Why can’t city’s aesthetics and commerce co-exist in Kolkata?

We’ve been far too caught up with great intent on crooks and scam artists; easily awed by anyone who not just bucks the system, but defrauds it. In our country, overseas, maybe in your neighbourhood too. On a smaller scale. Like the person in Jorabagan who paid a broker money equal to the value of the property he was trying to sell. Then there’s that architectural legacy recently demolished to make more space for the ugliest construction our city has seen in a long time. That legacy was sneakily downgraded in its official heritage status ensuring its quick and total destruction. Our activists woke up a little too late. It was, after all, close to a century old; a barely functioning place for many years before being sold off. We have more news of sorrow in the City of Joy. The Gurusaday Museum on Diamond Harbour Road in the Joka area is to shut down. It houses an exquisite, exclusive and rare collection of indigenous art and craft of Bengal, the outcome of one man’s passion. Gurusaday Dutt put together this collection of nearly 2500 pieces of art and manuscripts, archaeological artefacts, embroidery and weaving, paintings, terracotta, wood and metal between 1929 and 1939, brightly representing folk cultural traditions of undivided Bengal. The museum, established in 1961, received financial support from the Union Ministry of Textiles since the ’80s. This has now been withdrawn. One more fight to the finish on social media.In our city, aesthetics and commerce are two distinctly separate entities, now and then uncomfortably making joint forays together, never really succeeding. Our pride remains glued to what was. Anything different is considered progressive, contemporary. Not a bad thing in itself, but unable to actually get out of its mould of being new and forging a path. So we look elsewhere to imitate.This city evokes a strong sense of nostalgia. Even if you were unaware of its colourful history, you would still feel a little wistful passing through the old areas. I remember when we had trams of many colours. Or the first and best Metro in the country. But we did not build from that. Every station with art works inside and outside, giving each unique characteristics. Today, we’re trying hard to resemble the boring industrial sameness of the Delhi Metro. The artworks in the old stations look like neglected museum pieces, only their lighting changed from fluorescent to LED.In 1957, Frank Lloyd Wright the architect and educator, wrote: “Art is a discovery and development of elementary principles of nature into beautiful forms suitable for human use”. And the design guru, Charles Eames had this to say: “Art resides in the quality of doing; process is not magic”. I would say we forgot these principles a long time ago. The Italian artist, Michelangelo Pistoletto gets the final word: “Above all, artists must not be only in art galleries or museums — they must be present in all possible activities. The artist must be the sponsor of thought in whatever endeavor people take on, at every level". There are of course those who are impatient with all this nostalgia and perhaps the associated art. They thrill to the modernistic trappings of the city raising their heads all around. The malls, the new bars, cafes and restaurants, the prospects of migration. Anything that reflects all this modernity, contemporary, must be good, better than before. History is for textbooks.Last week I speculated on re-imagining our city from its history, intervening with evolving artistic and creative responses. An autonomous watchtower, as it were, set up to overlook urban planning and projects could be a good way to get going. Comprising artists, architects, designers, historians, scientists, writers and other aesthetes with expensive but short tenures in the council, this watchtower would have the power to recommend, even demand aesthetic inclusions and exclusions to anything affecting urban planning and development, whether by the government or private entities. This necessarily requires massive political initiative, will and practice. Calcutta could lead the way.I’m just happy there’s a whole lot of very good music available with even more choice thrown in. I spend a lot of time seeking music. For music I heard when I was so much younger than today, for music I read about but hadn't heard, and those recommended by people whose music tastes appeal to me. Along the way are discoveries that move me, or leave me cold. I recently came across a one and a half minute video of a group of qawwals singing Sweet Child O’ Mine, that most popular rock anthem by Guns’n’Roses, in their style. The main singer also did the double-handed, index fingers pointing down thing hip-hop artists do when he sang the chorus. What made it embarrassingly cringeworthy were the listeners preening themselves and looking thoroughly pleased with the rendition of that which must never be called music.— PATRICK SL GHOSE