‘Harappa Files’ at 24 Jorbagh

When the graphic novel ‘Harappa Files’ was released in 2011, Sarnath Banerjee’s commentaries on the post-liberalised country had felt like a searingly ironic albeit humorous statement, a satirical look on what was a plausible future. He had imagined a Greater Harappa Rehabilitation, Reclamation and Redevelopment Committee that was commissioned to conduct a survey of the existing ethnography and urban mythology of a nation teetering on the edges of seismic transformations, and its far-reaching ramifications affecting the fate of every man.

Recently, when 24 Jorbagh, an art space belonging to the Gujral Foundation, was heading for demolition, Sarnath was commissioned to recreate the ‘Harappa Files’ in this rambling space, bringing alive the narrative that had invoked a time when the modernisation of India was imminent. The artist-novelist effectively captured those times through evocative vignettes, like the ‘Nirma’ years when people everywhere were humming the washing powder’s advertising jingle. Time is textured into material, and through repositioning the narratives, Sarnath questions the measure of time, making viewers witnesses to the ebb and flow of the passing years.

The dialogue of the artist navigating personal and public spaces from within the walls of a transitory studio brings William Kentridge’s recent project to mind. In ‘Self-Portrait as a Coffee-Pot’ at the Arsenale Institute for Politics of Representation, for the recent Venice Biennale, Kentridge explores how our identities are defined by human emotions and memory. Across different perspectives, it is fascinating to see two art practitioners respond to their personal circumstances by making use of a lived-in space, achieving very different ends. “These are the fragments,” says Kentridge, “that are allowed to swirl around the studio and then rearrange, before being sent back out into the world as drawing, as a film, as a story.”

‘The Daily Melancolony of a Heartburn City’ is ‘Harappa Files’ retold within the walls of a house once dedicated to showing contemporary art. In the artist’s words, “The Reclamation Project is to remember how we felt at a certain time. To remember the history of time and feeling. The idea was to anchor time and slow down the present moment even as it haemorrhaged and bled away into the past.”

To put the graphic novel within the framework of history, Sarnath placed the narrative at the fag end of a Prime Minister’s tenure. The dramatis personae were people like petty businessmen, landlords, small-time operators, property dealers who thrived on distress sales, also vendors, shopkeepers, manufacturers et al — the type of stereotypical characters one encountered everywhere in the capital of the ’70s.

Serendipitously, some would say, when Sarnath was invited to exhibit his work at the soon-to-be-demolished art space, which has played host to some edgy art shows in the past, it struck him that perhaps it was the perfect opportunity to bring it to the city he had lived in, and in turn loved and been angry at. As he puts it: “My main task has been to put together an encyclopaedia of feelings — to record how people vibed with a particular time.”

24 Jorbagh, with its green painted gates, has a stern notice at the entrance — it warns the casual trespasser that the property is under strict surveillance of the ‘Residents Welfare Association’. One imagines the uncles and aunties of the neighbourhood taking offence at late-night visitors mingling with the opposite sex or at certain social activities that fall outside their moral framework. The mood is established at the entrance itself and reinforced further as we step within the rooms that have Sarnath’s signature graphic art on the walls (floor to ceiling) and elsewhere.

Most of the satire is immediately distinguishable as belonging to those years when neoliberalism was the hot new trend, and packaged Bisleri bottles were considered trendy accessories. The larger-than-life portraits bantered on the ‘day-to-day spirituality of Delhi’, alongside lampooning the custodians of the Saraswati Sena, which consisted of retired Brigadiers who had nothing better to do than army the hood, especially young men and women. In his work, no one is spared, not even the historical figures of the past era, like Begum Roshanara, titled Botany Begum, whose penchant for botanical substances was well-known. Sarnath reminds viewers that it was at her suggestion that her bother Aurangzeb decapitated Dara Shikoh and sent his head to their father, Shah Jahan.

Coming to more recent years, a scooter is seen parked outside ‘Soni Real Estate’, from where a gang of rowdies (the artist refers to them as Cavaliers of Delhi) operates, bullying the elderly to sign away their properties to enable newer constructions. Violence, toxic powerplay and divide are narratives that come alive in the space, bursting with wicked humour, as we revisit history — but in the retelling, we are also reminded that the present world has not changed so much.

For those who have read ‘Harappa Files’, ‘The Daily Melancolony of a Heartburn City’ will resonate on many counts, enriched all the more by the tactile experience of the works and the space and the sound effects they encounter. The use of a radio set and a television is especially inspired — the advertising jingles familiar to so many of us who grew up in those years. There is a similar feeling of deja vu when we see the Boroline mother with her children in tow, hurrying towards a taekwondo class. Personally, ‘Cabinet of Curiosities’ was a memorable takeaway, containing within its glass shelves packets of Digene, Isabgol and Boroline (an integral part of every Bengali’s household), immediately transporting one back in time. As we make our way out of the house, the jingles play on, or is it just our memory that resonates with ‘I am a Complan Boy!’, ‘Vicco Vajradanti’ and the robust notes of ‘Lifebuoy hai jahan tandurusti hai wahaan’? As a friend observes in her post on social media: ‘What emerges is more than a critique — it’s an illustrated archive of soft power and social structures, of nostalgia shrink wrapped in plastic bottles and wrappers decorated with roses.’ (Priya Pall)

Perhaps it is only fitting that, along with this remembrance of past times, 24 Jorbagh will also now be part of history.

— Puri is an art writer, independent curator, collector & documentarian

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