Subodh Gupta
Dear R,
I am sorry fate interrupted my stay in Delhi. I have returned to London owing to circumstance and the usual state of affairs I find myself subject too.
I noted, coincidentally, as I travelled from the airport to the city, that ‘Subodh Gupta’, according to the Evening Standard, is the “Damien Hirst of India”.
There was a picture, on the front page, of an ‘elephant made of forks’ to illustrate his work.
It reminded me of Flanagan’s ‘Nijinsky Hare on Elephant’ that is in a New York Plaza.
Your friend Subodh Gupta I found, like you, a ‘brother in arms’, whatever that means.
Somehow, during our conversation we invented this word -:
“Om Be”.
It came about, if you remember, after I quoted a two line Poem I had written:
“Furnish the depths to fill the tomb
“With gifts to bear into the womb.”
OM – India, the sound of silence…the resonance of God.
BE – English/Latin, the Here and Now, reason, logic, a nation once glorious, brought to its knees, drowning in a bureaucratic ocean of its own making…
OM/BEING…
It passes so quickly life like a continuous succession of moments, hardly a whimper, or a whisper, like the fleeting second of Picasso, Gandhi, et al, a mere heartbeat.
Between West Nizamuddin and East Nizamuddin lies a thin traffic Island where people live, wash, have babies, cook, and invite friends from underneath the flyover.
To them it is lower, more impure, to eat sausages than live their way on rice and Dahl.
OM
BE
Now there is a question!
