Rethinking of Dinanath Pathy – Memorial Talk
Dinanath Pathy – Tendering a Thousand Flowers to Bloom
By Ramli Ibrahim
Amorous Delight, the last collaboration of the late Dr Dinanath Pathy with Sutra in July 2016, reaffirmed his reputation as a progressive renaissance man of Odisha, epitomising the totality of his vision in integrating and effectively uniting his talents as an artist, theatre designer, dramaturg and litterateur.
While enjoying our latte at a bistro-café near the new Damansara Performing Arts Centre Theatre (DPAC), waiting for our next rehearsal session for the Kuala Lumpur premiere of Amorous Delight, Dinanath looked around at the milling crowd of the new mall-complex which also houses DPAC and bemoaned “it should not be impossible for us to have something like this in Bhubaneswar – where patrons and artists can enjoy a relaxing atmosphere on their outing of dance and theatre”.
Dinanath was aware that Kuala Lumpur has now a number of these smaller performing arts complex to cater to its growing urban theatre-goers. I would not carp to him my grumbles on the lack of thoughtful facilities, effective design, and details of these newly built ‘boutique’ performing theatre houses. They have recently mushroomed for the young suburban population of our various satellite towns, who are hungry for a theatre night out. I thought of telling him ¬- but didn’t – that these newly built theatres, constructed more as an afterthought rather than a well-conceived design, could have incorporated practical inputs from the artists themselves before they were built. The prime users – artists – were never or were last to be consulted, and as such, their real practical needs, technical and comfort-wise, were never fully considered.
By now, Dinanath, who has collaborated with us from time to time over a period of 25 years, was familiar with Sutra’s creatively charged working ambience. Viewed from afar, this is an ideal setting. However, it is hardly typical of the general Malaysian environment. In keeping a creative team together and on track, I usually spared him of our own struggles and perennial problem of funding, or the challenges of surviving within the environs of apathetic corporate and governmental bureaucracies which insist on measuring all endeavours in convenient indexes related to quantity and monetary profits.
Usually, there would be barely any visible grousing whenever Dinanath came to Sutra to collaborate over some project or other. He would inevitably arrive in the midst of a Sutra’s happening, and would find us engaged in ‘something’ – be it a dance class, workshop, performance or exhibition. Or there would be a gathering of artists over tea or dinner. Artists, students, or parents together with Sutra’s pets, bustled and milled about absorbed in their own errands and activities – coming and going in their own purposeful flows. Whenever Dinanath would land from Odisha in the midst of these pandemoniums he would quietly show me his recent publications, and then would simply get to work with whatever needed to be done on his part. He fit into our creative groove like a glove.
This was the Sutra environment he was familiar with and seemed to thrive from. The mise-en-scene was thoroughly democratic – there was no overt reverence to or display of his seniority towards the great man he was. Everyone called him ‘Dinanath’ and not Dr Dinanath, seldom ‘Dinanath Ji’, or even ‘Sir’, unless in a formal situation. He was at ease and at home in this setting.
I do believe that this is similar to the environment when he was with Dr Eberhard Fischer at Rietberg Museum, Switzerland or when they were on their research rounds of Odisha. There was work to be done and Time was sacred. And, those times were best and happiest for a genuine artist-scholar such as Dinanath, who relished in a world sans the culture of political opportunism and sycophancy.
We miss those irretrievable times with Dinanath: his boisterous laugh which can be heard over breakfast, lunch and dinner as we engaged in discussions at Sutra. I got to know many intimate anecdotes and observations, which he reminisced with much pleasure. Dinanath was ever ready with new ideas, writing, editing articles of ours, or drawing an extra illustration, which I seemed to perpetually request of him. I never ever saw him losing his cool, even in the most tense of situations.
But not so in Bhubaneswar… I was sometimes privy to Dinanath’s impatience and annoyance during vigorous debates involving art matters that might break into arguments of sorts. On some occasions, I was told: ‘Dinanath ought to be more diplomatic and not so outspoken of his views, less others would be slighted by his overt and drastic criticism and reactions’; ‘He might lose friends if he continues in this grain’; ‘Of late, he was getting too excited for his health’; or ‘He should be more careful!…’ Dinanath is quite capable of flinging his iconoclastic views like grenades to his challengers. This was his ‘other’ personality I was told, reserved for when he was in Odisha. Towards the later part of his life, I was aware of these two sides of his disposition.
The fact was, Dinanath was a man burdened with self-imposed responsibilities and vision. He was indefatigable and selfless in what he considered his lifetime mission. Ultimately, that vision, which he determined to realise for the Odiyan artists and wards of students, concerned the contemporary cultural heritage of Odisha. In immediate hindsight, it may be convenient for us to say that this vision was too unrealistic, too ambitious and too far ahead of his time, beyond the myopic shortsightedness of the prevailing world-view of his milieu – a prevailing world-view riddled with labyrinthine bureaucratic and political snags.
But Dinanath never accepted the futility of this utopic vision. Many artists would confirm that under the present condition, it would be almost impossible to survive with dignity as a creative artist in Odisha. How could artists survive in a state with hardly a gallery or facilities to showcase and promote their works, with hardly any substantial support from industrial houses or corporates to truly champion their aspirations, and having to deal with a government that always functions with depleting arts budgets that was never enough for the vital endorsement of their efforts? Creative contemporary visual artists simply cannot make a living in Odisha, as Dinanath and many others would lament.
Dinanath’s efforts (as a scholar-historian-thinker, writer, institution builder, documenter, arts-educator and promoter of Odiyan artists) would eventually interconnect and coalesce to augment his ultimate vision of providing a dynamic space in engaging artists in nation-building and to fulfill their contemporary cultural destiny and potential, in Odisha first – then nationally and ultimately, internationally. Specifically, his vision firstly concerned the Contemporary Arts movement (which included education) in Odisha. Intensely nationalistic, Dinanath believed that the fabric of contemporary modernity of Odisha must be built on the solid foundation of Odiyan traditions and the solidification of the Odiyan identity.
Taking the role of an ‘insider’, ‘facilitator’ and ‘mediator’ who knows the inter-connectedness of all the cultural manifestations in Odisha (performing, visual, literature etc), Dinanath ideally preferred that this contemporary vision had a relevant indigenous context and identity. Throughout his life as an educator, Dinanath espoused the harnessing and integration of the technical know-how of traditional craftsmanship with modern arts-educational technology.
Though the continuing debate of the dichotomy of local vs. global, periphery vs. centre, regional vs. national — as far as Odisha contemporary movement was concerned — would always fuel and rage on in contemporary arts discussions, Dinanath, as a visionary, saw a continuum, rather than a stark division of the two seemingly polarised views. For Dinanath, the local must aspire to excellence to be global in order to be recognised; the periphery should feed and inform the Centre. He was concerned with the identity and contextuality of Odiyan contemporary art and artists. For Dinanath, it was more relevant and precious that their creative points of reference should have indigenous context.
Thus, Dinanath was our man and the monolith who restored the confidence when things seemed bleak, who fanned the spark of hope to a raging fire of action, the earnest warrior who continued to fight the battle, the motor that continued the momentum of the initial contemporary movement set by pioneers the likes of Sarat Chandra Debo, Muralidhar Tali, Ajit Keshary Ray, Gopal Charan Kanungo and Ananta Panda.
Dinanath’s active and driven efforts to promote awareness of contemporary art can be gleaned in activities of institutions he helped to foster, such as Khallicote School of Art and Crafts, Lalit Kala Akademi, Silpi Samsad, Working Artists’ Association, Citrabaramasi and BK College of Art and Crafts, and many others outside Bhubaneswar.
When he was General Secretary of the Central Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, Dinanath made sure that opportunities were given to Odiyan contemporary art and artists, and their existence acknowledged through publications, workshops and exhibitions. When there was little scope for creative survival of Odiya artists in Odisha itself or to be known nationally or internationally, Dinanath opened the available doors for their talents, to flourish and to be recognised in the ‘centre’ of power, that was New Delhi. Otherwise, they would forever languish in the periphery of regional art. Many Odiyan artists who now don the hallowed cloak of ‘internationality’ owe their initial breaks to Dinanath. He had talked his walk, and walked his talk, and made Delhi take note of Odiyan talents and Odisha Contemporary Art movement.
Dinanath was a visionary with great expectations of what Odisha could and ought to be. He carried the heavy burden of angst swimming against the current, to take on the challenge of choreographing the cultural potentials of Odiyan artists into a meaningful dance of life of their beloved artistic community. Dinanath wanted that the psychic moorings of Odisha – based on indigenous traditional values – be transmogrified to the present contemporary modern era functioning as a living and healthy cultural entity.
Dinanath often quoted the dynamic achievements of Odiyans of yore in the spheres of military warfare, and architectural grandeur, besides that of the Arts. That Odisha (especially of Ganjam), he emphasised, had accomplished great things in the past. His mission was to realise this vision during his lifetime, by changing shackled mindset, and by catalysing and cultivating a critical mass of a new generation of sensitised and dynamic Odiyan artists. This was his unrelenting idée fixe which he selflessly dedicated for the people and state of Odisha.
But eventually, Dinanath felt disenchanted in his attempts to move the juggernaut of entrenched bureaucratic mindset which allowed the floodgate of uniformity to open for the triumph of mediocrity to rule sway. To Dinanath’s dismay, sometimes, the very institutions that he conceived or helped to build joined the mongering herd in playing to the power gallery and verily, themselves, became the bureaucratic bastions he disdained.
But there was also another unexpected, even more devastating, onslaught that came as a slow and insidious paradigm mind-shift that swept the world community as well as that of India (Odisha included). It came first as an undercurrent of hyper-capitalism under the guise of modern development. There was the business of politics which artists had to contend with, but the politics of big business would be beyond the pale of artists. The paradigm shift in how one looked at the world became more confused as one consumed the mis- and dis-information dished out by the global tsunami of the digital era. Humanity, social sciences and the related areas of concerns such as environmental and cultural bio-diversity, together with time-tested cultural values all became submerged flotsam and jetsam of just another extraneous human pursuit – relegated as dispensable commodities like mobile phones and apps, computer screens, and reality shows. They all became mere footnotes of history. The mantra was ‘Develop or Perish!’ The spectre of development came in the guise of multi-nationals and agenda-ridden CSR programs and big-time tourist festivals.
On a more personal note, Dinanath documented his abject loss in his book ‘Drawing Master of Digapahandi’.
Dinanath’s muffled voice of protestations was the loudest among creative artists who warned against the danger of selling one’s soul and values for the quick return of fast result, fast bucks and popularity. Many times, he told me that he had walked out of a dance performance because it had simply become too boring and banal to watch.
In the last few years of his life, Dinanath, battle-wearied, became more irksome and impatient. The futility of explaining a point, which no one seemed to care anymore, became tiresome. Out of step with the prevailing fashionable code of ethics and values, which were related mainly to quantity and not quality, to profit and rupees rather than to timeless beauty and authenticity, Dinanath found it less stressful to spend time in Malaysia and Switzerland.
I was delighted when the Reitberg Museum awarded him the prestigious Rietberg Award 2014. Always optimistic until the very end, Dinanath still saw a light at the end of the tunnel in the form of the Ila Panda Foundation, and worked hard for the ambitious launch of Ila Panda Centre of Arts (IPCA) Artists’ Conclave in August 2016. He spoke excitedly about it during the preparation of Sutra’s Amorous Delight in Kuala Lumpur. Dinanath, the art-warrior to the end, expecting that his dream would finally come to fruition in his life time – that Odiyan contemporary art and artists would finally have the home and platform they have been waiting for and which was their due – was fated not to have his wish come true in his life time.
With his demise on the very day of the launch of the Ila Panda Centre Artists’ Conclave, an era of contemporary modern art of Odisha closed an important chapter of its history.
As I partake breakfast in the mornings, I bask in the benign vibrations emanating from the subtle chromatic colours of a large painting by Dinanath, which overlooks my dining table. The painting represents a continuous flow of my own sylvan surrounding, an extension of my own expression of beauty and harmony of a ‘fantasised’ ideal eco-system. The painting’s composition is centrally and symmetrically designed. It speaks of an imaginary fauna-flora utopia, of the Soul of Nature. Supremely balanced in its interconnected existence, Dinanath’s ubiquitous ‘Blue Mountain’, not unlike the ‘gunungan’ (mountain-tree-of-life and central puppet entity which opens the Malay-Indonesian shadow play of wayang kulit), contains the created world – with monkeys, tiger, deers and foliage – painted in muted earthen terracotta orange-brown, culminating in a luminous yellow sheath around its blunt phallic peak. A round pool with swimming fish, wriggling snakes and lotus flowers in bluish green hues represent the elemental world of the waters. Tree trunks and flying birds decorate a dark ominous void of the upper world. The fact that there is no human presence is perfectly ok with me, too.
At night before sleeping, my eyes inevitably rest on my favourite painting by Dinanath – a large canvas depicting the apparition of a monumental bluish figure, with one hand outstretched and the other, concealed at the back. Kamadhenu, the mythic cow of plenty is painted on the path of energy of his outstretched hand – as if to say, “I am the Giver of your dream-requests…” The ‘Blue Mountain’ with Botticelli-Bottero-like damsels seemingly oblivious of being part of the drama of Life, float about in the silhouette of the ‘Blue Mountain’, symbolic of the created world. This is Dinanath’s interpretation of karmic Life’s drama of give-and-take; blessing and curse; the gift of beauty and the jinx of misfortune, replete with its checks and balances, which plague human existence.
Dinanath’s paintings remind me that Life has no absolutes – of his idealistic aspirations as well as the reality of Destiny of which we have no control. As artists, we sense that authentic artists are shamans who paint Life as they envisioned, and at the same time are their own actors in the karmic destinies of Life. That Dinanath has lived life to the full – and thereby fulfilled his destiny – is something that we salute him for. After all, we are the beneficiary of his generosity, vision and creative calling. He has prepared the bed of fertilized earth, sowed the seeds of creativity. I am positive that the fragile seeds he implanted will one day germinate to reaffirm his vision. A thousand flowers will bloom to display their incandescent mosaic colours to sing his praises – and for all to witness.
#DinanathPathy #ReneissanceManofOdisha #Artist #Scholar #Rethinking #Memorial
