HIS room looks a small space…. But then this was then first glance you threw. The second one and the world beings to zoom in on you…. In a sudden, gush of beings and being. You wonder how come does the Spring breeze in here so freely and where does it come from and where does it go…. You figure out half of that when you take in his frames. The other half hits you somewhere on the drive back home… across vacant roads – that space isn’t about space…. that space could be in gathering of crowds, experiences, living… walking, running, to the wind, to the hilt…
This all and a little more comes back as Diwan Manna comes back…. The photographer is back from his long rendezvous his camera took him on. The last when you were reading of him in this very space in HT City, he was busy packing into his bags, bundles of camera rolls and frames for a series of exhibitions across Germany and France. The news is – they happened, happened to be pretty happening, so much that some of them also happened to woo some art lovers enough to go home with them. Diwan has returned after selling 16 frames in Germany of which 14 have been bought to be made permanent collections of Museum Fur Indische Kunst while the other two have won over two Germans. He’s sold two in USA and eight in the UK, and mind you, by way of a mere catalogue on him.
So how’s it been like? Especially Berlin, where was the first Indian photographer to exhibit muse. He smiles, hangover of travel glinting through: “Until recently, Berlin hadn’t been too open to contemporary Indian Art… but now, I guess things have begun to change. People there are highly responsive. They kept coming back to tell me they hadn’t seen my king of work before… maybe what they meant was thematic series… and well, every response, was stirring, as ever. Somehow… they’ve a way with honesty. And if they don’t like you work, they just smile a polite ‘hi’ and leave saying, “carry on!” Their ways of appreciating differ from probably ours…. I mean, there were those who just came back to invite me for dinners, parties, drinks… and those who could afford, bought my photographs.”
From here he goes on to talk of cultures that Germany and France and USA and UK are… “I loved Berlin. Maybe because of history… Berlin its wall, its buildings still
Wear scar of the world wars. Streets runs marked with thousands of bullets. The Checkpoint Charlie can still stir up a strange mix of emotions. And yes, Germans know a lot about India… in fact, some of India’s best works of art which we may not find here, sit preserved there. People are highly organized when it comes to say, holding an exhibition. They’d do everything from sending invites to organizing all in-betweens. Art is blessed there, maybe because just anything won’t pass off. When we talk art, it looks it, unlike here, where exteriors fake sometimes.” And people? “Hmm…” feeling out, he comes up with what we all know and feel more gladdened at knowing yet again – “Oh people are the same everywhere… Their joys, pain, their relationships, but truthfulness rules over all there, unlike the way we play games. Somehow travel never fails to widen spectrums, handing down visions and abilities to appreciate a lot many things we would oversee in cubbyhole-existences”
And in between a silent sip on his drink, he talks of his yet- to-comes…A coffee-table book on Kerala, work on a book of Swedish poetry being translated into Hindi, besides yet another theme exhibition for a French agency… “But of course… at their own pace and my own. Can’t just rush about,” he shrugs.
As we drive back, the breeze is a wee bit spring splashed space in crowds… bighearted perspectives. Space after all, is inside. Never outside. So that with each visit of Diwan’s room, the space keeps getting bigger… space inside his muse, and living, does it.
