Water from 74 rivers

Geologist and artist Manish Pushkale’s years of extensive travel across  continents was triggered by one idea — “Once my grandfather told me that mixing water from different sources is a sacred act, a symbolic union.”And the product of his travels since, is an ongoing show at the Kalakriti art gallery, titled Amidst Two Waters. While Pushkale notes that water has been crucial for civilisations and has even been the cause of geo-political conflicts, he adds, “As an artist, I am interested in the aesthetics of a river than its socio-political significance. I also am trying to locate and discover my own relationship with water.”

Pushkale, a trained geologist, who without any academic background in art, rose to fame in the art circuit when be became S.H. Raza’s protégé, collected water  from 74 different water sources, from the Mississippi, Jordan, the Amazon to Manasarovar, the Ganga and Yamuna, to paint. Among his “most exciting” expeditions has been one to a cave in Chhattisgarh, known as Kuttumsar. “One very interesting thing about this cave is that sunlight never hits the water and so the fish here are blind,” he says. “There are thousands more on the waiting list. This gives me a reason to travel and seek out some of the most remote places,” says the native of Bhopal.

“I am very keen on going to the origins of the rivers, very keen on understanding the civilisations on the banks and on understanding the journey and to experience the precise point where the river meets the ocean. The ‘parikrama’ — walking along a river — is very sacred. You will experience different moods of human life,” adds Pushkale, who has so far earned a name in the medium of oil paints with minimum interference of the brush.

But the challenges and joys of working with water colour are different. “Water colours drift on their own on the page. They stop abruptly, creating contours. The problem in the history of civilisation stems from the need to control water, but here I enjoyed the idea of having no control.

The minute I try to control, it transforms into tension of the plain. It’s not something I want to make, it’s happening and I am following it. It’s like the sarangi  — the dharma of the instrument is to follow the music, not to overtake it. So the water is the music and I am the sarangi.” Besides collecting water in containers, the artist also collected pebbles, soil, sand, flora and fauna from the banks of rivers.