraction for many esteemed artists. Starting from K G Shubramaniam to M F Hussein – horse has dominated the canvas world over the years. M F Hussein started giving importance to horse as a medium to express his artistic vision since his famous painting ‘Between the Spider and the Lamp’ 1956. He completed a whole series on horse after that. In one of his interviews, he clearly expressed, “The horse is a combination of male and female, the front part of the horse is the male which is very aggressive; the back part is like a woman. So it is like an ArdhNarishwar (Half Man-Woman) the horses are a metaphor for the male and the female and is not depicted as an animal.”

Likewise, horse takes the main seat in artist Biswajit Das’ series ‘Horsepower’. However, man has also found its important position in his series. The first thing that catches our attention while looking at Mr. Das’ depictive quality is, his horses carry completely different expressions than those of Mr. Hussein. They are just not the emblems of ‘completeness’ – they represent a completely unique and special class!

In his famous play called ‘Hayavadana’ (Horse Face) famous Kannada playwright and director Girish Karnad had depicted horses as a symbol of working-class in our society. It was a tale that showed us how someone who had attributes of both physical labour and intellectual thoughts, gradually turns out to be a complete labour, who is always ruled by society’s so-called intellectuals.

This exhibition has 55 paintings by Biswajit Das, most of which have horse as their main theme. But this artist has not limited his horses under the shackles of lasso. It’s a delight to see so many wild, strong and beautiful horses running on the whole canvas.

Some paintings depict their speed; some establish their unity and wild bonding, while few other highlight the pain of their extreme loneliness.

The tiring, sweating life of the labour class, the desire of oneness with the partners in that life, their protest, their revolt and their deserted loneliness – every aspect of working-class is depicted in several forms of horses by the artist. Few of them depict intelligent human children with the horses.

Sometimes, those children are trying to stop the horses’ movements, sometimes they are try to tame to ride them! Human efforts to enchain the horses or to place burden on them (to serve humanity’s narrow interests) are unmistakable.

One of the paintings depicts human desire to touch the sun while riding the horses – seems like the game of acquiring wealth (ab)using the sweats of the labour class has just began. A few of the canvases depict the pain of the horses while dragging chariots. But those chariots have no human passenger on them; they only have flags! it shows, the only truth is ‘time’, the only universal passenger is ‘time’ – isn’t this the universal truth? Kings come and go, kingdoms rise and perish, rulers rule and are be-ruled, but the eternal flow of the society and its life is always sheltered in the sweats of the working class. They are the ones, who carry the ‘chariot of time’ forward, withstanding all odds.

One of the paintings has a special blue horse with two heads. His eyes has magical glow in them. Is the artist trying to capture the dream of the common men to become ‘uncommon’ in their way… someday?

There are few paintings which capture the enduring pain of the horses, one of them is quite unique which has several heads over one body. Is it just artist’s imagination or an effort to depict the unbearable pain of the solo body which pushes the entity to have several heads to pain… in tandem?

Artist Biswajit Das’ sense of comfort, confidence and ease with the ‘game of colour’ has taken the entire series to a quite different altitude altogether. Few have wash effect in them while few other concentrate on calligraphic style. There are some dry pastel works as well. Mr. Das has touched a new epic-chord with one of his paintings where he has depicted two horses exchanging their emotions with a half-moon at the backdrop. But somehow, it feels that the painting depicting the pain of a lonely horse will fetch some special appreciation from the critics’ quarters.

Reality has given us the game called Polo, where humans ride the horses to satisfy their sports excitement! But has reality ever given us an opportunity where someone has flown kites while riding a horse? The way artist Biswajit Das has tried to capture the desire of the upper class of the society to satisfy their narrow interests while riding on the labour class (and the way he has succeeded in that acute depiction) is absolutely praiseworthy. This indicates an artist’s realisation of an ongoing peril of today’s society which needs to be addressed immediately, without fail. It clearly shows how entertainment-machines (labour class) are painfully deprived of entertainments in their personal lives. When was the last you saw a carpet on the floor of a carpet-labour?